RPM Live 007: Elisa Harkins + Laura Ortman + Mourning Coup
The Music Gallery and RPM present
RPM Live 007: Elisa Harkins + Laura Ortman + Mourning Coup
Revolutions Per Minute, helmed by Jarrett Martineau, is a label and media platform for emerging and established Indigenous musicians. This year alone, RPM has programmed at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Harbourfront and the Toronto International Film Festival and Martineau hosted a radio on show on CBC entitled Reclaimed.
We last worked with RPM in April to present What Sovereignty Sounds Like, a forum for Indigenous musicians in Toronto. During that discussion, one question raised was “what is Indigenous futurism?” Tonight, the second show in RPM Live’s 2017-18 season and their seventh overall, represents one possible answer.
Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) composer and artist originally hailing from Miami, Oklahoma. Her work deals with the concept of “Performing Life”, in which the performance intersects with her actual lived experience. Tackling subjects such as adoption, enrollment, and the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act, Harkins uses electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools.
Multi-instrumentalist Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) has spent quite a bit of time in Ontario this year and we’re thrilled to host her in 918 Bathurst’s soaring acoustic space. Laura produces solo albums, live performances and film/art soundtracks and frequently collaborates with artists in film, music, art, dance, multi-media, activistism and poetry, such as Tony Conrad, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee and Martin Bisi. She plays violin, Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, pedal steel guitar, sings through a megaphone, and makes field recordings.
Vancouver’s Mourning Coup is spearheaded by Chandra Melting Tallow of mixed ancestry from the Siksika Nation. With foundations in performance art, Melting-Tallow takes influences from artists like Eurythmics, Bruce Haack and Freddie Mercury, and combines them with the exploration of the metaphysical realm. Exclaim and Silent Shout covered her debut album Baby Blue, an emotionally-charged piece developed through the processing of the effects of inter-generational trauma in a world of fantasy and ethereality.
Accessibility
Please note that this venue has gendered washrooms and is not wheelchair-accessible (there are three steps to the entrance and a short flight of stairs up to the performance space, as well as down to the basement). The washrooms are located in the basement.
[gview file=”https://musicgallery.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/What-Sovereignty-Sounds-Like-transcript.pdf”]
