Access Winnipeg

Meule w/ Rayannah
2024-01-26 20:00 - 23:00 (America/Winnipeg) | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3B1Z8, Canada
Winterruption 2024 featuring Meule – Friday, January 26, 2024 at 8:00pm

Meule is made of modular synths, a guitar, two drums and all this by three musicians crossed at the bend of other Touraine bands (Thé Vanille, C4DILL4C, Lehmanns Brothers…). Their music is carried by repetitive and saturated grooves a la CAN, sequencers and electronic atmospheres reminiscent of Tangerine Dream and the German kraut softs bands of the 70s. Closer to us in time, one is also reminded of Animal Collective in the ode of a post-modern psychedelia, like Mario Kart on a nutella climb on a full moon night. A kaleidoscopic and intense music, cut into six hypnotic tracks on this first record.

Waahli
2024-01-27 20:00 - 22:30 | Bulldog Event Centre, 1374 Main Street, Winnipeg, MB, R2W 3T8, Canada
Winterruption 2024 featuring Waahli – Saturday, January 27, 2024 at 8:00pm at the Bulldog Event Centre

***NEW DATE***
Saturday, January 27, 2024
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Waahli is a Montreal artist born of Haitian parents. Raised in a family where music is omnipresent, he is immersed by the traditional Haitian melodies with artists such as Tabou Combo, Coupé Cloué or Manno Charlemagne. He learned to play the guitar on his own. In spite of a great influence of Haitian music, it is with Hip-Hop that he develops his own style.
In 2004, Waahli co-founded Nomadic Massive, a mythical hip hop group in Montreal. Still active, the group has just completed a new EP recorded during a tour in South America. At the same time, Waahli felt the need to develop a solo project. In 2018, he released his very first album ”Black Soap” followed in 2020 by the EP ”Soap Opera”.
Performed in English, French and Haitian Creole, these songs are a fusion of catchy rhythms at the crossroads of rap and Afro-beat and are a true tribute to Haitian culture.On September 30, 2022, Waahli returned with “Soap Box”, a reflection of his newfound intimacy during his confinement. He signs an even more personal and committed album, paying a vibrant tribute to his Haitian roots. The 11 tracks, co-produced with Boogat & Lou Piensa from Nomadic Massive are an amalgam of instrumentals, live vocals and percussion influenced by Haitian and African sounds. The opening song “Machann” is a subtle and moving mix of traditional Haitian songs combined with Waahli’s incisive tone.With “Soap Box”, he collaborates with Clerel on an upbeat and danceable track in which he salutes his Afro-descendant heritage.
The song “Te revoir” created with the complicity of the singer Malika Tirolien is a heady love ode, ranked for several weeks among the 50 most listened to tracks on CBC Music. Also, Waahli is an organic soap maker!
With its ancestral rhythms and his sharp words, Waahli’s innovative hip-hop takes us to the four corners of the world.

Sunny War
2024-01-27 20:00 - 23:00 | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3B1Z8, Canada
Winterruption 2024 featuring Sunny War – Saturday, January 27, 2023 at 8:00pm

“…her right thumb plunks the bass part while her forefinger upstrokes notes and chords, leaving the other three fingers unused. A banjo technique, it’s also used by acoustic blues guitarists. Her fingers are long and strong – Robert Johnson hands – in jarring contrast to the waif they’re attached to. The walking bass line sounds like a hammer striking piano keys in perfect meter, while the fills are dynamic flurries – like cluster bombs. I haven’t heard a young guitarist this dexterous and ass-kicking in eons.” – Michael Simmons, L.A Weekly

