By David P. Ball
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Heart of the City Festival's artist-in-residence tells The Pulse on CFRO he hopes for America's "moral soul" to emerge after election, and shares the story of his great-great-great grandmother who escaped slavery to Canada.
Juno-nominated Khari Wendell McClelland calls Vancouver his home, but as a musician born in Detroit, the United States' still-undecided election is something he's watching with more personal interest than many here.
The acclaimed musician and artist is artist-in-residence of the Heart of the City Festival, which is hosting both virtual and distanced-in-person events until Sunday. With results still rolling in and ballot counting ongoing — amidst President Donald Trump's threat to use courts to try to prevent some from being counted — he says a lot is at stake here in Vancouver and many places outside U.S. borders.
"I think I'm not alone, there are millions and millions of folks who are American or who have relatives who are — or just know the impacts of what that country does and how it votes will affect people around the world," he told The Pulse on CFRO. "Lots of people are waiting for the results with a lot of anticipation.
"I'd just love for there to be less sense of impending doom … Sometimes the threat of great peril can bring people together in powerful ways. I hope fo the future of the country — a connection to the moral soul of the country that can lead the country in the direction of a more just, equitable and loving society."
Cross-border grassroots connections between the United States and Canada are a recurring theme in his work; his project Freedom Singer told the tales of people who escaped slavery to Canada — including his great-great-great grandmother, he explained.
He recounted his Freedom Singer project was really "about me trying to coonect withhte songs my great-great-great grandmother Kizzy would have sung as she was escaping slavery in the U.S. and coming to Canada," he explained. "I wanted to find out more about her … but I ended up complicating the narrative associated with both sides of the border — that includes the unfort and dev history of slavery inside Canada, both the slavery of Africans and the enslavement of Indigenous people."
He spoke to The Pulse on CFRO about artist pandemic survival tips, the U.S. election and why the Heart of the City Festival is so important to the Downtown Eastside community.
"It's a lot about sharing the voices of community members who are often unheard," he said. "It's also hightliging the cap and the brilliance of many people who may not get a spotlight in the mainstream — and when I say that, I"m thinking about Chinese community members, Indigenous community members, specifically folks in the DTES, people who have housing precarity or use drugs, poor folks.
"It's a way to meaningfully tap into the creative capacity of average folks in the neighbourhood and makes the story of the community a richer one. They are the holders of many, many stories that would otherwise be lost — whether the history of the Black community in Strathcona and the DTES and different communities."
His virtual Zoom workshop at Heart of the City Festival is titled "Survival Tactics for Artists in the Age of Covid," and will be held Thursday at 3 p.m. Registration is limited.