Ars Poetica

At Bain St-Michel, 5300 St-Dominique, Montreal, from January 17-February 12, 2012.

Infinite Theatre Production

An Anglo Montreal Theatre company when it chooses to explore the local Anglo Arts Angst (AAA!) scene in a spectacular manner, and for a month long run, is possibly exposing itself to a live post-mortem, which is not a particularly pleasurable encounter for the theatre company concerned.  A vitriolic dissection demolishes young actors and the experienced alike, especially when enormous efforts have gone into the production.  On the other hand, a careful and benign story line reportage followed by a few casual praises does not up the art, either.  The etymology of Ars suggests a historic commitment to high art.

A courageous act, no doubt, on the part of the company to encourage a local story by a local writer. But the Anglo community being what it is—growing in presence, vociferous, envious, cautious, (but rarely experimental), sees things in a variety of ways which is often colored by personal exigencies, animosity, competitivity, defensiveness and not always in the fantastic and expansive realm that theatre as an art form offers to those who are simply interested in being in the audience.  In other cities in North America (and there is no need to specify Brooklyn or Manhattan as the examples) the theatre critic maybe entirely anonymous; just as a food critic in Montreal restaurants is often not recognizable (since the days of the late Rochester and Chandwani). The point is that we know each other and must continue to know each other as we are a small community. Therefore needless to say, the pressure on the critic and the well-wisher, here, is extremely significant. But, the critical view of the audience cannot be numbed!

Having said that, one must state the obvious. This was a great production, very well technically cued up, excellently blocked, considering the complex geometry of the set, but essentially culled out of a dead-beat script; chock full of clichéd, banal and stereotypical character incarcerations. From beginning to end, stereotyping dominated. From the sleazebag lawyer Hugh portrayed adeptly by Howard Rosenstein, to the elfish student intern (the daughter Naomi) conniving to move to NYU, (the supposed Valhalla of creative writing)– miscast but valiantly acted by Elana Dunkelman. Then came the archetypal and hugely avoidable Canada Council Program Officer whose Quebec-isms are an archaic instigation and throwback to the racist Anglos who departed down the 401 highway to Ontario and elsewhere in the seventies. All this leaves the play wanting in intelligence.  Wanting in contemporariness, wanting in a dateline that defines its periodicity.  In a post-Bush, Harper world– Montreal’s contemporariness goes beyond a few casual mentions of Concordia, McGill and Cote Vertu. The act of defining it as a “serious farce” (Guy Sprung to Pat Donnelly in the Gazette), does not get the script off the hook.  It remains muggy, earthbound, and non-ethereal—- the etymology of the title would suggest otherwise—while the sets are telescoping skywards in a spectacular manner.

George, the Publisher (Noël Burton ), who has inculcated in his staff the allegorical ability to enter and exit complex financial and social circumstances through the fire escape,  is outstanding as an actor who takes his character beyond its spine; words and grunts tumble out of his mouth in near spontaneity as he lives the character on stage.  Now here perhaps is the redeeming creation of the writer Holden, who must have an insight on the lives of well-known Montreal poets. There must have been a deeper understanding  here of the connections between popping a bottle of bubbly early in the AM, flying off to Cancun with grant money and liaising dangerously in one’s office.

Guy Sprung, Artistic Director of Infinite Theatre and Director of the play, is extremely resourceful, cycling his way around corporate Montreal tirelessly, networking, making the right connections, raising substantial sums of money to keep alive a significant Montreal institution( and injecting lascivious characters often in his productions along the way). This play however was surprisingly contained.  No subtext, no suggestions, no post-orgasmic exhalations. Everything peters out at the end and a cinderellaesque compromise is achieved.   Sprung’s ability however to deploy the right resources towards an excellent utilization of the old, cold bath house repeatedly for theatre, is commendable. When one enters, one is reminded of the new Acropolis Museum at Parthenon, large cubic shapes and windows to another world, slanted at expansive angles with gobos and projectors streaming the words of well-known Montreal Poets. The sets were done very imaginatively by Veronica Classen.

All in all a production worth going to, but marred by the writing.

An issue on Canadian Literature has been on the cards for a long time. Here it is, and…… here is to bemused looks, neutral shrugs, crinkled foreheads, and other intense Canadian-isms.

