Take a nice deep breath, hold it close to your heart and let it go, quietly, as if it were a whisper. Gently let your eyelids fall over your eyes and with each deep breath shift your intentions and focus to your ears. Listen hard and inquisitively to your surroundings, these noises are a symphony. Or at least a goofy rag-tag jug band.
Listening is an exercise of patience, of discovery, of curiosity, and sometimes we need a special place to listen where there are few distractions and whole soundscapes, worlds, and journeys to hear.
Danielle Jakubiak, an accredited music therapist with Masters degrees in Music Therapy and Ethnomusicology and one of the four organizers of Bleep in the Dark, understands the importance of creating these special spaces to listen intently. not your boys club sat down with Danielle to talk all things noise, darkness, and the importance of uplifting femme+non-binary noisemakers.
Danielle Jakubiak
Photo by Alex Pearson
Bleep in the Dark is a live experimental music event experienced in darkness that graces the foggy shore of K’jipuktuk but three times a year. This upcoming event, their final event for the year, will be featuring solely femme and non-binary performers. Danielle highlighted why she thinks this is important through anecdote and ambition.
Danielle was a live sound engineer in Montreal where she often experienced men talking down to her and discrediting her vast knowledge and skills on the basis of her gender – going so far as to blame the mistakes of others on her. In response to this, Danielle wants to create and give space to femme+non-binary people to access, learn, and play with electronics, sound, and noise and take a more comfortable step into performing experimental music of all kinds. Empowering new musicians who experience marginalization is one thing Danielle is always keeping on her mind.
~ A space for anyone to test the water ~
And test the water they do! Bleep in the Dark has provided a platform for many people to not only play their experimental noises for a crowd, but a crowd that they do not even need to look at or be seen by. The darkness creates a shroud that lies gently over and eases the worries of being seen when performing and gives a bolstered sense of importance to the sounds and textures created.
The range of sounds at the upcoming Bleep in the Dark features performances from some new, and some returning, musicians all varying in their scope of experimentation; Layia (Alyson Randles) combines personal field recordings with ambient layers of live vocals and instruments; Possible Williams (Jess Talbot) focuses on ethereal synth loops, sad teenage poetry and ASMR lightness smooshed into sound; Multiples (Anne-Sophie Vallée) constructs lyrical disquieting pop soundscapes through saturated cycles of rhythmic vocals; Amy Brandon who has written award winning contemporary choral, chamber, orchestral and acousmatic works; and finally, Hosta (Kayla Stevens), a noise/drone project that uses electronics and samples from the world around her. While the darkness is intimidating to many – worry not! The darkness will be punctuated by Jess Lewis (visuals) and DJ OS who will be providing tunes to snack, mingle, stretch, and decompress to in between the performances.
This event is held to raise funds for CKDU 88.1 FM, and is supported by Obsolete Records, Bromoc Printing, and Glitter Bean Cafe. Make sure to support these local businesses that are helping to incubate experimental art in K’jipuktuk.
Contribution by: Kelly
not your boys club 