“I feel like there are two sides of me,” says the Nashville-based singer-songwriter and guitar virtuoso known as Sunny War. “One of them is very self-destructive, and the other is trying to work with that other half to keep things balanced.” That’s the central conflict on her fourth album, the eclectic and innovative Anarchist Gospel, which documents a time when it looked like the self-destructive side might win out. “Everybody is a beast just tryin g their hardest to be good. That’s what it is to be human. You’re not really good or bad. You’re just trying to stay in the middle of those two things all the time, and you’re probably doing a shitty job of it. That’s okay, because we’re all just monsters.”
Extreme emotions can make that battle all the more perilous, yet from such trials Sunny has crafted a set of songs that draw on a range of ideas and styles, as though she’s marshaling all her forces to get her ideas across: ecstatic gospel, dusty country blues, thoughtful folk, rip-roaring rock and roll, even avant garde studio experiments (like the collage of voices that closes “Shelter and Storm”). She melds them together into a powerful statement of survival, revealing a probing songwriter who indulges no comforting platitudes and a highly innovative guitarist who deploys spidery riffs throughout every song.
It’s a style she’s been honing for most of her life, at least since she took her first guitar lessons and fell in love with music. “When I was a kid, I was obsessed with AC/DC, and I loved dramatic ‘80s guitar bands like Motley Crüe. Later, I was obsessed with Bad Brains, the Minutemen, and X.” True to the punk ethos, her first punk band, the Anus Kings, made music with whatever they had at hand, and what they had at hand were acoustic guitars. That made them stand out among other Los Angeles groups at the time, and today Sunny is the rare roots artist who covers Ween and can drop a Crass reference into a song (as she does on “Whole”). “I don’t really make music with a traditional roots audience in mind. I like weird music, outsider music, like Daniel Johnston and Roky Erickson.”
Even as she was developing a guitar style that married acoustic punk to country blues, those two sides of Sunny were already at odds. As a teenager, she began drinking heavily, which led to her dropping out of school. She played punk shows, stole and chugged bottles of vodka, and quickly became addicted to heroin and meth. For money she busked along the boardwalks in Venice Beach, recording an album to sell out of her guitar case and letting that self-destructive side win most of the battles. But “the body can’t handle both heroin and meth,” she explains. “When you’re young, it’s hard to gauge that you’re killing yourself.” A series of seizures landed her in a sober living facility in Compton, so emaciated that she could only wear children’s pajamas.
Music remained a lifeline, and she fell in with a crew at Hen House Studios in Venice, where over the years she made a series of albums and EPs, including 2018’s With the Sun and 2021’s Simple Syrup. Twelve years after she kicked meth and heroin, Sunny is remarkably candid about this time in her life. “Everyone I loved died before they reached 25. They OD’ed or killed themselves. We were just kids who didn’t have anyone looking out for us. You’re not supposed to know so much about death at such a young age. Maybe that’s why I write a lot about not taking shit for granted, because it always feels like something’s about to happen.”
Building on those hard-won triumphs of previous albums, Anarchist Gospel documents a moment when Sunny had finally gained the upper hand on her self-destructive side, only to watch that stability crumble. “I went through a breakup,” she says of the album’s genesis, “and I was still staying in the apartment that my partner and I had lived in. I had to finish the lease. I was really depressed and drinking a lot. I felt so isolated from everybody I knew. I didn’t have the energy to do anything. It felt like the world was ending. Then I got Covid.” Sunny admits she contemplated suicide, but instead she wrote a song, “I Got No Fight,” a muted, measured gospel number on which she sings that title like a battered mantra. It’s a moment of almost unbearable honesty, although fortunately she did find the fight in herself. “I was just having a tantrum really. A lot of my songs are just tantrums. But I did feel better after writing it.”
Once her lease in Los Angeles ended, Sunny moved to Nashville, where she was born and where she lived until she was twelve years old. Among the items she packed were demos for several new songs of heartache and hard-won hope. “I think the album is split between being a breakup album and being somehow uplifting.” She booked sessions at the Bomb Shelter to work with producer Andrija Tokic (Hurray for the Riff Raff, Alabama Shakes, the Deslondes). “I already liked a lot of the records that Andrija had made. As far as new stuff goes, a lot of my favorite albums were produced by him, so I thought we’d be a good match.”
Working with a small backing band, they captured a raw energy in these songs, although one instrument gradually dominated the music as they proceeded: her own voice and the voices of others trying to stay between good and bad. Most of these songs are call-and-responses with a small choir that includes Allison Russell, Jim James, Dave Rawlings, and Chris Pierce (her partner in the duo War & Pierce). Acting as the angels and devils on her shoulders, they alternately challenge her self-accusations or sympathize with her worries. “There’s so much singing on here. I didn’t plan for that, but I really like it. That’s why I thought it would be cool to call the album Anarchist Gospel, because of the choirs on these songs.”
Music assuaged her heartache and confusion, even the songs she didn’t write. Despite its title, her reimagining of Dionne Farris’s “Hopeless” is perhaps the album’s most hopeful moment: “I cried just a little too long,” she sings. “Now it’s time for me to move on.” On the sadder end of the spectrum is her cover of Ween’s “Baby Bitch”; showcasing her sly sense of humor, it’s a playfully melancholy kiss-off that features a choir of kids singing along as she tells an ex, “I’m better now, please fuck off.” It’s funny, but uneasily so: a joke that reveals something bleaker. “It’s such a great breakup song! You’re out there somewhere and run into your ex with their new partner. But you know who they really are. You know they’re being a bitch. There aren’t many songs that get to that kind of experience without turning it into a joke.”
As the sessions wound down and the mixing process started, Sunny got the worst news imaginable. “My brother called me and told me I should come to Chattanooga. My dad was in the hospital, and he wasn’t going to make it. I called Andrija and told him I had to cancel the session and catch a Greyhound. Instead, he insisted on giving me a ride. He drove me down to see my dad. I barely knew this guy, and he was doing this incredible thing for me. I don’t know too many other producers who could navigate that kind of situation.” That simple act of kindness helped her endure that astounding loss, even as the grieving process threw these songs into even sharper relief.
Because it promises not healing but resilience and perseverance, because it doesn’t take shit for granted, Anarchist Gospel holds up under such intense emotional pressure, acknowledging the pain of living while searching for something that lies just beyond ourselves, some sense of balance between the bad and the good. “This album represents such a crazy period in my life, between the breakup and the move to Nashville and my dad dying. But now I feel like the worst parts are over. What I learned, I think, is that the best thing to do is just to feel everything and deal with it. Just feel everything.”