Oh! Don’t get me wrong! We love grovelling in the multi-culti-interculti-stewpot-goulash-curry-prairie-east-coast-big-city-rez-dopey-sex-crazed-iconoclastic-we-are-different-ist mishmash that is CanLit,  which is now taught, researched, admired, funded, trashed, heavily quoted and equally heavily ignored all over the world, so to speak. But Canadians are writing away with ferocious sagacity (another deeply held Canadian bipolarity), unknown in recent times. Every time you turn a corner, there is a new author popping up from behind a lamppost. Ambush! There is a Canadian writer from Montreal, who is now unfolding an entire novel Tweet by Tweet! We are unstoppable!

In the past, Montreal Serai has published Shyam Selvadurai, Rawi Hage, Jaspreet Singh and several others before they scored (Canadians like to) and hit some major targets! But this time we have the full metal jacket, or more like both barrels locked and loaded, to use a not so peaceful analogy…

We have contributions from Linda Leith, the founding Director of the renowned Montreal Blue Met Literary festival; Cyril Dabydeen, much published novelist and frequent essayist from Ottawa; Canadian novelist and Montreal’s Rover Arts Magazine founder, Marianne Ackerman; Julian Samuel, Montreal writer, painter and filmmaker on a new exhibition in New York by ex-Montrealer and Guggenheim scholarship holder (and also a past contributor to Montreal Serai) Abouali Farmanfarmaian.  And to boot, there is an interview with Montreal filmmaker and writer Merrily Weisbord, whose book Love Queen of Malabar is doing very well in readers’ and writers’ forums and on bookstands; and a rising new Toronto poet who has chosen to write Ghazals in English, Sheniz Janmohamed. If that were not enough, we have our perennial reviewer Maya Khankhoje on Ondaatje’s new Book The Cat’s Table, Rosalind Hampton with a powerful interview of the artist Theodore Harris and several more essays, book and film reviews (by Ann Cimon and Prasun Lala) and Ilona Martonfi on the legendary Montreal Literary Space, The Yellow Door. And then there are short stories by Montreal composer Antoine Bustros and as well as others. In short, this is a power-packed, bullet-proof edition for the year ending 2011. Enjoy or be Canadian!

Rana Bose (RB): Canadian Literature has been evolving in all directions.  Literature out of a newer multicultural context is also making its presence felt. The Globe and Mail reviewer in reviewing your best seller The Love Queen of Malabar says “It is also a truly original example of the cross-cultural adventuring – typically with an Asian focus – that has become so unexpectedly common in Canadian literature.” These are not your words, of course, but can you reflect on this “unexpectedness.”  Should it be “unexpected.”?

Merrily Weisbord (MW):  I’ve been thrilled to see Canadian literature opening up to the world, or the world opening up Canadian literature. Raised in a left-wing, internationalist home, I had trouble relating to much of the earlier Canadian canon. Too tame, too constrained, not enough sex until Ian Adams, an underrated Canadian writer wrote Bad Faith. I guess for those steeped in our literary past, cross-cultural adventuring is unexpected. For me, it’s a great part of the transcendent nature of literature, a way to lift mind and spirit into the further reaches of words.

RB. “Reciprocal revelation, self-realization, eavesdropping” etc—these are some of the expressions used in reviews about your book. I felt your writing went way beyond that. Tell us something about your Love Queen Book that has been difficult for you to convey?

MW:  It’s hard for me to know exactly what The Love Queen of Malabar does convey. I know from talking to readers and from their letters, that the book speaks differently to everyone. Some love Kamala, some think she’s an impossible drama queen. Some think she’s a victim, some consider her a courageous rebel. Some readers are moved by our friendship, others can’t understand Kamala’s love for a husband who treated her badly and they can’t get their heads around her converting at age 67 for love. What makes me happiest is that readers enjoy taking the trip into Kamala and her world. Yet Kamala was an extremely complex person. I think what has been most difficult for me to convey is the aesthetic, moral, emotional weight of her Malayalam childhood in Malabar. Even when he was 80, George Bernard Shaw never forgot the natural beauty of his childhood and he counted it as a factor of first importance in his real education “which was essentially aesthetic.” I identify with the important nature/family aspects of Kamala’s real education and am inadequately equipped to fully convey the Nayar, goddess, Malayalam, Sanskrit, traditionally moral aspects.  I could also never adequately convey the feelings of trust and love we felt for each other, and my growing hindsight realization of how very lucky I was to know Kamala Das.

