Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 33: Music in the City 鈥� with Jarrett Martineau
Speakers: Rachel Wong, Am Johal, Jarrett Martineau, Scott Neufeld, Nicolas Crier
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Rachel Wong 0:05
Hi listeners, thank you so much for tuning into this episode of Below the Radar. My name is Rachel long and I'm with 丁香园AV's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. We would like to acknowledge that Below the Radar is recorded on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. This week we sit down with Jarrett Martineau. You may know him as the host of the CBC Radio show Reclaimed. But closer to home, Jarrett is the music planner for the City of Vancouver. His work helps him to support the Vancouver music scene, which includes his contributions to the Culture|Shift Strategy Plan. Our host Am Johal and Jarrett delve into how affordability affects available venues, the diverse array of music being created within the city and the power of providing the platform of radio to early career musicians.
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Am Johal 1:00
Really delighted that you could join us on Below the Radar. We're really excited to have Jarrett Martineau with us. Welcome, Jarrett.
Jarrett Martineau 1:06
Thanks for having me.
Am Johal 1:07
I just wanted to just begin by saying you have a voice like warm butter on the radio.
Jarrett Martineau 1:13
Thank you. That's very nice of you.
Am Johal 1:14
So the City of Vancouver just last week passed the Culture|Shift music strategy, a 10 year arts and culture strategy for the city, Making Space Initiative as well that's connected to that, and the third piece was the music strategy for the City of Vancouver. Now, you've been working on that for quite a while, but you also have a long history of being involved in the Vancouver music scene here as a practitioner, as a producer. And so your involvement just doesn't go into this plan, but you have a sense of what things were like in the 90s and early 2000s. And all of that and wondering if you can talk a little bit about what this strategy is and how it will affect the music industry and artists as well in the city.
Jarrett Martineau 1:55
Well, you know, it's interesting, I was living in Toronto up until fairly recently, and I had I never lived in Toronto before, I lived there for the last four or five years. And I was struck by and this may not be a surprise to you, but I was just struck by how much love people have for the City of Toronto, and in particular, for music. I mean, obviously sports, you know, there's other other reasons and sort of big successes that have brought a lot of people together. But there's a real investment in the local music and arts community there and a real sense that if you're from Toronto, that means something and people feel connected to that. And I was thinking about this while I was in Toronto, because I was like, I know that in Vancouver, my experience going back is there's like little pockets of scenes or genres or whatever, where people would kind of come together and be in their own world feeling good about the work that they were making, or the community that they were part of, but it didn't really translate into an overall kind of celebration of Vancouver talent, and I felt like a big piece that was missing. So I've been thinking about this while I was in Toronto, and then this opportunity came to do this work with the city about doing a music strategy. And I was thinking about kind of coming back to the city that I was raised in and stepping back into a conversation to kind of see where everything was at and also to see if there was a way to really kind of bring a lot of people together who have been in their way siloed. And I feel like that kind of fragmentation and siloing is something that has been a long standing kind of part of the arts and culture community here. And what's been really gratifying about doing this work, and particularly the kind of community side of the work in terms of engaging folks and bringing people together to be part of the strategy and developing it, is exactly that it's been to like actually overcome some of that siloing and I feel like there's a kind of critical momentum now, not just because of the strategy, but that the strategy is building on and supporting on the part of a lot of people who feel like Vancouver music and Vancouver is kind of arts and cultural scenes, as only a visual art scene has been, you know, is internationally celebrated and renowned in the dancing also, but music hasn't quite kind of hit that sort of threshold and I feel like we have some kind of critical mass and momentum now that we haven't had.\
Am Johal 3:48
And now you know, I think you know, Vancouver, of course, with intense affordability issues as it had there's been a lot of loss of spaces where people are used to going to see shows and also where scenes develop. You know, in a previous era places like the Starfish Room or The Town Pump, The Railway Club went under and now it's in a new iteration, but also like underground spaces like Red Gate, Vivo used to do a lot of experimental, interesting work and they've moved into a different location now. But how would you characterize Vancouver's music ecology right now in the face of the affordability challenges, both in terms of people living here, but also spaces in which people experiment and build out and develop their music?
