YYC Music Awards

This Is What Calgary Sounds Like Now

September 11, 2026 in Award Shows, Music

Bijaan and Jaiden Riley arrive at the 2026 YYC Music Awards from very different corners of Calgary’s music community. Bijaan’s path runs from childhood rap sessions in northwest Calgary to two nominations for “Jungle,” while Riley enters with three nominations after a year shaped by rapid career growth, community and profound personal loss.

In conversation with Afros in tha City, both artists look beyond the awards to the friendships, mentors, family histories and years of work that made the nominations possible. From Bijaan’s third-culture story and long relationship with Calgary hip-hop to Riley’s rise through the city’s country and folk community, the feature offers a deeper look at what it actually takes to build a music career from here.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

AITC - September 2026

Featured

AITC September 2026 - What Will It Take For Us To Feed One Another - Aquakultre

What Sugar and Indigo Remember

Sugar, indigo, family photographs and the Atlantic carry histories that are easy to overlook until someone asks us to look again.

At Dalhousie Art Gallery, curator francesca ekwuyasi brings together Stina Baudin, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Bushra Junaid and Christina Leslie for Burnt Sugar Blue, an exhibition examining colonialism, Black diasporic memory, family, spirituality and the histories embedded in everyday materials.

In What Sugar and Indigo Remember, Afros in tha City looks at how these artists turn materials and archives into something living, while Roger Mooking’s SoundBites continues the conversation from across the gallery.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Roger Mooking Is Building Beyond the Algorithm

Roger Mooking is thinking beyond the algorithm.

With SoundBites, the Canadian multidisciplinary artist is responding to streaming culture, shrinking attention spans and the rise of AI by asking a different question: what happens when technology distributes the work, but does not define its value?

In conversation with Afros in tha City, Mooking talks about the state of the music industry, the value of slow creative practice and why the future of music may look a lot more like a campfire than a platform.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Prismatic Is Thinking Beyond Representation

Prismatic Arts Festival has spent nearly two decades creating space for Indigenous, Black and racialized artists. For Executive and Artistic Director Raeesa Lalani, the conversation now goes beyond visibility to sustainability, power and what artists need to build lasting careers.

In our September 2026 issue, Afros in tha City looks at the festival’s history, its place in Canada’s arts ecosystem and the artists shaping Prismatic 2026, including Walter Borden, Tara Taylor, Bageshree Vaze, Tania El Khoury and Dee Hernandez.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Timeless: 100 Years of Oscar Peterson Extended at Studio Bell

The National Music Centre’s Timeless: 100 Years of Oscar Peterson has been extended at Studio Bell through January 3, 2027. Originally opened in July 2025 to commemorate the centenary of Peterson’s birth, the exhibition brings together instruments, archival materials, awards, personal artifacts, interviews and multimedia installations to tell the story of one of Canada’s most important musicians.

Saul Williams Still Believes Art Has a Job to Do

With Leap Life and Songs My Mother Taught Me arriving eleven days apart, Saul Williams turns sound and page into one argument about art, memory and responsibility.

There is something almost unreasonable about the amount Saul Williams still expects from art. Nearly three decades into a career spanning poetry, music, theatre, film and literature, Williams has not arrived at the comfortable conclusion that art should simply entertain us. Within the span of eleven days this summer, he released two projects arguing that culture does much more than that.

His album Leap Life, released August 28 on Big Dada, moves through spoken word, hip-hop, jazz, ambient composition, African rhythmic traditions and improvisation. On September 8, Haymarket Books published Songs My Mother Taught Me: Why the Artist Must Take Sides, a political memoir tracing the people and experiences that shaped Williams’ understanding of art as power.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Afros Picks: Three DJs Setting the Tone at MUSE N°001

Vancouver’s MUSE N°001 brings together four DJs with distinctly different approaches to the dance floor. RAEDIAMENDZ, SAANZ, and DJ BOMBAE move through hip-hop, R&B, African electronic music, Afro House and open-format sounds, each bringing her own relationship to culture, rhythm and the room.

Created by creative director Drew Ragiste, MUSE is built around a bigger question: what happens when women are considered in the design of nightlife from the beginning?

