UNDERWORLDS
Underworlds follows the Anishnaabe (Ojibway) hero Cheeby-Aub-Oozoo whose mythic descent to the underworld bequeaths music and dream quests to the land of the living. Underworlds is based on the mythology born from Canada's soil, and is unique to the Canadian cultural experience.
Written and performed by Sandra Laronde, with cultural advisors Alex McKay and Basil Johnston (Anishnaabe/Ojibway Elders), Underworlds is a live music, song, and dramatic storytelling performance featuring only pre-colonial music and instrumentation.
Underworlds was a signature event of the Metamorphosis Festival, Toronto's city-wide festival of transformation and the arts which was a double bill of Red Sky Performance and the Toronto Consort.
REVIEWS OF UNDERWORLDS
"A vivid illustration of the transformative power of music and song."
– Toronto Star
"Underworlds has so much going for it: the story of Cheeby-Aub-Oozoo is intriguing and the narration by the beautiful Sandra Laronde is strong and stately. Marion Newman’s singing and frame drumming is consistently well-focused and well-executed with the solid traditional singers Eddy Robinson and Derrick Bressette...Zepeda truly occupies centre stage."
– Live Music Report
"The mythology of a people is the articulation of the dreamworld of that people. Without that dreamlife being active in all its forms - from the most extreme beauty to the most horrific and back - the culture of that people is dead."
– Tomson Highway