RB: There is such a wealth of Literature across Canada– new writers, poets, e-zines. CanLit has seen exponential growth. There are departments in Asia, awarding degrees on CanLit.  I am not just talking about Atwood, Ondaatje, Mistry and a whole host of others. I am talking about those who set their stories in Canada for a long time. Has Canada found an identity for itself in world literature today? And what is that identity?

MW:  Oh Rana. This is the question, isn’t it? I have no idea. This is why I never wrote a PhD. thesis.

RB: Did Canadian Literature have a significant impact on the world? Has it really made its mark in world literature as “Canadian”? Mavis Gallant, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Laurence, Irving Layton, Alice Munro, and Carol Shields –these are big names. Then there are the diasporic writers, whose stories go back to the Holocaust period and further back into the First War, then there are those who go back to the Prairies or Atlantic Canada and describe the soul of life there and there are those who write about urbane Canada today and now. Given that there are so many streams emerging, whether they get nominated or not for various prizes, has there been any genre of Canadian literature that has maintained an essentially longstanding appeal for you?  Something you could categorize as “essentially Canadian.”

MW:  The Canadian writers I know best are Margaret Atwood and Ted Allan. Two more dissimilar writers would be hard to find. I started reading Atwood in the 70’s, my marriage on the rocks, isolated in the country, searching for other women with feelings like mine. I was saved from isolation by magazines like Aphra and poets like Diane di Prima and Atwood whose poetry was sharp, biting, cleansing.

You fit into me

Like a hook in an eye

A fish hook

An open eye.

Later, I wrote an NFB film on Atwood called Margaret Atwood: Once Upon a Time in August:

http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=15249

I met Ted Allan when I first went to London as a young CBC radio journalist. He had plays in the West End, had published stories in the New Yorker, was friends with Sean Connery (a chorus boy at that time), was at the centre of ex pat successful, Canadian cultural life, and had written the biography of Norman Bethune The Scalpel, the Sword, which I read in my teens. He was my first radio interview. He taught me to work the tape recorder and suggested questions. We became friends and I followed his career: the Academy award nominated film Lies my Father Told Me, Broadway with his play Chu Chem, LA writing for Cassevetes (Lovestreams won a Golden Bear at Berlin), Stephen Leacock Award for Love is a Long Shot, and more. I wrote and co-directed an NFB film about Ted called: Ted Allan: Minstrel Boy of the 20^th Century which is largely unknown, as regrettably is Ted. He is, interestingly, a character in the new novel by Susanna Fortes, Remembering Robert Capa.

RB: You have an extraordinary insight and family association with the evolution of the left not only in Quebec and Canada, but also in North America. Your family background and personal engagement in writing the story of the left in Quebec and Canada, in making significant films, being a journalist leaves one craving for many details that folks today are totally oblivious about. Especially during the McCarthy era.  Was it easy to write about left wing issues then? Is it easy now?

MW:  I was a radio journalist in the 80’s when I started researching communists in Canada. I wrote the book,  The Strangest Dream: Canadian Communists, the Spy Trials and the Cold War because the CBC was still scared to do a documentary on communists. An old time CBC staffer advised me to write a book instead. It wasn’t easy to get people to talk. They trusted me but The Cold War was still in the air and it was dangerous for work and community relations to be to be identified as ever being a communist. In fact, it appears that the reason the South African government revoked my visa when I was working on the film Songololo, is that some concerned agency told them I had written The Strangest Dream.

I am still not sanguine about Canada’s tolerance for socialist or Marxist ideas. It’s disquieting in 2011 to read that the government is withholding parts of Tommy Douglas’s secret RCMP file, dating from 1936, because releasing it would compromise national security. When I applied for my files from the CSIS data banks, our intelligence service answered. They couldn’t help me because they didn’t know my birthday. Finally they informed me that I did not have a file in two of the data banks I’d inquired about. As for the file on people of ongoing interest to CSIS, they couldn’t tell me if I had a file or didn’t have a file because to do so would be a threat to national security.

