Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Good morning, Fort McMurray, wood, Buffalo, and the rest of the world. You've tuned into the Mac CD morning show. I am your host Elliot Pierre, and we're going to start the show off the same way we start every episode off with a moment of gratitude. I know you could be doing a million other things with your time, and the fact that you spent it with us truly does mean the world to me. So thank you on that note, Tanner hit him with the intro
Speaker 4 00:00:29 Hey everybody, Keith Simpson here from neural Toyota, we support dwell Barrens. We've joined the drive-in movie theater. We're involved in the marathon here in Fort McMurray, and that's what makes this community such an amazing place to live.
Speaker 0 00:00:42 All right. And we're back before we get started big shout out to neural Toyota, Keith fad, dimmer, all the boys and girls down at Al thank you for being the title sponsor to the show. Definitely appreciate your support. So thank you. Now on that note, as you know, I don't introduce my guests. I let them do that themselves because they could do a better job. So can you please tell everybody at home who you are and what you're about?
Speaker 5 00:01:03 Yes. Thank you for having me again. My name is , um, uh, the executive director of mindless foundation, uh, but also a teacher in the community.
Speaker 0 00:01:15 That's right. So you were here just a little while ago, and you're telling us a little bit about the foundation you're telling us about you going back to St. Paul school. Yes. And then you reached out and you said, Hey, listen, I actually have something coming up. Can I come chat about it again? And I said, well, 100%. So what do you have coming up?
Speaker 5 00:01:32 Uh, on March 22nd, we'll be launching our first community program. Uh, the Montclair spawn foundation. So in about 10 days.
Speaker 0 00:01:40 Okay. Yeah. Okay. So what's that event all about? Let us, let me know about it.
Speaker 5 00:01:45 Yeah. The program is, uh, is titled technology and musical instrument for all. So the foundation has purchased, uh, uh, a bunch of musical instruments and, uh, Chromebooks, but we'll be learning that to people in the community, so it can be individuals, but it can also be, uh, uh, organizations, afterschool programs, churches, music, programs, whatever they need. Uh, they can reach out to us and coming in for, for some times it can be from one day to three months at the time. Yes.
Speaker 0 00:02:20 Cool. So have you, is this event about, um, collecting donations and trying to garner support for this? Or have you already had, do you already have all of these instruments and Chromebooks, and now you're saying, Hey, come and see what this is all about.
Speaker 5 00:02:36 Uh, usually the fund, the foundation is the one making donations. Okay. Uh, we April can reach out to us and donate if they want to the foundation, but usually on March 22nd, who we, the foundation in honor of Mount LA, we are making donations. We'll go, uh, on the same day on March 22nd, but also we are making available those, uh, uh, Chromebooks and musical instruments for the community.
Speaker 0 00:03:04 Okay. So where, and when is this event taking place?
Speaker 5 00:03:07 This is when we'll be taking place in the community hall in millennium at million gate in Timberly
Speaker 0 00:03:14 Again? Timberly yeah, what's another landmark. I don't know where that is. Millennia.
Speaker 5 00:03:18 The landmark being on gate is, uh, beside the Boston pizza. Intima intimacy. Yeah, it's over there. There
Speaker 0 00:03:24 We go. Okay. It
Speaker 5 00:03:26 Is cold. Yes. That area.
Speaker 0 00:03:28 Yes, yes, yes. Okay. What kind of instruments do you have?
Speaker 5 00:03:31 Uh, we will have a ukulele because they were manned last favorite musical instrument and we will also have a gym base. We will have, uh, um, uh, guitars and, uh, what else? Pretty much for now. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:03:46 Okay. Okay. Sweet. And then as well, he's like you said, you had Chromebooks, so what would you utilize a Chromebook for in regards to music or arts? What kind of things could children? Our young adults use that,
Speaker 5 00:04:01 Uh, the Chromebooks, uh, in regards of all you probably, I'm not a music teacher though, but if, uh, you have, uh, you know, music teachers can, they have, uh, applications and, you know, people can use that. But also the, the technology part is for those who are facing, uh, I know through hardship and probably they will want to use that phrase. For instance, I have a, a friend of me who just, you know, we were talking and she said, oh my God, my daughter, Josie, she's in high school. She just broke her laptop. And we are still in the middle of the school year. School is not done yet and she cannot shoot. She wasn't able to afford another laptop writing right there. So we come in handy and if a parent is facing that kind of situation, they can just reach out to us and say, can you write a Chromebook food? Came on for the,
Speaker 0 00:04:53 Oh, okay. Okay. That's awesome. Now, when it comes to musical instruments, do you play any?