Jarrett Martineau 4:32
Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's a lot of kind of conflicting things sort of living in relationship to each other right now. I think there's a narrative overall, that the arts are in decline because of rising affordability and displacement and I don't think that's actually true. I had a number of conversations with folks who are running more DIY spaces, many of whom and - actually I remember in one of the conversations that we had, some of the folks who had just found out the news that week that their space was going to be shut down at the end of the year through renoviction and development and stuff - and so even though that reality is pretty, you know, pretty immediate for a lot of people doing work in the music space, at the same time, and I heard this from so many people that I've spoken to in doing this work, that there's sort of never been more spaces. So even though there might they might be short term, or you know, these very kind of temporary places to kind of create disruption and create alternative spots for music particular to be presented, I think that that is a really thriving part of the kind of underground scene in Vancouver and not necessarily visible to most Vancouverites, and so I think there's a misperception there that because I can't see it, it doesn't exist, but it actually is there and actually is thriving, like if on a kind of a small scale. Now that's like that, that is also true, as is the fact that people are getting displaced, that kind of an evermore, you know, increasing rate, and that the remaining spaces for people who have been kicked out of the spot that they've been running are sort of fewer and further between and so I think there's a big challenge right now particularly at that kind of intersection between not large scale institutions and arts organizations, but those who are really working in a kind of a smaller spaces to be able to build work and have place to develop, you know, talent and community over time. Because the the sort of the small scale things that I'm talking about, and the things that are working in that intermediate space, I think, are super valuable, but it's hard to kind of sustain, right? So I think that's like one of the big challenges right now is that precarity doesn't always lead to, you know, the ability to develop and grow a scene or talent over time.
Am Johal 6:32
You can go to cities like Toronto or Montreal that have thriving music scenes, or, you know, other places like Chicago, New Orleans. There's a spatial issue here in terms of spaces, but also there seems to be a kind of regulatory environment that works against music venues as well. And that's maybe a policy piece or maybe a lack of permissiveness in Vancouver. And I'm wondering whether that's an actual policy issue is it a perceived thing or what, you know, came up in the consultations around people trying to open up spaces or utilize restaurants and bars and these types of ways, like what gets in the way of having a little bit more funk in the city, because we go to Toronto, Montreal, New Orleans, you just really feel like it's part of the city, in a way here that people really struggle to make these spaces work and go.
Jarrett Martineau 7:22
Totally, I mean, I think historically, there has been that challenge around the regulatory piece and that there, there's been maybe less of a permissive attitude, or more restrictive attitude around that. And there's a lot of examples that people have cited in terms of what's possible, where and all of that. I think one of the other big pieces that has come up in the work that I'm doing, and particularly around one of the recommendations that's in the music strategy that's been approved, is around the creation of a music staff position. I've been in the role just since the beginning of 2019 and it's a temporary position to deliver the final strategy which I've done and now we've got this approval for. But the creation of a music staff position the city, just to mention that in the context of your question, is, I think, important in the sense that for the music community Vancouver, they haven't really had a voice at the city. So people have kind of on a very individual basis experienced whatever those barriers are, without really knowing necessarily how to navigate city policy, the different departments don't have relationships necessarily built for those that do and that have worked either for larger organizations and I'm thinking of some folks I know who work for some of the bigger festivals here in town, who know everybody they know the, you know, person at Fire Department, they know the folks that permits and licensing, and they know these different people having that kind of baseline of relationship built means that there's a kind of a level of understanding and a kind of a level of mutuality and the kind of trust that can get built, that I feel like isn't there for a lot of people just by virtue of not having those relationships. So the fact that there can be somebody as a kind of a point person, even at the city for the diverse needs of the music community, which are pretty diverse, if you the Jazz Festival, or like the small DIY, you know, venue that that I was talking about earlier, those are pretty different experiences in terms of what you need from the city and from music and your relationship to engineering and the police and fire department necessarily is, you know, I was going to be challenged, you know, by that disparity. So I feel like there's the big first big pieces around a knowledge gap. I think that's a big piece. I think the other part is actually a broader issue around reception, and particularly when this comes to DIY spaces, which is, you know, been a big focus just of our conversation this morning. But like, I think that comes about also because of a misperception around a DIY being equated with a lack of safety or permissiveness to things that are illegal and what have you. And there's a bit of a failure to recognize the conditions that produce that kind of a scene in the first place. And if anything, and I heard this from so many people in the community, and this may not surprise you, but I think for a lot of people is maybe a bit of a surprise, which is that there because of working at the margins, and in a more precarious position, the folks that are running those spaces and doing those kinds of shows are so focused on the well being of their community because they don't have the otherwise protections that would be the case if they're running a legitimate big music venue. And for a lot of people that are going to those shows and participating in the whole huge underground scene, of which there are many here in Vancouver, a lot of the folks that are going to those shows feel less safe going to a big concert or a nightclub on Granville Street than they would at some of these other spaces. And actually by, you know, certainly by the folks that I've spoken to, they were saying the kind of incidents of, for example, I mean, any kind of violence or drug overdose or what have you and stuff are actually far lower in that scene, and that sort of communities than they are in some of the larger venues. And so I think, fundamentally, there's also there's been a kind of long standing misperception that what exceeds the bounds of kind of these sort of normalized and regulated spaces, necessarily means it's part of some nefarious underground, and it's just not true.