**

To read a review of Merrily Weisbord’s book entitled The Love Queen of Malabar,  click here.

Definitions are falling apart and yet there is a constant need to understand and explain the phenomena without relying on a comfort zone that is steeped in personal affiliations and minor and concealed major doses of fear of the other.

In this issue of Montreal Serai, Patrick Barnard presents an extraordinarily passionate teacher’s perspective on teaching the other. Students today are in a better position to understand and not get easily “affiliated.” Mirella Bontempo covers the entire spectrum of migration, political culture, European adversity to the other in her essay on Multicultural Panic. Mathew Soule questions the evolving soul of Canada.  Prasun Lala and Rola Harmouche do a dynamic exchange covering Algonquin rapper Samian and Basra born Montreal rapper Narcycist and British born Palestinian rapper Shadia Mansour.

We have an extensive interview of Guy Rodgers, Montreal activist for English cultural rights, by playwright and performer Anna Fuerstenberg. And there are essays, short stories, poetry and some live poetry by new suspects and as well by some of the usuals.

We have a rather spectacular issue in place this time with contributions from Sam Boskey, former Councilor from the borough of N-D-G, who played a leading progressive role in city politics during the MCM days; from Dimitri Roussopoulos, leading Montreal grass roots democracy activist, environmentalist and founder of Black Rose Books​ who has just returned from the World Social Forum; from Patrick Barnard, long time Montreal environmental activist, who has fought ardently for green space in this city and Serai editor as well; from Patrick Bolland, long time social activist, who has campaigned against the use of tasers by the city police and is a researcher with the “ coalition pour la retraite du Taser”; from Shubhobroto Ghosh, freelancer in New Delhi, comes an article on Summary Justice and from Sujata Dey,  who has been active in city politics and is a well-known figure in the “multicultural’ borough of Cotes-des Neiges, on community organizing; from Sylvia Goldfarb, poet and freelancer on Prison Politics in Canada today, and then there is an extraordinary collection of photo montages by Mathew Soule, a time-lapse display of a few North American cities by Quebec City photographer Dominic Boudreault including an accompanying interview; essays on the city and a book review by Maya Khankhoje, poems by Montreal poet and writer Louise Carson and others. Enjoy this city’s rich history, spectacular vistas, dynamic political and cultural past, her ugly scars, as well as her vibrant aspirations!

Wikileaks is exemplary when it exposes imperialism and its secretive and militarist execution of global domination. Wikileaks is good when it exposes the real language and racist mindset of Western diplomats. Wikileaks is good when it exposes videos that depict the lawlessness of the US and other MILITARY FORCES in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wikileaks is good when it exposes the fact that the Indian state has used torture routinely in Kashmir and elsewhere. Wikileaks is excellent when it clearly reveals that the Saudis are never to be trusted by the Muslim world.

Wikileaks is also very good because it snatches away the control of mainstream media (and the resultant cultural consensus) and provides “other” information (although there is significant evidence that it also collaborates on what it will not release). Wikileaks also expands on the notion that the industrial working poor are not the only people by definition who are fertile for surplus value extraction. Knowledge workers are at the core of creating the code that allows the gears and cogs of the information industry to turn. Their surplus value extraction is increasingly critical for the military-informational complex. Drones, satellite based warfare, counter-hacking, cyber surveillance would not be happening if this farm of ants was not at work so industriously. Thus their rebellion against the complex is a good thing. Otherwise why else would a Canadian Conservative Minister call for the assassination of Assange on an open line TV show?

But those who say that Wikileaks and Facebook and Twitter, as social media and information technology, are going to bring about revolutionary transformation in “despotic” areas of the world, be it Tunisia, Egypt, Libya or Iran, are actually displaying an old “centre country” colonial attitude towards the “periphery”. It is the old notion of “modernity”, liberating the backward and the medieval. It is an archaic notion that Western democracy and information exchange would be a godsend for a pre-capitalist or neo-liberal society.  A battle tactic, a guerilla weapon, is made to sound like “enlightenment” theory for the underdeveloped. It is like worshipping at the altar of the ultimate transcendental information guru–Baba Ram Twitter or Guru Wiki! Information is good, but worshipping media is not good.