In this month’s Afropicks, Afros in tha City meets the four selectors setting the tone for MUSE’s first night.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Award Shows, Music

This Is What Calgary Sounds Like Now

Award Shows, Music

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Award Shows, Music

Fashion, Wellness

Recovery Was Never Meant to Be Hidden

Fashion, Wellness

Sober Runway is bigger than a fashion show. Built from lived experience, work in addiction and mental-health services, and belief in recovery through community, the organization uses fashion to challenge the idea that surviving addiction should remain hidden.

In the September issue, Sober Runway founder Suzzy, opens up about stigma, culture, family, recovery and the community she is working to build beyond the runway.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Fashion, Wellness

Music

The Road They Built and the Stars Who Found Their Way Home

Music

There was a time when Kreesha Turner’s voice was everywhere. Her music filled Canadian radio, reached international audiences and made her one of the most recognizable artists to emerge from Western Canada. Then she stepped away.

Her return to Edmonton leads back to Music for Mavericks, the grassroots collective that helped prepare Kreesha, Mouraine and a generation of Alberta artists for the world. Twenty years later, they reflect on the music, sacrifice and community behind the movement, as well as the work Alberta still has left to do.

*Community Note
In connection with this feature, a direct donation was made to the Calgary Drop-In Centre by Music for Mavericks.

The full feature and photo story will be released with the September digital issue and limited print edition.

Join the Afros in tha City newsletter to be the first to know when both editions become available.

Music

Identity, Music

Afros in tha City - August 2026 - Adrian Younge

Identity, Music

& Afro-Disco Makossa: The Dance Floor Record He’s Always Wanted to Spin & More.

Music never arrives without a history. It carries places, technologies, memories and the fingerprints of those who came before.

For our August cover story, Afros in tha City sits down with Adrian Younge to explore the sounds, relationships and creative philosophy behind Afro-Disco Makossa—a record born from his long-held desire to create music for the dance floor without surrendering the depth, musicianship or historical consciousness that defines his work.

Drawing from makossa, soul, funk and disco, the album does not treat these traditions as relics to be reproduced. Younge approaches them as living languages: sounds capable of holding their histories while continuing to move, transform and speak to the present. The result is music designed for movement, connection and deep listening—a record that looks backward only to understand where it might travel next.

But this conversation extends far beyond one album.

Younge reflects on the trust that can only be built through consistency, his enduring creative partnership with Ali Shaheed Muhammad, and the ecosystem they have created through Jazz Is Dead. Rather than positioning legendary musicians as figures frozen in the past, the platform invites living artists to continue creating, experimenting and adding new chapters to their own stories.

He also speaks about attending law school because he wanted to become what he calls “an educated artist”—someone equipped to understand contracts, intellectual property, ownership and the structures surrounding the work. His independence is not simply an aesthetic or an industry label. It is knowledge, preparation, discipline and the infrastructure required to protect a creative life.

That philosophy carries particular weight for an independent publication like ours. Building outside traditional systems requires more than vision. It requires learning how the machinery works, deciding what must remain yours and creating an ecosystem capable of supporting the work long after the excitement of an idea has passed.

Throughout the conversation, Younge retains the curiosity that first led him toward music. “We’re just bigger kids,” he says—a reminder that serious artistic practice does not require abandoning wonder. Growth can mean becoming more skilled, more informed and more intentional while remaining open enough to keep discovering.

This is a cover story about a dance-floor record, but it is also about something larger: how artists honour history without becoming trapped inside it, how independence is built rather than declared, and how curiosity keeps the conversation moving forward.

Adrian Younge covers the August issue of Afros in tha City.

Read “Afro-Disco Makossa: The Dance Floor Record He’s Always Wanted to Spin” at afrosinthacity.com and in our print publication.

Stories Shaping Culture.

Identity, Music

Music

Valerie June on the Practice of Joy

Music

A fifteen-minute festival interview with Valerie June begins with crossed schedules and a quiet moment of evaluation. Then the conversation finds its rhythm, becoming something much larger than an exchange about her latest album, Owls, Omens and Oracles.

In “The Practice of Joy,” Kimberley Dooshima Jev speaks with the Grammy-nominated artist about spirituality, independence and building a creative life that remains aligned with your values. June shares how meditation and affirmations become part of ordinary routines, why “small is powerful,” and how she measures the impact of her music through human connection rather than charts, algorithms or scale.

Their conversation also turns toward the ways Black women’s experiences are routinely flattened—and the freedom of creating new platforms instead of waiting for permission to belong. June’s declaration, “I’m keeping my joy because they would want me to,” transforms joy from a fleeting emotion into remembrance, responsibility and an inheritance carried forward.

