FEATURE he four women stand in the murky light of the stage in a crowded ethnic hall. The audience, somewhat restive, fills the air with the babble of after- dinner conversation as the dishes are cleared away. Gradually the talk peters out as people become aware that the cultural part of the evening has arrived, and only a few whispers are heard as four female voices, unaccompanied by any instruments, assert harmoniously: No time for love if they come in the morning No time to show fear or for tears in the morning No time for good-byes, no time to ask why And the wail of the siren, is the cry of the morning. It’s topical music, part of a tradition as old as the socialist, peace and labour movements themselves. But the audience at the benefit — in this case, it’s May Day — is moved to more than the usual perfunctory applause, because the harmonies are something relatively new. Sung by the four- member (now reduced to three) a cap- pella group, Aya, the song by British singer-songwriter Roy Bailey has acquired a new dimension. On another night, another packed hall may be rocking to the electric band onstage. But the lyrics competing for attention with the synthesizers and amplified guitars might be somewhat different than the traditional rock offer- ing, and sound something like this: It’s baloney from Mulroney ‘bout trade that’s free He’s selling out his own country Tf you lose your job, you know he’ll say “tough luck” He’s out to make big business bucks. It’s been four long years since the Solidarity Coalition days when groups like Cultural Workers Against the Budget were firing up the anti-Socred bills protest with songs old, new and rewritten. But while that organization, and some of the cultural groups that were its backbone, have passed from the scene, the heritage of musical pro- test they represented survives in new forms. Aya, the women’s group first menti- oned, and the Ginger Group, the latest incarnation of a local progressive rock tradition, are two of the current musi- cal organizations entertaining progres- sive functions in British Columbia. But they’re only a few representatives of a larger body of musical performers that are reaching greater audiences these days. How they are doing that is through the medium of cassette tape. Coupled with relatively inexpensive recording equipment, it allows performers to rep- roduce their sounds at modest rates — much cheaper than conventional long-playing records. And it is provid- ing a means for needy organizations to get a little publicity and cash. In the forefront is a new outfit called Slim Evans Records and Tapes, run by the Ginger Group’s Julius Fisher. “Nowadays, with the new technol- ogy it’s possible for a bus driver to get a bank loan and start a recording stu- dio,” Fisher, a B.C. Transit employee and until recently, guitarist for a series of progressive bands leading up to the Ginger Group, states. Slim Evans Records and Tapes con- sists of a garage with about $30,000 worth of equipment: a modest eight- track reel-to-reel tape recorder, a state- of-the-art drum machine and a mixing board, run by Fisher himself. With the facility, called Surplus Value Studio, Fisher has produced three tapes within the last 12 months: Hold the Fort in December, 1986, fol- lowed by Watch Over Liberty this spring and, most recently, Talking Union: Songs for Organizing. The titles give a clue as to their con- tents, as does the name of the recording company. Arthur “Slim” Evans was a famous B.C. trade unionist, who, among many achievements, led the On- to-Ottawa Trek for jobs in 1935. Fisher observes that, ““Vancouver has always had an incredible infrastruc- ture of musical talent — Phil and Hilda Thomas, Tom Hawken and so on. Political music is not new, and if we’d-had this technology around even a few years ago, think of all the people we could have recorded.” The Slim Evans tapes feature several of the same local artists, including Aya, Tom Hawken, labour singer and Car- penters’ Union member Phil Vernon, and Julius Fisher, Jane Leroux and other members of the Ginger Group. All the tapes have been made with a specific issue in mind, and to raise funds for a fight around that issue. Hold the Fort raised money for the Vancouver and District Labour Coun- cil’s strike support committee. Watch Over Liberty, a shorter tape with seven selections, concentrated on the fight against Bills 19 and 20. The most recent release, Talking Union, is intended to aid the Canadian Farm- workers Union. : the tape as a means of communicating to British Columbians the struggles of the union. “When I tell people that B.C.’s farmworkers labour without even min- imum wage protection, they’ll say, ‘What, is that true?’”” Boal relates. “Farmworkers handle dangerous pesticides without knowing what they are or the harm they can do. Canadi- ans generally don’t know that farm labourers here work in conditions often worse than in many third world coun- tries. That’s why I call this tape very timely.” As with other productions, Slim Evans received the financial and pro- motional aid of the Vancouver and District Labour Council and the B.C. Federation of Labour. Members of the Graphic Communications Union, Local 525, contributed their skills to printing the cassette cover. And like the previous releases, Talk- ing Union received what Fisher calls the “invaluable” assistance of the Van- couver Folk Music Festival Society, whose director, Gary Crystal, provided selections under the festival’s copywrite. That includes music by Pete Seeger, Jane Sapp and Si Kahn. Toronto sin- ger Arlene Mantle also provided a selection from her album, Class Act. But most of the music is the work of local musicians, and this tape has the most original music of any Slim Evans production, Fisher notes. “T asked people for original songs. Of course, there were complaints that I didn’t give them enough time.” “Julius Fisher must be credited with badgering us into writing more tunes last two months than we have (written) in the last two years,” agrees Aya member Mickey McCune. She wrote two of the songs Aya performs ori Talking Union, while fellow member Uschi Schnell wrote another. McCune is a shop steward in the Canadian Union of Postal Workers and an 11-year veteran of the post office in Vancouver. She also has a theatrical background and was for sev- By Dan Keeton eral years a member of the Bread Bak- er’s puppet theatre. She cites singing in church choirs as being key in her early musical expe- rience, one she says is shared by the group’s other members, Schnell and Norma Jean McLaren. It explains the unique harmonies Aya attains, includ- ing some intriguing dissonances. “Discovering” the progressive and feminist singer Holly Near in 1980 helped launch McCune in the direction Rien a ENN RIN RES TS i RTE CERES IE TS TTT Cram egy AS Ra a . 16 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 16, 1987