As James Carville, Clinton’s campaign strategist in 1992 once said … It is the economy, stupid! It is the plight of people, poverty, hunger, lack of shelter, poor health, disease, lack of justice and personal freedoms that make people self-immolate and rebel. It is the failure of globalization and neo-liberalization that make people take to the streets with their I-phones, BBs and FB. Twitter does not do it. Twitter and Facebook and even SMS-ing are like lookout couriers for the street corners and rooftops in the real world of rebellion. They are battle hardware, perhaps. The whistle and bird calls in the jungles that guerillas use. To suggest that Wikileaks is the harbinger of a social movement, the unifying core of a world movement opposed to the politics of globalization etc is perhaps in that colonial or post-colonial mode, where khaki clad monkeys from the West tried to tell real monkeys in forests how to whistle and talk English.

A critical thing to observe, however, is that contrary to the fears and anxiety of the Western press, this entire revolt in the Arab world has been an extremely tolerant, secular movement, not at all in the clutches of any extremist religious group. This must worry the West. Because the leverage of using “fundamentalists and fanatics” to stage an invasion by NATO is not really possible. At the same time, it is interesting to note that in cities like Benghazi, where Libya’s oil base is primarily located, flags of the old monarchy which Gadafi overthrew –the Idris dynasty–have appeared prominently. When the mainstream press asks for democracy and peace and bleeds for the people, one must worry.

In this issue of Serai, we have concentrated on the advent of social media, information technology, the imagery for social context and advertising and the relevance of information in bringing about social and cultural change. Contributors who are familiar with code writing, ciphering and deciphering and also those who have engaged for long in thinking about their roles as information workers have put their thoughts together. Bottom line is that you cannot tweet a revolution to completion!

******

A link to a brilliant set of photographs from Reuters, from the Egyptian Revolt :  http://totallycoolpix.com/2011/01/the-egypt-protests/?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d4fe127a7097739,2

Twenty-nine organizations in Canada came together on November 16^th, 2010 to issue a joint statement in response to Canada’s much postponed endorsement of the UN declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, originally adopted in 2007.

The joint statement says that it is not simply an aspirational instrument.  That it is an establishment of minimum standards for survival, dignity, security and well-being of Indigenous peoples.  When one walks around the now gradually gentrifying area around the Old Forum of Montreal or when one happens to be in any of the hospitals of Montreal, one knows and understands what is being brought up here about the plight of the Firsts Nations of this country. As one walks on down the street further, one sees that the longstanding art and writings of First Nations people along the walls of the old Seville have all been all torn down. It was actively organized and supported by community activists who understood the plight of Canada’s First Nations peoples and especially Inuit people who sought some warmth in this area and panhandled for survival around this neighbourhood, after coming in from the North.  I do not see them anymore. Instead there is a demo model of a massive condo complex being built out there, inappropriately and cynically named “Complexe Seville” after the fabled repertory cinema where I had seen Phantom of the Opera a few times in the ‘70s.

As I read the joint statement, I further realize that the Canadian government says the UN Declaration “does not reflect customary international law.” This according to the UN Special Rapporteur is a “manifestly untenable position.” Does Canada already want to redefine and wriggle out of what it has already signed, by making malfeasant interpretations or does Canada have another plan?

In 2007, Canada was one of four countries (the others being United States, Australia and New Zealand)  that refused to sign the Declaration when it was adopted in the UN General Assembly. Canada understood it then as not just a human rights document, but also affecting its ability to negotiate on biodiversity, climate change and intellectual property.  Something has changed and no one knows for sure what Canada’s real intent is.

“Canadian laws and policies are not above reproach. We strongly encourage the government of Canada to use the Declaration as a tool in reforming laws and policies that fall below international human rights standards, ” said Alex Neve, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

A leader of the Quaker’s organization, Merrill Stewart says that Canada would do well not to see this as “… Isolated problems but part of a long-standing and deeply entrenched pattern of racism and exclusion.”

The Joint Statement goes on to conclude that in the past four years the Canadian government has not fulfilled its constitutional duty to consult the First Nations and accommodate their concerns in respect to the positions taken in the Declaration.

