Billboard-charting world music supergroup Sultans of String are excited about the launch of their feature length film "Sultans of String: The Refuge Project - Visual Album" – their pandemic project that just won at the Cannes World Film Festival, Best Istanbul Film Festival, and selected for the Vancouver Independent, Scarab, and Folk in Film Festivals.

Come join their Cast and Crew party, and celebrate their recent wins with a film screening, as well as another birthday “year around the sun” for bandleader Chris McKhool, all while raising donations for a good cause!

TORONTO: Sunday November 20
Doors at 6 pm, Film at 7 pm sharp.
Tranzac Main Hall, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2M7
Tix: https://sultansofstringfilm.eventbrite.ca

All admission proceeds of Toronto show after hall rental cost are donated to the UN Refugee Agency for their life-saving programming. Sultans of String have raised more than $10,000 so far!

Following a world premiere at The Toronto International Film Festival in 2022 and in honor of Native American Heritage Month, American Masters – Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On premieres nationwide Tuesday, November 22 at 9 p.m. ET on your local PBS station, pbs.org/americanmasters and on demand after this date on the PBS Video App.

The life, music, and activism of legendary Indigenous singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie are explored in this documentary that is as captivating as its subject, who smashed through barriers to become an inspiration to fans and fellow musicians alike.

This is why your song is not picked! Part 2.

I’m writing the main and most common reasons why we reject artists' songs on the radio station. I will get back to the series about the magazine and the festivals. Now gets to the main reasons we say no to songs for radio. Just to get some inspiration I will go into my mailbox and submit an account to see what is in there right now.

Oh, the first one here is an artist that wrote: Listen at 3:20 in the song there the magic happens.

Before writing a No. 1 Billboard hit (“Black Velvet”), becoming a MuchMusic original veejay, and an author and podcaster, JUNO-winning songwriter Christopher Ward recorded a 1978 solo debut album titled Spark of Desire.

Until now, Spark of Desire has never been available on streaming services. However, on a lucky trip to his well-organized storage space during the pandemic, Ward found the master tapes, and Warner Music Canada was able to bake them back into existence and remaster this delightful debut.

Fans will finally be able to discover (or re-discover) Spark of Desire in its remastered splendor, including the joyful, groovy single “Once In A Longtime,” which, with its bright horns and easy disco roll, evokes the beauty, wonder, and euphoria of discovering new love.

The biggest problem right now for the music industry is that we have opened the doors to the big brown wave. Before we had some kind of gatekeepers in the music industry. It was definitely not good all the time, but better than today when there is nothing to stop people from giving out stuff.

The opportunity to give out something stops artists from really developing a song. When I became a scriptwriter for TV and Film the first thing, they told us was, writing is rewriting. Something I’m not good at, as you can see here in my columns. Sometimes I should just stop reading the text and rewrite it. Stop again and just rewrite. Yes, my columns would be better. Unfortunately, time wise and I need to do so many other things I really don’t have time for it, so you have to bear with me.

When it comes to a song though, it’s a different story. Here you are writing something that should be forever. There is no real deadline; the song is ready when it’s ready. You are also writing a song that should compete with millions of other songs. Not just a column that comes out once a week and then is forgotten. No here you must put your soul into it.

It’s not hard to make a show in your head and everything is there. I would even be the best performer in the world if you just let me have an unlimited budget and complete control. My show would have singing dinosaurs on a real life scale and more pyrotechnic than Kiss or Rammstein. I would just perform my own songs, but since I’m not that good of a singer we would require at least twenty-five people and guest stars that would help me perform by songs. Also, a good sound technician can handle Autotune in any circumstances. It will be a story during the whole show about my journey in the music industry and all the artists that I have met and worked with over the years.

Sounds good?

It would be a spectacle, I promise. The problem here is that, of course, if I would take this to a festival or any gig place for that sake, they probably would say no. You would need a gigantic stage and production around it. Even if I paid for all the production myself many would be skeptical to bring this show in. Of course, it will be good, even if I can’t sing or play all the things around it will be just worth seeing. The music is coming far behind the show.

