Today we’d like to introduce you to Aparna Halpe

Hi Aparna, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?

I am originally from a hill town called Kandy, in Sri Lanka. I was born in the 70s, at a time of tremendous political upheaval with war and genocide going on for most of my life there. Surviving through tough times was a life lesson that I learned very early, as well as the sense that we are all connected, and we must always move forward in the world in a way that puts kindness ahead of any other value.

I was incredibly lucky to be born into an artistic family where my father was a scholar, poet, and theatre director; my mother was a pianist and choral director. I have music and poetry in my blood, and I grew up around fiery poets and activists who were not afraid to call out repressive regimes, often at the cost of being jailed, tortured, and sometimes even killed. Being an artist meant that you inherited the responsibility to speak the truth, and that is something that I strive to practice in my music.

I started learning the violin at the age of three. My mother, Bridget Halpe, was my first teacher (even though she was a pianist.) She would go to my older siblings’ lessons, watch, and come back and teach me. She was incredibly tough, and she taught me that being a musician is about discipline first and foremost. Her perfectionism was hard to live up to, but it gave me a strict inner compass and respect for my craft. My early success at my instrument led me to become a professional violinist at age 17, when I joined the Lanka Philharmonic as assistant concertmaster. The orchestra was the first professional orchestra in South Asia, and I learned many valuable lessons about professionalism from my time there.

I had hoped to follow a career as a professional violinist in North America, but as an international student, I quickly learned that my parents could not support me through music school. So I gave up my dream of being a violinist, and pivoted instead into academia, becoming a community college professor teaching English, and the vice president of my college’s union. As a labor activist, and the first racialized woman elected to a leadership position in my union, I quickly realized that we cannot separate issues of fairness and justice from the realities of identity politics in any undertaking. In the arts, where so many of these issues are swept under the carpet in the name of gaining exposure, standing up for equity and diversity is absolutely vital!

In 2021, as the pandemic still raged, I founded Solidaridad Tango, North America’s first all-women, diversity-focused tango ensemble. Creatively, tango is my first love, but I had seen and experienced the unsafe, patriarchal spaces in which women tango musicians had to practice their art; I knew that every single woman I had worked with had horror stories about sexual harassment, gender disparity resulting inequity in pay, of disrespect, and of racism. At the time, the feminist movement in Argentina was calling for change through the “ni una menos” movement, and we knew that we needed that change here in North America as well.

Solidaridad Tango creates a safe space for women musicians, it provides professional development and training in tango, and we maintain a diversity mandate where all positions are first offered to racialized immigrant women musicians. At present, 90% of our musicians are racialized, immigrant women. We also take our treaty relationships seriously, and strive to operate from foundational understanding of our responsiblities as settlers on Treaty 13 lands in Toronto, Canada.

A presenter recently described Solidaridad as a unicorn in the arts world… which is probably true, but if I could do it, then I have to ask, what’s stopping the rest of us?

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

I don’t believe in smooth roads…

My answer to any challenge is to face it, and try to learn from it.

I used to play in a tango band where most of the other members were men. When we founded the band, the leader said that he would not be able to pay me much, but I was ok with it because I loved tango so much and I was hungry to play. But there as a catch… while I wasn’t getting paid to rehearse or play, the guys in the band were receiving the fees of pro musicians! Apparently, because I had a day job, the leader thought it was ok for me to continue to play for free. There was no recognition of my time or contributions. I still didn’t leave the band because I had nowhere else to play tango, and like so many women throughout the ages, I believed that I had to put up with it.

But one night in the pandemic, after a shared glass of wine over zoom with another woman tango musician, I decided enough was enough. I gave in my notice to the band, and in the band meeting that they had to “talk things through” I presented what it had been like to be that woman who was disrespected, under-appreciated, and not paid. I hope those guys took something away from that experience.

Within a few months, I founded Solidaridad Tango where all musicians, including myself (the band leader), get paid the same. Where women composers have priority in programming. Where we recognize that being a professional musician and a young mom is incredibly hard, so we put extra financial supports in place to help make that work-life balance possible.

But I share this story because the most powerful challenge here was for me to recognize my self worth. Women are systematically socialized into erasing their wellbeing in order to keep others happy. Society tells us that we have no value unless we are raising kids or fetching the coffee! So changing that narrative and putting my foot through that door (or breaking it the f*ck down as one powerful woman recently said) means respecting myself.

And that respect means that I don’t let anyone close that door on me or any other woman who comes after me.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?

I am a tango composer and violinist, and the director of Solidaridad Tango.

As someone who comes from Sri Lanka (where there is no tango), people often ask me, why tango?

I can’t say that I have an answer completely down for that one… but something about the music and poetry of tango, particularly tangos that are as much about place and politics as they are about nostalgia and passion, speaks to the deep history in me. When I listen to the tangos of the 70s, during the repressive regime in Argentina, I hear a fierce artistic cry for freedom. That is something I recognize; that is how I approach art. I also found my artistic community in tango, in the friends and mentors in Buenos Aires and the US who have been cheering me on from the start. I have found them to be so incredibly generous and supportive unlike the gate keepers, who take every opportunity to tell me what I can and cannot do.

I hate being told that I can’t do something because I am a woman, or because I am not this or that, or because of the colour of my skin or the language that I speak. When I get that kind of casual hate, I respond as an artist would, with my music and my lyrics.

I have been told that women can’t write, play, or sing tango… and so Solidaridad does just that. I have been told that tango can’t be in English, and so I write tangos in English. I have been told that contemporary tango music is not for dancing, so I write really catchy dance tunes for the fun of it… I could go on.

But I don’t entirely write as a cry against repression. Like all artists, I write because I have to, because I can’t contain or bury that creative spirit, and the music and poetry has to get out of my head and my body. In many ways, I don’t think of this music as my own, I feel that it comes from somewhere else and I just happen to be the vessel in which it has chosen to arrive. It is a blessing, it is a curse, and it is the artist’s way.

Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?

My answer to risk, which is just another form of challenge, is to make careful assessments of what can be accomplished in any given circumstance.

Starting a band in a pandemic seemed like a super risky maneuver. But by carefully assessing who our potential audiences could be, by being open to playing varied kinds of venues, by taking up community-focused residencies, and by offering public outreach and education, we invited audiences from the jazz, classical chamber, and world music scenes to experience a genre that crossed all these boundaries.

Likewise, the decision to found an all-women, diversity-focused tango ensemble in Toronto was a risk. Although we are the most multicultural city in the world, we don’t really have a culture of live tango music, which means that we had to build our audiences from scratch. To complicate matters, we also do not have trained tango musicians to choose from, so creating jobs for racialized, immigrant women musicians meant choosing from a talent pool that didn’t as yet exist. To address this, I began by recruiting highly trained musicians and offering them the opportunity to discover and train in a brand new genre.

I guess you might say that risk is about making an educated commitment to the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://solidaridadtango.ca/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/solidaridadtango/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SolidaridadTango
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHH5qaUnZyT29Jn-QqDKxrA
• Other: https://solidaridad.bandcamp.com/album/distancia

Image Credits

Aparna Halpe personal image: Graham Sanders
Images 1 and 5: Mary Matheson
Image 2: Shayne Gray
Image 3: Ambrose Pottie
Image 4: Karen Reeves