Dub/reggae singer-songwriter gives voice to Toronto’s homeless

A decade in the past, after a dozen years of post-secondary examine to earn a PhD in philosophy, and three extra as a professor of similar on the College of Ottawa, Paul Salvatori returned to his hometown of Toronto and had an epiphany.

“I bought again to doing group work, activism, journalism and it reawakened the will to assist carry change to marginalized communities, which was such a spotlight in my teenagers,” Salvatori says. “That is what I wasn’t getting within the classroom – and I noticed I’m right here to make a distinction.”

Salvatori bid farewell to academia and entered the social service employee program at George Brown. He volunteered along with his mentor, famend homeless advocate Cathy Crowe, on the Shelter and Housing Justice Community, and started his personal particular person outreach to the homeless he encounters close to his Downsview space dwelling.

Now 41, he’s additionally a videographer, photographer, journalist, podcaster – and a dub/reggae singer-songwriter.

“I’m actually involved about how the marginalized – whether or not we’re speaking concerning the homeless, the racialized, the low earnings – don't have an amplified voice within the mainstream,” Salvatori says. “Sometimes, now we have educated, skilled folks writing tales about them (in mediaand educational research), however what I want to create is an initiative … the place they'll inform their very own tales on their very own phrases.”

That imaginative and prescient might embrace offering instruments and coaching to allow writing, documentary video, podcasting and images. Salvatori says the necessary level is that “they're the authors as an alternative of the topic. As an alternative of those being talked about, they're those doing the speaking.”

Recording below simply his surname, Salvatori is now utilizing his expertise as an artist to “shine a lightweight” on homelessness in Toronto, which he describes as “a public well being catastrophe that we’ve sort of simply normalized.

“I used to be considering lots about music, not simply as leisure or an artwork kind, however as a software to speak necessary concepts with political relevance,”he says, citing Leonard Cohen and Jamaican dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson as inspirations.

Recorded in collaboration with multi-instrumentalist and producer Peter Bull, Salvatori says he realizes his new seven-song impartial EP “You Lie” won't be everybody’s cup of tea. “It sounds experimental,” he says, “but it surely simply displays the darkish actuality of not simply the homeless lives of the folks I do know, however how I encounter them in these conditions. It’s additionally reflective of anger and frustration and fears concerning the well-being of the homeless.”

The mix of Bull’s avant-garde soundscapes and Salvatori’s deeply resonant, brooding, spoken-word collages take the listener on an unsettling journey into the lives of the folks like Domenico Saxida, the unofficial chief from Alexandra Park’s homeless encampment, who died just lately; and Kevin, who implored Salvatori to seize on video his message of “the ache and the fear he felt being homeless.”

One monitor displays Salvatori’s emotions of watching police and social staff transfer in to clear the homeless encampment at Trinity Bellwoods Park final summer season: “Got here in like a squadron, horsemen harassing the homeless on the day of the eviction.”

Different lyrics pose questions: “I'm wondering what it’s like for the homeless to see us in snug houses, snug automobiles, snug garments … do they hate us? Envy us? Pity us?”

Salvatori hopes “You Lie” (obtainable through main streaming providers and YouTube) will invite folks to consider how society addresses homelessness, which he believes shouldn't be seen as merely a truth of life in an enormous metropolis. All proceeds from the EP shall be donated to a homeless assist group.

He needs to in the future see Toronto reply to homelessness the best way the Imaginative and prescient Zero marketing campaign is attempting to shift views about bike owner and pedestrian deaths – to deem it essentially unacceptable.

“Issues stand to worsen if we don’t hearken to their voices, as a result of they're finest located to essentially illuminate to us how unhealthy that actuality is,” he says. “It is a political drawback that may be rectified via collective motion and thru accountable management, so I'm inviting folks to consider how we are able to obtain that.”