French Class w/ Bicycle Face and Octopus Tea
2024-01-28 14:00 - 17:00 | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3B1Z8, Canada
WINTERRUPTIONWPG 2024 presents French Class with Bicycle Face and Octopus Tea – Sunday, January 28th at 2:00pm

French Class is an electronic dance pop project led by Megumi Kimata, a beat maker based in Winnipeg. A festival favourite, French Class makes you want to put on fresh sneakers, grab your friends and get on the dance floor. Megumi works in collaboration with Tiana Garcia on vocals. Their new single “Dance!” is out now!

Making Movies w/ El Leon & The Strangers
2024-01-28 20:00 - 23:00 | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3B1Z8, Canada
Winterruption 2024 featuring Making Movies – Sunday, January 28, 2024 at 8:00pm

Siembra y llegará. As Making Movies delivers its fourth album, XOPA, the Kansas City band proves true the maxim which, in English, is like an encouraging version of “reap what you sow.” Meant to inspire its recipient to push forward, the phrase is chanted on the LP’s multi-movement epic, “La Primera Radio” — but it’s exemplary, too, of Making Movies’ musical odyssey.
This is a band that makes American music with an asterisk: because Making Movies’ sound encompasses the entirety of the Americas, not solely the country inarguably centered in mainstream everything. It’s through this broader perspective that Making Movies crunches classic rock into Latin American rhythms — African-derived percussion and styles like rumba, merengue, mambo and cumbia — in a way that feels oddly familiar, yet delivers the invigorating chills of hearing something singularly special.
Each member — Enrique Chi, vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter; his brother Diego Chi, bassist and experimental vocalist; percussionist Juan-Carlos Chaurand; and Duncan Burnett, newly incorporated into the band on drums — is enthusiastically committed to music history, to uncovering connections between genres and cultures both their own and otherwise. They’re all lifelong musicians too, hailing from disparate yet similar backgrounds — parents that cherished music, fathers that kickstarted cultural movements, families in which gospel is critical to their very existence.
“The goal is to create music that includes every bit of our individual identities,” Enrique says. “Music is our way to find a deeper understanding of our own stories. It’s a healing of sorts.”
But none of this earned understanding precludes the group’s perpetual evolving. Enrique Chi, lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter, is compelled to share knowledge, but like any sincere historian, though, he also listens. It’s impossible to know everything; in musical lore and its future there is still so much yet to be uncovered.
The band’s collective yearning for exploration has attracted a nexus of connections, many of them legendary players, like Steve Berlin of iconic rock band Los Lobos, a recurring collaborator and steadfast champion of the band. An approach from beloved Panamanian musician Rubén Blades led to joint songs like “No te Calles” and “Cómo Perdonar.” Making Movies has also created with indie-folk band Hurray for the Riff Raff, trumpeter Asdru Sierra of Ozomatli, Puerto Rican salsero Frankie Negrón, and all-female mariachi group Flor de Toloache. On the heels of Making Movies’ 2019 album ameri’kana, the band worked on an eponymous documentary series, through which they connected with the legendary organist Reverend Charles Hodges, an soul music pioneer who played alongside Al Green, and fellow Memphis, Tennessee, musicians the Sensational Barnes Brothers.
Making Movies creates music that is undoubtedly pedagogical, yet inarguably kinetic. And their live shows, despite the precision with which they perform, are not lacking in dynamism. Every time they perform, they are wholly present, feeling every original groove with the same rush of as when they first found it.

