Albums

Dub Trinity and Chet Singh

Exclaim
April 2005

Drum and bass duo Dub Trinity have their priorities straight. This Peterborough band have taken their love of reggae and African music, and their passion for a good political cause, and have done a Dennis Bovell — meaning they’ve hitched up with their very own Union Kwesi Johnson, in the form of Centennial College professor and dub poet Chet Singh. Gregory Roy (drums/percussion) and Beau Dixon (bass/keys) have a knack for seeking out dub poets to perform with and they make a point of keeping the subject matter political. In Chet Singh they have found an excellent collaborator, both fiercely opinionated and musically adept enough to flow freely overtop the band’s grooves. Singh takes on Middle Eastern bloodshed in “Angels of Mercy,” jumps into the skin of a Peterborough racist in the Bad Brains-inspired “System Fraud,” and reminds Bush, Blair, Hussein and bin Laden that “Everything we do is going to come back to we.”

— Brent Hagerman

Dub Trinity CD captures sounds of genre

Peterborough Examiner
November 27, 2004

Local musicians Beau Dixon and Greg Roy have been sending out good musical vibes as the fun live act Dub Trinity for a few years now.

This new collection captures well the sounds this band creates in such a setting.
A political bent takes a firm front seat, with the music always holding its own. Dixon, Roy and Singh mesh Dub, reggae and other sounds of protest into a northern influenced compote of cool sounds and outta sight beats.

Dub Trinity works as a collective, involving guest musicians and an array of locals in creating their strident sound and message.

The set opens with Another Statistic which ‘sends a strong crime message, while other tracks touch on personal, environmental and political issues.

You may have caught this band on the main stage at the Folk Festival in 2003. Since then, regular club dates have happened, giving this area a real taste of dub, and its firm message.

— Jeff Macklin

Dub Trinity and Chet Singh

Ottawa Express
April 2005

“Canadians get up, get up!”—Chet Singh delivers a poetic wake-up call for complicit Canadians to stand up and fight against the erosion of social programs on “Counter Attack’.’one of many verbally explosive songs on Biographies. The new album is a collaborative effort with Toronto duo Dub Trinity. Singh, a Jamaican-born Peterborough-based poet-activist, mixes rebellion with the Trinity’s dub-flavoured island music that occasionally includes Santana-esque guitar wails, and at times heavier head-nodding rifts that complement Singh’s dark messages of drug use, corporate sleaze and Canadian politics. Even Alberta’s Minister of Environmental Destruction Ralph Klein isn’t safe. Singh calls him to account for his record on poverty and the environment on “Why”—”Mr. Klein/lt’s a crime/Against humanity.”

— Matthew Harrison

Dub Trinity and Chet Singh

Ottawa Express
November 18th, 2004

Peterborough’s Dub Trinity join forces with social activist and dub poet Chet Singh, serving up monster grooves and plainspoken political chatter through this bone-rattling rhythmic beast of a set. The tone is set from the start: “The ‘shit-stem’ is a fraud,” declares Singh with casual disgust, digging into the beat of the opening track, Another Statistic. Then, little by little, the energy rises. Backed by the rocksteady rhythm of Beau Dixon (bass) and Gregory Roy (drums), the less-than-intense Singh turns up the heat as best he can, taking aim at those who “plant the seeds of sorrow/ building a land of no tomorrow.” A satisfying fusion of blunt prose and crisp dub beats.

— Steve Baylin

Structures of Complicity: CD review of Darkness of Daylight, by Chet Singh with Dub Trinity

Arthur, the Trent University student-run newspaper
Monday, 10 March 2008

Sometimes it can feel like that, mimetic and empty of substance, even Adornian, to an undergraduate student looking ahead at a lifetime of corporate drudgery that seems to be mapped out in advance. You imagine slotting yourself into a ready-made opening in a corporate niche on the basis of a certain slim skill set, and then settling down into a dark cubicle for an indefinite span, far from sunlight, feeling paradoxically lucky and condemned.

Sometimes it can feel like that, mimetic and empty of substance, even Adornian, to an undergraduate student looking ahead at a lifetime of corporate drudgery that seems to be mapped out in advance. You imagine slotting yourself into a ready-made opening in a corporate niche on the basis of a certain slim skill set, and then settling down into a dark cubicle for an indefinite span, far from sunlight, feeling paradoxically lucky and condemned.