Speaker 5 00:04:59 No.
Speaker 0 00:05:00 No.
Speaker 5 00:05:02 I love to hear people play. I don't play, like I used to play ukulele. I was always saying, please stand up properly. I don't want you to have back pain because she was always in her, you know, on her ukulele. No, I don't play any.
Speaker 0 00:05:16 Okay. Unfortunately. Okay. Yeah. Fortunately for other people's ears, I guess.
Speaker 0 00:05:24 Okay. So this is happening on the 22nd. What time can people come
Speaker 5 00:05:29 From four to six.
Speaker 0 00:05:31 Okay. And is it something that people need to call in and register for just like walk in or how does this all work out?
Speaker 5 00:05:36 I sent out some invitation. So if somebody is interested to come, uh, they can reach out to me. We will invite them or they can just pop in, you know? And, uh, and, uh, yeah, we are there, we are launching this event. We are making donations, like I said to, uh, two high schools in town. Uh, and, um, and well, listen to have hope. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:06:00 Yeah. So now in regards, we're going to jump back to music. You don't play musical That's okay. But obviously, like you have a love for music in one way, shape or form. How did that start?
Speaker 5 00:06:10 Um, well, African background, everything is musical, right? So, um, but beside that, like, I love the, I love the language. So whether it's French or English, I love a lot of French music. Uh, and also like I'm born well, would I wouldn't say when I was born, but I made the Airbnb, the nineties and twenties, that song, I love listening to music.
Speaker 0 00:06:40 Okay. So now I grew up born and raised here in Canada. I have unfortunately, never been to Africa one of these days. I'll try to make my way over there. So what I did grow up in a musical house in regards to my house was so loud all the time. And I loved it and I have a very quiet house. My son is growing up, completely different from me. Um, in regards to like at my house, my mom was always listening to, and I picked her up a few days ago and you blew his mind. I was listening to soca music and he was just like, what are you listening to? It's like, it's so crazy. Like, why aren't you listening?
Speaker 6 00:07:15 I, yeah. See, I knew what soca music was. I was surprised that Lee pier was listening
Speaker 5 00:07:20 To it.
Speaker 0 00:07:20 That's right. And I was just like, I grew up listening to this and it's not what I traditionally listened to now, but soca music was always playing by my mom and my dad is a like loves records. And so my mom would be listening to soak upstairs. My dad would be listening to top 40 or Motown music downs in the basement. So we had two musics competing. My sister would be playing Allister. My brother would be playing video games. It was like a loud house all of the time. And now I have Keegan. It's only him. And, uh, culturally, my wife, uh, grew up, uh, in a different household. Her parents are from Ireland. So very quiet. Uh, so now I don't have all this going on. So I know culturally there is music and noise and loudness, but my parents were from south America. So in Africa, like what is the music involvement in regards to the,
Speaker 5 00:08:15 Oh, the music is in our every day to day lives, right? Yeah. So when you have, um, to attend traditional stuff, everything is, you know, it's musical, you have music was used to communicate messages. You was used to express your emotions using when you use in a variety of ways. Right. And, um, and, uh, also we are, people will, you know, happy. So when we are happy, we express it by singing. When we are sad, when something drastic, you know, or tragically, uh, you know, uh, rises you are, you use that because sometimes that's the only way for you to express yourself. So music was always all the time and, uh, yeah. That's okay. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:09:03 Now you are listing off some genres of music that you like. So obviously you were influenced by north American music. So, but, and I've never really heard like now, cause satellite radio and Spotify and apple and whatnot, like you do hear global music now, but I've never heard of like a superstar come out of Africa as far as music that I'm aware of. Oh, am I wrong about this? Are there,
Speaker 6 00:09:29 I can, like, I can name several like successful artists from South Africa to start,
Speaker 0 00:09:35 Let me hear. Yeah.
Speaker 6 00:09:36 You might not know them, but like there's a very famous band called see either. Nope, no. See there's from South Africa that there's, I know that there, um,
Speaker 5 00:09:46 Fela Kuti was a very famous Nigerian singer, very famous, uh, Davido, also bono boy, you know, in this time, this age, um, how do afrobeats? Yeah. It's huge everywhere. So,
Speaker 0 00:10:04 So I, but that music to me has an influence of like, it sounds like traditional African music with, with north American flavors, reggae tone, and everything kind of makes it into
Speaker 6 00:10:15 A con
Speaker 0 00:10:16 Oh, I know econ. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 5 00:10:20 So
Speaker 0 00:10:20 Growing up there and like the language is different. So you must have like local music, local artists, there's obviously
Speaker 5 00:10:27 A
Speaker 0 00:10:27 Musical scene. So how come that doesn't translate over here is that much,
Speaker 5 00:10:32 Um, uh, how come it doesn't translate? Probably because, um, uh, it's not promoted as it should be. And also because, you know, when we're back home, when we're back home, we are, we are always interested by what's coming from, uh, from outside, right. These foreign saying. And, um, we didn't have the means because, uh, the culture here or the way they're promoting is so overshadowing what we are doing over there, but we don't have the financial means to export right.
