The Music Gallery & Uma Nota Festival present:

DJ Ushka + Poirier

Doors: 10pm

Concert: Mojo Lounge, 1305 Dundas St. W.

Tickets: $15 regular | $10 members, students & arts workers (at the door) | $12 advance at Soundscapes or BUY NOW

During last year’s concert featuring A Tribe Called Red at our X Avant Festival, we found ourselves sharing the Great Hall with Tropical Urban arts organization Uma Nota Culture. Needless to say, it was a pretty festive evening from top to bottom, so this year we’re going one step further by joining forces for this transcultural party at Mojo Lounge featuring New York’s DJ Ushka as she makes her Canadian debut.

Ushka is a Sri Lankan-born, Thailand-raised, Brooklyn-living migrant. She is an activist, cultural organizer, and deejay re-defining the boundaries between global bass music and culture.

Having grown up in several parts of the world, her musical influences are as transnational as she is. She deejays from the perspective of a dancer, blending a wide range of music from soca to cumbia, hip hop to South Asian rhythms, kuduro and other African styles to samba. She does so with the philosophy that global genre-blending connects cross-cultural struggles and tells important stories between communities but most importantly, she translates this onto dancefloors.

Along with DJ/Rupture, she is also a part of the Dutty Artz label + crew, a collective of DJs + producers creating sonic cultural production and events in NYC. In a sense, this is a Dutty Artz night, with Rupture handling the early shift at the Music Gallery with the Julius Eastman Memorial Project and Ushka bringing it to the dancefloor.

Poirier is Montreal’s pre-eminent Tropical Bass producer. Pinpointing the bits and pieces of dancehall beats, soca energy and electronic intensity is futile in the face of Poirier’s dance-driven creativity and air horn-worthy excitement. This is a man who just understands what works in the dance. He’s released several acclaimed albums on Ninja Tune, remixed the likes of Busy Signal, Salif Keita and Pole and has toured the world several times over. In 2013 Poirier embarked on a new mission: the “chamber techno” music of Boundary. This alias was responsible for one of the remixes in the Music Gallery’s Hugh Le Caine project last year.

Uma Nota parties are renowned for their combinations of live & DJ music, visuals, vendors and lots and lots of drums. Check www.musicgallery.org for updates as the date draws closer!