Tonight I listened to Jowi Taylor’s keynote speech to the 2009 Podcasters Across Borders conference in Kingston. As a result, this episode is about passion and inspiration. It’s about one man’s belief in a project, the Six String Nation Guitar, his unwavering pursuit to complete it – and how it inspired unity in a divided nation.
The story is amazing on many levels that you will hear when you listen to it. The one thing I wanted to highlight was how the project, building a guitar made from pieces of Canadian heritage and culture from across Canada, was a unifying force. From a piece of a tree sacred to the Haida Nation in Britich Columbia to a piece of the house of Canada’s first black cowboy (that almost none of us knew about), the guitar is made of pieces of things from some of Canada’s greatest stories. Some of the stories are well known, most aren’t. Each comes from one of Canada’s diverse peoples and together make an instrument that members of each group have used to play their unique stories. Many contributed to making it. Many have touched and played it. Everyone owns it.
Enjoy, and share, the conversation.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:27 — 50.8MB)
Tags: pab09
June 26th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Thanks so much for posting this Robin. I missed the keynote so it was great to catch it now. Jowi’s message about storytelling has revitalized how I look at my podcast.
June 27th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Thanks Sean. Jowi’s presentation inspired me to, of all things, write my first Wikipedia article! How? Well, I was blown away when Joey said the Six String Nation Guitar contains a piece of the cabin built by Canada’s first black cowboy, John Ware. Black Canadians’ stories are often left out of Canadian history – even by the public institutions using their tax money to tell that history. Jowi also said the guitar has a piece from the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children from the early 1900s. I checked out the Six String Nation Web site that tells you about each piece and found out the Home was co-founded by Nova Scotia’s first black university grad and lawyer, James Robinson Johnston. I checked Wikipedia to see if there was an article about his important story- and there wasn’t. So, I wrote one. It took some work to make it good enough that it wouldn’t get deleted but I did and it seems to be staying now.
To explore the pieces of the guitar:
http://www.sixstringnation.com/en/guitar_explorer/sixstring.html
Six String Nation Guitar Web site:
http://www.sixstringnation.com/