Last year during a cultural festival at Dalhousie University, six university students took the stage in bright colourful outfits called Vardiyaan for their first performance. The routine brought together various folk dances from across the Punjab region of India and Pakistan. Now, with Armaan Dhillon at the helm, they form the six-person Bhangra group Noor […]
New Radicals
Tyson Tolliver is digitizing the cultural markers of African Nova Scotian identity
For Tyson Tolliver, a community advocate and entrepreneur, East Preston is the place of his childhood home on Lower Partridge Road, a few houses away from his maternal grandmother “Big Mama,” matriarch of the large Colley family, and East Preston United Baptist Church where he spent more than two decades of Sundays playing the drums […]
Meditations on music, religion and neuroscience
“I’ve always been interested in many different things and I choose to do them all, unapologetically,” explains Sidath “Sid” Paramee Rankaduwa. At just 22, Rankaduwa is an alumnus of Dalhousie University with a rather unusual combined Bachelor degree in both music and neuroscience. Through his craft, he’s exploring society’s intersectional interplay between the brain, culture, […]
Alex “Cunny” Ross finds fame through family
In the Spring of 2015, a shy 18-year-old named Alex “Cunny” Ross laid down 10 of his songs over beats produced by future Halifax councillor Lindell Smith during a session at his neighbourhood studio. The “Young and Coming Up” mixtape—featuring his Centreline Studio pals such as BenG, Neptune and Honey—was burned onto 50 compact discs. […]

