Asian Heritage Month links Montreal, Toronto artists

Click here for 2009 AHM events

Every Asian Heritage Month (AHM) – held each May in Canada – for past 11 years has seen a special meeting between artists in Toronto and Montreal. Their meeting place? Cyberspace.
“Every year it’s been a kind of cyberjam,” explains Janet Lumb, organization of Montreal’s AHM. “We’ll have a videoconference between the two cities, they’ll perform live online with dancing or singing. This year we had an electronic round table where artists shared ideas.”

Usually, each city meets its own needs when it comes to AHM. In Ottawa, some events held on Parliament Hill take on something of a national flavour. In Halifax, events tend to focus on ancient dance and costume. In Montreal, the focus is on avant-garde artists and their works.

But that doesn’t mean Lumb, a successful musician and film music composer, has anything against celebrating traditional customs and rituals.

“I do believe it is important to retain your culture. It’s a personal issue of timing and issues of indentity,” said Lumb, a fourth generation Chinese Canadian who has also lived in Toronto and Vancouver. “Some people have no connection (to AHM) and feel comfortable with that. For others, it comes when they have kids or a crisis. But I don’t take a position.”

Montreal’s AHM, Accesasie, came about because many cutting edge artists in the city didn’t have a home. They weren’t traditional enough for the Asian community and they were too “cultural focused” for the mainstream. So 15 years ago they created their own festival.

But Lumb, laughingly, said she hopes it won’t last another 15 years.

“I hope we won’t have to have an Asian arts festival,” she said. “Ultimately, it’s about fighting racism and increasing tolerance and increasing understanding. I hope we’ll just have artists independent of the festival.”
Pur laine Quebequois have been called intolerant (and worse), particularly following last year’s “accommodation hearings” where hearings where held across the province to discuss how far society is willing to adapt to minorities. But history shows that it is the French who sought to infuse their ways with aboriginal peoples. Even in Europe, it was the French who first brought acupuncture and other eastern traditional medicines and sciences to the west.

In some ways, if Quebec seems less reluctant to embrace multiculturalism than the rest of Canada is, maybe that’s because when the French commit to an embrace, it is a full embrace.

CUTLINE

Janet Lumb is Artistic Director / Directrice Artistique Gesù - Centre de creativité. To find out more about Asian Heritage Month in Quebec, log onto www.accesasie.com.