Name: ASKO with Zoon
Start: 2025-04-11T19:00:00-05:00
Location: West End Cultural Centre

send + receive and the West End Cultural Centre present ASKO, an immersive A/V work of electronic percussion by Marek Tyler, with support from Daniel Monkman’s moccasin gaze outfit Zoon.
ASKO is a teaching lodge that you enter into with hesitation and humility. It is an immersive experience in which, if you bring an open heart and an open mind, you will learn to listen in a different register and come out of the lodge with a different perspective than you entered. ASKO is a coming together –a meeting of emotional and intellectual knowledge, a meeting of the heartbeat and the sound of thought travelling through space. It is a place that teaches us how to listen to the energies and forces that continually create nêhiyawak worlds in spite of and despite the noise of colonialism.
Marek Tyler is nêhiyaw and Scottish/Irish, and while his name is on the project, ASKO is a gathering place of many collaborators and advisors. In some ways, Tyler is an oskâpêwis, listening deeply to the creative forces of his relatives. He follows the guidance of his câpân (great-great-grandfather), his mom, artist, educator and Knowledge Keeper, Linda Young of Onion Lake Cree Nation, his uncle Dale Awasis and advisor Diana Steinhauer. ASKO’s community doesn’t end here, though. ASKO includes the kinetics of pow-wow dancers following the heartbeat of the big drum and embraces the choreography of prairie chickens telling the stories of the grasslands. It is the voice of the wind and the songs of the bright blue sky. (Written by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson)
In the Ojibway language, the word Zoongide’ewin means “bravery, courage, the Bear Spirit.” It’s no wonder Daniel Monkman adopted Zoon as their musical moniker. The Hamilton-based musician has spent the better part of their 28 years finding and channelling their strength to overcome such adversities as racism, poverty and addiction. Music saved Monkman’s life. And, on Zoon’s debut album, Bleached Wavves, they paint a message of hope and fortitude, lessons they learned studying the Seven Grandfather teachings after experiencing the lowest point of their life. Bleached Wavves is the first true document of what has been dubbed “moccasin-gaze,” a tongue-in-cheek nickname for the amalgamation of Monkman’s shoegaze influences with traditional First Nations music. (Written by Cam Lindsay)