Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” Mark Twain wrote.  It also has the power to awaken the senses.  In 1962, I was an innocent abroad, a white boy plucked from homogenous suburban Toronto and deposited in the tropical, northern Malayan town of Ipoh.   My father, born there during colonial times, had decided to move us to his hometown while he embarked on a writing project and explored his ancestral roots.  I can still vividly remember all the exotic smells, sights and sounds of the place.  A walk through Ipoh’s streets, past food stalls selling aromatic curries and spiky rambutans, dodging trishaw peddlers and pedestrians in sarongs and ch...

After exhausting the musical possibilities of rhythm and blues over the past 30 years, pop music is searching for ways to rejuvenate itself. The Police found success with their own brand of Jamaican reggae, and such bands as Talking Heads, the English Beat and Culture Club have eagerly borrowed ingredients from other Third World sources. Now musicians— including the Police—are turning to Africa for inspiration. Of all the sounds to come out of that continent recently the most influential—and exotic—is the juju music of Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé. Last week Adé played two triumphant concerts in Montreal and Toronto to coincide with Synchro System, his first album to be released in Canada. ...