DISCUSSION & DRINKS 8 - 10
w/ Panelists:
Bambii
Luis Jacob
Roger Gibbs
Fan Wu
& More

PARTY 10 - 4
w/ djs:
Bambii
Ouri
Prime Diesel
Vaughan

FREE ENTRY

SUGAR is a site-critical project located near the Redpath sugar factory on Toronto’s Sugar Beach, and formerly on the site of the seminal Guvernment and RPM nightclubs. The SUGAR music events pay homage to the Club by using dance and discourse to animate the material and cultural conditions explored by SUGAR’s curatorial project.

The first edition of this series of events at SUGAR is SHIFT, addressing the site of Sugar beach, where a colonial history of sugar production industry between Canada, UK and the Caribbean mirrors a history of cultural exchange and appropriation in music. On the one hand, there is the emergence of the “Toronto sound”: hip-hop marked by Caribbean vernacular and rhythmic forms. And, on the other, a club culture that represents a single centre of activity amongst many (Detroit, New York, Chicago, London, Berlin etc.) in the history of club musics - disco, house, techno, jungle, club. Something in both these histories reflects and is tied to a triangular relationship coalescing around commerce and culture between Canada and the Northeastern United States, the UK and the Caribbean. And, in particular, a strain of dance music simply named ‘Club’ that has come to encompass a variety of regional genres.

SHIFT is a project aimed at paying homage to the recent history of this site at 130 Queens Quay East, Toronto. SUGAR, will host this club-music event and free-form dialogue aimed at exploring the site’s cultural legacy. Aware of the tensions that continue to exist - the shadow of neo-colonialism to contend with and the economic history of extracting and refining Caribbean sugar cane for mass consumption in North America - SHIFT creates context to move and connect to these condition through dance and discourse.