Just in time for Halloween, Jackie K has released her latest single, “Nurse Jane,” a creepy alt-folk ballad inspired by a tuberculosis sanatorium in Saskatchewan and a troubled nurse who worked there.

Check out “Nurse Jane” on YouTube here:

“On the shores of Echo Lake as the Great War was done / She dressed in white and went to work in the sanatorium / Nurse Jane doled out tablets and help to those in need / She cleaned and fed, they coughed and bled / The valley of TB,” she sings.

“Saskatchewan opened three TB sanatoriums at the beginning of the twentieth century and one of them was located in the Qu’Appelle Valley at Fort San,” Jackie recounts. “It was a completely independent space, except for coal delivery, and an early model for what we now know as Medicare.” Built in 1917, it functioned as a TB clinic till 1971.

I wrote the same line around 2005. Internet was taking over, MTV was dead, and it seems like we were splitting up in our media consumption that there were no trends, just niche things. Back then my question was if Eminem and Britney Spears would be the last Superstars! It looks like it, nothing big really came out.

I was wrong but it took up to three years more, almost to 2009 before it really happened again. Then it was Lady Gaga and after that, we got several Superstars. I don’t know what made it possible. Did we actually start to look on the same channels just to make it possible? Did someone have the formula to get their things in several channels at the same time? I know for a fact that Lady Gaga put all PR in Europe for example, but at the same time was just a fluke.

I have attended many showcase festivals over the past half year. What strikes me is how organized most of them are, but how lost they are in some fields including people. I have been looking for a while now at how many of how them are accessible for handicapped and special needs and to be honest it’s sad to see the lack of support and awareness in this area.

Almost none of them have handicapped speakers, but worse is that they don’t have handicap-friendly venues or facilities. At the same, they almost compete to have small stickers to have on your badge if you are he, she, or them it’s totally ignored that there is around 26% of people that is handicapped or challenged, or if there are people that have special needs. Or that around 11% actually are in wheelchairs, something you very rarely see at festivals. In fact, in Sweden, a person in a wheelchair was thrown out from a festival because he wanted to get further ahead to see the show since people were standing in front of him.

Auction items include music trips, autographed items, original photography prints, vinyl packages, event tickets, and a 15-minute Zoom call with Cmdr. Chris Hadfield

For a complete list of auction items, please visit the website: theawesomemusicproject.com/auction

The Awesome Music Project, a Canadian charity dedicated to raising awareness and supporting research into music’s transformative impact on mental wellness and mental health, will be launching its first-ever Awesome Online Music Auction on World Mental Health Day, October 10, 2022.

“What better way to mark World Mental Health Day than with an auction to raise much-needed funds to help bring music-focused mental wellness programs to communities across Canada,” said AMP Executive Director Cori Ferguson. “We are blessed to have received an incredible line-up of donations from partners across the country, and I think we’ve got something that will appeal to casual and hardcore music fans alike.”

Featured auction items include:

Anyone who’s ever had a fake friend knows that, in contrast, loyalty in a friendship is an important quality that is worth its weight in gold!  JUNO-nominated Canadian pop group Girl Pow-R captures the unique agony of knowing a backstabber with their new single “Slam” – check it out on YouTube here:

The fifth single from Girl Pow-R’s sophomore album, “Slam” begins with funky flute and ominous beats, and then dissolves into a head-bopping groove as the group sets their boundaries with a “friend”:
You snuck around my back
And I will not take that
I thought that you were real
Yo, what’s the deal?

With 2+Billion digital streams across platforms and counting, Canada’s original, best-selling kids’ music group the MINI POP KIDS celebrate their Bright Lights Relit tour with a new video for “About That Time” – check it out on YouTube here:

A kid-friendly cover of Lizzo’s “About Damn Time,” the ’70s-inspired disco-funk earworm gets the video treatment with highlights from the tour thus far, depicting a montage of the kids’ high-energy performances and fun-filled interactions with fans.

After a temporary touring hiatus due to Covid-19 restrictions, the MINI POP KIDS finally returned stateside this summer, where they will be touring through the fall. They have also added several new dates in Canada.