🦻🏾Come all, come wide, come far! This Wednesday, June 24th, we welcome you to join us at the Bleach Listening Room for the 14th instalment of Sensational Listening Session (SLS).
⚽︎ Swing by after Canada takes on Switzerland at BC Place and all your other World Cup viewing festivities.
📻This month on SLS we listen to a bespoke melange of warm, groove-led afro jazz of Kokoroko mixed with the Mexican folkloric expressive sound of Natalia Lafourcade after of their concerts at the Commodore Ballroom and the Chan Center, respectively.
Artist Bios:
🎸Natalia Lafourcade is one of the most beloved and recognized voices in Latin American music. Throughout her more than 20-year career, she has built a musical universe with a deeply personal sensibility. A lot has changed in the past two decades for the four-time Grammy winner. Most importantly, she has been making a concerted effort to cultivate her spirituality in order to express herself with complete abandon and pliability. Of course, Natalia Lafourcade might very well be the only person who thinks Natalia Lafourcade can be better than she already is. Among her most acclaimed albums are Hasta la Raíz, Musas, Un canto por México, and De Todos las Flores. In 2025, she presented Cancionera, a new album that brings together her own compositions, traditional songs, and gems from the Latin American repertoire. Winner of 18 Latin GRAMMYs, 4 GRAMMYs, and multiple international awards, she has taken her music to stages such as Carnegie Hall, the Oscars, and the Montreal International Jazz Festival.
In addition, Natalia is committed to social causes and the preservation of Mexican cultural heritage.
🪘Kokoroko first formed in 2014 when Sheila Maurice-Grey (trumpet/flugelhorn/vocals) and Onome Edgeworth (percussion) met on an arts trip in Kenya, bonding over their shared tastes in music. A desire to connect young people in the African diaspora with genres like Afrobeat and Highlife would also fuel the band’s genesis. Before long they were playing gigs, riding a wave of the then-nascent “London jazz scene." In 2018, their breakthrough was secured when the sparse ‘Abusey Junction’ was included on Gilles Peterson’s ‘We Out Here’ compilation. An understated 7 minute ballad recorded in an afternoon, it quickly became a viral hit racking up 75 million streams.
Session Details:
💿Jaladé (@jalade__) will be joined by residents: Losso (@losso_____works) and Kikino (@kristenliston), punctuating the session with a curated selection of tracks placing the Kokoroko & Lafourcade sound in a wider musical conversation before spending some time focusing solely on their discographies.
✏️During this week’s SLS, we have Andrew Tavukciyan, a Canadian-Armenian multidisciplinary artist and muralist, returning to help facilitate “open draw”. Tavukciyan will present a live drawing, encouraging you to do the same. Let the music guide you; embrace abstraction. Don’t think, just draw.
⛓️Sensational Listening Sessions at Bleach are an opportunity to gather and collectively listen. The Bleach Listening Room is free to enter, offering a thoughtful selection of wines and small plates. Seating is first-come, first-served.
💗 All levels of listeners are welcome.
🚪Ouverture 18:00–23:00