Am Johal 10:39
Yeah, there's a level of care and investment.
Jarrett Martineau 10:41
Yeah. And so but what that leads into, I think, this culture of a kind of a lack of permissiveness, because if the perception is there, then that those spaces will be the more, you know, more likely to be targeted in terms of in terms of police presence, and various other things. And so I think that that's part of the challenge here is is the kind of relationship building between and across those scenes and there's lots of folks who don't really want to have anything to do with the city. I talked to a lot of them in the course of the work that I've been doing and that's fair as well. But I think that it's not that everybody needs to be necessarily on the same page. But I think there needs to be better understanding of what people are actually doing in this city and who's actually coming out to these shows and being a part of the music.
Am Johal 11:13
In the Culture|Shift policy piece, there was quite a bit of discussion around the role of equity, diversity, inclusion, decolonization, and I'm wondering how some of those questions were taken up in the development of the Vancouver music strategy.
Jarrett Martineau 11:28
Yeah, well, I mean, one of the first things that and this came about a little ahead of the actual delivery of the final strategy. But stepping into the role, I'd inherited a decision that was made last year when we delivered this interim strategy that was money was allocated by counsel for what has been called a Vancouver Music Fund. And at the time, there wasn't really a clear mandate in terms of where that money was going to get spent, but that it was going to support Vancouver music and artists and projects and in line with the city's - remember from a few years ago toward reconciliation and also in supporting equity initiatives and a number of other pieces - we decided, and I'm very happy that this was able to happen to put three hundred thousand dollars, which, you know, on the scale of sort of larger city budgets is not a lot of money. But for people that haven't otherwise received grants, for example, for music, is a lot of money to put the entirety of that money toward Indigenous and underrepresented communities here, Vancouver, and the results of that are just kind of being rolled out now. So artists are just finding out about their projects now. But that is not an insignificant contribution towards helping to rebalance the scales a little bit in terms of where some of those funds are going, and particularly to try to bring people into the mix in terms of being able to receive some grants and support, who otherwise have never applied for grants before and never really talked to the city before and all that. So I feel like, you know, that's a just a one sort of example in terms of thinking about where the resources actually are directed, which I think is a pretty fundamental one, given that the city does support, to varying degrees and to lots of different organizations, not only through granting, and I think that the other sort of big piece for me has been really about retelling the story, like for the music strategy, particularly about retelling the story of what Vancouver music is, because I think if you look back 15 or 20 years, even further, there's a concept of an established players and institutions that you would sort of think of as your kind of shorthand to think of like what Vancouver music is. And what I've seen and I think what is sort of amazing about the Vancouver music scene right now is it absolutely is way more diverse and way more reflective of the actual live communities that are here. So in order to do a music strategy that is driven by some principles toward, you know, really trying to have a more equitable distribution, not only resources, but also have priorities that like to do work that's actually reflecting the music. It's being made by the many different communities who are making it, ithas been like a cornerstone of the of the work that we've done and very much guided a lot of the community engagement as well was to bring folks to the table, you know, where they wanted to, to be part of advancing things that they were like, this is what our community needs. And it was surprising to me off I'll just say this kind of as an aside, but it was surprising to me to hear from so many different communities how few the opportunities have been for self organizing those kinds of convenings, like around music in particular. And so I mean, that was also surprising. I didn't expect the city to be necessarily that point of reference or that for the kind of convening and community conversations, and a lot of folks that we talked to said, you know, actually, we should be doing this more often anyway, we don't need the city to do it, we can just do this anyway. But we actually need to get together and talk about this stuff, because when we do, we realized that all of our experiences are pretty related and there's like a lot of, you know, shared, not just values, but ideas of where we want to take things. And so I feel the enormous amount of gratitude also for the fact that so many people were willing to be a part of this process, who like I said, hadn't have hadn't had a prior relationship to the city, and who I hope and so far, I've felt this from people who've looked at the work, they see themselves reflected in the strategy and that was really important to me that people feel that it's not like it's not only representing the interests of one group of people and Vancouver's music scene, this is like the real actual diversity that we live in, you know,
Am Johal 14:55
So when you were in Vancouver, in the in the 90s, and the 2000s, what kind of places were you going to and what kind of music were you going to see, young Jarrett Martineau?