On Darkness of Daylight, his latest collaboration with local roots-rock-reggae band Dub Trinity, Canadian Dub poet and social justice activist Chet Singh expresses this feeling well: “Step out into the unnatural light, uranium night,” he says ominously in “Electric Man,” the song of the album’s title phrase. He queries surveillance in the workplace and other 21st century workplace hazards such as harassment, discrimination, overtime, and stress.

Singh’s choice of words in “Electric Man,” underscored with a dark, catchy bass synth line, is particularly significant in the wake of the recent arrests of Trent professor Paula Sherman and Fleming College professor Bob Lovelace during actions against the uranium prospecting and mining on Ardoch Algonquin First Nations ancestral lands by private company Frontenac Ventures. At a time when Trent and the greater Peterborough community is faced with parallel questions, Singh knits together his concerns for workers’ rights with questions about their complicity: “Are we becoming gate-keepers of institutions, or are we agents of transformation?” he asks.

Singh, who on 2002’s Dub Trinity and Chet Singh rescripted the national anthem to read “Oh Canada, our home on native land,” credits the milieu of his youth for establishing his social consciousness. Born in Jamaica and raised in the Caribbean, Singh began using “the revolutionary art form of dub poetry” in the early 1980s with the formation of his reggae/punk/Latin fusion band One Mind. Singh felt that dub, an “oral tradition born out of the material conditions of oppression and discrimination” and especially concerned “with excavating normalized discriminatory discourses and practices that perpetuate social and economic inequities,” was well-suited to his politics as an activist. He continues this musico-political activism on Darkness, his second release with Dub Trinity. In “Red Maple,” a track about nation-building, he succinctly sums up the interrelation of colonialism, capitalism, politics, anti-environmentalism, and racism: “Red maple rooted in aboriginal soil…. Our ruling classes have priced it all, the water, the air, the DNA in my balls.”

Darkness is unrelentingly political and tackles collusion with the system on multiple tracks, including “December 6th,” about the 1989 massacre of 14 women at l’École Polytechnique on that date in Montreal. “Do you remember that day in December,” he begins, exploring the underlying systemic structures that may have led to Marc Lépine’s vitriol towards women and feminists. Singh comments darkly on the interpellation of men into these structures of discrimination and violence: “At the age of 3, they gave me a gun; boys will be boys, let them have fun…. By 13, misogyny was running through me.”

With a cymbal-heavy, two-step drum n’ bass beat in “Identities,” Singh rescripts the symbology of dancehall critiques of the oppressive “Babylon” culture, using the term to refer instead to the “inner culture” of homophobia of some dancehall djs who direct their “killer lyrics” towards queer people. “Privilege and marginalization are contextual,” Singh notes, depending on “messy” categories; by ignoring the “nuances and interconnections” of identities, he states, “we may well be replicating that which we were attempting to eradicate.”

Occasionally, Darkness slips into exactly the sort of political univocity that Singh warns against. In the opening track “Price is Right,” the alignment of time signatures seems to have been sacrificed to the fervour of the message. Singh’s lyrics are cramped together in their urgency, lacking the negative space needed to offset his satiric points about the co-optation of revolutionary symbols by corporate interests (“There’s a man with a blackberry makin’ a call; the human stockpile is about to fall”). The instrumentation on this track seems to parachute down into Singh’s musical ontology from elsewhere, spread poorly over his vocals under the cover of dub “jazziness.”

Yet while some tracks may be hampered by the weight of their political message, others, as in the laid-back jazz lull of “Jane & Finch,” the lively vocals and trumpet accompaniments of “Buskin,” and the poppy “Abstract Graffiti,” blend the positive and negative spaces of Singh’s dub vocals together with compelling rhythms and expressive, layered percussion. On these tracks Singh is most successful, luring the listener into complicity with the rhythms of his well-wrought vocals, even as he asks us to raise our awareness and become conscious of how easy it is to be swayed by the medium, at the expense of the message. Noticing the medium, Singh seems to suggest, means noticing the cubicle walls and what fills them. This may be the titular daylight in darkness; the substance underlying the empty mimetic form of corporate nichedom is ourselves, and what renders the form neutral or invisible is our complicity: we choose to fill each slot as if it were a given.

