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BEATWORK

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra Interview with Ruben Esguerra Your work as a musician is so integrated with social movements. You often perform on the streets, at demonstrations, at union meetings, and facilitate music making with community groups. Why is this work important to you? I grew up in an environment where music was needed for […]

Photography, Compliments Ruben EsguerraPhotography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Interview with Ruben Esguerra

Your work as a musician is so integrated with social movements. You often perform on the streets, at demonstrations, at union meetings, and facilitate music making with community groups. Why is this work important to you?

I grew up in an environment where music was needed for rallies, community events and protests. I grew up in a family of educators and activists. I came to Canada as a political refugee with my parents, who were doing human rights work in Colombia in the late 80’s, when there was a lot of instability. Many people who were working for human rights organizations and as social activists were being disappeared, many were members of political parties like Union Patriotica and other movements wiped out by state repression. My parents did art and education work in Bogotá and I grew up in that context, just following them. I grew up seeing the importance of music, culture and art in the building of communities. So it is important for me to continue the work that I learned from my elders. I provide music for important causes and for those who need music to inspire them and to motivate their work. For me it is an honour to do it. That’s why it is important.

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

As part of NGHTSHFTS programming this year we were so thrilled to have you bring your instruments to the farm and facilitate music making with migrant farm workers in Niagara region. What did you learn or take away from the experience? 

The experience was amazing, just driving up and actually seeing the field and the land at the farm was super important. I think its something everybody in Canada should experience  because you get to see for yourself the conditions that people are working in, their realities.

I learned a lot from meeting each person, hearing their stories, and sharing music. Just to hear each person’s story – about their struggles and their families back home – hang out, talk, and share with them was a first hand experience of their realities that allowed me to understand the struggle of migrant workers better.

Aside from being farm workers, they are also musicians. I was able to see what music they were into, what music inspired them to continue working everyday. The workshop I did was actually on the origins of cumbia – where the instruments that I brought originally came from, and how they are tied to the Indigenous and African communities in a specific region of Colombia.

Cumbia is now one of the most popular musical styles in the world, coming from Latin America. It is the music this group of migrant workers listens to and plays, but they are playing a more commercial or I guess you could say contemporary style. Traditional cumbia informs the contemporary kind of cumbia music that they play. So we did a workshop where I showed them the roots of the music and we played the traditional instruments. Then, we practiced the repertoire that they perform. It  was really cool to see those links because the workers really weren’t familiar with the traditional music and I wasn’t familiar with their repertoire. So it was a learning experience for all of us.

A month or two after the workshop, the workers had a gig in Toronto at a radio station, one of the only Latin American radio stations in Canada. It is called Radio Voces Latinas at 1610am. I actually have a program in that radio station called Northside Condor. It airs on Saturdays from 4-5pm. So the workers contacted me to play with them. Unfortunately, I was already booked and did my best to make it but wasn’t able to. But now that connection is there so they know that if they need anything from me they have my contact info and I can help them out however I can. This connection is also something important that I took away from the experience.

 Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

 Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

For people who don’t understand the conditions of migrant work, could you summarize some of the issues that you heard the workers are facing? What are the conditions migrant workers in Canada are living under?

People are coming up from different parts of Central America, South America, the Caribbean, the Philippines. They are being brought to work in really harsh and terrible conditions. Some people live super crowded in a small house, and they are made to work all the time. They don’t have the support that workers have when they are unionized. They can’t get citizenship even though they are continuously paying to CPP and Employment Insurance. They never see the benefits that permanent residents and citizens have access to, even though they pay into the system. Many are sent back without the ability to return or compensation if they’re injured. Also, for them to leave the farm is super difficult. This is one of the things I saw, right? It is hard for them to get out and walk such far distances outside.

The situation is so difficult back home that many see it as a blessing they are even here. That juxtaposition and their desire to be up here working under these conditions without their families helps us to understand the difficult situations people are also facing in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

We know you have another album in the works. Can you tell us about it? 

The album has themes that have to do with migration, with the instability that is caused by North American intervention. It deals with the issues going on in Latin America that cause people to migrate north and still work under terrible conditions when they arrive.

North American intervention has caused so much violence and uprisings in Latin America. The album is definitely influenced by the stories of the migrant workers who I met, because these are the issues they and many of us have faced. There is a song about the environmental crisis we are going through, as well as songs specifically for the struggles here in Toronto – all the cuts to healthcare and education we are going through under the Ford government. These songs are specifically for rallies, for people to interact with, to do call and response, to break the barriers between audience and performer. This is very characteristic of the music I do, especially when I perform at rallies and protests. There are also songs about issues going on in Jane and Finch, the community where I live and work.

I run a mobile recording studio in Jane-Finch. Just the energy, motivation and inspiration that has come out of that work is amazing. There are issues within the community where certain neighborhoods are at odds with other neighborhoods due to gang related tensions. So I have a song just talking about the importance of collaboration with artists from those different areas. That song actually incorporates the work of artists from the different areas of the community, working on the same project together.

So in general there are songs about local and global struggles, and songs about resistance, migration, environmental struggles, Indigenous issues across Turtle Island and Abya Yala. It’s about uplifting and empowering the people who I perform for, the people who support me. I always write my music thinking about the spaces where I perform and the issues that are important for that audience.

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

The Beatwork percussion workshop with farm workers was made possible with generous support from UFCW, through Mayworks. They also supported your JUNO attendance for your nominated album, New Tradition Volume 2: Return to Kuisi. Why is it important for unions to support artistic production, within the context of migrant work?

UFCW has supported my work for such a long time. They have been amazing in terms of creating spaces for artists like myself to perform. I am the  musical director for Solidarity Squad.  We are a collective of artists that come together to do covers of union classics, covering songs of songwriters like Pete Seeger, tracks like Solidarity Forever, Which Side Are You On, Bread and Roses…union classics.

We switch them up, rearrange and remix them to and create hip hop, tropical and acoustic versions. That is the concept of Solidarity Squad, as well as to do our own original music. We recently put out an album called Solidarity Forever Vol 2, which has made a lot of noise. The union supported me to co-produce the album, to put together the band and the different artists. That to me was a huge support.

In terms of my own individual work, I received a JUNO nomination on my own project, “A New Tradition VOL 2: Return of Kuisi”. In order to raise funds to go to Vancouver for the awards, I organized a fundraiser and a whole lot of support from community and organizations came through. UFCW was one of the organizations that donated and helped me get there.

I think this is important for unions to support artists that are from the communities they serve and that create art to inspire their specific causes. Music is important to movements because art allows us to communicate ideas and needs for urgent action in a way that words can’t, especially during the intense work and long meetings that take place at conferences and conventions.

It is always important to have an artistic way of communicating those ideas because it touches and motivates people in different ways. So for me I think it is something smart that UFCW has done for a long time. As socially conscious artists we always stay connected to the different struggles that are important to workers in Ontario. So I think the support unions give for artistic production is very meaningful and important.

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Photography, Compliments Ruben Esguerra

Beatworks was presented in collaboration with UFCW Canada.