By Neil Armstrong
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| Poster created by DJ Craig Dominic Blockorama 23 'Black is Love' flyer promoting July 27, 2021 celebration |
DJ first attended Blockorama in 2012 when he was 20, after coming out, and since then it has been an annual event that he attends with his mother and sister, and sometimes with friends.
“With Blockorama, it was just a place where I felt like all of my identities were acknowledged, in the sense that I’m a Black person and everyone around me is Black. My parents are of Caribbean descent, they’re playing the music that I listen to and know, the type of dance that I’m used to, for example, and I’m also a queer person. And, obviously, not everyone is queer but the majority of the people there are a part of the community.”
DJ says it will always be that place he looked forward to going because while there were many parties he could have attended on the closing day of the Pride Toronto Festival, he made a deliberate choice to be at Blockorama.
“That’s where I feel comfortable and I see friends and I see people in the community that I may not see all the time. And you also get to catch up with them and see how they’re doing and exchange numbers and reconnect sometimes.
“I am so thankful that it exists, to begin with, and I don’t see why I would ever stop going. I don’t think I’ve ever stop going, I always have so much joy and it’s safe too. And you can be yourself. When you are there, you see the diaspora of so many types of queer Black people and however they like to represent themselves, whatever way it is, they’re there. And I don’t think people feel uncomfortable, you feel like you’re supposed to be there and you’re welcomed there and it’s a positive environment. “
DJ says the space also welcomes non-Black people who love Black music and appreciate Black culture.
The Pride Parade is a family affair for him as he would usually go with his mother, with his sister or an aunt in tow, and one year he remembers his mother singing along to an artist who was onstage at Blocko and whose repertoire she knew very well from her younger years.
Blockorama is a celebration of and for the Black LGBTQ+ community and allies, organized by the collective, Blackness Yes!, and this year it is marking its 23rd anniversary.
Pride Toronto’s longest running and largest stage was born from the lack of representation for African, Black and Caribbean LGBTQ community members during Pride Toronto’s yearly festival, notes the website for Blockorama.
In 2020, like many event planners, the organizers had to host a virtual show because of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Sunday, June 27, 6:00-9:00 p.m. it will again be virtual but with a difference from last year, notes DJ Craig Dominic.
“The virtual experience of Blocko last year was tough, not being in person and feeding off the energy. We at least had a virtual crowd that we could see and swipe through in the Zoom Room though. Seeing people experience Blocko from their homes, dancing and dressing up as they would in person was great and really helped us feel the vibe as organizers.”
He says although there isn't a live audience component this year, “it's going to be an amazing show and people will get all of their Blocko life, definitely.”
“Pride has decided to pre-record all of the material and will assemble the show and broadcast it, so it's brought a different challenge. I will say, from everything I've seen, and I've seen it all, it's a better show than last year, though shorter.
“We have more performers and they were able to be a lot more creative than performing in front of their webcams. I was able to me more creative with a pre-recorded set as well.”
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| Poster created by DJ Craig Dominic |
Dominic is already thinking about the annual Blockobana happening on August 1 in Regent Park during Black Pride Weekend, July 31-August 1. He has been reaching out to various Black queer organizations across the province to find out their plans for that weekend so he can highlight their events in a schedule.
The late drag icon, Michelle Ross, was a popular performer at Blockorama and although she did not perform at the inaugural celebration, DJ Nik Red, another organizer, says Ross definitely did in most of the subsequent years.
The image of Michelle Ross towers over the schedule of performers on the digital flyer created for the upcoming celebration by Dominic. Karimah Zakia Issa made kaleidoscope videos that will be featured in the show.
“She was one of the strong threads that held us together as we endured different locations in our continuous fight for respect. Michelle was for a lot of us the first drag performer that brought the Caribbean diaspora vibe and that really spoke to a lot of us. She also nurtured and encouraged numerous performers like Duchess and others.”
Like DJ Craig Dominic, Junior Harrison, one of the founders of Blockorama, was feeling the vibe of the event, dancing and “brucking a sweat to a soca set” last year in his living room.
He says one year he got sick in June – which was a first for him – and he was homebound on Pride Day, usually the last Sunday in the month.
“It was the most surreal feeling I have ever had in my life but it also made you realize how we take things for granted.”
As a result, he is cherishing every Blocko and he loved the virtual experience of last year’s event.
“I also thought, you know what, if at all possible this should be a standard for people who can’t make it to Blocko, for people who are not located in the GTA, people who are not located in Ontario, and people who are not located on this continent can participate in this thing.”
Harrison hopes that even when Blockorama goes back to the Wellesley St. parking lot in 2022 that the organizers will be able to live stream it.
The community stalwart says the show in 2020 was well done and he is hoping that this year’s event will have a tribute to Michelle Ross, Danger Kairo Kewusu, and others who have passed away since the start of the pandemic.
Reminiscing on when Blocko started in 1998, Harrison says at that time they did not set any expectations, in terms of who would show up and the numbers.
As the public relations lead, he would drive to various parts of the city to post flyers, even pasting them on the bus stop at Keele and Eglinton, and wondering if people were going to read them while he was standing there.
