Toronto in the 1980's

I went to an 80’s party a couple of years ago, a fundraiser for an environmental group, and everyone was invited to come dressed in their favourite 80’s apparel. We missed that information somehow, and so we arrived in our usual clothes, only to find ourselves surrounded by a sea of Cindy Lauper’s and Billy Idol’s. I spent the entire night feeling like an alien, nothing around me seemed familiar. Where was I in the 80’s anyway? Surely not on this planet! The experience left me anxious and disoriented and I went home and spent the rest of the night trying to locate myself at that time.

In 1980, I was a farm girl escaping to the big city to study dance, but I never returned home after graduating from Ryerson. Toronto was a vibrant, multicultural scene and I was hungry for that experience. Times have changed, for better or worse, and I don’t know what it is like now to be 18 and arriving in Toronto from a small town or farm, but in the 80’s, a large flow of Latin American refugees was having a big impact on the city, and on me. I backpacked throughout Central America after college and learned Spanish along the way, so by 1987, I was pretty fluent and was working with refugee families through the Mennonite Central Committee. I was hanging out at small underground “peñas” (unlicensed parties with music and dancing where you had to know someone to get in) with El Salvadorians and Guatemalans, and learning how to dance cumbia and salsa. No wonder I didn’t find myself reflected at that 80’s party! I was living a different life, with other music, other people, in other clothing!

BamBoo club entrance

Recently, I opened an old journal from that time, and found this surprising entry about a conversation I had with a close friend in 1987. She is Jamaican descent and we have been friends since we were 20 years old. There is no doubt I have learned a lot through my relationship with her. She drew me along with on her learning journey about her own history and she shared a way of looking at the world as a critically thinking young black woman. The following excerpt from my journal follows an event we attended together, down on Queen West at a popular club for “progressive” young Torontonians, the BamBoo. (photo) It was the centre of world music in Toronto at the time, and it attracted people from a wide range of backgrounds. Last year, Denise Benson did a retrospective on this cultural icon, a glimpse into the cultural life of young adults in Canada’s centre of multiculturalism in the 80’s. Have a look if you are curious:

http://www.thegridto.com/culture/music/then-now-bamboo/

Here’s what I experienced at the BamBoo one summer night:

Thursday, August 13^th, 1987

I’ve been thinking all day about the conversation I had with Alicia last night. It’s an issue that upsets me deeply.

We were dancing at the Bamboo to the music of the Hopping Penguins, a Mozambique support event, and we both were having a good time. Then I noticed Alicia withdraw and stand and watch from the back for a while. She described feelings that she wasn’t sure how to name, but used words like being uncomfortable, feeling like the group was “plagiarizing” Caribbean sounds.

I just shrugged my shoulders and went back dancing, thinking this was another one of Alicia’s “premonitions”, like when she didn’t come to the South African Women’s Celebration on Saturday because she didn’t know who was putting it on and felt bad vibes. It is true that it was poorly promoted, and also that there was an obvious lack of attendance from the Black community, but I thought it was a great evening despite Alicia’s suspicion.

I talked with Alicia again, after she had a long chat with a black man. This time she was more able to verbalize her uneasiness. It was a feeling that something was being stolen from blacks, a white group doing music that is close to the Black Soul, and doing it very well. After we talked for a while I could understand why she felt the way she did, but my first response has been anger. I really objected to her using words like “imitating”, saying if you closed your eyes, you might think they were Black, and “plagiarism”. Don’t white people have a right to enjoy and play reggae music? Don’t they have the soul and rhythm that they might share in the music? Lots of bands play other people’s music; why couldn’t the Penguins? These were my arguments. I guess the problem was just how well this white group produced Caribbean sounds.

This small, gut feeling of Alicia’s, and my defensiveness, launched us into a long conversation. I could really understand when she said how she knew the European history taking from the Blacks and not giving in return, of Blacks having to adapt to white culture but not vise versa, of feeling that whites had taken everything else that belonged to the Blacks … homeland, family, dignity, economic self-sufficiency, and now they wanted their music, and language too. They wanted their rhythm, their soul.

This feeling, this illogical but deeply rooted anger and fear I can understand so well. But as Alicia said, I can only assent to a mental understanding. I don’t have the experience.

You have no idea how surprised I was to read this over 20 years later and hear how I was questioning my whiteness in my 20’s, because I don’t remember it feeling that conscious at the time. I was studying Latin American and Caribbean Studies and anthropology at York University at the time, learning about colonialism and culture, and trying to put the 2 together. I think I was asking a question that white Canadians may still be trying to answer, each of us coming to our own answer.

This shakes me down to the core, and brings out every insecurity I have about my goals as an artist and an ethnologist. I am white, I am middle-class, I am well-educated, I can go anywhere, do anything I want. Where is my culture being threatened (except by its own self-destructive tendencies)?

And yet I long to travel and participate in other cultures. I believe I can share their art and ritual and ideas despite being a WASP. Don’t I have the right to share in the spirit like a South American Indian woman when I work beside her, dance with her, speak with her?

God it’s impossible to put into words how deeply I feel about this. Last night I was able to talk to Alicia calmly and clearly, but today emotion overwhelms me.

I am not sure young Canadians are running from their whiteness the way I did in my 20’s. Roots and other Celtic music influences seem to have resurfaced in mainstream pop music today, perhaps saying something about how the average white Canadian relates to their own ancestry in 2014. The Lumineers sing “Hey Ho” in their work pants and straw hats and make it to the top of the charts. Mumford and Sons, Of Monsters and Men, have all drawn success from songs with a strong, ethnic white vibe.

But I was definitely looking for something else in those days, something in the cultures of other people. I was not square dancing. It was cumbia and soukous that appealed to me. At 25, I wrote:

I guess to be honest I am searching the spirits of other peoples for something to fulfill myself.

Wow, that was pretty honest. Was I the only one feeling this way? Or was that the white times we lived in?