What's On

Tonye Aganabe

2019/11/22 (Friday)

TONYE AGANABA

  Something Comfortable: Live

  Thursday, November 28, 8pm

  Shadbolt Centre for the Arts (Studio Theatre)

  6450 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby

  Tickets:  Adults: $36 / Youth (18 & under) $15

  tickets.shadboltcentre.com

   Slip in to "Something Comfortable: Live"!

This immersive, intimate, and interdisciplinary experience was lovingly envisioned and created by Tonye Aganaba and a gifted family of co-creators. She performs with a 10-piece band and ensemble.

Aganaba is a singer-songwriter born in London England to Nigerian and Zimbabwean parents. They moved to Canada in her teens and started a career in music at 17. Now a Vancouver-based artist, Tonye’s style can be described as a mix of soul, folk and hiphop. Something Comfortable: Live fuses music, visual art, dance, digital media, and the age old art of storytelling to communicate its creator’s experiences as she describes as “a queer, Black, disabled, immigrant and non-binary, artist living under the poverty line, on stolen land”. This show is an intentional and devotional undertaking and each performance is unique, filled with spontaneous energy, and genuine to the core.

Tonye draws influence from a sudden plunge into disability, having been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in early 2015. This diagnosis, followed by a severe car accident, led - through a series of misadventures – to an immersive and continuing journey of self-discovery and healing. Intersectionality* became a new and prominent fact of Tonye’s existence, and from that reality birthed the analysis that is Something Comfortable. Tonje recognized that creation occurred on the unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. 

Aganaba is a MuchMoreMusic Video Award recipient, a social justice advocate and the kind of singer/performer that turns heads wherever she plays. Joining Tonye on stage is Jean Se Le Doujet (bass), TIm Proznick (drums), Thomas J Hoeller (guitar), Langston "Doc" Raymond (trumpet), David Mergens (saxophone), Mary Ancheta (keys), Suin Park (keys), Aaron Hamblin (percussion), Elisa Thorn (harp), Tonye Aganaba, Corrina Keeling and  Jess Vaira (vocals), Jojo The Dancer, Hayley Gawthrop, Jessica Dawn Keeling and Bo Dyp (movement) with visuals from Afuwa & LoveLettersForEverybody.

Full info on Tonye can be found at https://www.tonyemusic.com/.

*INTERSECTIONALITY is a concept used to describe the various ways that oppressive cultural and societal institutions like racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, xenophobia etc are inextricably connected.