“There was no social media so it was word of mouth, email chain, going on some radio stations, CKLN and CHRY,” he says, and CKLN would eventually do remote broadcasts from the site.
Harrison recalls that on the day of the first Blockorama as they were setting up in the south end of the parking lot they figured that they had done as much as they could to get the word out.
“We’re here, if 10 people show up, if one person shows up we’ve done our job. Little did we know how quickly the grapevine happens and next thing you know there’s a crowd. There’s people just sort of happening upon the space, there’s people walking by, they see more than three Black people and they’re like what’s going on here. And then they’re the people who either got my little flyers out in the Toronto diaspora l call it. They would come and stay on the periphery, they wouldn’t come into the space but they would come and stay out on the Maitland [Street] sidewalk and peek in. And then as the day went on and as soon as the Parade wraps up around 3pm, 3:30pm/4pm., people were there. Grannies with their chairs and people with their small kids and we’re like okay, it’s happening in our little tent, one little tent, not even a stage and I think Duchess performed that day and a few others.”
Visual artist, poet and spoken word performer Courtnay McFarlane, another founding member of Blackness Yes!, has captured what Harrison just recalled in one of his poems about Blocko.
In a special issue on Queer Canada of the Journal of Canadian Studies, Vol. 54, No. 2-3, Spring-Fall 2020, Christopher Smith, in their article titled “Where u from, who u wit?!” Black Pride Festivals as Itinerant Hospitality underscores the significance of Blockorama at the Pride Toronto Festival.
“Through the curatorial imperatives of the programming body Blackness Yes, Blockorama would provide a site for the front-line dissemination of HIV prevention and sexual health literature, but it would also offer a soundtrack and space that recognized the diversity of tastes and regions across the Black/African diaspora. When an individual exited Wellesley subway station, their senses were awakened by the rhythms of various Black popular musical forms and the aromas of Caribbean cuisine. Through sensory modes of address, Blockorama would signal that it was a site for pleasure and sustenance and that one need not feel lost in the larger festivities—that, in fact, there was a “home-place” where Black LGBT+ individuals could arrive at Pride as their fully embodied selves,” writes Smith.
Smith received their doctoral degree from the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the University of Toronto. Their dissertation “Apprehending Black Queer Diasporas: A Study of Black Pride Festivals and Their Emplacements” is based on a multi-site research project that examines the origins of Black LGBT+-centred festivals.
Blackness Yes! is a volunteer collective made up of professional DJs, stage and visual artists, community organizers, healthcare practitioners and activists. Since its inception, it has built and sustained safe spaces for African, Black and Caribbean (ABC) LGBTQ communities through art, music, AIDS awareness and outreach.
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| Blockorama at Wellesley parking lot on the last day of the Pride Toronto Festival |
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| Blockorama |
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| Blockorama |
A SELECTION OF STORIES FROM THE PAST (2012 – 2018)
Featuring work by: Christopher Cushman, Abdi Osman, Courtnay McFarlane, JORIAL, Kamille Grant, Deviant Productions, Syrus Marcus Ware and more.
“Toronto has an incredible history of African Diasporic LGBTTIQQ organizing and activism. It also has a thriving artistic community and a burgeoning queer arts scene. It is from within this history and community that Blackness Yes! has created The Fire This Time: A Look Back at the Blocko, a retrospective exhibition that considers the many artworks created through 14 years of Blockorama, a day-long festival celebrating black LGBTTIQQ community in Toronto,” notes a synopsis of the exhibition.
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| Photo credit: David Lewis-Peart. Left to right: Tawiah Ben McCarthy, Daniel Ellis, Samson Brown and Thomas Olajide in "Picasso's Black Canvas" |
Picasso’s Black Canvas with actors: Tawiah Ben McCarthy, Daniel Ellis, Samson Brown and Thomas Olajide at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre on June 27, 2012.
“Young, G(ay)ifted & Black: (Re)Telling The Stories Of Survival and Thrival for Young Black Men” – Picasso’s Black Canvas -- is a collaborative effort between Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP), Project Humanity, CIHR & Buddies to share key outcomes from Black CAP’s modified Many Men, Many Voices Intervention (3MV) bringing new insight, understanding and reflection of lived experiences of Young Black Men who have Sex with Men (YBMSM) to the community at large.
From January 17 to February 1, 2015, Small Axe, co-produced by Project: Humanity and The Theatre Centre. On January 18, 2015, Black CAP, Project Humanity and Dwayne’s House presented “Small Axe: In Solidarity,” a fundraiser to support work with Jamaican LGBT communities (Dwayne’s House) at The Theatre Centre. A community dialogue on homophobia, migration and Black communities took place following the performances.
A queer white documentary theatre-maker thinks he’s investigating homophobia in Jamaica. But what starts as a quest to expose an injustice, turns into a burning call for his own personal transformation.
How do we justly engage with an injustice? To whom does an injustice “belong”? Through a constellation of encounters — with activists, refugees, priests and ministers, journalists, artists, Pride Week revelers, and many queer people of colour – Small Axe asks us to bravely face our differences in order to discover how intricately connected we are.
