Roles: Production and Audio Editing Trainer, Technical Consultant
Collaborators: Génération 1.5 team, CHOQ
Génération 1.5 est un podcast documentaire sur les enfants et les adolescents qui ont immigré avec leurs parents. Il explore les différentes étapes de ce déracinement : la perte du chez-soi et l’arrivée, le choc culturel, les questionnements identitaires et les manières de reconstruire ce chez-soi.
J’ai soutenu l’équipe de production avec des formations en production et montage et du soutien technique.
Since 2016 I have been collaborating with Togo-born trumpet player, jazz musician and composer Elias “Kokou” Damawou, a golden talent forging his own voice with an original repertoire combining rhythmic elements of Togo with jazz harmonies and arrangements.
This culminated in a recording session in April 2022. Two demo EPs had previously been produced with different lineups.
Roles: Trainer, Advisor, Music consultant, Editor, Mastering
Collaborators: Collectif NOOR
Le collectif NOOR a été conçu avec le but de valoriser et amplifier les voix et récits de vie de jeunes personnes racisées. J’ai agi en tant que consultant en conceptualisation et production pour la première saison du podcast Noor. J’ai aussi fourni de la formation en techniques d’enregistrement et de montage.
Par la suite, j’ai fait les mixages finaux des trois saisons de Nous Autres, une série de conversations entre jeunes âgé.e.s entre 19 et 30 ans, issu.e.s des « communautés culturelles », vivant à Montréal ou à Québec. Cette série a été produite par le collectif NOOR en collaboration avec des membres de la Démarche jeunesse sur le vivre ensemble de l’Institut du Nouveau Monde (INM). Plus tard, elle sera sélectionnée pour une curation culturelle destinée à Mon été culturel à Montréal et diffusée sur OHdio par Radio-Canada.
Roles: On-site Sound Recording and mixing Technician and Mixing, Post-Production Technician
Collaborators: Youssef Shoufan, ELAN
In 2020, the English Language Arts Network (ELAN) began to develop a project about identity and belonging within the English-speaking communities of Quebec called Waves of Change. ELAN brought together five discussion groups based on waves of immigration. A sixth group brought together English-speakers from communities all around Quebec. Participants were invited to discuss their experiences to help us define that nebulous character – the English-speaking-Quebecer.
The six Waves of Change documentaries explore these questions from a multitude of perspectives, presenting a rich and diverse portrait of what it means to be an English-speaker living n Quebec. I was in charge of audio and sound recording as well as live on-the-fly console mixing for the video shoots, which involved 5 – 11 participants each and was shot during the pandemic.
“L’artiste a centré sa composition autour du vécu des personnes racisées afin de visibiliser ces histoires trop souvent ignorées. Il répondait ainsi directement au thème central de l’exposition : « l’air », élément de l’invisible. Cet air que l’on respire est aussi devenu source de contagion depuis un an. Le recours à la fréquence radio a permis à l’artiste de déjouer la peur de l’autre, la crainte d’une contamination, pour faire de l’air un véhicule d’ondes de vie et de liberté.” -Emmanuelle Jetté
Installation / Performance in articule’s front window
ARTIST’S STATEMENT The face mask is the ubiquitous new hall pass. It protects from infection and insulates the wearer from the fear of what they cannot sense. It is also a physical, social and psychological barrier, a fitting metaphor for the suffocation of BIPOC voices and the invisibilization of their struggles that have redoubled in intensity in 2020, the year of the pandemic, the year we came up for air, gasping. What happens when expression can no longer be stifled? What happens when energies and emotions break their confinement? Parker Mah (Rhythm & Hues) channels these questions in his latest performance work, in which the performer is (all but) captive in his bubble. Music and words reflecting and amplifying the experiences of black and brown bodies find a way to escape through the plexiglass. Microscopically, vibrationally, the air around us quivers with life.
DESCRIPTION A mix of vinyl, samples, live instrumentation, and effects, this piece was performed at 4 random times between November 27 – December 13th for a maximum of 2 hours. An array of instruments, turntables, consoles and equipment were set-up behind the front window space of articule, which gives onto Fairmount street. Surrounded by living room furniture and a disco ball, Parker Mah aka Rhythm & Hues performed a prepared set of meaningfully juxtaposed records, instruments and vocal samples, routed live through a pirate radio signal broadcast extremely locally (50 meter radius) as well as to a boombox positioned outside, to passerby and unwitting radio listeners.
ARTISTS’ STATEMENT Wax (pronounced wakh) means “to speak” in Wolof. This project, a first collaboration between artists Lamin Fofana (Black Studies) and Parker Mah (Rhythm & Hues), catalyzes the collective strength of afrodiasporic presences in time and space, through a mapping of vocal samples lifted mostly from vinyl records. In the airy expanse between utterances lie ghostly traces that make visible the invisible; that speak truth to forgotten narratives.
DESCRIPTION This exhibition produced a second piece, a collaboration between artists Lamin Fofana and Parker Mah, both DJs and sound artists. Lamin had been expected to come to Montreal for the residency but could not due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. This piece developed out of online exchanges and a mutually established creative process.
Collaborator: Sarah Elola, Montréal Arts Interculturels (MAI)
La Pileuse dives deep into the origins of rhythm and dance. This art of entering in communion with the elements instead of resisting them, of neither enduring nor dominating them; this art of renewal that can transcend the laborious; La Pileuse takes stock of all this and represents a mine of movements, sounds and philosophical reflections in what is ultimately an intimate encounter with the African woman. La Pileuse is Sarah Elola’s second solo piece. It draws upon African traditions, and more specifically those of Oulo and Boromissi – villages in Burkina Faso where the dancer and choreographer spent her childhood.
I produced the entirety of the soundscape for this piece, which integrated instrumental performance mixed with sample-based production. I also contributed some video and photo work.
Roles: DJ, Musician, Music Researcher and Sampler, Sound Modeler
Collaborators: Nina Segalowitz, Moe Clark
Relive a magical performance put on for Nuit Blanche 2016 called “NIPI: Paysages Sonores”, led by spoken word poet / musician Moe Clark alongside throat singer Nina Segalowitz & Rhythm & Hues on turntables / MPC. The multi-layered set mixed traditional storytelling, drumming and singing with loop pedals, effects, and a sample-based sound design drawing from field recordings and the rich pantheon of indigenous music to create an northern ambiance as crisp as the night outside. The highlight of the night was this live retelling of an Inuit Drum Story, presented here. This performance, commissioned by the Canadian Guild of Crafts, marks their first collaboration together.