I am wondering why Canada has signed this Declaration. First Nations peoples are not easily assuaged by plum offerings.  Does our government have a game plan? Does this country want to create a fog of doubt about the increasing opposition to the Tar Sands and the Pipelines by instituting new environmental committees, scientific advisory bodies and then assuaging the First nations simultaneously?  Is this a methodical strategic plan to diffuse and mesmerize while carrying on unpopular policies?

               One does not have to be a militant environmentalist. Neither does one have to be a duck, a penguin or a halibut to feel encrusted, choked and oxygen-less. One needs to be just an engineer and scientist here, in far away Montreal, Quebec with a minimal sense of social responsibility, to feel incensed by the outrageous and cynical behaviour of those corporate hoodlums who failed to take the prescribed preventative measures. Measures that would have easily pre-empted the blow-out that is ravaging the Gulf coast and now beyond.  By now, it has also pretty much been forgotten that eleven workers were blown to bits and of course their families were also destroyed.   

Sketch of a Cameron Blow out preventer from Wiki commons

                A bit of technical detail is in order, for a start. Preliminary evidence suggests that the explosion that destroyed the rig was caused by methane gas coming up from the explosion well. Drilling and well-capping are well established procedures in the oil industry, since methane is a highly explosive gas. Specific capping devices, blow-out preventers, have been in use for these specific situations for decades. When a well is drilled, it is also filled with “mud” or drilling fluid in order to prevent the gas from running up the pipes. Once drilling is completed, a process known as “cementation” follows. It is generally done in two stages, first around the drill casing, and then a “plug” is placed to seal the well. Evidence suggests that the explosion that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon rig, and perhaps damaged the blow-out preventer on the seafloor, was caused by methane gas coming up from the well. There are suggestions that unusual procedures were used to place the final cement plug.  It is being suggested that instead of the “mud” that is normally used, sea-water was pumped in.   

                This is where the 3 finger-pointing companies step in and start their obscene “not me” routine. Halliburton (of Dick Cheney pedigree) says it was told to do so by Transocean. Transocean says it was told to do so by BP! And no one is willing to take responsibility. Tim Probert, Halliburton’s president of global business, says, with some degree of arrogance, that the company was “contractually bound to comply with the well owner’s instructions on all matters relating to the performance of all work‐related activities.” In other words, whether the instructions given by the well-owner were safe or not for its workers and the environment, Halliburton was going to comply with the contract.   

                Then there is the BP President for America, Lamar McKay, who is more concerned why the blow–out preventer did not work, more than why recommended Best Practice was not followed. In other words, an accident was spec’d in! The question for him is not why there was accident built in, but why the accident fallout preventer did not work after the accident!   

                Finally, there is the U.S. Federal agency charged with regulating drilling — the Minerals Management Service (MMS). It turns out that these folks who are charged with the responsibility of regulating drilling operations and the accompanying safety, while promoting explorations (that by itself being a conflict of interest), abrogated their responsibility by agreeing that “offshore operations have become so complicated that regulators ultimately must rely on the oil companies and drilling contractors to proceed safely.” Hello? Wasn’t there such a hullaballoo a couple of years ago about corporate governance —some device called the Sarbanes–Oxley Act that was going to set things right after the Enron-Wescom mega collapses?     

                Conservative estimates suggest that 2,500,000 gallons of crude a day is spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.  Here is a link to a real time leak meter.    There is no point in repeating here the damage that has already happened to human-marine-biological life.  Never mind the food chain, which is now shot for the next few years at least. Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry is raking in windfall profits. According to the advocacy group Avaaz, “BP, which operated the sunken rig, more than doubled its first quarter profits in 2010 to $5.65 billion.” Oh! We must of course let the oil companies make obscene profits. That is a sacred right. After all, in 2005 BP’s Texas city refinery managed to kill 15 of its workers and it was determined that the company had a poor safety and quality record. A year later 4,800 barrels seeped out of a BP pipeline in the Alaskan North. In 2007 BP paid a fine of 300 million dollars for fixing propane gas prices. This company has become somewhat of an all-rounder it seems.  And they refer to themselves as BP-Beyond Petroleum! However, Beyond Perfidy would be a more appropriate moniker for them.       

