Tafari Anthony is a Toronto based artist blending Pop, R&B and Soul. Exploring his own personal soundscape, Tafari returned with pop anthems, “Centerfold” and “Live in a Dream.” Now he unveils the emotional “No Good,” produced by Alexander Flockhart.

Tafari has been featured in PAPER Magazine, Gay Times, MTV, was nominated for a Toronto Independent Music Award, and receives regular airplay on CBC Radio, his single being named one of CBC’s Most Influential Songs of 2016. Tafari performed alongside Shangela (RuPauls Drag Race) as well as at Dundas Square and Massey Hall.

Cover Art Design by Tania Willems

Tafari is now releasing his new EP The Way You See Me.

https://tafarianthony.com/

Indigenous artist Madisyn Whajne has spent most of her life searching: for her purpose, her family, and herself. She was taken from her family, like tens of thousands of other native children, before the age of two by the Canadian government in the Sixties Scoop.

Save Our Hearts recorded live to tape in Montreal at Hotel2Tango with engineers Howard Bilerman (Arcade Fire) and Shae Brossard (Bahamas, The Dears) who she met singing backups for Canadian indie-folk star Basia Bulat.

The album is imbued with a visceral sense of loneliness and longing, a burning desire for connection and companionship that propels it endlessly forward in pursuit of something perpetually out of reach.

Madisyn is releasing her first album Save Our Hearts this December 11th which you can preorder on her website.

https://www.madisynwhajne.com/

Photographer Jen Squires

Cover Art Design by Tania Willems

Darryl Hurs recently hired by CD Baby for market development in Canada has a 25+ year history in the music business including launching and running one of Canada’s largest emerging artist showcase festivals and conference, Indie Week Canada.

Past positions include graphic design/branding for Live Nation as a freelancer (corporate branding, event marketing assets, including work for known artists such as U2, Nickelback, Madonna, Beyonce, Jay-Z and Dave Matthews and the launching of VIPNATION.com website), retail buyer at HMV, booker for one of Toronto’s top live music venues (The Rivoli), and performing in various musical acts.

Indie Week is an online conference this year focused on education from Tuesday November 10th until Saturday November 14th.

Cover Art Design by Tania Willems

https://www.indieweek.com/

Morgan Doctor is a Juno and Dora nominated performer and creator. She currently plays with Andy Kim, Jill Barber, Amanda Rheaume, and Fefe Dobson. She performed on Letterman, sold out theatres and arenas, music videos, and countless full length albums.

Morgan performed and won at MTV LOGO’s “Artist on the Brink” Award for 2008 with The Cliks. Morgan’s session drumming can be heard on CBC Metro Morning, The L Word, and Grey’s Anatomy. She received a Dora nomination for her sound design for Between Us Goddess in 2005 and earned a Juno and Dora nomination with her work with The Toronto Tabla Ensemble in 2001. Morgan is a big advocate of music education and teaches at Girls Rock Camp Toronto as a drum instructor and band coach.

In 2006 Morgan signed with Aporia Records and has released three solo albums. Her most recent release, Strangers explores the actions of connecting and disconnecting, and the fragile boundary between intimacy and estrangement. “… it is a rare musician who can make an instrumental album that seems confessional” – Toronto Star

Cover art design by Tania Willems

https://morgandoctor.com/wp/

Emm Gryner is a successful Filipino-Irish pop singer-songwriter based in Canada who started her own label Dead Daisy Records.

Emm was signed to Mercury Records for two years, and then continued to release albums on Dead Daisy, signed In Flight Safety & Royal Wood, toured extensively in David Bowies backup band as well as Swedish band The Cardigans.

Emm played in Hot One with Nathan Larson of Guided By Voices, collaborated with astronaut Chris Hadfield, was in the documentary Lennon or McCartney and is now releasing a jazz album Just For You.

Emm Gryner Photo by Cynthia Moore

Cover Art Design by Tania Willems

https://www.emmgryner.com/

Tarun “Tspoon” Nayar toured the world  with his award winning band Delhi 2 Dublin and is now Executive Director of Turtle Islands largest South Asian Youth event 5XFest.

Tarun collaborated on a fan engagement app originally used by the Manchester City Soccer Team and now runs music festival 5XFest in Vancouver with concerts, fashion shows, art events, 40 stages, 60+ creators, and over 25,000 people are on the 5XFest app. 

Tarun is on the board of Vancouver’s New Forms Festival, the Canadian Live Music Association, a member of BC’s Ministry of Education Advisory Committee, Vancouver’s Music City Task Force, and Vancouver’s 2018 Juno Host City Committee.

Tarun manages emerging Pakistani-Canadian electronic artist Khanvict, and is the co-founder and owner of digital label Snakes x Ladders which focuses on the new wave of hybrid South Asian artists.

Cover art Design - Tania Willems

Music:

Tarun Nayar - Kezang La

GWS, Cartel Madras - Stay Up All Night

Skinny Local - Bass Baje

Falling - Chin Injeti featuring Esthero & Tarun Nayar

Khanvict - Before Summer Ends

courtesy of SnakesXLadders

https://snakesxladders.bandcamp.com/music

https://www.5xfest.com/

Zaynab is a Canadian-Trinidadian globe-trotting multi-instrumentalist, who openly embraces her creative and personal expansion through her dynamic style and passionate expression.  She transmutes the raw material of her experiences and voice into songs that “quietens your spirit”. 

With a diverse musical input ranging from Bob Marley to Norah Jones, Esperanza Spalding and Billie Holiday, Zaynab’s output flows with elements of improvisation influenced by Jazz, Soul, R&B and Afro-Caribbean.

Born into a steelpan playing family band based in Montréal, music and sound flowed with diversity throughout the family home giving Zaynab rich cultural and musical roots to explore.

In 2014, she earned a Bachelor of Music on drums from Humber College then continued with her musical dynamism through debuting her own project, MoZayic, and in supportive percussive roles with Jason Wilson, Alysha Brilla and other local and international projects. In 2018, Zaynab welcomed a new level of deepening with music when she released as a singer-songwriter and has since performed her original project across Canada, in the USA and Australia, receiving radio airplay on Canada’s CBC and Australia’s ABC. 

Zaynab is planning to start her own podcast, The Music Cabinet, which will explore music/art/storytelling as a therapy, medicine and healing tool.

Cover Art Design by Tania Willems

https://www.zaynabwilsonmusic.com/

"Rae Spoon is one of the most important musicians working in Canada today" - NOW Magazine

Rae Spoon is an award winning non-binary performer, composer, music producer, visual content producer/director and author based on the territory of the Lekwungen speaking peoples in Victoria, BC.

They published First Spring Grass Fire, a book of short stories about growing up in Alberta and Spoon was awarded an Honour of Distinction for LGBT writers in 2014. Spoon began the music label Coax Records "out of a love for indie music and as an answer to under representation for many groups in the music industry".

Photo by Dave Todon

Cover Art Design by Tania Willems

https://www.coaxrecords.com/