Jarrett Martineau 15:04
Yeah exactly, you mentioned a bunch of them. Definitely. There's like kind of a whole stretch of time, and actually before Yaletown was fully Yaletown, I remember getting brought so my first like early rays and putting on some shows and things random and we did a show one of the early shows I was ever involved in putting on like some random little late night after hours in a place called District Coffee on Mainland. Rest in peace.
Am Johal 15:25
Yeah, I remember a couple of '91, '92 raves down in that.
Jarrett Martineau 15:29
Yeah, and it's I mean, it's pretty remarkable to see how much the city has changed in that time and also in a way I feel like I still lament the loss of some of the sort of like long standing just independent institutions like places you're talking about like you know, Starfish Room...
Am Johal 15:41
Love Affair.
Jarrett Martineau 15:41
And Love Affair, yeah, exactly, Love Affair, Riches on Richards. I mean, the idea of sort of trying to push everything into one strip on Granville Street, which forced the closure of a lot of pretty great, I think live music institutions in the downtown core, obviously has served the needs of putting up more condo buildings throughout the downtown core, but like definitely, I mean, the fact that the net effect of that or one of the net effects of that is, I've been so reminded of this since I've been back of like walking through the sort of maelstrom of a weekend night on Granville Street with a police perimeter and the kind of full on effects of that. If that's the sort of net consequence of like losing some of the other music venues we have in in order to try to centralize this sort of hub, I don't think that we're quite getting where we need to with that, you know, because it's not serving everything. There's definitely people that love that scene and want to, you know, want to be a part of it, but there's a lot that's been lost lost along the way. But I mean, I also one of the big places, it's sort of the, the sort of non traditional spaces that weren't as underground and necessarily precarious, I don't think as they are now, I'm thinking about places like even on Granville Street like the Sugar Refinery and 1067 Granville, places that were really hubs for a more experimental music, we're really open to lots of different genres. For me at the time, being a young person making music and being interested in doing shows, there was a very low barrier to entry in terms of being able to present music and present work and kind of build community around these small scenes, and not to say that that doesn't exist now, and definitely there's like a whole new generation of folks who are creating those spaces and service in service to that. But I feel like the available opportunities for it are harder and and further afield. And definitely, you know, just as an aside, I was thinking about, some young folks that I spoke to, who are doing shows for all ages, are like all ages shows, and just for young artists and emerging artists and stuff, and they were saying sort of all of these preconditions for them in terms of being able to make sure that their audience and the artists are safe, being able to have a show that's close to a SkyTrain line or close to transit and has to then end by certain time and kind of all of these factors for them, to make sure that people are able to kind of come out and be a part of their shows. And then I was thinking back also to the early days of Nardwaur doing shows here in Vancouver, and Nardwaur has been kind of on my mind a lot lately, for a number of reasons. But anyway.
Am Johal 17:50
He's the senator of the Vancouver indie music scene.
Jarrett Martineau 17:53
Exactly, exactly. And I was reading this thing because he's getting inducted into the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame this year, which is pretty amazing. Well deserved. I was saying...
