Wavelength Music is on the frontline of Toronto’s DIY scene

Even outside my hotel window at The Drake, situated on the snowy strip of one of Canada’s hippest neighbourhoods, between bouts of sleet, black squirrels dart along skeletal tree branches, performing their own kind of urban choreography. On a late-night walk back from a showcase, I clock a fat raccoon scaling a telephone pole like it’s second nature. It’s abeguiling sight for an individual simply accustomed to the rats on the London Underground. But it’s also a reminder that survival in Toronto requires adaptability to forever-shifting environments, be it location or climate, as one bears witness throughout the course of a three-day programme of talks, panels, workshops, gatherings, and performances abound: Alex Cameron, Dan English, Bibi Club, Sook-Yin Lee, notably.

Following the announcement of an inaugural “music festival + conference” format, Wavelength has expanded its platform into proposition, a testing ground scrutinising traditional showcase models but for the best, with all-encompassing itineraries inviting industry delegates, artists, promoters, policy-makers, and curious DIY music fanatics. A welcome unison of local and international guests all circling the same uncertainties.

At the organisational level, Wavelength is an independent non-profit which justly prides itself on being able to pay artists close to a living wage. Fair compensation as a non-negotiable rather than aspiration. What began as a weekly concert series dating back to the year 2000, it is spearheaded by co-founder Jonathan Bunce, a.k.a. Jonny Dovercourt, author of Any Night of the Week: A D.I.Y. History of Toronto Music, 1957-2001. A driving force in advocacy for Toronto’s music community over 25 years, in 2023, he co-authored Reimaging Music Venues, a province-wide research report concerning new models of conservation and innovation for Ontario’s live music spaces.

Grassroots venues in Toronto, much like elsewhere, operate on fragile economics, unstable ground dependent on the network of licensed bars and alcohol sales, more so than cultural funding. Speaking to BEST FIT, Bunce emphasises that while alternative spaces like libraries, galleries, and churches are increasingly part of the conversation, they are not replacements but complements to existing venues. “Wavelength has always been about developing this ecosystem approach, and just building the community from the ground up,” he says.

For Bunce, the solution lies in structural reform and collective action. There is an opportunity for Toronto, and Canada more broadly, to position itself as a more welcoming and viable destination for artists navigating an increasingly volatile landscape. But pressure must be put on governing bodies. Touring is difficult, distances are vast, and investment uneven across provinces. Wavelength’s mission is clear: to make Toronto more than a stopover, instead a meaningful hub for connection less about scale than sustainability.

On Little Portugal, one of Old Toronto’s many wondrous ethnic enclaves, sits Lula Lounge, a grand live music venue known for its Latin flavour of salsa dining and dancing. For Wavelength weekend, it serves as the spot for an abundance of panels targeting all manner of subjects, the two-day conference opening with Middle Power: Inside Canada-EU Export Pipelines. Landing somewhere between wry observation and identity crisis, ideas of exportable music and the maximisation of showcase opportunities float. Bob van Heur, co-founder of Utrecht’s Le Guess Who? Festival, cuts through with clarity: there should be more focus on Indigenous artists, not as a token gesture, but as a structural priority.

By the second panel, conversations turn toward Iranian music communities in Canada, and the urgency is palpable. There’s a hunger for connection, an almost instantaneous kinship when Iranian musicians meet across borders. With geopolitical tensions difficult to ignore, speakers emphasise the importance of keeping ears to the ground. Tehran-born, Detroit-basedDJ Salar Ansari believes Persian music is widely practiced but deeply understudied. Negin Rashidipour speaks on exclusion tired to her political stance on current evens in Iran. Tokenism, fractures within diaspora communities, and the discomfort with reductive, flattening labels like “world music” or “Middle Eastern music”.

Later on the Thursday night, Dastgâmachine, a “Persian dub-concrète psychedelia” three-piece from Toronto, are defiantly hybrid, their sound neither traditional nor fully electronic. Paris artist Cinna Peyghamy builds a slow-burning set around rhythmic percussion and creeping static, not pausing for one moment on his impressive tombak playing.

“Music has been probably the biggest, most successful cultural export of our country,” says Bunce. Heated Rivalry craze aside, the DIY spirit of Toronto’s ‘90s music scene endures and flourishes through acts following in the footsteps of It’s Patrick!, Kat Rocket, Mean Red Spiders, Neck. Spaces like Ted’s Wrecking Yard and Sneaky Dee’s, Wavelength’s former stomping grounds, are no longer. St. Anne’s Parish, amid restoration following its destruction by fire in 2024, remodeled by Bunce’s collective with a welcome banner and projection screen. A stage is set at its basement level, playing host to a variety of lo-fi and noisy outfits, including Dastgâmachine and Peyghamy. In between sets, an aptly named Coat Check Disco off to the side complete with a glitter globe and makeshift mobile.

