GATHER – Collective Study: k-os’ Joyful Rebellion in collaboration w/ Today This, Tomorrow That
Free Salon, Requires Registration | September 16, 2026 | 6:30–9:00 PM | The Palmerston Theatre, Toronto | All Ages |
**This event is free with the RSVP; entry is subject to capacity.**
In celebration of the 2026 Polaris Festival, presented by SiriusXM Canada, Polaris presents a special edition of Collective Study, produced in collaboration with Today This, Tomorrow That and cultural producer Duane Bobbsemple: k-os’ Joyful Rebellion and the Sound of Black Canada – a collective learning cultural salon that, through research and reflection, revisits one of the defining Canadian albums of the 2000s as a work of Black sonic imagination, creative freedom, and diasporic self-definition.
The 2026 Polaris Festival is a month-long celebration of Canadian music as art, bringing together concerts, salons, listening sessions, conversations, artist development initiatives, and the Polaris Concert & Award Ceremony at Massey Hall. Through the Festival, Polaris creates space for audiences to listen differently, gather around important Canadian albums, and explore how music shapes culture, identity, memory, and belonging.
Register For Free to Reserve Your Spot
Collective Study: k-os’ Joyful Rebellion positions Joyful Rebellion as a sonic theory of Black Canada. An album that refuses fixed categories, moves between genres, and creates its own language for Black creative freedom and cultural belonging.
Part lecture, part listening session, part living room, the event brings together artists, critics, DJs, scholars, writers, and cultural workers to study how Joyful Rebellion challenged the borders placed around Black Canadian music. This Collective study will be lead by artist/designer Ian Kamau where he will focus on what K-os’ Joyful Rebellion still teaches us now and asks what this album makes possible: how it uses genre as a tool for freedom, how it moves between musical traditions, how it resists fixed expectations of Black Canadian identity, and how it opens up a more layered understanding of Black creativity in this country.
Audiences will be invited to listen again to this album, or to hear it for the first time, through an understanding of Black Canada as plural, improvised, unfinished, and always in motion.
Featured Contributors
Photo by Roya Delsol
Ian Kamau – Speaker
Ian Kamau is an artist, writer, and designer from Toronto. He has released seven music projects including the self-produced album One Day Soon (2011) and has published articles, short stories, and poems in publications by Vice, Coach House Press, and Book Thug. He has created short films including Non-Essential (2021) and We Went Out (2022) and a multi-media performance called Loss through The Theatre Centres residency program that was mounted at The Luminato Fest 2023 and at the Under The Radar Festival with the Apollo in New York City in 2025. The son of pioneering filmmakers he was the founding executive director of Nia Centre for the Arts, has a Bachelor in Design and a Masters in Environmental Studies from York University, and a Masters in Strategic Foresight and Innovation from OCAD University. He currently sits on the OCAD University Cultural Policy Hub advisory and is the 2026/2027 Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor at University College, University of Toronto.
Christopher Wilson – Moderator
Christopher Wilson is a cultural futurist and artist-researcher whose work is at the intersection of cultural studies, Black Futures and Sound Studies. His practice is shaped by ancestral wisdom and radical possibilities, with a commitment to reimagining the past and present as pathways to an inspired future for Black folks. Christopher has held professional roles in Toronto and London, where he has led cultural programs that support communities. Parallel to his professional journey in music, Chris holds a Master of Design from OCAD U in Strategic Foresight and Innovation and is working towards his PhD in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, with a research focus on the sonic histories of cassette tapes and Black performance practices within Black diasporic communities in Canada. These academic pursuits revolve around bolstering Arts & Culture through insightful policy development and urban space design that harmonizes with community needs.
About Polaris Music Prize
Polaris Music Prize is a Canadian charitable arts organization honouring music as art. Through its Album, Song, and Heritage Prizes, Polaris amplifies Canadian artists based on artistic merit — not genre, sales, or algorithmic popularity.
The 2026 Polaris Festival is presented by SiriusXM Canada and made possible through the support of Experience Ontario, Ontario Creates, the City of Toronto’s Cultural Festivals Funding Program, FACTOR, the Government of Canada, Canada’s private radio broadcasters, and the Festival’s many community and venue partners.
