Tuesday, October 27
Touched With Fire
Maxwell Cummings Auditorium, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 7 p.m.

The festival opens with the Canadian premier of Touched With Fire, a film that tells the story of Marco and Carla, two manic-depressive artists who, after meeting at a psychiatric hospital, oscillate between the extremes of intense inspiration and destructive suicidal ideation. Despite warnings from doctors and friends, the two fall into a romance, and attempt to navigate love, medication, and sanity together. Institutionalized four times for bipolar disorder starting when he was 24, writer and director Paul Dalio decided to craft this autobiographically inspired movie, starring Katie Holmes, with executive producer Spike Lee, while studying film at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

Thursday, October 29
DocuMental Series
Maxwell Cummings Auditorium, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

A series of Canadian and foreign short films delve into a handful of stories, some only five minutes long, others 25 minutes or more. The DocuMental series allows viewers to experience a variety of cinematographic styles and subject matter all in one sitting.

Leben, A Short History of Madness
2 p.m.

Leben is a German short film exploring the realities of living with obsessive compulsive disorder. Translated in English to “Touching Life,” the short follows the protagonist, Ben, over the course of a day. Fed up with his illness and invited to a neighbouring town for a job interview, Ben must decide between staying home or venturing out into the unpredictable world.

A Short History of Madness uses contemporary dance to portray the evolution of the treatment of mental illness in Quebec, starting from the late 19th century.

The Phone Call, Letting You Go
7 p.m.

The Oscar-winning short The Phone Call follows the length of a phone conversation between a crisis hotline worker and a man in distress, unfolding over the course of its twenty-minute run time.

Letting You Go is a Dutch documentary that follows the decision of Sanne, a young woman, to self-euthanize after years of treatment for boderline personality disorder, chronic depression, and insomnia. Director Kim Faber, as well as Sanne’s father, will be present after the screening to discuss assisted suicide laws and self-determination.

Friday, October 30
The Living Museum
Maxwell Cummings Auditorium, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 7 p.m.

In 1983, the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York housed about 1,350 patients. That same year, psychologist Janos Marton invited Bolek Creczynski, a Polish artist known for his work in political art and experimental theatre, to join the hospital staff. Together, the two guided the transformation of an abandoned building on the campus known as Building 75 that housed the main kitchen for the Creedmoor patients. Marton and Creczynski had the ability to see through the grime and faded interior of the deserted building and, with time, created an ever-changing space full of art and beauty, the Living Museum. Academy Award-winning director Jessica Yu spent over a year following the artistic development of six different patients, creating a nuanced and complex account of life in a state mental institution.

For a full listing of films, head to: acff.ca

The post The 3rd Annual Au Contraire Film Festival appeared first on The McGill Daily.

In concert, The Internet is magnetic, as they were when they played in Montreal last month.

Frontwoman Syd tha Kyd is the group’s centre of gravity. In Vibe’s August cover story, she is described as “one of the hottest rising stars on the music scene,” who “appeals to all demographics, all sexes.” As a gay woman of colour, Syd tha Kyd challenges the heteronormativity of R&B and the slow-changing formulation of women in the music industry. Live, the alluring, yet edgy personality of the singer has the crowd falling in love left, right, and centre. Syd is a woman singing about other women, and the raw seductiveness that coats her lyrics is easy to respond to regardless of sexual orientation.

As a gay woman of colour, Syd tha Kyd challenges the heteronormativity of R&B and the slow-changing formulation of women in the music industry.

Syd, however, is far from commercializing it. When interviewed for Vibe, she said, “I’ve always been conscious not to take advantage of my sexual orientation because I don’t think it’s fair and it shouldn’t matter. I don’t see the big deal. […] I wanted people to find me through my music. Not, ‘here’s this gay new artist, if you’re gay you should listen to her.’”

Syd started out as the lone woman of the Odd Future hip hop collective. Both producer and DJ, Syd would play keys and mix behind the decks while Tyler, Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean, Domo Genesis, and others crowd-surfed and moshed. Inspiring a similar character in the TV series Empire, Syd was the girl cool enough to hang with the boys. Underneath that cool, however, is a highly contemplative, emotionally sensitive vocalist with excellent taste in music. With the help of Martians and the others in her group, that potent combination is explored for the first time. Written off in the past as a fast-burning offshoot of the greater Odd Future collective, Ego Death and its sold-out North American tour dates beg to differ. The Internet has found its groove, and is now taking its place on the list of groups to watch out for.

The post R&B’s newest leading lady appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Tuesday, September 29
Sweet Micky for President
7 p.m., Imperial Cinema

Come to the opening night of the MIBFF to see Martin Luther King III accept the festival’s Humanitarian Award for his work addressing youth violence as a public health issue, among other projects. Stay for the screening of Sweet Micky for President, a film that follows founding member of the Fugees Pras Michel as he returns to his homeland of Haiti after the 2010 earthquake to help musician Michel Martelly, nicknamed “Sweet Micky,” with his campaign for the Haitian presidency. A panel discussion with Pras Michel will follow the screening.

Wednesday, September 30
Selma
7 p.m., Salle D.B. Clarke – Concordia University

Join Martin Luther King III, Reverend Darryl Gray, special assistant to the national president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, and others for a panel discussion on the power of non-violence. The panel will follow a screening of Selma, the Oscar-winning biopic of Martin Luther King Jr.’s involvement in the U.S. Black civil rights movement. Laura Gallo, interfaith facilitator at Concordia University’s Multi-faith Chaplaincy, will moderate the panel.

Dry
7 p.m., Former NFB Cinema

Not to be missed is Dry, actress and director Stephanie Linnus’ feature-length drama. Inspired by a true story, Dry chronicles the return of a successful Nigerian OB/GYN to her birthplace, where she explores the far-reaching consequences of child marriage in northern Nigeria. Dry addresses both the medical and social issues surrounding maternal health in the country.

Thursday, October 1
Thina Sobabili (The Two of Us)
7 p.m., Former NFB Cinema

Thina Sobabili (The Two of Us), South Africa’s submission to the Oscars’ foreign-language category, recounts the lived experience of two siblings making a life in the Alexandra township of Johannesburg. Hulas, the older brother of Zanele, grows more and more protective of his younger sister as she meets a well-to-do older man promising her a better life. Catch Thina Sobabili in Montreal before it wins that Oscar.

Friday, October 2
3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets
9 p.m., Former NFB Cinema

Part of the festival’s Special American Program, which features screenings of films made by American directors and actors, 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets deconstruct the 2012 shooting of Jordan Davis in Jacksonville, Florida. See the ramifications of the stand-your-ground self-defense law and the failings of the U.S. criminal justice system as they unfold after this tragic event.

Saturday, October 3
Game Face
7 p.m., Former NFB Cinema

Game Face chronicles the lives of two  LGBTQ athletes and their struggles for acceptance and equality in competitions. Highlighting mixed martial arts fighter Fallon Fox and college basketball player Terrence Clemens, the film details their coming-out process and the rampant heterosexism and cissexim apparent in the media firestorm surrounding each of them.

Battledream Chronicle
9 p.m., Cineplex Odeon Quartier Latin

The first Martinican animated film, Battledream Chronicle tells the tale of Syanna, a Black slave who fights for her freedom in a world where harvesting on the plantation comes in the form of accumulating points in a video game.