Created by playwright/performer Andrew Kushnir, director Alan Dilworth, and Project: Humanity.
“Facing Home: Love and Redemption” is a contemporary dance production that investigates the global impact of Bob Marley’s music – its expression of humanity’s struggle and its inspiration toward love , redemption and hope – and the active, deep-rooted homophobia in Jamaican/West Indian culture.
Black Boys, created by the Saga Collectif and featuring Thomas Olajide, Tawiah Ben McCarthy, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff returned to Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2018 after premiering in 2016. On November 30, 2016, a performance of the play was held as a fundraiser for Black CAP.
A raw, intimate, and timely exploration of queer male Blackness, Black Boys is created from the lives of three people seeking a deeper understanding of themselves, of each other, and of how they encounter the world. As they explore their unique identities on stage, they subvert the ways in which gender, sexuality, and race are performed. Theatrical and intimate, Black Boys weaves together the ensemble’s own personal stories in search of an integrated self and a radical imagination.
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| The poster for "speaking of sneaking," a theatrical piece created by dancel jelani ellis |
In May 2018, emerging artist daniel jelani ellis presented a new theatre piece, speaking of sneaking, as part of Why Not Theatre’s The RISER Project at The Theatre Centre.
speaking of sneaking is a contemporary, cultural remix of two traditions; the archetypal Jamaican ginnal and the mythical African Anansi. For the premiere of this new show, working with director di’b.young anitafrika and choreographer brian solomon, ellis was inspired by the experiences of growing up queer in Jamaica and finding home in Canada. He is interested in investigating the complex relationship between immigration and displacement, yard and foreign, home and abroad.
RESOURCES & EVENTS
Black Gay Men’s Network of Ontario (BGMN)
The Black Gay Men’s Network of Ontario is a centralized hub for same-gender-loving men of African, African diaspora, Afro-Latino, Caribbean and Black identities, operating from Toronto as an independent and autonomous entity.
Our goal is to provide cultural, intergenerational and mentorship opportunities, leadership, self-development and empowerment as well as activism support aimed at improving the lives of Black queer people in Ontario.
Pride Events 2021 - “Sweetness fuh Pride,” (June 20, 5:00-6:30 p.m.)
“Dine and Lime,” (June 25, 7:00-10:00 p.m.)
Check BGMN’s social media platforms for more information.
Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP)
Since 1989, the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention (Black CAP) has worked to respond to the threat of HIV and AIDS in Toronto’s African, Caribbean and Black communities. Our work is guided by our motto, ‘Because All Black People’s Lives Are Important’, which serves as a reminder of our commitment to the human rights and dignity of all Black people who are vulnerable to HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
Pride events 2021 – Community Lyme, Pride Edition on Saturday, June 19, 7:00-9:00 p.m.
Check Black CAP’s Facebook page for more information on this and other events.
Bigger Than We
Bigger Than We (BTW) is a Toronto-based collective of Black LGBTQ+ artists and community activists dedicated to using various artistic forms to develop intergenerational creative experiences for members of Toronto’s Black LGBTQ+ communities with the goal of strengthening the fabric of our communities by building intergenerational bonds of understanding, friendship and solidarity.
Bigger Than We 2 will happen during the fall as a hybrid (online/in-person) one-day event, with careful consideration given to adhering to COVID-19 protocols.
There was a call for a total of 20 community participants to contribute to the design and creation of one of three integral activities for the one-day event.
Activities and Lead Artists
Opening ceremony performance (Sedina Fiati / David Lewis-Peart)
Interactive historical timeline (Courtnay McFarlane / Jonathan Broderick)
Collective story creation (Chiedza Pasipanodya / Taymah Armatrading)
Check Facebook page for more information.
Salon Noir
Salon Noir is born out of our desire and commitment to black trans, gender fluid, gender queer and queer people to provide a safe place for our communities to laugh, learn, love and socialize.
Keeping it 100
Keeping it 100, or K1 for short, is a Black guy into guys peer discussion group. To participate, email Robert at r.alsberry@maxottawa.ca for ZOOM link. You can also contact MAX via email, phone, or social media and MAX can give you more details.
Max Ottawa
MAX is a community-based organization that focuses on maximising the health and wellness of gay, bisexual, Two-spirit, queer, and other guys who are into guys, both cis and trans in the Ottawa region.
Black Queer Youth
Black Queer Youth (BQY) is a weekly drop-in group where we celebrate Black queer and trans spectrum people’s experiences and accomplishments. It is a space dedicated to your creativity and desires. It is a safer space for you express your whole self. BQY is administered by Supporting Our Youth (SOY), an innovative community development program of Sherbourne Health.
Black Queer Youth Collective
Provides opportunities and support to Black LGBTQ+ youth in Toronto, Ontario since 2017.
The 519
The 519 is committed to the health, happiness and full participation of the LGBTQ2S communities. A City of Toronto agency with an innovative model of Service, Space and Leadership, we strive to make a real difference in people’s lives, while working to promote inclusion, understanding and respect.
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