Aquakultre’s Community Listening Party in collaboration with Half
Saturday, September 19, 2026
2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
It's Ok* Studios
Music serves as an enduring vessel for memory, resistance, and community history. In this special collaborative listening session hosted at It's Ok* Studios on Queen West, artist Lance Sampson—performing as Aquakultre—invites audiences to explore the deep lineages behind his Polaris Music Prize-longlisted album *1783*.
Presented in partnership with Half A Concert, the gathering traces connections between Black Loyalist ancestry, the history and legacy of Africville, and contemporary Black Canadian artistic expression. Rather than a conventional concert, this is a guided communal listening space where songs meet oral archives, historical recordings, and lived testimony.
Listening as Collective Practice
Aquakultre leads the room through selected cuts from *1783* alongside rare audio and video recordings of Black Nova Scotian musicians across generations. The program is structured to spark conversation around performance traditions, migration, preservation, and joy, creating space for dialogue among artists, elders, cultural workers, students, and neighbours.
The Venue
It's Ok* Studios operates as an independent Black-led multidisciplinary art and cultural space at 468 Queen Street West, situated between Spadina and Augusta. It has quickly become a critical downtown hub for experimental programming, community conversations, and live performance.
Admission is free and open to the public, making this an accessible opportunity to engage with Black Canadian music history in an intimate, thoughtful setting.