Sunday, October 4
The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution
7 p.m., Salle Theatre Hall – Concordia University

A mix of archival footage and interviews with police officers, FBI agents, and journalists, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution is a documentary that explores the cultural movement that changed the conversation about Black civil rights. Closing the festival, this film about the limitations of non-violent civil rights protest brings the MIBFF full circle, highlighting the relevance of the fifty-year-old movement today.

For a full listing of films, head to: www.montrealblackfilm.com

The post The Montreal International Black Film Festival appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Wednesday, Day
Art POP – Pillars: Voices to Look Up To, By Miss Me x LOVE
12 p.m.
Quartiers POP
Free!
Kick off POP with the presentation of “Pillars: Voices to Look Up To,” a collaboration between Montreal street artist Miss Me and local youth center Leave Out Violence (LOVE). Earlier this summer, LOVE led a leadership workshop with local youth, and the eight participants chose five of their role models to be depicted in Miss Me’s canonizing style. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Emma Sulkowicz, among others, made the list.

Wednesday, Evening
Suuns & Jerusalem in My Heart + Jerusalem in My Heart Album Launch + Hraïr Hratchian
8 p.m.
Theatre Rialto
Tickers $16
Find out what happens when an indie rock band cross-pollinates with a modern experimental Arabic audiovisual project at Suuns and Jerusalem in My Heart‘s collaborative performance. Stay for Armenian duduk player Hraïr Hratchian‘s liturgical chants set to ambient electronic music.

Thursday, Day
2 p.m.
Quartiers POP
Free!
Only at POP will a goth rock duo, a Mozambican-Canadian vocalist, a futuristic soul duo from Brooklyn, and a rapper best known for a stint in Montreal’s Bordeaux Prison play a barbecue. Come for the food, the music, or the cognitive dissonance that comes from sitting through a lineup as nonsensical as this one. Regardless, it’s bound to be a good time.

Thursday, Evening
Princess Eud & Ded Kra-Z + Lady Ace Boogie + Jai Nitai Lotus + Hvllowz +Aralune
9 p.m.
Balattou
Tickets $10
If you haven’t partied the night away at Balattou on St. Laurent yet, now’s your chance. Princess Eud and Ded Kra-Z will bring Haitian hip hop beats, Hvllowz will set folk vocals to trap beats, and Aralune will blend nineties R&B with future bass sounds.

Friday, Day
POP Symposium: Indigenous Beats
11:30 a.m.
Quartiers POP
Free!
Join Dakelh McGill professor Allan Downey in a discussion with Indigenous artists and beatmakers Beatrice Deer, Mskwaankwad Mnoomnii, Mack MacKenzie, and Will E. Skandalz about decolonization, reconciliation, and resurgence.

Friday, Evening
Film POP: Twentieth Anniversary Showing of Showgirls
Midnight
Cinéma L’Amour
Tickets $10
If you still haven’t heart of Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls, give it a quick Google. The 1995 box office bomb has aged like fine wine, and has earned a place of pride at Cinéma L’Amour for its 20th anniversary midnight screening. Watch Nomi Malone go from pole-licking exotic dancer to Las Vegas showgirl at the adult cinema, and try not to think about all the different activities that have taken place on your seat.

Saturday, Day
POP Presents: POP Arcade
11 a.m.
Quartiers POP
Free!
Including Montreal’s independent gaming industry in the festival for the first time, POP Montreal presents POP Arcade. Join 15 local indie game developers for a day of live demos, featuring new games and those still in development. Miscellaneum Studios, Heroes Never Lose, Burrito Studio, Illogika, Red Se3d Studio, and others will be in attendance.

Saturday, Evening
Art POP: The Trouble with Reality + No Fun
Midnight
Monument-National
Tickets $23
Montreal has a world-class contemporary dance scene. See what happens when it meets rock ‘n’ roll music. Developed at Tangente, Montreal’s premier contemporary dance laboratory, this night of movement and misanthropy is guaranteed to push boundaries.

Sunday, Day
Puces POP: Record Fair
11 a.m.
Église St. Michel
Free!
If you own a record player, a cassette player, or just want to dig through crates of dusty records, spend your Sunday rubbing elbows with private collectors as you search for the next hidden gem or just want some retro album covers to decorate your walls with.

Sunday, Evening
Vinyl Williams + People Pretend + Bronswick + Radiant Baby
9 p.m.
Casa del Popolo
Tickets $10
Finish off POP with a night of, well, pop at the darling of Montreal’s music venues. Be ready for experimental pop, synth, pop, eighties pop, and any other derivation of the genre artists can think of.

The post An alternative POP guide appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Tuesday

Catch Tonal Ecstasy, McGill’s oldest a cappella group as they take the OAP stage to serenade you with perfectly harmonized covers of pop, R&B, jazz, and hip-hop numbers.

Wednesday

Shyre is a local alt-pop project that combines orchestral violin, viola, cello, and piano with a pop-driven drumbeat. Make sure to catch their ethereal set and accompanying prose readings.

Thursday

Self-described as ‘funkadelic swing,’ Static Gold is an amalgam of twenties jazz, eighties funk, and soul. OAP-ers are lucky to have Static Gold gracing the stage, so be sure to catch their contagious set.

Friday

In the mood for psychedelic grunge rock and jazz? Fleece has you covered. Catch their set for music that sits somewhere between BadBadNotGood and Tame Impala.

The post Who to see at OAP, week two appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I told her I’d go if she wrote my application, including the essays, which she did.

I dreaded the phone interview after receiving the confirmation email that I was a candidate for the trip. I had picked the most secular trip offered, something called “Israel Outdoors,” which promised hiking, kayaking, and camel rides. Even then, I was sure that the fact that my father is Algerian and his family members are practicing Muslims would disqualify me from the trip.

The call finally came. I was walking across campus from my Arabic summer course when a woman called from Washington D.C. to ask me how I felt about Judaism. She started out slow, inquiring if I was taking any Jewish Studies courses at my university and if I celebrated any Jewish holidays. She then asked about the origins of both my parents, starting with my mother. That was easy. My mother’s family originated from Odessa, a port town in either Russia or Ukraine, depending on the year. They were all Jewish, although not particularly religious. My ancestors immigrated to Michigan through Ellis Island in the late 19th century.

The woman on the phone then asked about my father. I told her he was an atheist. She asked about the religion of his family. I told her my father’s family is Muslim. She replied with a deadpan “Oh,” that I still can’t quite decipher. Her response should have been a huge red flag for what was to come.

Somehow, despite my Arab father, I was offered a spot on the trip. I was to leave for Israel mid-August, during the hottest part of the summer, to visit the country for ten days.

My reality growing up was entirely a Jewish one. After moving to the U.S. from France, where I was born, I was enrolled in a Jewish day school. There, I learned the Hebrew alphabet alongside the English one, and spent hours of my day praying in Hebrew and studying the Torah, as well as learning math and science.

At Jewish day school, we were taught to love Israel like it was our mother, or the most precious thing in existence that needed to be defended at all cost. Israeli Independence Day was celebrated with more zeal than the Fourth of July. I only stayed for four years before leaving due to anti-Arab sentiment, but during those four years, I never saw a map that delineated Gaza or the West Bank – the Israel I loved didn’t include Palestine.

Around this time, I stopped believing in ‘god.’ I still considered, and consider myself to this day, ethnically Jewish. My time at the Jewish day school educated me about our traditions and the lore surrounding them. I carry that mythology with me wherever I go, just like someone who grew up with another religion carries theirs.

My father never talked to me about Islam.