Speaker 0 00:11:08 The
Speaker 5 00:11:09 Way it should be. But if you are in Europe, you will hear more about African music than if you are in north America. Right. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:11:16 Okay. So my favorite part about getting in different people's vehicles, it's like listening to the music that they have. So yeah, I'm a big lover of music, but, uh, yeah, it's just nowadays you're right. When I listened to like satellite radio, there are like, there's a lot of African artists coming out that you hear, especially like in like the dance scene because they oh yeah.
Speaker 5 00:11:38 Oh yeah. The beats,
Speaker 6 00:11:39 Well, and a lot of dance music is based off of music, like Jamaican dance house and soca music.
Speaker 0 00:11:45 Yeah. So, huh. Well, listen, Tanner, uh, showed me the little flash a few minutes ago that he has his questions for segment ready to max in a minute. But before we get going with the Mac city minute, um, there was a sponsor that we got to give a big shout out to it's, uh, McMurry denture center. If you're looking for a good smile, there's only one place to go with Marie denture center. Thank you very much for sponsoring this segment. We do appreciate it now. Tanner, you can hit her with the Mac city minute.
Speaker 6 00:12:13 Alrighty. Question number one. What is your favorite part of providing computers and instruments to the youth of Fort McMurray,
Speaker 5 00:12:20 Uh, is that we are helping the community and also we are doing it, uh, to honor the memory of Mandela who was very, uh, uh, focused on reaching out to others.
Speaker 6 00:12:35 Question number two, what is one organ reason youth will benefit from your organization?
Speaker 5 00:12:42 Let's just one reason. People who could benefit
Speaker 6 00:12:44 Youth
Speaker 5 00:12:46 Oh youth, um, you know, you start are interested in music and the parents can not afford to, uh, you know, buy an instrument for them. They can just come and sign and, you know, uh, register and just have the musical instrument loaned to them for, you know, if you, like I said, from one day to three months at a time and they can, when they done, if they still want to and they still need it, we can learn it again to them. Right. Yeah. So we hope that you'd will be coming to us because there's no reason to not do if you know, those musical instruments are available for you in the community. Okay.
Speaker 6 00:13:23 Question number three. What is your favorite song to listen? To, to lift your spirits?
Speaker 5 00:13:29 Oh, okay. If you, in a general called, uh uh, so sipapu that from Alan cafe and what's the other one that I like will say see for that, but I, I love some rap music too though, but
Speaker 0 00:13:50 All of a sudden we're going to talk
Speaker 5 00:13:50 About rap, like from Europe so much from the, you know, the state yeah.
Speaker 6 00:13:57 Question number four. What is one way you would want the people of Fort McMurray to support its youth?
Speaker 5 00:14:06 Uh, one way I will, like, I will, I would love for us in the community to, you know, to provide more programs that the youth can, you know, be interested, interested in, um, with COVID unfortunately people knows, they stayed in, in the houses and, and also the economical, economic hardship that we went through. Right. So I know, for example, I wasn't able to provide as much as I wanted for my daughter, which is, uh, she's 13 years old and she needed to go outside. Right. She needed to, to have interesting program to attend to. And, uh, we ha we need to have that in our community.
Speaker 0 00:14:49 Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6 00:14:50 And your final, what is one reason you're glad to run your organization within the community of Fort McMurray?
Speaker 5 00:14:57 Uh, one reason, first of all, I would like to give back, uh, to our community the way they give, uh, the way they supported us after the tragedy. Uh, that's my, for me, it's, you know, uh, I just, I feel like when you receive the kind of support we received, you have to give back and again, everything the foundation is doing is up to it. We want to honor the memory of man, like who she was. And she was somebody, even when she was here, that we always wanted to reach back and we wanted to give back to the community. She would always say, mom, can we do something like, can we help? So
Speaker 6 00:15:42 That's been your five questions.
Speaker 5 00:15:44 Thank you, Tanner.
Speaker 0 00:15:46 Okay. I don't know much about African music, but I know a little bit about R and B hip hop, especially from the nineties and early two thousands. So this is a topic of discussion I actually can get involved in. So who are you listening to? What kind of artists were your go-to jams?