Am Johal 18:01
Getting a tour of CITR by Nardwaur is one of the great joys of life.
Jarrett Martineau 18:05
My first experience with radio was with Nardwaur. And me and my buddy Mark, we used to, we wanted to do hip hop show so badly. And we would like offered ourselves to be the sub for anybody that canceled their weekly hour of radio at CITR. And we went into go get our little tour of the station, and like how the gear worked. And of course, there was a man himself, Nardwaur, who gave us a tour and everything. It's so cool. Yeah. But anyway, but yeah, Nardwaur, I was reading article that Grant Lawrence had written, who's been a longtime friend and collaborator with Nardwaur. And he was telling me that when he was in high school and Nardwaur was sort of recruiting grant to like, help suss out whether or not they could use, you know, different high schools or different community centers and stuff to be able to throw these all ages shows with punk bands, you know, like Fugazi and these like seminal kind of punk bands of the time and thinking about kind of that work that was, again, just like more available in terms of people being able to kind of do it, and in without as many kind of barriers to kind of access now, and I think now, the there's a real push on the part of younger people toward the idea that things need to be professionalized in order to be legitimate, and that that professionalization means a whole lot of barriers. So again, if you're one of these younger promoters and organizers who are doing music shows here, and you want to do your show at a club, there's a kind of an immediate barrier there in terms of the cost to be able to like book the night out, and all these kind of others that have responsibilities that come with trying to partner with a larger promoter to do things at you know, at a larger venue when I just feel like we're missing out. We're missing out on like, supporting the younger people who are the next generation and the ones thereafter that are coming up who, you know, deserve that kind of support to, right?
Am Johal 19:36
You did, while you were in Toronto, with RPM Records doing a lot of producing of, of new young artists. Can you talk a little bit about that period, how that came to be and how pulling all of that together?
Jarrett Martineau 19:47
Yeah, I mean, I started RPM here in Vancouver with a couple of other collaborators here in Vancouver and years ago now. Feels like long...feels like a lifetime ago. And initially just as a digital platform for Indigenous artists, because there wasn't even really a website that was kind of a cool place to say, "Oh yeah, someone's always got a new record out." Of course now like, you know, native artist winning Polaris prizes, and you know the whole thing, right? It's like it's very much a part of the mainstream kind of institutions of music, even in the short kind of a timeframe. So it's been interesting for me to sort of be involved in that work. And it's very, like iterative way and watching, kind of in real time, the sort of feedback loops of doing that work. You know, when I first moved to Toronto, we've been doing this digital version of RPM for a number of years, but we hadn't really been involved in producing shows and kind of producing artists and sort of mentoring and developing talent that way. But we had a lot of artists who are reaching out saying, "Hey, I've got this project, can you help me out with it, whatever." And I also realized that I'd been to a lot of Indigenous events, both here in Vancouver and many other places in Toronto as well, that were really only reaching the indigenous community. And I was like, great for us as a community to be able to have those spaces but also there's a lot of other people I think, who would love to be a part of this or to witness it or attend or whatever, who don't feel like it's for them. And so part of the early impetus with RPM Live was to kind of - and particularly being based in Toronto, which is such a hub for kind of culture, I mean, to the point of seeing itself as the only hub for culture in the country - part of the early kind of mandate there, which I think has been just such a kind of cool thing to be a part of doing was to be able to bring artists who had enver played in Toronto before and bring out communities, who had never been to an Indigenous show before and present this work that, you know, stands absolutely alongside the best music being made by anyone else in the country and isn't sort of this on the smaller stage off in the corner Indigenous showcase, do you know what I mean? But it's like a legitimate part of the kind of music community music scene. And to see how kind of quickly communities really took up that, that invitation. And in a way also to see not necessarily as a direct result of the work that we're presenting, but like, overall, to see this kind of surge and interest in Indigenous music happen in such a short timeframe. Now, it's, yeah, it's like even now, I've been sort of recalibrating and rethinking a lot of the work that I've been doing because I'm like, in a way, the kind of intervention that that was making five years ago is not the intervention that it's that it is now, even though there's still lots of room to grow the scene and stuff, but Indigenous artists coming into the music scene now can, you know step in and get a record contract with a big label, regardless, you know, and just sort of step into the music scene and not kind of have to kind of work their way in from the margins, the periphery, in the way that they that they would necessarily have to do five or 10 years ago.