I awaited my trip with trepidation. Days before leaving, I had asked a few members of McGill Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights to point me in the direction of some readings to do about the conflict. But after a week of reading, I still felt drastically uninformed about the region I was about to visit for ten days.

After landing in Tel-Aviv, my group was given paper passes instead of stamps on our passports to enter the country. We swiftly passed through customs and were shuttled two hours north to a hotel in Tiberias, a small town on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

The first hike we took was to Mount Bental, a mountain in the occupied Golan Heights and “a key strategic point for Israel” during the Yom Kippur War of 1973 due to its proximity to Syria. Upon arrival, we immediately descended into the long halls of a military bunker, and crowded into a dark and smelly room as our tour guide regaled us with the tale of a group of Israeli soldiers holed up in a bunker “half the size of this one” during the Yom Kippur War. We were told that 1 per cent of the Israeli population died in the Yom Kippur war, which we were told would be the equivalent of three million Americans if 1 per cent of the U.S. population died in the same war. Because that’s how equivalents work.

“At Jewish day school, we were taught to love Israel like it was our mother, or the most precious thing in existence that needed to be defended at all cost. Israeli Independence Day was celebrated with more zeal than the Fourth of July.”

While in the Golan, there was no mention that of the territory being occupied. All of the violence discussed was couched in the tone of “aggression against the State of Israel.” This would be a common theme throughout my trip.

On my way back to the bus, I stopped at a fruit stand selling apples and jams. A Druze man let me sample his fig jelly and told me that he was a former Arabic teacher. I told him, in my awkward Modern Standard Arabic, that I studied Arabic at university. He then quizzed me on my vocabulary and taught me some new words. At one point, he pointed to his heart and said a few sentences I couldn’t understand. I wish I had. I nodded, he smiled, and I got on my bus. Immediately, people from my group asked me what language I was speaking. I told them I was speaking Arabic. They thought it was pretty cool.

Back in Tiberias, my group was told that a famous Israeli musician was coming to sing to us after dinner. He sang us a few songs and told us his life story – his military service, his subsequent debauchery in Thailand (full moon parties, anyone?), and his road trip across the U.S.. He then tangentially launched into a shockingly racist diatribe on how dealing with Israel’s Arab neighbours was impossible because “it was like dealing with different tribes, not nations.” He took five minutes to explain to us his conception of the difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims – which was concerningly the only ‘analysis’ my group received on the subject during the entirety of the trip – and at one point, mockingly ululated and spoke jibberish Arabic to qualify his point.

The next morning, we were bussed to the mountain village of Tzfat, the centre of Kabbalah or Jewish mysticism. There we were led to a building called “Ascent,” a Chabad, or Orthodox Jewish hostel and learning centre. After listening to the incredibly charismatic, yet analytically shallow, spokesperson tell us about his experience with Orthodox Judaism, the floor was opened to questions. I asked him about the role of women in Orthodox Judaism and what I heard in returnwas the scariest justification for sexism I had ever been faced with.

According to him, Orthodox women are inherently spiritual and holy. It’s the men who need to constantly work on attaining religious perfection while the women have the ‘privilege’ of exercising their divine right to bring life into the world. The women also need to be protected – because they are treasures – and cover themselves to help men overcome their “predatory instincts” toward physical beauty and allow men to get to know the “soul” of the women. When we left Ascent, a few of my group members commented on how “nice” the answer to my question was.

After the illuminating experience at Ascent, we were allowed to roam freely down a street toward our bus. I was later told that a guy on my trip named Daniel*, who was of Chinese and Jewish descent, was asked by an Orthodox Jewish man at an outdoor table, if he was interested in putting on tefillin, an item traditionally used by men in prayer. While Daniel was being wrapped, the man asked if his mother was Jewish. Daniel’s mother isn’t Jewish, and when he told him so, the man told Daniel he wasn’t Jewish either and started taking the wrappings off. Our tour guide told us this story a few days later, stating that the Orthodox Jewish man in Tzfat was not ‘acting Jewish,’ as Judaism is a state of mind, not solely the result of your matrilineal heritage. Apparently, the Orthodox man would beg to differ.

After Tzfat, we were bussed to Jerusalem, where we headed to a park for icebreakers. Along the way, four police officers on horseback galloped through a red light toward an intersection a few streets away. Police vehicles were blocking the intersection. No one acknowledged what had happened. It wasn’t until later that someone told me that a huge demonstration had occurred that night by Orthodox Jews of the neighbourhood in protest of a movie theatre staying open on Shabbat. That was the first time I truly realized that the everyday Israeli experience was being purposefully hidden away from us.

“While Daniel was being wrapped, the man asked if his mother was Jewish. Daniel’s mother isn’t Jewish, and when he told him so, the man told Daniel he wasn’t Jewish either and started taking the wrappings off.”

The next day we visited the Western Wall. Immediately after being dropped off in the Old City, I was on edge. There was an indescribable tension in the air that prevented me from standing still. In the Jewish Quarter, I struck up a conversation with Sam* one of the Israelis who joined our trip, about something I noticed on a sign. I had talked to him the night before and discovered he was fluent in Arabic because he had worked in intelligence during his military service, where he spent his time listening in on Yemeni phone conversations.

I asked him why the sign for the Sephardic Quarter in Jerusalem was written as “the neighbourhood for Spanish Jews” if Sephardic encompasses the Jews of North Africa and the Middle East as well. He explained to me that because the Sephardic Jews originated from Spain, that’s how they were labelled in Arabic. He asked me if I was Sephardic. I said no. I told him my mother was Jewish and my father was Algerian. He asked me if my father was Jewish. I said no. I told him my last name was Larbi-Aissa. He didn’t understand so he asked to see my ID. I showed it to him. He told me I should change my name – many Sephardic families do once arriving in Israel – because I was Jewish.

Before I could ask him why I couldn’t be Jewish and have an Arab last name, we had to move. My head was reeling as we reached the Western Wall and I couldn’t share in the group’s excitement at a lively Bar Mitzvah parade that approached us as we prepared to separate into the gender-segregated sections. I stood in the shade and watched as the rest of my group danced and clapped along to Bar Mitzvah songs, and couldn’t stop thinking about that alienating conversation. According to Sam, my two ethnicities were somehow mutually exclusive.

The funny thing is, the most Arab part about me is my last name. I’ve only visited Algeria once and the only Algerian food I’ve been exposed to at home is my family’s couscous recipe. If it were up to him, my father would identify exclusively as French. He never spoke Arabic to me when I was a child, on purpose, and to this day, he encourages me to perfect my French and forget about my Arabic language studies.

That night, we gathered in the dining area of our hotel in Jerusalem for a seminar on the geopolitics of Israel. I had noticed that the majority of the hotel workers, including the waiters who cleared our dishes after meals and the concierge who worked the front desk, spoke to each other in Arabic. During the seminar we’d find out that some of them were Palestinian.

The man who gave the seminar was an Israeli PhD student who attempted to present us with a ‘balanced account’ of Israel’s history. Overall, the speaker accurately reported (as far as I know) what the ‘non-Israeli narrative’ was for each event he discussed, but was highly defensive to questions. Almost immediately, when discussing “where the Palestinians of today came from,” someone raised their hand and asked if it was true that some Palestinians came from Lebanon. The speaker retorted sharply with a jarring “Is that a question or a statement?” and sidestepped the subject. I raised my hand to ask why the Golan Heights was highlighted as non-Israeli territory in the Oslo Accords map the speaker was projecting. It was bothering me that no discussion of the occupation of the Golan Heights, somewhere we had been taken to.