Speaker 5 00:16:04 Oh, my favorite us, sir.
Speaker 0 00:16:06 Okay. All right. Now, are we talking about, I have been listening to usher since he was very first signed with puff daddy back in the day, you remind me of like all these songs. So are we talking early usher? Are we talking about older usher? Where
Speaker 5 00:16:22 Early OSHA? All the ocean? No early one. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:16:27 Okay. I like that. All right. So usher is your favorite artists for R and B. Now let's switch it up in regards to rap. Where are we going for? A rap artists,
Speaker 5 00:16:36 Rap artists. I will go with the old, um, the old French rap. Uh, yeah, I am the group. I am MTM, um, Percy the new west one. Damn. So I'm listening to it, like,
Speaker 0 00:16:52 Okay. Yeah. Okay. I always liked usher. Um, but I started like in my house, R and B was like a staple. So one of the artists back in the day that just, I think everybody listened to it. I emulated. There's so many pictures of me with an oven Mitt on my hand, dancing around the house is Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was
Speaker 5 00:17:15 Huge.
Speaker 0 00:17:16 So for me, he's like, everything else is just a, a version of
Speaker 5 00:17:21 Absolutely.
Speaker 0 00:17:22 Of Michael. So I like Osher. I got then, like, I think he's a talented artist. There's a bunch of others, like genuine and like Keith sweats. And you could just go on and on there's R and B artists are amazing, but yeah. Uh, yeah,
Speaker 5 00:17:37 But of course you're right. Like Michael Jackson is, I think everything that was done after him is really just to emulate him in a way, uh, you know, on another one. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:17:48 Another one that my parents would argue with me, cause I'm like, oh, it's all about Michael. And I do love and have, have more appreciation as I get older for him is James Brown. Oh,
Speaker 5 00:17:57 I told you, he will say prince.
Speaker 0 00:17:59 Oh no, prince and Michael were the same. This I, me and my business partner have led, led. What's the word I'm looking for? Legendary, legendary arguments about this. Because back in the eighties, like when that, that was a battle, you're either prince or you were Michael. And my business partner is big T he loves Michael, but his brother loves prince. And so like, you see this argument going
Speaker 5 00:18:22 Back, so
Speaker 0 00:18:24 I'm easily there. It's not a competition. Prince is amazing, but I'm,
Speaker 5 00:18:29 You know what, between the two, I think I'm more Michael Jackson fan and prince. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:18:34 Yeah. But James Brown and I actually, my little boy yesterday, this is like, literally yesterday I was showing him he was dancing him. He was like doing these little moves. I'm like, you're trying to moonwalk. And he looked at me, he's like, what's a moonwalk. I said, what is a moonwalk? I'm doing a horrible job as a parent. If you don't know what a moonwalk is. So I got a YouTube video up and I showed and he's just like, he obviously has a like little rollers in his shoes. And I'm like, cause nowadays kids have those rollers. Right. And I'm like, no, no, no, there's all the rollers. And like we started and we zoomed up when we him
Speaker 5 00:19:12 And how's he
Speaker 0 00:19:13 Doing? How's he doing that? Like the bat, no man has moves. Like you got to learn. And he's like, can I learn how to do that? I was like, good. So anyways, Michael Jackson, but yeah, I'm sure it was a good one. I'll give you a sure. So listen, time flies. We're at the end of our 20 minutes. But as you know, before we cut people loose, they get a shameless shout out or plug. So we have the mic lights and a camera on a phone.
Speaker 5 00:19:37 Okay. I will plug to organizations or, yeah. So the, for one again, equal sample for all of the amazing work they're doing and the way they are honoring Mandela and, uh, supporting us at Amanda's foundation. But I will also want to plug model's hair in downtown. She's a beautiful hairdresser and uh, she does hair.
Speaker 0 00:20:00 Okay, cool. Those are good shout outs. All right. Well, for me, Murray wood, Buffalo, the rest of the world, that's been another episode of the Mac city morning show. Thank you so much for tuning in. It means the world to me, big shout out to neuronal, uh, Toyota for being our title sponsor as well as McMurry denture center for sponsoring the Mac city minute, we really do appreciate your guys' support. So thank you. I hope everybody at home is having a great day and we'll see you tomorrow.
Speaker 4 00:20:26 Hey, everybody, Keith Simpson here from there, Alto data, we support the El we've joined the drunk
Speaker 7 00:20:31 Dalio Wade. And another morning show later by us.
Speaker 9 00:20:48 Talk about quenching your ugly thirst.