                BP Engineers and their friends in Transoceanic and Halliburton will someday get to the bottom of why the Blow-out preventer did not work, why so much pressure built up and why after the catastrophe the blow out preventer was not actuated. There will be a tendency to blame individuals and not of course the invalid systems that these companies have deployed, based on mindless penny-pinching. All the spectacular attempts at lowering a coffer dam etc. are really band aid measures for public consumption. Unless a parallel horizontal bore is made into the main well to relieve the pressure and siphon out the oil to the surface, nothing will have been achieved and we know that it is going to take months to drill 18,000 feet below.     

                It will be sometime before we find out if this new buzz tech that BP is touting is going to pan out on the ocean floor.  As far as the extent of the damage goes, there are indications that even by conservative estimates, this spill will have exceeded the Exxon Valdez spill by a factor of four.    

                OK, we can all go home raving and ranting. And ask for reparations and BP will oblige with a couple of billion dollars out of their quarterly pirating. Here’s what I think should be happening now (never mind the long term issue of getting rid of cars).   

                What on earth is Barack Obama doing leaving BP in charge of the plugging of the well, even now? What are the mighty US defence forces doing? They mine the sea bottom in Korea, they scour the Pacific and Atlantic laying cables, they develop space planes that can launch attacks within two hours anywhere in the world. Why is the US government not plugging the well themselves and then sending the bill to BP? It would at least shave a couple of billion of the trillion dollar deficit. Why does the US government have such a knee-jerk reliance on Big Oil?  Why is BP still playing Big Dada, dishing out clean up jobs to the families whom they have devastated?  Why is it that sea foods, vegetables and other foods are already disappearing from North American grocery stores and meat and poultry prices are already jacked up? Will BP pay for that?

Montreal Serai Editor Rana Bose interviewed Catherine Potter, leader of the Catherine Potter-Duniya Project, after her show at the MAI in Montreal.

MS : The show La Convergence des Continents at the Montreal Arts Interculturels on 23rd January, 2009 was very tight and innovative with an interesting visual backdrop provided by VJs jocool and Liberty. North Indian classical flute as played by you fused with the Senegalese Kora played by Montreal Kora player Zal Idrissa Sissokho, and Quebecois Jazz guitarist Jean-Marc Hebert. Resulting in some very interesting improvisations. Let me ask you right away, what was driving the pulse of this show, meaning what beats were you improvising around, the tabla of Subir Dev, or the drums of Tom Gossage. I ask this because both of them are so tight and volatile and yet set an interesting dual pace?

CP:  What you refer to as “the driving pulse” of this new repertoire is not so much the percussion instruments, as it was with my last album, but rather the rhythmic and harmonic force of the kora, the West African harp. I had worked with different kora players over the years and, in fact, my first Duniya group in 1985 was with kora player Nathalie Dussault. I had been waiting for an opportunity to integrate the kora into Duniya Project because it is such a beautiful palette to play off of; like a wonderfully complex and rhythmic tanpura around which the drum and tabla grooves were also created. I worked a lot with Zal while writing these new compositions in order to tune his instrument, quite exceptionally, to the modes of the North Indian ragas. This allowed me to write original material for the kora with the other five instruments and to find ways to use the traditional Mandingue kora accompaniments with these new tunings. 

MS:  I know that you trained under Hariprasad Chaurasia and you have played live with him in concerts. Who in the Jazz flute world has had an influence on you? I heard Yuseef Lateef and Rahsaan Roland Kirk in some segments. Am I right?

CP:  My approach to cross-over music is not only in my way of composing and in bringing musicians from different traditions together, but also in my own improvisational flute vocabulary.  I have a background in jazz flute, having completed a jazz studies degree at Concordia, and I’ve probably been influenced by those jazz flutists whom I like such as Yuseef Latif (who himself was influenced by Indian music.)  However, I’ve think I’ve also been influenced by many other jazz and world musicians including Wayne Shorter, John McClaughlin, Zakir Hussain, Pat Metheny, Paul McCandless and Jan Garbarek.

MS: This is a world music ensemble you have put together Catherine Potter-Duniya Project .  How did you put this band together and what were your inclinations towards this fusion? Is this where you are settling into? Or would you tour also playing exclusively North Indian classical? Also tell us something about the musicians and your interaction with them. How did it develop? They are all such individual stars, especially the Kora playing of Sissokho, guitarist Jean-Marc Hebert and contre-bassist Nicholas Caloia.