I wanted my group to hear about it, even if only briefly. The speaker went on to say that while the Golan is considered occupied land, the European Union does not label the origin of the food produced in the Golan for export as originating from occupied land, which according to him, “is very telling.”

“He told me I should change my name – many Sephardic families do once arriving in Israel – because I was Jewish…. According to Sam, my two ethnicities were somehow mutually exclusive.”

What interested me more than an Israeli PhD student’s summary of 100 years of history, was watching the very politics in question play out in front of us. Throughout the seminar, the hotel workers that had been taking down the buffet from our dinner were causing a bit of a commotion, quite purposely from my interpretation. They talked loudly and irreverently during the seminar. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, but tensions were high. From time to time, a worker would have to cross between the screen and the speaker to pick up something on the other side. On a trip back to the kitchen, one worker loudly sucked his teeth, a gesture meant to signal disrespect. At one point, our trip leader entered the kitchen to ask the workers to be less disruptive, and emerged a little flustered, uttering a firm “todah,” which is thank you in Hebrew. The speaker then sarcastically commented that “any conversation ending in Todah is good.” Immediately after, what sounded like a tray of dishes crashed to the floor.

After another day in Jerusalem, we returned to the hotel for yet another seminar. This time, we were herded into a side room of the hotel – which I later learned was one of the hotel’s bomb shelters – to talk about anti-Semitism. No recognition was ever made of the different privileges – including but not limited to class privilege, white privilege, heterosexual privilege, male cisgender privilege, and educational privilege – which those in my group, including me, enjoy to varying extents.

At one point, the statement “Any comment against Israel is anti-Semitic” was discussed in small groups. One of the more militant attendees asserted that this statement was true because Israel is a Jewish state that does amazing things for Jews around the world – including saving all the Ethiopian Jews when they were facing prosecution. He backed up his claim by saying that the state of Israel involves itself in the affairs of all Jews, not just Israelis, to make sure that they aren’t discriminated against. Bringing up the Jewish bakery shooting in France following the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office, he said that Israel encourages French Jews to move to Israel, because living in France is “like living in a Muslim country now anyways.”

After the seminar, I was interested in hearing what Sarah*, an American-born Israeli who had moved to Israel to do her military service, had to say on the topic. She had joined our trip with the other Israelis and quickly asserted herself as the most nationalist of the bunch. To be blunt, talking to her felt like talking to a mouthpiece of the State of Israel. I sat down with her and another Israeli and asked them if they considered criticisms of the state of Israel to be anti-Semitic statements. They weren’t sure what I meant, so I related to them the following:

I had read a first-person narrative of a Jewish Iraqi family’s immigration to Israel in the early 1940s. The author detailed how her grandmother had arrived in Israel pregnant. The Israeli hospital told her that her child had not survived the delivery. Later, the family discovered that the child had indeed survived, but was given to an Ashkenazi family to be raised. The author discussed the two-tiered society she grew up in, where official government policies like the kidnapping of Sephardic babies goes unrecognized to this day. Naturally, no acknowledgement of the difference between the Ashkenazi and Sephardic experiences in Israel occurred on my trip.

After listening to the story, Sarah immediately launched into an account about how the Israel Defense Forces was currently in the process of ‘rescuing’ injured Syrian fighters and rehabilitating them, in a weak attempt to portray Israel as a humanitarian state. I had to wrangle her back to our original discussion and pin her down on the Sephardic kidnapping story. I asked her point blank if I was being anti-Semitic by saying that the Israeli policy in question was abhorrent. I got the sense that this was the first time she had ever contemplated the thought, or heard criticism of an Israeli governmental policy at all. In the end, the other Israeli involved in the conversation said, “I don’t know;” and we moved on.

The next day, we went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance centre in Jerusalem, and the national cemetery immediately after. The visit to the museum was extremely powerful. The centre had a massive amount of information about the North African Jewish reality, which I had never seen in a North American Holocaust museum. The tour lingered on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and we learned about the civilian insurrection that the Jewish community organized against the Nazis. The irony was staggering in light of the way ‘civilian insurrections’ occurring daily in occupied Palestine were framed as ‘aggression and terrorism against the state of Israel’ throughout the trip.

I especially enjoyed when our tour guide, an aging British man, stopped at the last installation of the tour and asked us, “Why is this here?” He was referring to an information plaque about the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The question was phrased rhetorically, with heavy overtones of disdain. I got the sense that our tour guide didn’t like the emotional linkage of the Holocaust to the State of Israel any more than I did.

After the emotional experience at Yad Vashem, we were bussed to the national cemetery. There, we listened to first-person experiences of the Israelis in our group whose family members or friends had died fighting in Gaza or policing the streets of Israel. People cried. As we walked through the graves, which were predominantly of young adults between 18 and 25, someone on my trip expressed interest in finding the grave of a friend of a friend – someone who died fighting in Gaza when “Hezbollah came out of those tunnels like rats.” I corrected him and said that if it was in Gaza, it was more likely to be Hamas, but didn’t address the rat comment. How could I humanize a group of people so othered by the American and Israeli narrative that they merited being compared to rats?

After staying at the graves for quite some time, we started up the hill to the grave of Theodor Herzl, a major figure in modern Zionism. While desperately trying to recall what a friend and I had discussed about Herzl before my trip, James*, an Israeli who had spoken earlier that day about a deceased friend, approached me. This is when I learned that having that discussion with Sarah about anti-Semitism was a mistake. James asked me if I still felt the way I felt about Israel “after today.” I was thrown. I never had a conversation with him about Israel. He must’ve been referring to the conversation I’d had with Sarah, a conversation he was nowhere near and must have heard about through her. I feigned misunderstanding and hurried up a set of steps. James was a heavy smoker and struggled to keep up with me, so once we reached the top, he was too out of breath to rephrase his question. By the time he had caught his breath, we were already standing in a circle around Theodor Herzl’s grave. Our tour guide spoke of Herzl’s ‘dream for Israel’ and then we sang the national anthem. I thought I didn’t know it, so I stayed silent, but the song coming from my group was something I was intimately familiar with – in a prayer setting. Every morning from kindergarten to third grade, I sang this song in the middle of my prayers. Not once was I told it was the Israeli national anthem. At best, I knew it as Hatikvah, or ‘a prayer for Israel.’ If I had never gone on Birthright, I would have never known that I unknowingly sang the Israeli national anthem for four years of my life. My skin was crawling.

The overarching assumption of Birthright is in its name – that you, as a Jew, have a right by birth to the land of Israel. Within that assumption is another, more subtle, one. It assumes that the State of Israel is a legitimate nation that ‘deserves’ the land it’s on. Israel is an exclusive state, by Jews and for Jews. No matter how many times I heard that ‘Israeli Arabs enjoyed the same rights as Israeli Jews,’ the lived experience of the average Palestinian seemed scarily similar to my understanding of the lived experience of a South African of colour during Apartheid. The colonized minorities of Israel living within its borders are treated as second-class citizens and forced to endure humiliation after humiliation as Zionist settlers weave narrative after narrative justifying their presence. Birthright goes an extra step – it showcases the shiny side of Israel to tourists so they return home with only positive memories of their time there. Anything can be legitimized if you try hard enough, and Birthright tries really, really hard.

