Pop-up Concert at the Canadian Music Week Conference
By Stephen Weir
Grammy-nominated Panamanian American singer Aloe Blacc was in Toronto last week at the Canadian Music Week conference.  He performed on stage at the Sheraton Centre conference and met with the media.

Blacc was here at the request of the US Consulate who were at the music conference to promote the Toronto premier of a new IMAX movie which stars Aloe Blacc. America’s Musical Journey opens next month at the Ontario Science Centre and at other museum and science centre IMAX theatres across Canada.
The 40-minute large format film follows Blacc as he travels to New Orleans, Chicago, Nashville, Miami, New York and California to explore the roots of American music. It is all about making music and sharing music and how the influence of the greats like Louis Armstrong and Elvis Presley helped shape today’s sounds.
Aloe Blacc is best known for his chart-topping “I Need a Dollar” and his vocals on Avicii’s “Wake Me Up”. 
Blacc took to a stage that had been brought to Toronto from Detroit. It was an old Motown nightclub, where some of the city’s best had sung from.
Blacc told the music industry insiders gathered around the stage that he had been out of the public eye for 4-years  to make movies, write songs and spend quality time with his wife Melissha Martinez and their two small children. Martinez is better known by her stage name Maya Jupiter. She is a Mexican/Turkish Australian rapper, songwriter, MC and radio personality. 
 Blacc, backed by a guitarist and keyboard player, sang his two big hits and then performed songs that paid homage to his time away from the spotlight.  His work on the movie America’s Musical Journey exposed him to the music of Jazz Great Louis

‘Satchemo” Armstrong, so he sang his take on Wonderful World and other tunes from the last century.  The biggest surprise from the standing room only audience was his remix of The World Is Ours, a Coca Cola commercial that was written for the 2014 World Cup.

-He told the Caribbean Camera that he his back at work, performing and touring and hopes to be back in Toronto for the June 23rd official opening of the movie at Toronto's Ontario Science Centre.


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