Am Johal 22:20
Yeah. And how long have you been doing the CBC radio show now?
Jarrett Martineau 22:23
Yeah, it's two years this summer. So yeah, we're, yeah, two years, two years this summer and that was just a kind of cool, fortuitous thing that happened from some folks that I met who were developing radio at CBC and I had like a kind of conversation with them a couple years ago, at the time of doing some of these work, work, presenting shows and stuff. And through those through those conversations, we realized that there's never been an Indigenous music show on CBC before. I mean, there's been other Indigenous programming - and certainly there's Unreserved and other shows that have been featuring Indigenous music, but not like a dedicated just playlist of music show and sort of spontaneously that sort of led to piloting a show that now has become like a regular part of the dial, which is just so cool. I mean, I also and I will say this just like total candor on this, that and I said this to CBC when we started it, as you know, I had to firstly I did it first I did a summer series, it was like 10 episodes for the for the summer. And then they renewed it and want to do it every week. And so it's like, okay, we're gonna do a free year and kind of see how it goes and back again for another year, and so on. And now it's just sort of continuing. But part of it was also a bit of an experiment to see if I would like start repeating myself, or if the music was kind of just like, oh, there's only 50 albums, we'd have to kind of find a new track from the 50 albums that are out there and being able to kind of have to sort of stretch in order to make the content and if anything, the sort of the growth and surge not just in interest from outside the community, but in terms of our own artists of our community, making work has been just like growing in such a huge and awesome rate that I just find new music all the time. And so I kind of don't have enough, I don't have enough space in a way to play all the cool stuff that's coming out which is cool because that was an experiment. I didn't know, and I said to them at the outset, I was like, if we do this for a year, and I've like run out of songs to play then, like, I don't know how much you know how much life this thing can have.
Am Johal 24:08
In terms of some of the emerging Indigenous musicians that you've encountered the show and in the scene, who are you listening to? Now, are you excited about in terms of the work? I know, there's so many people!
Jarrett Martineau 24:22
That really is an impossible question. I mean, I think I'll say this by way of answering this, I'm not trying to avoid naming people but at the same time, I just, I do like spend so much time finding new artists. And the coolest thing for me and this is still the case with artists and I'm able to feature on the show is to play people, you know, radio as a form particular like broadcast radio, as opposed to podcasts and stuff. broadcast radio is a form is necessarily like not the Gen Z millennial kind of medium. So, you know, you're reaching different people, de facto and then obviously, CBC, even though you can stream the show from lots of different places, whatever. But there's still something about that, that like you could turn on your radio in your car while you're driving somewhere and hear your music on the radio, that still has a tremendous amount of power. And a lot of like young artists that have no interest or real, I think, sense that, particularly with mainstream radio like that they're going to get on some big, you know, they don't have a radio budget to market, their music and whatever else. But a lot of those artists might have a few songs up on Soundcloud or like I think they put on YouTube or whatever it is, not even an official release, send emails to the show all the time, or I find the music through whatever way that I find it. And to be able to put that music on the radio and have artists be like excited about the fact that they've never thought they were even gonna get played on the radio and feel, you know, kind of compelled or inspired to like keep going and doing their thing and being able to kind of give that platform and that space is like one of the most gratifying things. That's like my favorite part of the job.
Am Johal 25:47
Now besides doing all of this, like amazing music stuff, you just happen to have a PhD in Indigenous governance who spent a little bit of time at Columbia and CUNY Center for Culture, Place and Politics. What was your academic work on? And what's your relationship to it now?
Jarrett Martineau 26:04
Yeah, it's I've been thinking a lot about what that relationship is in the last while.
Am Johal 26:10
I work at a university and I have those same questions.