“Every morning from kindergarten to third grade, I sang this song in the middle of my prayers. Not once was I told it was the Israeli national anthem.”

Hearing racist comments on my trip about Arabs, while unsurprising, hurt me deeply. It hurt me not only because I felt personally affronted, but also because I was watching history repeat itself before my eyes. The Israeli state has hijacked a rhetoric of Jewish oppression in order to perpetuate the very crimes it claims to guard against. Birthright is an exclusivist program designed to glorify the construct of the Land of Israel, while simultaneously erasing and disinheriting Palestinians from their land.

This ‘free’ trip is a privilege enjoyed by those who can sufficiently ‘prove’ they are Jewish and can afford to take ten days out of their lives to play tourist. In exchange, they have to sit through seminar after seminar aimed at making them fall in love with the Israeli state. Take it from me, the tradeoff is not worth it.

I went on Birthright because I wanted to be able to critique the Israeli state from within. Would I recommend it to Jews who share my political beliefs? Absolutely not. I regret letting my mother sign me up for this trip. I regret occupying space on contested land. I regret putting myself in a position where I had to endure microaggression after microaggression against half of my identity. And to answer your question, James: no, I haven’t changed my mind.

*Certain names have been changed in this article.

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Tuesday, September 1

OAP kicks off on Tuesday with Beaux Dégâts, one of the coolest events Montreal has to offer. Beaux Dégâts challenges teams of street and graffiti artists to timed competitions revolving around a common theme. Spectators vote with their beer cans for their favourite piece. This unique event is not to be missed.

Wednesday, September 2

Self-identifying as cream pop, Cult Classic is the perfect band to listen to on a warm summer night while sipping a Sleeman surrounded by fairy lights. Be sure to come out and support your local student musicians on Wednesday. Full disclosure: one of the creators of Cult Classic’s blissful sound, Rosie Long Decter, also moonlights as Community Editor at The Daily.

Thursday, September 3

Bringing some musical diversity to OAP’s indie rock-heavy lineup on Thursday, Clay and Friends’ genre-blending mix of hip-hop, funk, jazz, soul, and reggae promises to be a good time. Come prepared to enjoy a spontaneous jam session under the stars.

Friday, September 4

Boasting an impressive resume of big name performances, Montreal rapper Taigenz (who opened for Wiz Khalifa, Big K.R.I.T, and Denzel Curry, to name a few) is not to be missed. Solid production, witty MC’ing, and party anthems await Friday’s OAP audience.

The post Who to see at OAP appeared first on The McGill Daily.

The McGill Daily (MD): You’ve recently been throwing a lot of shade at the Montreal rap community in your song “The City That Always Sleeps.”

Jonathan Emile (JE): What Montreal rap community?

MD: Right.

JE: It certainly instills resilience, being in a city where nobody cares that you’re making hip-hop. It’s cool. There’s so much diversity in Montreal that hip-hop isn’t the thing, the urban culture that’s the most prevalent, which is understandable.

MD: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered working in that environment?

JE: Just on a marketing standpoint, Montreal isn’t one city; it’s two cities side by side, two different languages. When you’re making music in Montreal, you’re not really competing with Montreal artists. You’re competing with 500 plus artists that come visit the city every year. It’s a very arts-culture city, and there’s lots of competition.

There [are] some amazing people who do some great hip-hop in Montreal. [But] with the exception of Under Pressure Festival, there’s nothing really going on in terms of building a community, or a network, or having an open dialogue. It’s very much individualistic artistic projects, which is fine, but it’s maybe one of the most difficult cities to emerge in North America, even though it’s a city of four million plus people.

MD: You mentioned languages. Do you also do French work?

JE: Definitely. I intend to put out a French project before 2020, but one thing at a time. My mom’s anglophone and my dad’s francophone. […But] you can’t do everything at once. My first project is going to be in English and Jamaican Patois. That’s diverse enough. And the next one, we’ll see what happens.

MD: How do you feel about Kendrick Lamar having a song like “Alright,” that’s chanted by protesters critiquing institutional racism, but at the same time, working with him and collaborating with him is almost blocked because of the corporate mechanism. Do you think that detracts from what he’s trying to do at all?

JE: I think yes. It certainly opened my eyes to the way mechanisms really worked in the industry. It makes sense. This is what I signed up for in a capitalist industry. I sort of expected it, but at the same time, it makes it hard for me to see [Lamar] as wholly authentic. He definitely has to do what he has to do to be where he has to be, and I can’t knock that, but if his real priority is to make statements and make change, there’s no reason for him to back out of [our song, “Heaven Help Dem”].

Since then, there’s been a lot of back-and-forth between my team and my lawyers asking what we should do about this, but this doesn’t discount his work at all. I think he’s a brilliant artist and he has his own lane and everything, but it definitely makes it harder for me to respect him on that level.

MD: Would you work with him again?

JE: Not unless we have a real conversation. At this point I’ve been in contact with his management, and […] it’s been like pulling teeth. When somebody sees you as a small fry and that’s how they treat you, it’s like okay, I understand, but there’s been no chill on the part of his management, no chill, […] but life goes on and that’s not the focal point of my album. It’s about the content, and unfortunately [Lamar] wasn’t ready to address that content, or he had stuff coming out that was too similar to what I had coming out, so his management said, no, he can’t do this.

MD: Within the dichotomy of the Lover/Fighter LP, are you going to undertake a critique of race relations similar to that of “Heaven Help Dem”?

JE: Definitely. I address it in multiple songs on the album. Race relations is just a part of what we live as Black people. All the artists I’m influenced by address it, among other things. Anyone from Marvin Gaye to Bob Marley. If you’re making an album and you want to talk about the world and you gloss over that, [then] that’s not the type of music I want to make. I want to address things in an uplifting way. A lot of my music is reggae-influenced. A lot of my music is hip-hop-influenced. I try to pull out the parts of it that are the most uplifting, the most inspiring, and dwell on that stuff. You’ll see the dichotomy. The lover/fighter dichotomy is infused in every single song and I try to get it into every single verse and every single lyric. When you listen to it, you’ll be able to live the experience of what it’s like to have these two sides of you constantly at war, pulling against each other, and figure out which one to use when, so you don’t self destruct.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Lover/Fighter Document LP goes on pre-sale September 9 on iTunes. Its release date is October 9.

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Busty transitioned from being that one good act in the OAP lineup to the band everyone was talking about after winning the CBC Music Rock Your Campus competition in the fall of 2014. The $10,000 prize scored them the studio time and production needed to release their new album, GLAM. While GLAM is a professional rendition of the pieces that make up Busty’s live set, it doesn’t hold a candle to the energy created on stage by the musicians.

Bassist Milo Johnson summed up that energy when he explained the idea behind the notorious adjective in the group’s name: “The idea of ‘busty’ is like an adjective, [but] not the usual definition; [it’s when] you’re having a good time and letting go of the world and entering this crazy party zone, where it’s safe, but everybody’s having a good time.” That crazy frenetic energy felt from good live jazz is something Busty almost effortlessly provides, but it is far from effortlessly created.

“The idea of ‘busty’ is like an adjective, [but] not the usual definition; [it’s when] you’re having a good time and letting go of the world and entering this crazy party zone, where it’s safe, but everybody’s having a good time.”

Hatched in the basement of the Strathcona Music Building during Music Frosh, Busty runs on the technical training learned in class. “We all have a base level of technical proficiency,” said pianist and keyboardist Eric Haynes, “so we all come from that baseline and [we] all [speak] the same language [and have the same way of] approaching music […] so it definitely makes talking about music to each other a lot easier.”