CD Review: Chet Singh, Recessionary Revolutionaries

The Intelligent Online Caribbean Music, Culture, and Travel Magazine

Perhaps revolution itself is in a recession these days. There are so many significant problems requiring revolutionary solutions, but it’s difficult to demonstrate that great strides are being made with any regularity or promise of lasting success. Not that intelligent, concerned, talented people aren’t involving themselves in the struggle. It’s just that the issues are so numerous and complex, and that the forces for the ultimately destructive status quo are so entrenched. Or so it seems to some of us.

Chet Singh is one of those talented, concerned, intelligent individuals who hasn’t given up, and fortunately his voice is heard with great clarity and passion on his latest musical offering, Recessionary Revolutionaries. The vehicle for his highly political and highly charged lyrics is a bass-heavy dub style (with loads of dense electronic textures as well) – fittingly enough, because there’s nothing easy-listening or pop-oriented about the messages he lays on the world. The reggae element is also fitting because, although now based in the Toronto area, Singh is Jamaican by birth, with stylistic touches that bring to mind not only L. K. Johnson and Mutabaruka, but even Prince Far I. And you should know that the targets of his stinging critiques are the deserving ones, not necessarily just the easy ones you might expect. With Singh’s didactic purpose coupled with his declamatory vocal approach, you might assume this goes beyond heavy into ponderous or even tiresome, but no, you also have to consider the wealth of wit, rhythmic variations, unique insights and musical values at play. So in fact the album is extremely listenable. Intellectually confrontational perhaps, but enjoyable too.

“Occupation Nation” by Chet Singh

Stone Circle Press
Review by Pegi Eyers

It is always exciting to see new forms of literary and poetic expression morph and evolve, such as the flourishing of spoken word performance and dub poetry in Canada. A phenomenon that arose in Jamaica in the 1970s, dub poetry is a powerful artform that layers the style, rhythm, chants and drama of poetry with reggae, funk, jazz, fusion and other forms of experimental soundscape. That there are more dub poets in Toronto today than anywhere in the world (next to Jamaica!) is a marvellous comment on a city that embraces and celebrates cultural diversity. Considered “subversive” by some and “essential activism” by others, dub poetry is primarily concerned with political commentary, the critique of current events and social justice issues.  One of the best artists in the genre is Chet Singh, Lakefield resident and college professor, who has released his 6th compilation entitled Occupation Nation, a brilliant weaving of much-needed decolonial reality-speak and innovative dubs.

Born in Jamaica, Singh is founding member of the renowned Dub Poets Collective, former board member of the Ontario Arts Council, member of the band One Mind, and recipient of many awards for excellence in teaching and leadership. In addition to his many achievements, he is recognized as of one of the pioneers of dub poetry and spoken word in Canada. Embracing both the creolization processes of the Caribbean and the diverse cultural landscapes of Canada, he uses the metaphorical force of music and poetry as a continuum of his human rights activism. Singh not only seeks to expose the fiction of a “post-racial society,” but also explores the normalization of dominance, racism and injustice, and shows how the silence or denial from the majority makes all of us complicit. As the title suggests, themes of occupation are the focus of Occupation Nation, with tracks on debunking settler colonial narratives (“Madawaska”), the oligarchy-generated propaganda that continues to manufacture “the other” (“Among the Bombs”), our domination of the natural world, which is also a form of occupation (“Highway 115”), and the gentle reclaiming of our authentic eco-selves (“Natural Nature”).  In step with the fire lit by the recent Idle No More movement, Chet’s poetics remind us that First Nations, subordinated through imperialism and Eurocentric pedagogy, have been engaged in the monumental work of resisting the Settler State for centuries now, and the struggle continues (“Red Canoe”).

A collaboration of top-notch producers and musicians add texture to the solid foundations of Chet’s poetry in Occupation Nation, and for those unfamiliar, the intellectualism and social justice agenda of dub is definitely worth exploring. As the Dub Poets Collective website states, “dub poetry is not a cultural ornament. It is a vocal instrument of social engagement.” Even though Chet Singh continues to challenge the destructive ideology of Empire by “speaking truth to power,” he remains optimistic that equity will unfold, that humanity can do better, and that “there will be no peace without justice for all of us” (“Map of Violence”).