For a Time Like This: Ignatius Mabasa and Alana Levandoski

For this week’s music podcast we dig into our archives to feature two songs from a collaborative project we produced back in 2010, combining the musical gifts of Alana Levandoski with the Shona language spoken word “gospoetry” of the novelist and storyteller, Ignatius Mabasa. At the time Ignatius was the writer and storyteller in residence at the University of Manitoba, and it was in that context that we invited him to speak at one of our ideaExchange evenings - the audio of which is embedded at the bottom of this post. At the end of the session Ignatius asked if there might be a musician from our church who would be interested in doing a collaboration with him, and the result was a three song CD recording from which these two songs are drawn.

The project was recorded on December 11, 2010, in St Philip’s Anglican Church in Winnipeg, with the assistance of a grant from the Anglican Foundation of Canada. We encourage you to read the article from the Anglican Journal, which gives a little more background on this project.

 For more information on Alana Levandoski, please visit her website, where you can also find information on how you can support her newest project, Hymns from the Icons.  Ignatius Mabasa is currently rebuilding his website, though there is a bit more information on his work available here.

And please do take the time to explore other good music from this ongoing series of music podcasts.