However, Busty is far from a textbook jazz ensemble. Because of the members’ varied music tastes, the band puts out cover after cover of familiar songs spanning genres as disparate as hip hop and EDM. One hour into the set yielded a sampled masterpiece driven by Evan Crofton on synth and keys, featuring the wispy “never” and other sound elements from Disclosure’s “Latch” layered with powerful work from the band’s brass section. The packed room exploded with energy as the anthemic favorite pitched the room into an excited frenzy.

Yet, the audience response to the band’s more traditional jazz improvisations was equally as frenetic, if not more. A sublime piano solo by Haynes and gusty saxophone feature by Nick Ferraro had someone in the audience yelling “Holy fuck!” Somehow, the members of Busty and the Bass are able to present a genre of music largely foreign to their peers and get them dancing to it. They succeed in making instruments like the trombone and saxophone current to a demographic who can only vaguely remember John Coltrane and J.J. Johnson.

Now, more or less graduated from the Schulich School of Music, Busty is hitting the road. No longer ‘the college band to watch out for,’ the group must bank on the following it has been able to muster from quick tours during the semester to support it. If last night’s turnout is any indication, Busty won’t have a problem filling venues.

Catch Busty and the Bass at Le Savoy du Métropolis July 3 and 4 from midnight to 3 a.m.. Entry is free.

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It’s concerning to see an artist like M.I.A. preemptively questioned about cultural appropriation when artists ranging from Taylor Swift to Lily Allen to Katy Perry to Shakira roll out grotesquely appropriative music videos without second thought, duking it out in the court of public opinion post-production. This is evidence of an insidious double standard in the music industry where white and whitewashed artists get a carte blanche for their appropriative images, while artists of color who push marginalized perspectives into the mainstream consciousness are told to check themselves.

M.I.A. tweeted, “What happens when I shoot videos in America or Germany it makes no sense to the 00.01% of artists like me.” While this comment doesn’t exactly capture the idea of cultural appropriation, it illustrates well its widespread misconception. M.I.A.’s label sees any engagement in a culture not of one’s own as cultural appropriation. However, speaking about, playing music from, and appearing with members of other cultures isn’t appropriation. Speaking like, claiming music from, and appearing as members of other cultures is cultural appropriation.

M.I.A.’s label sees any engagement in a culture not of one’s own as cultural appropriation.

At its core, cultural appropriation is a hegemonic exercise. Dominant social groups and cultures demand those they dominate to conform to their norms and standards. Historically, colonizers demanded this from those they colonized. In addition, the dominant group has the privilege of picking and choosing aspects of other cultures to emulate and claim, erasing any sort of analysis or awareness of the cultural, historical, or political nature of appropriated symbols or practices.

As Amandla Stenberg stated in her viral history class video Don’t Cash Crop On My Cornrows, “…the line between cultural appropriation and cultural exchange is always going to be blurred, but here is the thing. Appropriation occurs when a style leads to racist generalizations or stereotypes where it originated, but is deemed as high fashion, cool, or funny when the privileged take it for themselves. Appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture they are partaking in.”

Appropriation occurs when the appropriator is not aware of the deep significance of the culture they are partaking in.

M.I.A. most certainly does not approach her music from this benighted position. Just the opposite –  she actively works to reverse the process of cultural appropriation with the music she creates, consistently spotlighting groups around the world that Western media may otherwise ignore. M.I.A. re-politicizes symbols and sounds that are otherwise homogenized by the Western music industry and infuses them with adrenaline and anxiety to purposefully make the listener uncomfortable. Even her most numbingly simple hit “Paper Planes” sneaks scathing critique of American immigration policy and the artist’s placement on the Homeland Security Risk List in 2006 behind the song’s deceptively straightforward lyrics.

According to M.I.A’s tweets, the video in question is a one-shot take of a talented dancer from Côte d’Ivoire who “was never going to make ‘____ got talent’.” She elaborates that “if the music industry allows an African artist to come through this year on the intnl level, [she] would gladly give him this video for free,” betraying a fatalist view of inclusivity in the music industry most likely formed through experience.

For all intents and purposes, M.I.A. is a bulwark against the very cultural appropriation her label is wringing its hands over. As one of the few non-Black American artists of color with international reach who regularly engages in global politics, it is cause for concern when M.I.A. experiences pushback mid-production while her contemporaries are given a blank check.

The post M.I.A.: cultural appropriation or cultural engagement? appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Local artists Andrew Da Silva, Jimmy Baptiste, Waxhead, and Bezo will share the space for the rest of the month, each bringing their own adaptation of traditional cartoons and comics to ABYSS’ walls. While their styles and technical approaches vary wildly, the artists create continuity between their work by flattening their colour palettes, resulting in an old-school animation vibe.

In an interview with The Daily, Da Silva mentioned the substantial influence of 80s and 90s cartoons from his childhood on his current work. But the characters he creates now aren’t rated E for everyone. In a piece titled All the Cool Kids Doing It a cheeky skeleton in a hoodie stands nonchalantly inside a metal trap. Wading through a glass of red liquid is a nude woman with the word ‘Molly’ written across her stomach and a Facebook ‘like’ hovering underneath it. Similar Instagram notifications and Twitter follower tickers are sprinkled throughout the rest of Da Silva’s canvases.

While their styles and technical approaches vary wildly, the artists create continuity between their work by flattening their colour palettes, resulting in an old-school animation vibe.

“My work is very satirical,” Da Silva explained. “I have a love-hate relationship with [social media]. I think my generation is too caught up with [it], obsessed with [it], so I poke fun at it.” Da Silva’s clever use of recognizable icons to critique social phenomena renders his work equal parts relatable and biting.

Across the gallery, Jimmy Baptiste’s artwork departs from the cartoon aesthetic to a more comic book style. His figures break away from Da Silva’s flatness and explode across the canvas with undulating arcs of delicate watercolor and spidery lines of pencil and ink. Inspired by anime and tattoo design, Baptiste focuses primarily on the female face, manipulating facial features to explore a full range of emotions. In a large piece titled Spring, four women’s faces share the canvas with birds and flowers. Instead of reproducing a stock image of spring, Baptiste creates substantial movement using flowing strands of hair and his calligraphy-esque signature as a repeated motif, invoking the tumultuous winds of the season.

Waxhead’s zany vandalisms of vintage photos line the wall alongside Baptiste’s work. While Waxhead’s whimsical characters can typically be seen peeking out from behind street corners and hiding in the alleyways of Montreal, they appear in Galerie ABYSS in a form much easier to take home.

According to the artist, the works on display are primarily produced during the winter. In preparation for the confining winter months, the artist jokes that he breaks into homes and steals vintage family photos in order to paint over the faces with his own creations. The miscreant can also be found haunting flea markets and thrift stores for his next mark.

Bezo completes the show with his cartoons-on-acid style. A piece entitled Cupcake painted on a roughly cut oval acrylic panel depicts a male figure with empty eyes in bright overalls staring at a cupcake. A yellow skull mask covers his face and a green crown hovers over his head. The figure’s arms twist into knots and stretch impossibly far in opposite directions, creating a sense of depth. The figure is part pathetic, part absurd, and elicits a strange empathetic emotion from the viewer. The rest of Bezo’s work borders on the edge of terrifying and intriguing, fitting in well with the rest of the show’s adult cartoon vibe.