What begins as an interview about music ultimately clarifies the values guiding Afros in tha City: community over scale, creation over permission and resonance over metrics. It is a reminder that joy is not escapism. It is a deliberate practice—and sometimes, an act of survival.

Read “The Practice of Joy” in full at Afros in tha City or in our print publication.

Music

Lowkita - In Her Own Time

Music

After nearly a decade between full-length projects, Lowkita returns with Why(Te) Tee—a deeply personal record shaped by motherhood, grief, burnout and the quiet confidence of an artist moving in her own time.

In “In Her Own Time,” Kimberley Dooshima Jev traces the Calgary-born, Vancouver-based artist’s years of rebuilding. Lowkita never stopped creating: she performed, produced, DJed, designed clothing and found new ways to sustain herself while raising her daughter and navigating profound personal loss.

The story also explores the meaning behind Why(Te) Tee. What began with the image of a white T-shirt as a symbol of starting over evolved into a larger meditation on purpose: the “Why” behind continuing, “TE” as a reminder that timing is everything, and the belief that every pause and setback has helped build the project’s foundation.

More than a comeback, Why(Te) Tee is an invitation to meet the person behind Lowkita’s bright, energetic presence. It captures an all-around artist who has learned that consistency does not require constant visibility—and that showing up, on your own terms, can be its own form of success.

Read “In Her Own Time” in full at Afros in tha City or in our print publication.

Music

"There Has to Be a Festival"

For Calgary ReggaeFest founder and producer Leo Cripps, success has never been measured by crowd size, celebrity headliners or rapid expansion. It rests on one enduring belief: “There has to be a festival.”

This feature traces more than two decades of quiet resilience—from financial setbacks and pandemic uncertainty to the 2024 cancellation of Sunny Soul Jam. Through it all, Calgary ReggaeFest has built its reputation by growing responsibly, remaining debt-free and honouring its commitments to every artist, vendor and partner.

Cripps also reflects on the festival’s new home at The Rise on St. Patrick’s Island, the generations of families who return each summer and a lineup that carries reggae’s history forward through legends and emerging artists alike.

At its heart, Calgary ReggaeFest is a story of stewardship: choosing sustainability over spectacle and ensuring reggae music and Caribbean culture continue to have a home in Calgary. After more than twenty years, its greatest achievement may be beautifully simple—it kept its promise.

Read the full story at Afros in tha City or in our print publication.

Identity, Music

The Blueprint of Reggae - Leroy Sibbles Looks Back on Six Decades of Rhythm

Identity, Music

Few musicians are as inseparable from reggae’s foundations as Leroy Sibbles. As a pioneering bassist and arranger at Studio One and the legendary lead vocalist of The Heptones, he helped create the rhythms, basslines and vocal sound that continue to reverberate through contemporary music.

In “The Blueprint of Reggae,” Cara Eyre speaks with Sibbles about six decades of innovation, from late-night rehearsals in Trench Town and groundbreaking recording sessions with Clement “Coxsone” Dodd to hearing new generations sample and reinterpret the music he helped build.

The conversation also traces the personal journey that brought Sibbles to Canada in the 1970s, where he helped cultivate Toronto’s reggae scene and established a lasting connection to his adopted second home. Looking back, he measures his legacy through the musicians he inspired, the careers he strengthened and the joy his work continues to create.

At the heart of it all is a message of unity. Sibbles’ music has crossed oceans, bridged generations and brought millions together—and after six decades, his invitation remains beautifully simple: “We all sing together.”

Read “The Blueprint of Reggae” in full at Afros in tha City or in our print publication.

Identity, Music

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July 2026 - The Omnibus - Print

CA$50.00

The Summer Omnibus is our most ambitious issue yet. Bringing together seven months of journalism, photography, and storytelling, this special collector's edition celebrates Black arts, business, fashion, music, and community across Canada and the diaspora.

Featuring exclusive cover stories with Judith Demosthene, Funmi Osatuyi, Adrianne Williams, Nancy Nixon, Ayokunle Akinsebikan, Femi Jr., and more, this 70-page volume captures the people, ideas, and conversations shaping culture today.

Beautifully printed in limited quantities, the Summer Omnibus is designed to be collected, shared, and revisited long after publication.

Limited print copies available.