Radio Active Community: Panel Discussion

Event Details

Event type: All Ages

Intersection Festival in association with CIUT FM and the Canada Black Music Archives

presents:

A Radio Active Community, a historical megamix by David and Sydney Dacks

Talk: August 31, 918 Bathurst Centre for Culture, Arts, Media and Education, 3PM

This event follows the previous evening's performance: August 30, Sankofa Square, 1 Dundas St. E., 8PM

A Radio Active Community is a personal journey back to the heady days of Toronto's

campus radio in the early 1990s in the form of an improvised 45-60 minute audiovisual

experience to be presented at Toronto’s longstanding downtown new music intervention,

Intersection Festival.

David Dacks, who volunteered at the University of Toronto’s CIUT-FM for 25 years, digs

deep into his digitized cassette library of his own and his colleagues’ airchecks from all

three Toronto campus radio stations to create a sound collage of music, commercials,

custom station IDs, interviews, technical bloopers and above all, many voices making radio

history in defining and unifying the city’s underground sounds. While CBC’s Brave New

Waves has been rightly chronicled for its influence in bringing emerging music to a national

audience, Toronto was paced by “the golden age of” campus radio which not only brought

new sounds but up and coming culture – especially Afrocentric culture - social trends,

politics and artists to as many as six million people within a listening range covering the

GTA and New York state. A Radio Active Community addresses this somewhat overlooked

time in Toronto and Canadian media history.

From illegal boozecan broadcasts to unhinged live dub sessions, it was a time for

experimentation and exchange on radio. This era witnessed the rise of hip hop and African

music scenes, the continued strong presence of reggae and dancehall, and collisions with

rock, jazz, experimental and found sounds to create a unique historical and artistic

circumstance which resonates strongly in Toronto’s contemporary sounds and scenes.

David’s kid Sydney Dacks creates multi-screen visuals to accompany the sounds which act

as virtual title cards, giving context for those who weren’t there and sparking memories for

those who were.

It was a messy, sometimes painful struggle to get this cultural shift to air. The following day

sees a panel discussion exploring this context, conflicts, triumphs and legacy of that era.

We’ll unpack it in a discussion moderated by fellow CIUT veteran Judy Perry with Phil

Vassell (Canada Black Music Archives), DTS (The Masterplan Show) and Dacks.

Event Link: More Info