As a singular unit, the aptly-named exhibit accurately takes the pulse of what’s new in the Montreal art scene. The small gallery in Griffintown is must-see for anyone who likes to keep tabs on local talent.

“The New Cool” runs at Galerie ABYSS until June.

The post Saturday morning cartoons, grown up appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Kindred:
Three albums in, frontman Michael Angelakos is still planted firmly within his signature synth palette. But underneath the sugary sweet pop hooks are more frank discussions of mental illness, childhood, and family. You’ll probably hear half the album on the radio this summer, but Kindred might also hold up as the perfect soundtrack for a pensive bike ride around Mont Royal.

Passion Pit’s third studio album, expected release on April 21.

Fly International Luxurious Art
The Chef has had a new album on the burner since before New Year’s 2013. No one knows what’s taken him so long, but this sixth studio album from the Wu-Tang Clan veteran is sure to deliver on the extended hype.

Raekwon’s sixth studio album, expected release on April 28.

All Things to the Sea
After opening for The National at NXNE, the post-punk fuzz-pop band got themselves into Montreal’s Breakglass Studios and recorded All Things to the Sea in ten days. With only 816 likes on Facebook, this is a band you’ll want to get into before the rest of the world notices how good they are.

Montreal trio CTZNSHP’s sophomore album, expected release on April 24.

Deep in the Iris:
Montreal-based art rock band Braids has produced some of Canada’s most innovative music of the past ten years. This summer, Calgary natives and former McGill students Raphaelle Standell-Preston, Austin Tufts, and Taylor Smith are releasing Deep in the Iris. If “Taste,” the first single released on the album, is any indication, this new release will be an atmospheric and poignant effort that lands somewhere between Animal Collective and Björk.

Braids’ third studio album, expected release on April 28.

BOOKS:

Kate Beaton – The Princess and the Pony:
Kate Beacon, beloved cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant is back this summer with The Princess and the Pony. This picture book for kids and adult pony-enthusiasts features a strong warrior princess and one of Beaton’s most enduring characters, the “roly-poly” pony from Hark! that has also made a cameo appearance on Adventure Time.

Available July 2015.

Boring Girls – Sara Taylor:
Boring Girls, a “deadly coming of age” story, follows the rise of high-schooler Rachel’s amateur metal band. She forms the band in the hopes of escaping the misogynist world she lives in, but is then ironically forced to fight misogyny in “the dark heart of the music industry.”

Available April 2015.

Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries who Shaped Our History… and Our Future! – Kate Schatz:
Calling this book a celebration of American women would be an understatement. A shout out to bold women who fought for everyone, the book is a spin-off of A-Z books that all children (and adults) need on their bookshelves – because A is not for apples, it’s for Angela Davis.

Available April 2015.

Laws & Locks – Chad Campbell:
Blurring the lines between fact and fiction, Laws & Locks traces one family’s encounters with depression and mental illness. Chad Campbell’s first book of verse weaves in and out of confessional poetry and explores the way our ancestors can influence our choices today.

Available April 2015.

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At the onset, medical personnel working in West Africa had no means of rapidly diagnosing patients with Ebola. This explains the World Health Organization’s (WHO) delineation between ‘suspected cases’ and ‘confirmed cases’ in its data. That in and of itself posed a huge risk to patients who presented with Ebola-like symptoms, such as fever and headaches, who did not ultimately have Ebola. Because local hospitals closed en-masse at the onset of the epidemic due to their inability to meet the acute need of Ebola patients, pregnant women and those with the flu were forced into quarantine with highly infectious Ebola patients for weeks pending results. That field test does not exist merely because those who need it, i.e. the West African population, do not constitute enough of an attractive market for the private sector to justify production.

According to Heather Culbert, president of the board of Médecins Sans Frontières Canada, the outbreak claimed over 500 local medical professionals, decimating the health infrastructure of already fragile countries. Culbert spoke on February 18, along with Gary Gottlieb, CEO of Partners in Health, and Srinivas Murthy, an infectious disease specialist working with the WHO, at “McGill Students Fight Ebola,” a conference organized by the McGill Global Health Network.

The current market system also failed West Africans when desperately-needed protective gear was put up for auction, instead of donated to NGOs on the ground. Even in the midst of a then-exponentially increasing death rate and an almost uncontrollable infection rate, the profits this auctioning brought to companies outweighed the number of human lives that could have been saved if the preventative materials were donated. This conscious decision to prioritize profits over human lives on the part of the healthcare industry raises the question: if the speed and severity of the Ebola outbreak did not merit corporate altruism, what will?

However, what was truly needed at the peak of the outbreak was a vaccine. The absence of an available Ebola vaccine is symptomatic of a market that allocates research and development for essential medicine through a profit-maximizing framework. Because Ebola is primarily a disease of poverty, a vaccine simply does not exist. Those in the ‘developed’ world who enjoy the comprehensive infrastructure and quality of life that renders Ebola benign constitute the bulk of the pharmaceutical market. Pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to bring drugs to market that lack demand from their customer base, even if large groups of people outside their primary market are suffering from a disease they could prevent. Companies essentially turn a blind eye to those who cannot pay. Because of the lack of an attractive market, it is interesting to examine the motives behind the limited Ebola research that had taken place before the outbreak.

Ebola vaccine research initially emerged purely to serve American interests. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) lept to fund hemorrhagic vaccine research after whispers of an impending Soviet bioterrorist attack surfaced during the Cold War. Eventually, researchers deemed Ebola not significant enough of a threat to justify continuing research. The progress made was left to gather dust until Dick Cheney gained a public platform as former President George W. Bush’s running mate. Cheney’s fearmongering succeeded in funding a vaccine for clinical testing, but the tepid political will and equally tepid market incentive left the VSV-ZEBOV variant, initially developed at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases, to stall in the backwaters of Phase I clinical trials after being licensed to NewLink Genetics, a private corporation whose primary focus is curing cancer. However, NewLink did not acquire the vaccine’s license straight from the DoD. The Canadian National Microbiology Laboratory took up where the DoD left off with a substantially smaller budget before selling it to NewLink. This intermediary research was funded entirely by a Master’s student’s research grant.

The fact that one of the few Ebola vaccines in the pipeline has such strong ties to American military interests comes at no surprise after examining the trend of complete and utter neglect of diseases of poverty. 90 per cent of the global burden of disease is targeted by only 10 per cent of total research. This 10/90 ratio shrinks to 1/99 when updated to reflect the amount of research allocated to the number of people suffering from neglected tropical diseases, such as Ebola.

There is no question that the healthcare industry in the developed world is unable and, more abhorrently, unwilling to allocate research and development to better the lives of those suffering from preventable diseases simply because they cannot pay. A few different approaches to change this, ranging from principled to pragmatic, already exist and await implementation.

The most basic change needed to reverse the divergence of global health research from global health problems is one of principle. Medicine should be a public good. Incentive to develop should never come from an individual’s willingness to pay, but from a governmental or global prioritization of the basic human right to good health. This drastic paradigm shift will not occur anytime soon. Pharmaceutical companies and entities reliant on industry profits – including universities patenting and licensing discoveries – all have a stake in continuing the status quo profit-maximizing framework. This ‘business as usual’ mindset comes at the cost of millions living with and dying of preventable and treatable diseases of poverty.

