Global Toronto Promotes An Exotic World Of Music Exploration

By FYI Staff

Small World Music has announced the full agenda for this year’s 5^th annual Global Toronto Music Conference — a 4-day event that includes showcases and think-ins that aim to break through barriers in what many might see as a predominantly lily-white music industry in Canada.

Its mission statement is to create a "sustainable, equitable and accessible future for the music sector.” In layman's terms, this means greatly enhancing opportunities for a diverse and colourful music sector that for all sorts of reasons misses the mark in achieving mainstream recognition here.

The Polaris Music Prize, and to some extent the Juno Awards, have helped give the fringes mainstream recognition, but organizers of Global Toronto and its affiliated Small World Music festival and event presentations hope for assimilation and global expansion for an ethnicity of Canadian acts by expanding market opportunities for a wide range of innovate acts that are pushing boundaries and mixing genres.

The GT team has reached far and wide to assemble this year’s networking group this year’s networking group of delegates which includes multiple Canadian arts organizations involved in booking or promoting non-traditional music, along with peers from Argentina, the US, Taiwan, Thailand, Colombia, and Norway.

In short, persons attending get to meet a virtual UN delegation of targeted contacts who can open doors and advance careers, whether they be performers looking for opportunities or music entertainment firms seeking a broader reach to enhance management portfolios, find new touring markets or generate foreign sub-publishing agreements and the like.

The GT23 Jury members, charged with picking this year’s 20 Spotlight Artists, are Toronto live music venue Drom Taberna co-founder and GM Misha Artebyakin, writer/broadcaster Marc Fournier, UK-based music journo/consultant Jo Frost, Festival International Nuits d'Afrique de Montréal and Club Balattou programmer Sépopo Galley, and Colombian-based alt music production house Biche founder Alejandra Gómez.

Among the daytime gatherings will be discussions on how to create closer ties with festivals and organizations with similar objectives in the global sphere, and forging an alliance with Mundial Montréal and the Quebec music industry in general.

These are lofty ambitions, but small steps can lead to bigger gains and the boutique-sized event promises much to those who wish to forge new alliances in a world that is ever-expanding and the music becoming more international by the year.

Below, is a selection of some of the 20 acts appearing in seven venues in this year’s Global Music showcases with a single ticket or wristband available to the public. Conference and showcase registration through Sept. 8 is $300 and $350 at the door.

Below, is a selection of five music videos from the colourful array of Global Toronto artists showcasing.

Moneka Arabic Jazz

Masmoudi Quartet

Eliana Cuevas & Jeremy Ledbetter

Kizaba

Diogo Ramos