Raising our Voices: Twenty Years of Musical Resistance
Event Information
About this Event
Solidarity Notes 20-Year Anniversary
We invite you to join our 20-year anniversary celebration for Solidarity Notes Labour Choir raising funds for the choir and DTES Response, which supports the community in the Downtown Eastside.
The event is hosted by fellow choir members Stephen Aberle and Carol Ross, as we gather virtually on the traditional and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples and welcome people from all lands.
Tickets
Suggested donation of $20, or pay what you can. DTES Response will receive 75% of the all money raised, and 25% will help support the work of Solidarity Notes. When you sign up for a ticket, we'll send a Zoom link before the event so you can join us!
Helping to rock your Saturday will be klezmer/punk accordion player and singer Geoff Berner and the Burnaby Mountain Mamas.
Music
Geoff Berner
Geoff Berner’s music combines the traditional folk music of Eastern European Jews with punk’s aggressive energy. It’s also very political and very radical, as evidenced by the song “Why Don’t We Just Take the Billionaires’ Money Away?”
For the past fifteen years Geoff has travelled the world, playing in bars, cafes, festivals and the occasional stadium. He’s performed in Berlin, Oslo, London, Zurich, Seattle, Toronto, Edmonton and Vancouver.
Geoff’s most recent album is Welcome to the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis , named for a place in Augsburg, Germany where “half the space is living quarters for refugees and asylum seekers, and half of it is a beautiful, inexpensive hostel.” Geoff adds in the liner notes: “It’s a wonderful thing for me, as a Jew, to see this project in Germany, where ordinary Germans are committed to truly welcoming travelling people in trouble, who are seeking help and a new home.”
Solidarity Notes is proud to include one of Geoff’s songs “Higher Ground” in our repertoire.
Burnaby Mountain Mamas
Burnaby Mountain Mamas was birthed as a wannabe string band by Anita Bates in 2011, when she was living at the foot of Burnaby Mountain. When Anita moved away some years later, the trio carried on with Rena Pinteric playing mandolin, Janie Benna guitar and Pat Howard banjo.
Their repertoire includes a range of traditional folk music from spirituals to ballads to blues, country music, and historical and contemporary songs of social and political commentary. Both Pat and Janie are members of Solidarity Notes.
Solidarity Notes
Co-host Stephen Aberle and our choir conductor Earle Peach will each sing a song.
Supporting the Downtown Eastside community
DTES Response knew that frequent hand washing was one of the most important ways to combat COVID-19, but, how do you wash your hands if you don’t even have soap? An ad hoc group of folks who cared came together to figure out how to get massive quantities of hygiene products to residents, and what it led to was an ambitious campaign to get more support for other immediate needs as well.
Carly O’Rourke from the group will tell us about the crucial work they are doing on the streets of Vancouver’s downtown eastside during the pandemic. Carly’s time is given as a free resource to DTES Response. She assists the team with admin, fundraising, grant-writing, and social media, while getting her first taste of frontline work doing meal deliveries in the community.
Solidarity Notes sings on the traditional and unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, also known as Vancouver, BC.