More practically, a change to an open-access paradigm in terms of drug discovery and development should be made. Because science builds on itself, innovations in one field can be applied to drug development in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently, prohibitive paywalls protect the academic literature surrounding medical experiments and discoveries. Entire countries are barred access due to these expensive institutional subscriptions. Perhaps if the DoD had not classified its Ebola research or if NewLink had not been able to purchase exclusive ownership of the data, a vaccine could have been developed in time. Current steps to insert open-access clauses in the Ebola vaccines being brought to clinical trial, and the creation of hemorrhagic fever research centres with the same aim, come too little, too late.

Because the development of essential medicines responds exclusively to market signals, those same market signals could be used to incentivize production of medicine for neglected tropical diseases. The promise of cash prizes allocated in proportion to the degree of impact of a newly developed drug can incentivize the market just as effectively as a patent monopoly – with an important caveat. In exchange for accepting the payout, the developer must allow for generic versions of their intellectual property to be sold at affordable prices, ensuring the interests of the developing world are protected. This works in theory, but would never be accepted by firms seeking to make grotesque profits from marketing pharmaceuticals.

Another market-augmenting strategy is amassing willing buyers from different locations around the world to increase their purchasing power. Nonprofits like GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance artificially manufacture attractive markets by pooling interested parties – typically small nations in Africa – to incentivize production and ensure equitable pricing. However, GAVI relies exclusively on funds from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to operate, which is neither sustainable nor sufficient to tackle this structural issue.

The Ebola outbreak confirmed that we need a massive overhaul of the healthcare industry at the risk of allowing toxic apathy on the part of those with the power to persist. Some semblance of morality needs to re-enter the economic arena or else future outbreaks, similar to or worse than Ebola, are inevitable. Murthy ended the “McGill Students Fight Ebola” conference by stating, “Hopefully we’ve learned a lot from the outbreak for the next one, because there will be a next one.”

The post Ebola: symptom of a larger problem appeared first on The McGill Daily.

What was striking about this panel – and the numerous other events organized by Sta Kuzviwanza, Nusra Khan, Katia Fox, and Dina El-baradie for the week – was the setting. In the same classroom where history, economics, and countless other academic subjects are taught every day, a serious discussion of hip hop’s political potency was taking place. While Concordia already offers courses in the subject, Hip Hop Week Montreal is the McGill community’s first serious engagement with the movement in an academic setting.

In an interview with The Daily, Fox commented on McGill’s lack of interest in examining hip hop, stating, “I think that the support that [Hip Hop Week Montreal] has been getting from Montreal and from McGill students is hopefully going to legitimize hip hop as an art that should be studied.” She noted that “when we ended up on CBC, McGill posted [the] interview on their official Facebook” – marking the first time the University itself chose to publicize the week.

Hip hop is “protest music” at its core, according to journalist Dalton Higgins, and thus contradictions arise when attempting to analyze and enshrine the hip hop movement in an institutional setting.

The subject of the appropriation of hip hop activism into the institution of academia was discussed at length during Thursday’s panel, running the gamut from skepticism expressed by L.A. MC Bambu as to whether the institution could have any effect other than to co-opt, to optimism from educator Audrey Hudson regarding the potential for “decoloniz[ing]” hip hop by occupying and working within traditionally white, Eurocentric spaces. Hip hop is “protest music” at its core, according to journalist Dalton Higgins, and thus contradictions arise when attempting to analyze and enshrine the hip hop movement in an institutional setting.

While this panel looked at hip hop through the lens of of race and resistance, other events explored less talked about intersections. Co-sponsored by the Union for Gender Empowerment, a panel on Tuesday titled “Big Booty Hos” broadened the discussion to include the intersections of class, gender, and sexuality. Hip hop artists Nantali Indongo and Magassy Mbow, educator Melissa Proietti, and queer MC and activist Marshia Celina rigorously examined the representation of the female body and frank discourse of sexuality in hip hop.

Instead of focusing solely on the negative representations of women for which hip hop is so often criticized, the panel highlighted ways in which the genre is reshaping common conceptions of sexuality and agency. Celina, for example, urged the audience to recognize the most important moment in Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video: “the metaphorical chopping of [Drake’s] penis” during the closing scene, in which Minaj begins to give the rapper a lap dance but then abruptly walks away in laughter. She argues that this was the first time since Missy Elliot that “someone demonstrat[ed] artistry in a new way in hip hop culture.”

Beyond bringing stimulating debate and discussion to McGill classrooms, Hip Hop Week was a lesson in politics and culture.

Beyond bringing stimulating debate and discussion to McGill classrooms, Hip Hop Week was a lesson in politics and culture. El-baradie opened the week by stating its mission was to “promote music, education, and art.” Bringing a comprehensive and diverse schedule of events to the McGill community entirely of their own volition, the organizers accomplished just that, with a notable conscientiousness and recognition of the systems of oppression surrounding the movement. While Fox noted that all four organizers would be graduating before next spring, she assured The Daily that infrastructure was in place to ensure the continuity of the week.

McGill offers majors in English literature, theatre, and art history, promoting the critical study of classical art forms, yet remains woefully ignorant of newer artistic and cultural movements. Even the cultural studies major, which is supposedly devoted to just that, is heavily weighted toward the study of film. Hopefully, the lessons of Hip Hop Week will extend far beyond these panels to encourage a critical examination of the political power of all cultural movements that are ignored in the McGill classroom.

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The Nuit Blanche opening of “Saints of Soul” marked Miss Me’s transition out of the Montreal streets and into the formalized art world. Having previously worked primarily with paint and wheatpaste, a street art style named after the glue used to paste posters to surfaces, Miss Me has transferred her now-recognizable canon of saints onto mixed media for this exhibit. Instead of peering out from behind MTL Blog’s St. Laurent offices, Saint Pac – her portrait of legendary rapper Tupac – scrutinizes gallery-goers from singed planks of wood flecked with gold paint.

In each of the “Saints” featured in this exhibit, each a black musician that has shaped the history of art and song, Miss Me translates their music into a visual representation that is both strikingly beautiful and dauntingly powerful.

If Saint Simone and Saint Pac weren’t impressive enough, a giant Miles Davis bores holes into art enthusiasts, his presence looming above. Painted directly onto the gallery’s ceiling, Miles is vertically framed by two expertly shaded curtains. The immortalized jazz giant stares out from beneath furrowed brows with the fierce dignity that Miss Me depicts in all of her subjects. In each of the “Saints” featured in this exhibit, each a black musician that has shaped the history of art and song, Miss Me translates their music into a visual representation that is both strikingly beautiful and dauntingly powerful.

A small back room is separated from the main gallery space by a thick black curtain. Inside, two shrines to Nina Simone glow with the light of electric candles. The 2D wall mural at the entrance to the gallery pushes into three dimensions, with gold trim and saturated reds, blues, and greens to bring out the now-green fist emerging from Simone’s chest. The result is a beautifully-rendered homage to the artist and activist.

Miss Me recently made waves in the Montreal community with her Pussylluminati bus posters depicting herself as masked and defiantly flashing the viewer with a breast shaped as a unicorn. She subdues her rebellious feminism in these stately depictions of artistic icons, immortalizing them in the streets and, now, on the gallery wall. But in a world where influential black women rarely receive the recognition they deserve, this exhibit is in fact a powerful act of rebellion, elevating Nina Simone to a godly state, and indicating that Miss Me might soon become our next pop culture saint.

 
“Saints of Soul” is on at Fresh Paint gallery at 256 Ste. Catherine until March 25.
 

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