Faith Nolan
African Canadian History Through Music
Concert or Workshop
Musician singer songwriter Faith Nolan has been writing and performing songs about Afro Canadian history since the early 1980's. Her album 'Africville', traces African Canadian history from slavery (1642) in Canada through the end of Nova Scotia¹s Africville in 1969. This album and songbook with art by Grace Channer can be found in libraries, community centers, schools and universities across Canada and the United States. Government and non government organizations around the country celebrate Afro-Canadian history in the month of February. This concert workshop celebrates and educates about the history featuring Faiths original story songs and discussions about freedom seekers Afro Canadians like VIola Desmond, ( Nova Scotias Rosa Parks) Mary Ann Shadd, John Ware and Americans like Soujourner Tuth and Harriet Tubman. Song stylings reflect the historical development of the African Diaspora such as drums, call and response, folkblues, jazz and reggae , Faith sings and plays guitar, harmonica and tambourine at the same time. She also will be playing banjo and ukelele tunes.As well as touching the heart this workshop is musically fun and educational .
Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Faith Nolan is an award-winning singer-songwriter, film producer, and ardent advocate for social justice. Her music and politics are one in the same, both firmly entrenched in her experiences as a queer woman of African, Miq Maq, and Irish heritage raised in the working-class neighbourhood of Regent Park, Toronto. These experiences have instilled in her an immutable commitment to social justice education and to the eradication of oppression in all its forms.
Currently, Nolan is Founder and Director of numerous women’s choirs, including the Central East Correctional Centre Singers (Lindsay, ON), Central North Correction Centre Women’s Singers (Penetang, ON), Sistering Singers (Toronto, ON) for homeless women, and the Singing Elementary Teachers of Toronto. Alongside these and other musical projects, Nolan has produced a film about women in prison entitled Within These Cages. This film is emblematic of her tireless efforts to increase understanding of the links between poverty and incarceration, drawing explicit attention to the disproportionately high number of poor women—especially poor women of colour—in Canadian prisons.
Nolan’s artistic work is a testament to the capacity of music to serve as a powerful tool for cultural and political expression. In January 2010, her accomplishments earned her the African Nova Scotian Music Heritage award. Over the course of her career as a musician, she has recorded fourteen albums, the most recent of which, Hang on CUPE, was released in 2009.
Website: www.faithnolan.org
Email: faith@nexicom.net