SESSION 4: WISE ATANGANA & KELLY LEE EVANS

Wise Atangana is a Canadian artist born and raised in Cameroon in Central Africa. He has offered more than 200 workshops and performances in schools in Ontario and Québec between 2015 and 2020, and is invited each year to perform at several major festivals across Canada. Wise Atangana describes his musical style as “Afro beat hip-hop fusion” and through his music he replicates what his grandparents did – shares his stories, his beliefs and his experiences as a Black man, Cameroonian, an African and a new Canadian Canada.

Projects completed between April 2020 and March 2021

•Album Justice for Peace; lancé le 11 septembre 2020: https://wiseatangana.bandcamp.com/album/justice-for-peace-blacklivesmatter

•Album Détermination, lancé le 8 janvier 2021: https://wiseatangana.bandcamp.com/album/determination

•Projet ‘Vulnérable’ (Assistance directe pour les personnes vulnérables) – Offre d’assistance directe (kitsd’hygiène COVID-19, vêtements, repas) et d’activités artistiques (spectacles de musique en ligne) pour veillerà la santé mentale de 200 personnes vulnérables d’Ottawa/ Gatineau; Subvention du Programme d’aided’urgence aux organismes communautaires en réponse à la COVID-19 de la Croix-Rouge canadienne et dugouvernement fédéral octroyé par Emploi et Développement social Canada nov. 2020 à fév. 2021

•Ouverture du Afro Black Cultural Center, le 5 février 2021: https://afroblackmediacentre.ca

•Lancement du ‘Black History Month Music Arts Festival’ (5-19 fév. 2021):https://artsconnectottawa.org/bhmmaf, Participation de 30 artistes de la région d’Ottawa/Gatineau.

Six albums deep and Juno Award winner Kellylee Evans is still shaking it up on Come On, her latest Decca album.The stylistic connoisseur has tackled everything from jazz to R&B and pop in such previous tasty classics fight or flight?, Nina – her Juno-winning tribute to the legendary Nina Simone – and I Remember When.Praised by the Latin Jazz Network for a “gorgeous voice (that) rises to the heavens in rapturous wonder as if in consanguinity with a chorus of angels” and by the Yukon Arts Centre for “a stunning crystalline voice, both powerful and emotive,” Evans now pushes her muse firmly into the soulful pop territory with Come On: a wonderfully refreshing album about love and life that comes on the heels of two nearly career-ending accidents: a freak lightning strike in her Ottawa kitchen and further effects of a concussion suffered during a fall at her home.However, Evans is nothing if not resilient: the runner-up of the 2004 Thelonious Monk Competition offers views on love and loss in an alluringly rhythmic approach that has touches of psychedelic pop, resonating soul groove and that je ne sais quoi that is strictly Kellylee and forged by her jazz discipline.From the stirring soul-stomper “Come On” - which combines an effervescent Motown feel with traces of psychedelia – and the funky groove-a-liciousness of “Hands Up” to the string-and-horn-spiced magnetism of “Know His Worth,” the 10 songs of Come On find Kellylee at her most magically potent.Produced and co-written by Eric Legnini (Stefano Di Battista), this is post-romantic soul at its finest; a project of strong vision and great execution that signals the return of Kellylee Evans as a bold explorer and interpreter.It only gets better when you experience her live, in her element.Kellylee Evans’ time is nigh, and Come On is just the catalyst to get her there.

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