Kensington’s Source for Jazz and Funk

SoulJazz Orchestra 1

SoulJazz Orchestra 2

I came for the Pink Lady apples, and stayed for the funk! Like an acoustic beacon, it was the distinctive, eclectic music emanating from this shop that first drew me in. ‘The Source for Jazz and Funk’ is how the media has described 4 Life Organic Foods in Kensington Market.

Pots, one of the owners and pictured above, tells the most incredible tales of the power of music. His epic yet incredibly personal stories are a testament to the life-affirming properties of music that cross cultures and musical genres…the story of a woman who stood, sobbing and immovable in his shop, for example. She was inconsolable. When he finally got her to speak, it turned out that the music that just happened to be playing on an old cassette was of a band that she knew the members of in her youth. She had last heard them as a child decades earlier, before fleeing civil unrest in Congo, her homeland.

She wouldn’t leave until she had a copy of the music! It turns out that Jamie from i-deal coffee, just down the street on Nassau, was in the shop and dashed back to grab a blank tape so that a copy could be made on the spot! The band is called Congolasia, and the recording is El Congo.

The hot tip from Pots? Check out Ottawa’s SoulJazz Orchestra, in town this weekend as part of The Beaches Jazz Festival, on the Mainstage this Sunday at 12.30, or if you are in a Hamilton kinda mood, check them out at The Pepper Jack the night before, Saturday, July 28th. More tracks can be found on CBC’s Radio 3.

Here’s one more, with a direct link to/from CBC, bless their hearts:

SoulJazz Orchestra 3