Articles
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Music
The Toronto Jazz Festival opened its 39th edition with a Black Music Month panel titled Jazz Meets Hip Hop, presented by ADVANCE. The Soul Rebels, Kreesha Turner and A&R executive Morgan MJ James joined moderator Skratch Bastid to debate sampling and generational exchange and why algorithms are pushing musicians back toward vinyl even as those algorithms quietly dissolve genre lines for Gen Z and Alpha listeners.
The room at The Pilot Tavern's Stealth Lounge had barely settled into its chairs when Skratch Bastid set up the question that would carry the rest of the morning. "We file jazz and hip-hop in separate bins," he said, "but they're closer to siblings than strangers." It was 11 a.m. on June 19, the opening morning of Toronto Jazz Festival's 39th edition, and the panel had been built specifically to test that idea against people who live inside both genres for a living.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Visual Arts
A chance walk from the Junction to Parkdale led to Kikospace on Dundas Street West, where Armova Curatorial's newest show reimagines bell hooks' classic All About Love. Running through June 28, "When Angels Speak of Love" gathers eight Black diaspora artists exploring love through painting, photography, sculpture and textile, each in a different register. The result treats hooks' philosophy as a discipline put into practice.
A recent long walk from the Junction neighbourhood toward Parkdale passed a storefront gallery on Dundas Street West, with an appointment to keep and barely a minute to spare. The artwork visible through the window was reason enough to step inside anyway. What turned out to be there was Kikospace, a gallery space that has quietly hosted experimental art for years and is currently home to Armova Curatorial's newest group exhibition, "When Angels Speak of Love."
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Arts & Culture
Toronto's OYA Media Group swept the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards documentary categories, winning five awards for Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story. Directed by Alison Duke and produced by Ngardy Conteh George, the film reclaims the legacy of Jamaican dancehall pioneer Sister Nancy, whose 1982 track "Bam Bam" became the most sampled reggae song in history. This win is a landmark for Black Canadian storytelling.
There is a particular kind of justice in a story finally being told on its own terms and winning the room while doing it. At the 2026 Canadian Screen Awards (CSAs), held on May 30th in Toronto, OYA Media Group's Bam Bam: The Sister Nancy Story walked away with five awards across the documentary categories, leading all unscripted wins at the ceremony. Five awards across five craft categories, for a story that had been waiting more than four decades to be fully seen.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Articles
- Category: Arts and Entertainment
The 46th Annual Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations arrive with a compelling story within the story: Black artists and organizations are among the season's most celebrated voices. From Kanika Ambrose's play about Caribbean migrant workers, to Natasha Mumba's continent-spanning debut, Esie Mensah's Afrofusion epic ZAYO, and host Amaka Umeh's record-tying double nomination, this year's Dora nominations reflect a performing arts community increasingly willing to centre Black Canadian excellence.
The Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA) announced the 46th Annual Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations today, on June 1, 2026, and the full picture is striking. With 221 nominations spread across 44 categories and seven divisions, this year's Doras reflect the breadth of Toronto's professional performing arts sector. But look closer at the nominations list, and a particular throughline emerges: Black artists, playwrights, choreographers, and performers are among the most recognized voices of the 2025-2026 season. Their stories range from Caribbean migrant life in Ontario to Zambia's mining heartland, from Afrofusion ritual to a mother's desperate search for her trafficked child. This is a season that demanded to be witnessed, and the Doras say so plainly.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Visual Arts
Taglialatella Galleries in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood is hosting Jean-Michel Basquiat / Editions, a landmark exhibition celebrating twenty-five years of limited-edition screenprints released by the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Free and open to the public through June 11, the show brings museum-calibre works to street level, offering collectors and curious newcomers alike a rare chance to stand face-to-face with one of the most urgent visual voices of the twentieth century.
There are artists whose work ages into history, and then there are artists whose work keeps aging into the present. Jean-Michel Basquiat belongs firmly to the second category. As someone of Haitian origin myself, this exhibition lands close to home. Basquiat's father, Gérard, was born in Port-au-Prince, and that Haitian root runs through everything the artist made. Haiti produced the world's first Black republic, born from a revolution that shook the colonial order to its foundation, and you can feel that revolutionary fibre in Basquiat's work: the colour, the defiance, the insistence on being seen fully and on his own terms.
