Cold snap Winterruption music festival lowers the temperature around Winnipeg By: Conrad Sweatman Posted: 5:03 PM CST Wednesday, Jan. 22, 2025

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It might be a surprise considering the weather, but Winnipeg is in the middle of one its richest annual stretches of live music.

While the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra delivers the sounds and fury of contemporary classical at the Winnipeg New Music Festival over the next three nights, the annual Winterruption festival, ending Sunday, presents some of the best in new local and Canadian alt-pop this week.

Co-presented by Real Love and the West End Cultural Centre, Winterruption features local luminaries and international stars over 17 remaining concerts across seven venues.

On the regional front, this includes jazzy post-rockers Slow Spirit, indie folkie and TikTok star tofusmell, R&B songstress Snackie, and soulful crooner Gabi Ocejo.

The festival’s headliners include New York’s Kool Keith, one of hip-hop’s pioneers and most legendary oddballs, the Polaris Music Prize-winning Owen Pallet (formerly known as Final Fantasy), and L.A. indie rockers Cheekface.

“Winterruption was created to bring artists to Winnipeg in the wintertime, in the coldest weeks of our year, so they could experience what a Manitoba winter is like,” jokes Real Love co-founder Adam Soloway, who manages the concert promo company with co-founder Gil Carroll and shares the stage in dream-pop band Living Hour, which has toured widely and enjoys a notable online following.

Winterruption organizers aim to create a vital musical happening in the season between September and June, when festivals are scant.

“This year, we’re bringing in more acts from out of town than we ever have before, which is exciting to us,” Soloway says.

Exciting not only because it’s fun, but because these kinds of exchanges with outside acts helps to create a more cosmopolitan local music scene, he adds.

In this spirit, it’s fitting that Winterruption coincides this year with Manitoba Music’s annual Sound Waves Music Meeting, a conference and showcase that brings together many of Canada’s top music industry figures as presenters and offers cheap registration options for local musicians.

“(Sound Waves) has typically run at other times of year. But we moved it to run in conjunction with Winterruption to be able to highlight the activity of the local music scene for visiting delegates,” Rachel Stone, Manitoba Music director of operations and communications, says via email.

One of Winterruption’s performers, the Toronto-based rapper DijahSB (Kahdijah Payne), also serves as a conference mentor. Payne speaks at a Manitoba Music event Thursday at a 12:30 p.m. and performs that night at a sold-out show featuring Kool Keith and Winnipeg rapper Dill the Giant, a member of now mostly inactive hip-hop trio 3Peat.

“I’m just really excited to travel and experience a new place in Canada. I wouldn’t just say, ‘Hey, I’m gonna go to Winnipeg,’” says Payne.

Payne is part of a wave of musicians in recent years who have started fusing hip-hop with house music, an early electronic dance genre from Chicago.

The impact of Montreal DJ and producer Kaytranada, who accelerated the organic sound and swinging rhythms of certain 1990s rap producers such as J Dilla to a more danceable house tempo, has been key here.

“I call it house-hop. People will send me beats and they’ll be too electronic. And I’m like, ‘Nah, I need some hip-hop,’” says Payne.

Dillan Wayne Morgan (Dill the Giant) is another rapper strongly influenced by the ’90s sound. After starting a family, Morgan is working on an EP that leverages connections between the Toronto and Winnipeg scenes.

“I just went on a trip to Toronto with my homie Ali,” says Morgan, referring to Winnipeg hip-hop and house producer Ali Wan Kenobi. “We sparked some creative juice there. I’ll probably be showcasing some of that at the show and just vibing with the homies.”

Soloway is excited about the presence of hip-hop and DJs in this year’s lineup, as well as the festival’s first lecture of sorts hosted by John Batt, the author behind the highly popular Instagram account @canada.gov.ca.

Batt, who has almost 100,000 followers, posts funny, nostalgic and surreal excursions through Canadian lore.

“It’s essentially going to be a TED talk with, like, a PowerPoint presentation that’s half-comedy and half-informational Canada-slash-Winnipeg history,” says Soloway, who jokingly calls the Sunday afternoon show, “our hangover brunch show with no brunch.”

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca

 

Winteruption sampler

THURSDAY

• West End Cultural Centre, 8 p.m., Slow Spirit and Owen Pallett
• Park Theatre, 8 p.m., Cheekface, Strawberry Punch, Tired Cossack

THURSDAY

• West End Cultural Centre, 8 p.m., Slow Spirit and Owen Pallett
• Park Theatre, 8 p.m., Cheekface, Strawberry Punch, Tired Cossack

FRIDAY

• Sidestage, 9 p.m., Witchy Woods, The Haileys, Blond(e) Goth, Nap Eyes

SATURDAY

• The Forks Market 2nd Floor Lounge, Hera Nalam (noon), KC is Lazy (1 p.m.), Gabi Ocejo (2 p.m.)
• Canadian Music for Human Rights, 4 p.m., sakihiwe festival Round Dance
• The Forks, Room 201, 7 p.m., Keisha Booker, DJ Zuki, Diaphane, Snackie, Dplus and others

SUNDAY

• West End Cultural Centre, 2 p.m., @canada.gov.ca

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