EDITOR’S NOTE – ISSUE 7: LEGACY
Art by: Galen Milne-Hines
The word “legacy” is always in the back of our minds when we discuss the co-op’s plans, hopes, and ambitions, as well as the lasting impact we want to have on our community. We’re always mindful of legacies when we consider the follies, fumbles, toxic patterns, and pitfalls of corporate models that we want to challenge, as well as like-minded organizations past and present, such as Weird Canada, whose spirits serve as a guiding star for our own. Looking forward, we also have aspirations for archival projects that would seek to preserve the work of music-focused websites that have folded or since disappeared entirely. As platforms are constantly bought and sold, the vast amount of work they produce is often an afterthought, and it’s here that we see an opportunity for an intervention: working to ensure that work is not lost and can be accessed by generations to come.
As we’ve mentioned numerous times before, one of our goals is to share knowledge and ensure the viability and vibrancy of future generations of music media professionals. As we see it, that requires ensuring that our future—or legacy, if you will—remains in the hands of our co-op’s members and the communities we serve rather than those of an opportunistic vulture venture capitalist waiting for the right time to sell their investment to a conglomerate concerned only with overhead and bottom lines.
Looking outside of our co-op, we wanted to consider what legacy means in music and how it impacts artists. In our latest issue, Legacy, the always insightful Daniel G. Wilson speaks with Inuit folk-rock legend Willie Thrasher and York University ethnomusicologist Rob Bowman in examining the evolution of music reissues and its impact on musicians’ artistry, audience reach, career trajectories, and the communities those musicians represent. Jesse Locke facilitates a conversation between Adam Sturgeon (Status/Non-Status, OMBIIGIZI) and a member of his childhood heroes Eric’s Trip, East Coast music icon Julie Doiron. Their chat is the first in a new series called Generation Wise where artists from different eras commiserate about and delight in their varying and mutual experiences.
Our seventh issue also welcomes four freelancers who are making their New Feeling debut: Jordan Currie, Reina Cowan, Sun Noor, and Karen K. Tran. Along with Locke and Tom Beedham, they complete the roundtable for New Feeling’s Group Chat, another new feature where we invite a panel of writers to give their takes on two songs selected by our editorial team, with the goal of offering a variety of perspectives of each track and discovering common threads of interest, analysis, and interpretation.
For those of you already helping us build something new, for the present and for the future, by subscribing to New Feeling, our utmost thank-you. For regular readers or those checking us out for the first time, we thank you too and hope you’ll consider supporting New Feeling by becoming a member and helping us build a healthy, equitable playing field for emerging and future writers while simultaneously working to preserve the past that inspires our mission and values.
Leslie Ken Chu, co-founder, New Feeling
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