Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Aparna Halpé. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Aparna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
When projects have meaning, they not only transform your own practice, but they touch the lives of others in ways that matter. I founded Solidaridad Tango to be in solidarity with the things that matter right now. In a world that’s falling apart, where collapsing economies of greed dictate that artists don’t matter, it’s important to give voice to truth. Solidaridad Tango’s debut album DISTANCIA (2023) is resonating with listeners around the world because it has music and poetry that surprises people out of their comfortable confines. Whether it’s the paralyzing fear of losing a loved one to covid, the epidemic of homelessness and mental health breakdowns for regular folk, or our continuing wilfully colonial ignorance to Indigenous sovereignty and their vital role as land defenders, we are at a crossroads, and as artists we need to speak out because the future of our children, and our children’s children depends on it.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I always knew that I wanted to be a professional musician, and I achieved that goal at age 17 as a professional violinist in Sri Lanka, where I come from. But when I left my home country as an international student, I found it increasingly impossible to continue on my chosen path. I simply did not have the financial resources to follow a career in the arts; so, I gave up, and went into academia instead.
I spent a decade as a devoted teacher and a labor rights activist who took up harassment and discrimination cases, and focused on greater protections for IBPOC faculty at the community college I taught at. I learned to listen to stories, and to not back down from a tough fight when the rights of the most marginalized in our community were at stake. It was the generosity and resilience of spirit of my colleagues that taught me how to stay present through darkness and despair, and this was a lesson that stood me in good stead.
In all this time, my music was like a gentle thread weaving through time, it would get thin, and I would lose it at times, and then, it would unexpectedly reel me in. I reconnected to my instrument and to my own creative voice through discovering Argentine Tango. I fell in love with the music and the dance, and began to listen obsessively to it. Eventually, after many years of study, I began to build a steady second career as a tango violinist and composer.
Although I knew composition was what gave me the most joy, I still did not have the courage to pursue it full time. I couldn’t trust that I had an original voice, and I quickly encountered gatekeepers within the North American tango community who would discourage my efforts. I was told that tango couldn’t be understood by anyone who wasn’t Argentinian, that women couldn’t really write tango, that you couldn’t write tango in English… and many other canards. Imagine my surprise when I first met great Argentinian musicians who unequivocally told me that tango needed me to find my own voice! They said that tango needed to grow into the new reality I was creating in Toronto. They urged me to connect to my roots and to draw on my own urban immigrant experience as I wrote. They told me that this was how I would take tango forward.
When the pandemic happened, many tango musicians lost gigs, and we suddenly had the time to just chill out and chat. Many women musicians and dancers from around the world started sharing our experiences. I realized that just like me, all these women had experienced discrimination based on protected grounds such as gender, race, and class. This shocked me. At this point, following a split from a band in which the men got paid and the women didn’t (yes, this still happens… I was asked to play “for the love of tango”) I decided to form my own project dedicated to creating space for women in tango, and to fostering diversity in the arts. That was how Solidaridad Tango, North America’s first all-woman, diversity-affirming tango ensemble was born.
When Solidaridad takes the stage, our presence and our music has meaning. We don’t shy away from the truths of our time, and our tango is a raw cry reminding our audiences that change is here. And for me, that immigrant brown woman who almost gave up on her dream, even more than the heady joy of creating music and poetry, the power of Solidaridad lies in the young women who come to a show by badass boss women, and leave with a sparkle in their eyes.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
As women, we’re socialized into effacing ourselves, and this is particularly true of women who come from my South Asian cultural background. We might be tough feminists, but under it all, the idea that the success and happiness of a family lies entirely in a mother’s hands is a lesson passed down through generations of women, and it binds us into relationship patterns that are filled with rituals of guilt. These patterns come at a heavy expense to creativity and selfhood in artistic projects as well.
As the leader of Solidaridad, I mistakenly believed that I had to fulfil an all-encompassing nurturing role to all the musicians who joined the project. I wanted women to feel safe and well in their creativity, and believed that this was something I single-handedly needed to achieve for them. I stopped listening to my own needs in my desire to be the perfect change-maker, and I stopped listening to the little voice that said, “hmm, this doesn’t feel right”. Of course, the price of not listening to your inner truth can be pretty devastating; it saps your energy, it destroys your ability to be present, and it can destroy your project as well. Most importantly, when you are not well, your creative voice goes silent.
One of the most important lessons I unlearned was holding on to working relationships that had grown dysfunctional. As a leader, practicing radical acceptance of imperfection in myself, and in this project and its people, is how the beautiful truths emerge, but learning to listen to my intuition and recognize and articulate when things just don’t work is the hardest and most useful lesson I have learned.
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
As I write this, it’s 3AM and snowing outside…
There’s a special significance to this hour. This is when I create.
My composition teacher, Charles Gorczynski once shared a wonderful story with me. He said that he feels like there is a cosmic river of creativity that flows above us through all time. Sometimes our dreaming self slips into this river and catches a fish, and when it starts singing, we bring that song back home to this world and its reality.
I used to get mad when I woke up at 3AM with music in my head; now I know it is a blessing.
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
Image Credits
Personal image credit: Graham Sanders Ensemble images: Image 1 credit: Karen E. Reeves Image 2 credit: Graham Sanders Image 3 credit: Shayne Gray Image 4 credit: Shayne Gray