Jarrett Martineau 26:13
Yeah, I mean, so my, my PhD was on Indigenous art making and creativity in relationship to decolonization without presuming that all artists who are making work or that there's like some inherently de colonial politic in the work that they make, but thinking through and asking and talking to artists about how they see their artistic practice, whatever genre and form of their working in relationship to political struggle and questions around decolonization and so on, and it started out as a project that was focused a lot on hip hop because that's the community that I kind of was raised with and a part of and saw a lot of work kind of coming out of the Indigenous community that way that was doing I think, some really interesting work politically, and then just expanded out to the kind of wider field of lots of different art making our practice. And one of the pieces of, I don't know, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot since is that one of the kind of core threads through that work and through the dissertation was really around questions around visibility and representation, and what needs to be coded and held within our community, which there are long standing practices and all of our creative sort of wor in Indigenous societies, around pieces that were for public knowledge and public consumption, even within the community or not those that were, you know, very selectively held and a lot of protocol around what knowledge was to be shared. And so there was a kind of a through line in that a lot that I was thinking about with thinking about Indigenous art making, which is a broader question in terms of Indigenous politics and representation about how we make ourselves legible to each other and to the outside and the outside being all of kind of settler society writh large. And then I've spent the last five years, since I finished the PhD, doing all this work in very mainstream media, I produce this series for Vice and I've been like doing this show on the radio and doing all these shows that are you know, putting artists out in front of folks. And it's very much with that political vantage point in mind in terms of the work that I've been doing, but also as the landscape is changing around us in terms of the desire for Indigenous content, the kind of increased appetite for the material resources that are now flowing to Indigenous artists through the opportunities that are there that just weren't there not so many years ago, in the number and in the in the ways that they are now has really has had me thinking a lot about that work and thinking okay, well, there is a need for visibility of a certain kind there is a need to kind of give platform and have collective representation as a way to assert a certain kind of counter power to colonial authority. And at the same time, if we are only collectively making work in service to what is now a very much increasing audience of people who are ever more desirous of the things we make and and who we are and all of our kind of creative works, where are those spaces where that can be coated or held back or kind of, you know, made maybe less legit legible in service to articulating something different for each other. And I don't think I've resolved that yet. But it's definitely, I will say this, working in media, working in planning, working in this kind of very active worlds of larger scale creative production, doesn't leave a lot of room, as I'm sure you can relate to, for the kind of really deep level reflective time that would allow, I think, a more serious kind of consideration of some of these, like bigger political issues, but it absolutely needs to be a part of it. And I think that's one of the things that I've sort of been thinking about a lot lately is that as much as it's good to produce stuff and put stuff out, we also need to like have the, the other part of that cycle, which is the "Okay, step back, think about this. What are what are we doing here collectively in servicing this work?" Yeah.
Am Johal 29:41
Jarrett, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. It's been wonderful speaking with you.
Jarrett Martineau 29:46
Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Rachel Wong 29:55
Thank you again to Jarrett Martineau for joining us on this episode of below the radar, you can learn more about gerrits show reclaimed on the CBC music website and the Culture|Shift strategy plan on the City of Vancouver's website. We will link to both of those in the episode description below. Additionally, we recently collaborated with Jarrett on a public talk with Indigenous musicians Neil Morris and Miss Christie Lee entitled "Songs of the Land: Tracing Global Pathways in Indigenous Music." You can listen to an audio recording of that talk in our Knowledge Mobilization A/V gallery, which is on our website, and will also provide a direct link to it below. Next week, we'll be talking to PhD candidate, Scott Neufeld of 丁香园AV's Psychology department and facilitator, freelance writer and outreach worker Nicolas Crier about their work related to ethical research in the Downtown Eastside.
Scott Neufeld 30:51
Some of the impact that we've seen there, I really appreciate it when different people say you know what we get so many asks, and I don't always know how to respond and now I can just literally send a manifesto back to some researcher, whoever it is and say, here's some perspectives on what research is and what good practice looks like to us. Let us know how you plan on meeting these expectations.
Nicolas Crier 31:13
We just sort of want to cover our end on that and that perspective and make sure right as Canadians, as just community members, as drug users, as marginalized citizens, as research participants and subjects we're being respected and in a dignified way. And I think that's what we've done so far.
Rachel Wong 31:35
As always, thank you to our team that puts this podcast together, including myself, Rachel Wong, Fiorella Pinillow, and Paige Smith. Davis Steele is the composer of our theme music and thank you for listening. Join us next time on Below the Radar.