Diaspora
2024-03-19 18:30 - 21:30 | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3B1Z8, Canada
A Special Presentation as part of the Architecture and Design Film Festival: a film screening, panel and fundraiser for Ukraine

“This eye-catching indie treat falls somewhere between love letter to a disappearing neighbourhood, delirious ode to diasporic alienation and yearning, and a darkly comic trip into the absurd. Think Lynch or Jarmusch, if they’d been raised on the Polish delis, Turkish shishkebobs and wheelies nights in the ‘Peg’s North End. Every shot is fantastic and feels weirdly alive.” — Stir B.C.
Arriving in Winnipeg’s North End in search of a better, safer life, young Ukrainian immigrant Eva finds a city filled with rundown, outdated establishments and a disproportional number of other, culturally diverse immigrants all too in search for a new life; each desperately holding onto their own language and culture, creating a neighbourhood of comedic miscommunication, growing apathy and oft painful alienation.
Filmed amongst the fading architecture of Winnipeg’s North End and Downtown core and performed in 25 different languages, DIASPORA seeks to uncover the heartbreaking struggles and absurdity tied to arriving in a new land. Ukrainian newcomer Yuliia Ghuzva, winner of the Best Actor Award at the 2023 Gimli Film Festival, delivers an unflinching, stellar performance in this wholly unique feature film that is a love letter to a disappearing Winnipeg.
Winner of the Best Feature Film at the Ukrainian Dream Film Festival, Best Feature Film and Best Producer at the International Motion Picture Awards, Winner of Best Actor at the Gimli Film Festival, Winner of Best Cinematography at the Wallachia International Film Festival and nominee for Best Main Title Theme Music at the Canadian Screen Music Awards; DIASPORA has screened across Canada and internationally including in war torn Ukraine.
Winnipeg filmmaker Deco Dawson, known for his bold, cinematic stylings and love for Winnipeg, has won the Best Short Film Awards at the Toronto International Film Festival twice, The Mayor’s Arts Award, the Winnipeg Film Group Hothouse Award, and has been host to retrospectives of his work worldwide. Dawson continues to blur the lines between narrative, experimental and documentary, crweating thought proviking, stirring cinema for over 20 years. Dawson most recently collaborated with Winnipeg’s Rusalka Dancers, designing the projections for their 60th Anniversary Gala Concert.

Daniel Champagne
2024-04-27 20:00 - 22:30 | West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave, Winnipeg, MB, R3B1Z8, Canada
Daniel Champagne at the West End Cultural Centre – Saturday, April 27, 2024 at 8:00pm

Daniel Champagne lives and breathes live music. The Australian virtuoso has been described as “the finest guitar player of this generation”, “a leading light in acoustic music” and “a performer that must be seen to be believed” and from March to June 2024, music lovers across Canada will be treated to an intimate live experience not to be missed.
Growing up in the Bega Valley, on the Far South Coast of New South Wales Australia, the story goes that the young singer-songwriter and one of a kind guitar virtuoso first picked up his instrument of choice as a 5-year-old following in the footsteps of a musical father. He began writing songs at 12, training classically throughout his teens and performing wherever he could, honing his craft and developing the dynamite live show that he is renowned for today. At 18 he finished school, turned professional and hit the road without looking back.
The following 15 years have seen him independently release 7 studio albums, tour relentlessly around the globe, play some of the biggest festivals under the sun and share stages with the likes of Tommy Emmanuel, INXS, John Butler, Lucinda Williams, Ani DiFranco, Judy Collins and Rodrigo y Gabriela.
Playing upwards of 250 shows a year, Daniel is passionate about spreading live music around the world and on the back of a sold out 2022 tour tour, his return trip will include 56 shows from Vancouver Island all the way out to Newfoundland!