Bunce, as ringmaster, introduces acts with a grin: “Let’s hear it for public funding of the arts.” Performance highlights include gritty Montreal-based post-punk band Ribbon Skirt, fronted by Anishinaabe musician Tashiina Buswa. Slash Need, in a late-night celebration of boundary-pushing electronica, conjuring propulsive techno and high-octane theatrical performance in the unorthodox venue space. Wavelength isn’t all seamless execution, a power cut mid-Slash Need throws the room off before recovery with even more ferocity. There are whispers of firemen being called out thanks to smoke machines. What becomes clear is that it’s unpredictability, though, is absolutely part of the charm.

Back at Lula Lounge, Juno-nominated Sri Lankan-Canadian artist Tara Kannangara offers something altogether different. Disarmingly sincere numbers, in the vein of soaring Chappell Roan or Gracie Abrams. With no new single or project to promote, she pauses mid-set to reflect on her warm Wavelength reception, “It’s actually really moving to me... you just want to hear me play.” Kannangara is very proud to be a part of Toronto’s inspiring scene, though with more DIY spaces popping up, she’s always shocked when venues manage to stay open. Down the street are two of Toronto’s few veteran venues, The Baby G and The Garrison, which invited Hong Kong’s Lucid Express for a reverb-drenched shoegaze set. “Maybe I stage dive,” the bassist jokes. The guitar does, eventually.

On capturing the mix of artists at Wavelength, Melanie St-Pierre – Music Sector Development Officer for Cultural Industries Ontario North, and founding member of billed Toronto indie rock band Casper Skulls – shares: “The people who are continuing and working really hard to put things like this on, they’re champions. We don’t have time to be gatekeepers, let’s just share the knowledge because there’s room for everybody. We want voices, we want new generations.”

Day two of the conference pivots towards topics of infrastructure, with Mark Davyd of Sam Fender and Wolf Alice-backed charity Music Venue Trust delivering a sobering keynote to Lula Lounge’s Canadian patrons. The UK has lost two-thirds of its grassroots music venues in the past 25 years. Rural closures are near-impossible to reverse, “these are not profitable venues, they’re cultural institutions,” he stresses. Davyd rouses an overwhelmingly positive response with his list of practical solutions, however. A game-changing “agent of change” principle, venue protection laws. A responsibility on behalf of Music Venue Trust for the buying of venues outright, removing them from volatile commercial markets dictated by developers and anti-noise legislation. Canada has, precisely, an opportunity here to act before reaching the same tipping point.

Conversations continue with the need for levies within the current music economy. The possibility of Universal Basic Income for artists, with Ireland cited as a case study. Touring sustainability involving electric vehicles, artist-only accommodation, and overall slow touring models to prioritise efficiency and eliminate burnout.

In the panel Pulse Check on Canada’s Festivals and Touring Landscape, Colleen Krueger, of Calgary music & food festival East Town Get Down, speaks passionately about slow touring, creating a network in local suburban scenes, and building connection beyond a single show. The importance of mitigative design, and the inevitable generational artistic gaps if young creatives in faraway towns do not gain the resources to be exposed to, and understand the curation of, art, the participation of art, in urban sprawls.

BC Music Festival Collective’s Julie Fowler sheds light on how climate disaster is affecting festivals, what it’s like to run a festival in a state of emergency, and the harsh realities of outdoor summer festivals. Fires, for instance, are a huge risk and a big issue for ticket buyers, especially, concerning the threat of event cancellation.

Even outside the official Wavelength programming, the city of Toronto becomes part of the experience. Sonic Boom Music, take away its presenting partnership with the festival, remainsan ideal hotspot for window shoppers, with sprawling rows of LPs and CDs. A chance detour to Doc’s Leathers reveals a treasure trove of subcultural music ephemera, housing shelves of preloved analogue synths and physical media. I pick up a 90s trance compilation box set here.

At art-and-technology-forward gallery InterAccess, presented by Synth Palace, Wavelength introduces its own Synth Petting Zoo, a delightful family-friendly feature in the form of interactive play with some incredible synthesizers and electronic instruments. A tactile disc jockey’s playground of vintage curiosities and experimental interfaces, cushions scatter the floor inviting you to sit, sprawl and tinker the alien textures from a Moog or Soma Terra.

Saturday activities keep spirits high, delivering a Musical History Walking Tour of Toronto’s bohemian and multicultural Kensington Market neighbourhood. Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf der Maur, in conversation at the Art Gallery of Ontario, draws a crowd for a book signing of her brand new memoir Even the Good Girls Will Cry. There’s talk of Courtney Love and Nirvana ,of legacy and misrepresentation. She is candid and compelling, capping off the day’s proceedings with a darkwave DJ set, bathed in purple light, back at St. Anne’s.

As the final night winds down, coats reclaimed from the disco room, while conversations linger on the freezing cold parish pavement outside, somewhere in the trees those black woodland creatures are probably still at it. Relentless, alive, and Wavelength, like them, shows no signs of stopping. Expect a round two of conference and concert chaos next March break.