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East Coast swing…the first two beats

Coming back to North America has been eye-opening in the fact that I’m taking two weeks to travel to the East Coast for the first time in my memory (I did supposedly go to Florida when I was young but I definitely don’t remember any of it). I’m relaxing at my friend’s place in DC, after spending a couple of days in TO, and on my way to Boston and NYC afterwards.

One purpose of my trip is to get a feel of every city, as every city’s got their own feel, own identity, and different styles of art, that arise as a product of its environment and people. I want to find out what makes their music THEIR music, and how it’s birthed. So here are a few observations from my travels so far:
Greek Town in Toronto

    Toronto:

  • Unbelieveably multi-cultural. My friend Loulee says it’s the world’s 2nd most multicultural city in the world. I don’t doubt it. Where Vancouver is basically half Chinese, Toronto gives me the impression that there is no one culture that dominates
  • Toronto has a much more urban feel than Vancouver, and the influence of Hip-Hop, R&B, Rap is stronger.
  • Where Vancouver has a Chinatown (actually, it’s called Richmond), Toronto has many different neighbourhoods that are very ethnically strong. In the picture above, “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” was filmed in the restaurant
  • Finally figured out where Jarvis Church got his name. I’m not surprised that he has all these influences b/c TO’s got it all…

Ivan at the White House

    Washington, DC:

  • This is city has way too many non-civilians! Oh wait, this is the captial…okay, it does remind me of Beijing…
  • This city feels sterile, at least in Arlington, and the West side of DC.
  • I figure a heck of a lot of people here in DC are Christian, and heavily engrained into this city’s psyche.
  • The neat thing about DC is the abundance of amazing gospel music available. Obviously, having a lot of african-americans in this city help spur the market for this genre of music. I had a chance to chat with two african-american sisters who were shopping for Gospel music albums. They were definitely very helpful in pointing me towards the better gospel music out today. Too cool.
  • Drinks at McDonald’s are wayyyyy too big. I ordered a medium, and I don’t think I’ve seen a medium milkshake that big before. Perhaps that explains why I see so many extremely overweight people here…

7/7 Live Earth in DC

It’s 8:20am and I’m going to be checking out the sights and sounds of Washington, DC, IIt seems like I’m going to run into some Live Earth celebrations in this city. But I wonder what kind of guitar Al Gore will be using…

Live Earth in DC