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- Written by: AfroToronto Team
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Music
Nigerian-Canadian Afrosoul artist Ayola walked away from a career in pharmaceutical science in 2024 to pursue music full-time. Now six months into an independent cross-Canada tour, he is building his audience city by city, carrying little more than his voice, a guitar and a cajon. In this conversation, Ayola talks about the leap, his sound, life on the road and what Toronto means to him.
There are artists who drift into music gradually, and then there are those who make a clean break and bet everything on the leap. Ayola, the Nigerian-Canadian Afrosoul singer-songwriter, belongs firmly in the second camp. Born in Ilorin, Nigeria's Kwara State, shaped by years of postgraduate study in biochemistry, pharmaceutics, and medical biotechnology, and now based in Canada, he spent the better part of a decade building a career in pharmaceutical science while quietly nurturing a musical life on the side. In the summer of 2024, standing at a Burna Boy concert in London, he felt something crystallize.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Articles
- Category: Arts and Entertainment
The 24th ACTRA Awards in Toronto brought together Canada's finest performing talent for a landmark evening at Koerner Hall on May 11, 2026. Adrian Walters took home Outstanding Performance – Male for his searing role in It Comes in Waves, while Paul Sun-Hyung Lee received the Award of Excellence. With eight competitive categories, political tributes, and powerful voices on the red carpet, it was a night the city won't soon forget.
On the evening of Monday, May 11, 2026, Koerner Hall at the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning lit up with the kind of energy that only happens when a city truly sees itself on stage. The 24th ACTRA Awards in Toronto, proudly presented by AFBS, gathered over 15,000 members' worth of collective pride into one room and gave it a night to match.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Arts & Culture
Toronto has a rich and growing ecosystem of Black-owned and Black-led art spaces that go far beyond the mainstream. From BAND Gallery's expanding presence across the city to the Nia Centre for the Arts in Little Jamaica, these institutions celebrate African diasporic creativity, support emerging artists, and build community. This guide explores the galleries, organizations, and cultural hubs shaping Toronto's vibrant Black art landscape right now.
Black artists in Toronto have always known how to build. From the earliest Caribbean and African communities putting down roots in this city, the creative culture we carried with us found expression in music, visual art, storytelling, and gathering. Over time, that creative energy organized itself into something more permanent in the form of institutions with addresses, mandates, and reputations earned over years of serious work. Toronto's Black art scene today is the product of that accumulated ambition. It reflects a community that is artistically confident, globally connected, and deeply rooted in its own sense of identity. This guide covers a small but prominent part of the spaces, the programming, and the people that make it real.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Arts & Culture
Holla Jazz marks its 10th anniversary with The Room Upstairs, a world premiere choreographed by Founding Artistic Director Natasha Powell and inspired by John Coltrane's creative process. Running April 29 to May 2, 2026, at Toronto's Winchester Street Theatre, the production fuses Black vernacular jazz dance with a live six-piece ensemble. In this conversation, Powell reflects on a decade of searching, community, and what Coltrane continues to teach her.
There are moments in an artist's life when two significant things arrive at exactly the same time, and the convergence feels less like a coincidence than like something earned. For Natasha Powell, this is one of those moments. The Founding Artistic Director of Holla Jazz is marking her company's tenth anniversary not with a retrospective or a celebration of past work, but with a bold, forward-facing gesture: The world premiere of The Room Upstairs, a full-length work inspired by and set to the music of John Coltrane.
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- Written by: Meres J. Weche
- Parent Category: Arts and Entertainment
- Category: Music
Toronto-born R&B icon Melanie Fiona just won the 2026 JUNO Award for Traditional R&B/Soul Recording of the Year for her EP Say Yes, her triumphant return after a 13-year hiatus. With two Grammys already on her shelf and Guyanese roots deeply embedded in her sound, this win is a celebration of Black Canadian excellence, artistic independence, and the courage it takes to start over on your own terms.
This weekend at the 2026 JUNO Awards in Hamilton, Ontario, something felt different. Melanie Fiona took home the award for Traditional R&B/Soul Recording of the Year for her EP Say Yes, and for anyone who has followed her journey from Toronto's club circuit to the Grammy stage and back, the moment carried real weight.
