Edited by: Jina Aryaan
After my first full week at the University of Toronto came and went, I was a little bit stunned, to say the least. I had never seen so many people in one place in my entire life. Living in the GTA—but rarely visiting Toronto—I quickly realized that the city has so much to offer…maybe a little too much for me.
Everything from taking the subway, to walking down the street, to squeezing my body past the hundreds of people shoving their way out of Con Hall after class was completely overwhelming for me. I got lost at least once a day and spent hours wandering around campus trying to sort myself out and figure out where I was supposed to be going. I met more new people than I could keep track of, and I had learned so much in that first week of classes that my brain was already struggling to take it all in.
It felt too busy, too fast, like my brain couldn’t keep up with the speed of the people surrounding me, and when I’d come back home at the end of the day, it felt as if things had gone right over my head. I realized that I needed something to ground me; I had to do something to slow things down for a moment.
I needed something that was familiar, comforting, and reassuring, but that also helped to ease me into the city. So when I heard that the Kensington Market Jazz Festival was on that weekend, I knew I was going to go.
The Kensington Market Jazz Festival is a brand new edition to the Toronto jazz scene. The festival was established in 2016 and transformed the market into an unsuspecting place for live jazz. This year, the second annual Kensington Market Jazz Festival ran for three days: Friday, September 15th to Sunday, September 17th, and featured over 400 of the most talented jazz musicians our country has to offer.
I took a look at the lineup online and was surprised and excited to see that so many of my favourite Canadian jazz musicians were taking part in the festival. Colleen Allen, The Heavyweights Brass Band, Laila Biali, and Larnell Lewis were there, to name a few. I’ve worked with Colleen Allen in the past and I’ve seen the other three artists perform live before, but I was equally as excited to see the all of the names that were unfamiliar to me on the lineup that made up the 400 artist grand total. The Canadian jazz community is a lovely one, and I would recommend checking out the artists I previously mentioned if you’ve never heard their music before…it’s an experience. Check out their websites below:
- http://lailabiali.com
- https://www.facebook.com/LarnellLewisMusic/
- https://www.colleenallen.ca
- http://www.heavyweightsbrassband.com
The only day I was free to go to the festival was on Sunday, the final day. Kensington Market can be a very confusing place, especially to those visiting for the first time (like me). The festival’s website did a great job of providing directions to each of the participating venues with maps and a roster that showed each performance and its respective location.
After a long morning of commuting and finally finding my way to Kensington Market, I looked at the costs of getting into each venue and found that it was way out of my spending range. Disappointed, hot, and tired, I found myself becoming overwhelmed by the atmosphere of the market itself, there were so many people, and so many stores, vendors and shops that I began to feel the same way I felt earlier in the week: like everything was happening too fast.
I didn’t want this experience to go to waste. I wanted to come to the festival. I wanted to listen to some great music. I wanted to change the way I had been feeling, so I tried something different. I sat down for a moment and listened to what was going on around me, relying more on my ears than my eyes. To my surprise, it worked. The chaos that I had been experiencing just moments before dissolved into music: the music of jazz, and the music of the city.
Amongst the sounds of the crowds, cars, and sirens, I could suddenly hear a few of the shows from the street; a big band in the distance, a trio singing at a café across the street, mellow sounds of a guitar floating through the air—I listened to it all. That’s how I spent my day: exploring Kensington Market with the hints of all its music as my soundtrack.
It was an amazing and important experience for me, as I was able to confront the fact that I was feeling frantic and overwhelmed in the city, and I was able to work through it with the familiarity of my favourite kind of music filling the air around me. I will definitely be setting some savings aside to experience the festival in its full glory next year, and I suggest that you do the same!
Don’t underestimate the power of music. By taking jazz music, something so familiar and comforting to me, and combining it with this new, exciting, wonderful city that I’m studying in, I was able to gain some much needed comfort. Thanks to the Kensington Market Jazz Festival, when I returned to campus the next day, I felt so much more at home in the amazing city of Toronto.
