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Oscar Peterson peers up through the glass ceiling of his sunroom and apologizes for the faint noise coming from a distant jet passing overhead. “We’re right in their flight path,” explains Peterson, whose split-level house in Mississauga, Ont., sits due west of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. Happily, the spacious home he shares with his fourth wife, Kelly, and their seven-year-old daughter, Celine, is also smack in the middle of the flight path of many migrating birds. Peterson loves birds. His sunroom is filled with artists’ renderings of them—some cast in bronze, others shaped in shards of brightly coloured glass. “My favourite is the loon,” says Peterson. “I've always loved its ...

A few days on the concert circuit with the Canadian band Sloan defy just about all the usual rock ‘n’ roll expectations. Excessive drugs and boozing? Try ginger ale and early-ish to bed. Dalliances with groupies? Try looking for a phone to call the steady girlfriend. A whole lot of egotism and attitude? Try nice, earnest, uncompetitive. The alternative-pop quartet, which put Halifax on the music map in the early 1990s, has added a decidedly grounded element to grunge--in fact, Sloan soon abandoned that bristly style for more melodic, even retro, sounds. Perhaps the only rock indulgence the four musicians allow themselves is basking in the adulation of fans.  “We’re not getting drunk or ...

As a teenager growing up in the housing projects of north Toronto, Darrin O’Brien did not seem to have much of a future. An indifferent student from a working-class family, he spent much of his time drinking, fighting and getting caught on the wrong side of the law. His police record includes several convictions—for mischief, causing a disturbance and assault. Aside from his skill as a street fighter, O’Brien's only talent was mimicking the thick Jamaican dialect that he heard on reggae records and in his predominantly West Indian neighborhood. Then, in 1989, when he was 19, a brawl involving butcher knives sent him to jail on charges of attempted murder. But prison proved to be a turning po...

With his oversized Afro and razored sideburns, Alex Cuba cuts a cool figure, a cross between ’70s soul man and stylish rocker. It’s a look that has been attracting attention ever since the musician, born Alexis Puentes in Artemisa, an hour west of Havana, first moved to Canada. But while Cuba’s appearance has turned heads—especially in the small, northern British Columbia town of Smithers where he settled with his Canadian wife, Sarah Goodacre—his music, an infectious blend of rock, reggae, soul, funk and traditional Cuban music, has been grabbing ears and winning awards. Cuba’s first two Spanish albums, Humo de Tabaco and Agua del Pozo, won Juno Awards for World Music Album of the Year. His...

It's Juno week again. And once more, those vying for awards in Canadian music's biggest lovefest run the gamut from artistic to plastic-from the always compelling Leonard Cohen to the prefabricated pop quartet Sugar Jones. The Junos, Canada's answer to the Grammys, have always been rife with eccentricities, as Cohen noted in 1993 while accepting an award. "It's only in a country like this," mused the man with the infamous monotone, "that I could get Male Vocalist of the Year." Cohen's competition that year included Neil Young, who is also not known for his dulcet tones. Young won the award two years later. After that, the category name was changed to Best Male Artist to prevent more bad joke...

For more than 25 years, Leon Redbone has been successfully romancing the past with his Twenties show tunes and turn-of-the-century ditties. His first two albums, 1975's On the Track and 1977's Double Time, were surprise hits. Wearing his trademark fedora and Groucho Marx moustache, he became a fixture on Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson during the '70s and '80s. His fans included Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan, who once told Rolling Stone that if he ever started his own label, Redbone would be his first signing. Now, Dylan has complimented him again: several songs on his latest album, Love and Theft, pay homage to Redbone's vaude- villian charms. So why has ...

Oh brother, what's going on here? Bluegrass and gospel suddenly seem as hot as hip-hop and electronica. Banjos and mandolins are replacing keyboards and drum machines as the instruments du jour. And sing-along hootenannies are taking over at least a few downtown clubs across the country. Ever since the O Brother, Where Art Thou? sound track started selling by the truckload, old-time country music is everywhere: at summer festivals, on college radio, even at the neighbourhood Starbucks. The trend has nothing to do with Nashville or guys in big hats with names like Garth. It's a musical revolution of a different sort -- out with the new, in with the old. Canadian guitarist Colin Linden, who co...

There's nothing morbid about Suzie Ungerleider. As her musical persona, Oh Susanna, she may be known for harrowing ballads of murder and destruction, all steeped in keening Appalachian-style vocals and plaintive pedal-steel guitars. But the acclaimed Canadian-based singer-songwriter is actually quite cheerful in person. The petite, soft-spoken musician smiled and giggled her way through most of a recent interview in Toronto. So where does this obsession with death come from? "It's really just a metaphorical device," explains the 31-year-old. "Many of my songs are about transformation. The characters in my songs, whether they're villains or victims, all go through profound changes. I like tha...

Is Hawksley Workman too good to be true? At 26, the Canadian singer-songwriter has already drawn comparisons to figures like David Bowie and Tom Waits—for two self-produced albums on which he wrote all the songs and played virtually every instrument. London's influential Time Out magazine has called him "quite possibly the coolest thing to come out of Canada." His performances—daring theatricality mixed with shameless romanticism—have elicited the sort of reviews usually reserved for rock royalty. Then there's his wildly improbable name. Is it something he lifted out of Dickens, or from an old travelling medicine show? Until recently, Workman wasn't saying. He first popped up in 1999 with hi...

When one of Africa’s most celebrated musicians receives visitors at his home in the Nigerian capital of Lagos, he lounges in little more than a striped bathing suit, which tends to slip down in the back. But when Fela Anikulapo Kuti jumps on stage to perform, his costume is a study in flamboyance. He wears a blue jump suit and pants embroidered with saxophones. His act is equally colorful. He sways his saxophone and waves his arms to keep his 27 musicians in line. Between blasts of his multicolored sax, Fela sings in pidgin English the provocative lyrics that have aroused the ire of the military government of his native Nigeria—and which have won him the title of the Afrobeat King, as critic...