CP:   I founded this ensemble in 2001 as a performance platform for my original compositions. Since the early 1980′s, it was something I knew I would eventually do but I had to wait until I felt that I had certain mastery over North Indian classical music first. I needed to feel that I was using the knowledge and art which has been passed on to me with respect and was able retain the depth of this music rather than simply borrowing from it, as do many musicians trying to create world music would do. I was shuttling back and forth between Mumbai and Montreal to study with Pt. Chaurasia Between 1990 and 2001 and I released my first album of ragas, Bansuri,– in 1997. As much as I love North Indian classical music, my original work better reflects who I am artistically and culturally. It is also great to practice and perform as a group. Here in North America where Indian classical concert opportunities are few and far between, one can spend a lot of time practicing alone and it becomes quite isolating. I feel privileged to have such amazing collaborators such as Thom Gossage on drums, Nicolas Caloia, Subir Dev; they all contribute their creativity to the project and they are all excellent improvisers. Zal Sissokho is an excellent traditional kora player who is in the process of opening up to new ways of using his instrument and Jean Marc Hébert was an excellent choice for these new pieces because his eclectic playing is like a bridge between our different musical cultures.   

MS:  It is great to see a woman composer from Quebec, highly accomplished in North Indian classical music, lead this world music band and put it together. This issue of Montreal Serai has a theme Women: Changing the World! You are unique in that sense. Over the years I have seen you perform, there has been a consciousness about the rights of women and the relationship to your music. Comments?

CP:  On the eve of International Women’s day, I must admit this is a difficult question to answer.  Unfortunately, I don’t  feel things have changed much and many of the challenges faced by women musicians remain the same.  If I have made any contribution in changing things, it would simply be in the choice to persist in a extremely male-dominated musical milieu, where even my guru-bhais would often tell me I was wasting my time because i was a woman and certain male musicians I’ve collaborated with have told me “no woman musician could ever kill like men” (?!) What to say to that, besides the fact that I’m not interested in killing?

MS : Tell us something about the India tour you did in 2008. What were the venues and how was it received? Who accompanied you? Give us some highlights.

CP:  We had a fantastic tour Europe and in India where the Duniya Project album was released by Music Today under the title “Following in the Footsteps of Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia”.  We performed in Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Mumbai, London, Dublin, Paris and Brussels, including some prestigious venues like the National Centre for the Performing Arts in Mumbai, Congo Square Jazz Festival in Kolkata, the East-West Encounter Festival in Bangalore and the Pavilion Theater in Dublin.  What I found most touching was doing 3 cd launches in large music stores in India.  Ordinary people just showed up not knowing what they were about to hear and were very visibly touched by the music. There was a question period with a microphone for individuals to express their impressions or ask questions. I was really touched to learn how they were moved by my music and my playing, more so than some of the feedback from “elite” audiences.   We also got a very good response from the Indian press.  I understood that it is easier to be acknowledged as a musician doing what they call in India, “fusion” and which I prefer to call original cross-over music, than as a full-out Hindustani classical flutist.  While here in the West, we have gotten beyond the need to have Caucasians Europeans perform Western opera in order for it to be considered “authentic”, there is still a widely held belief in India that you have to be ethnically “Indian” to be able to play Indian classical music “authentically”.  This attitude has had an effect on how the Western world perceives those like myself who have chosen this path.

 MS: What is the look ahead? What plans do you have? What are you working on?

CP:  I’m presently in pre-production of my third album, which will include most of the pieces from La Convergence des continents.  We are also promoting this new show to eventually tour both in Canada and again internationally and will hopefully show-case it at CINARS 2010. I was brought to Morocco a couple of months ago where my career is being promoted and had some wonderful opportunities to collaborate with Moroccan musicians. I will return later this year for more collaboration and to continue working on building a festival tour there for Duniya Project in 2011. I also plan to return to Indian next winter for a few months with a Shastri fellowship to continue to study ragas with Hariprasad Chaurasia, to seek inspiration in the wealth of South Asian musical traditions and to work on new original material.