I don't know where home is. While this is something I have grappled with since well before I moved to Toronto, these days I say that I am home wherever my feet touch the ground. The truth is that my perpetually transient nature is the most halted when I am watching, writing, or thinking about music. This magazine in itself is a place to ground (and to publish) those thoughts, a kind of digital roof over my head. From the radio in my childhood bedroom, to my mother’s car and father’s speakers during breakfast, all the way to my always-in-use headphones, music has been connecting pieces in the culturally complex tapestry that is my life. 

This theme, “Whereabouts,” is close to my heart. It salutes the soundtrack to the places you call home, including this city and all the surrounding areas, as well as beyond. The four co-editors this year are diverse in terms of culture and genre preference, but we’re united by our love for this magazine and music in itself. As a team, we embody the idea that even near strangers can be brought together and turned into friends by a shared love of something. During our time in charge, we aim to focus on the local legends and hometown heroes, cultural touch points from around the world, and of course, the songs that make you feel like you belong, wherever that may be. Join us as we embark on a mission to pay homage to the art form that connects us regardless of geography. 

That being said, Demo will look a little different than it has in the past. This year, we’ll be making four seasonal zines rather than the one glossy magazine you’ve come to know and love. The goal of this is to give more people a chance to contribute, as well as cost-effectively get your hard work into the hands of people across campus. As we all know, a beautiful publication is pointless if it’s just sitting in a box. We will also be hosting plenty of shows featuring local musicians, the majority of which will be in some way affiliated with the University of Toronto. We want to bring their talent to the forefront, and give attendees a look into our vibrant scene in venues across the city. We hope you’ll be inspired by our theme, and that we’ll catch you at a show! — Finch Strub

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Where did it come from? Where is it now? Where does it go from here?

Music is always located somewhere. In the movement of soundwaves, of neurons, of bodies. Yet, since it is always moving, it can be easy to lose track of and hard to place. This year at Demo, we’d like to focus on locating the geographical points that music originates from, passes through, or seems to be heading towards. 

In keeping with this, the co-editors of Demo would like to acknowledge our place in the city of Toronto, a city with a thriving community and rich history of musical expression. We wish to celebrate and explore Toronto as a collection of places which don’t always seem to fit together as a whole. We’d like to highlight music made by local artists from all boroughs, all backgrounds, all places, and even across time: from the rich history of Reggae in Little Jamaica or Bangla in ‘Sauga to folk music right here in the University of Toronto’s backyard of Yorkdale, Toronto has stories, told and untold, which prove difficult to fit into a singular narrative.

Regional subgenres are nothing new in the world of music, but it’s unclear if Toronto has any sort of regional sound. Is it just personal bias when I think that Crystal Castles or Alvvays could only ever originally be from Toronto? Am I wrong to say that PND sounds more like Toronto than The Weeknd ever did? Do I sound insane when I say that I think there’s a connection between the sound of Toronto’s music scene and the sheer number of YouTube video-essayists that I keep seeing around the city? Probably. But why not write about it anyways, just to see where it goes?

Toronto might not be the greatest city in the world, but it is my home, and home to some of the greatest people I have ever met. I am so excited to explore it together this year, with or without a map. — Jonah Page

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I became fascinated with the connection between music and place pretty early on in my life as a music fan. I remember being 13 or so and marvelling at the way that some hip-hop could make me, a kid from an upper middle-class Toronto suburb, feel like I was walking down a grimy New York street I had never been to, and also at the history of local scenes, where lots of great bands could emerge with the same kind of mindset from a specific place at a specific time. Perhaps any form of artistic expression is like this, but music specifically, with its ability to create atmosphere and feeling through sound, seems particularly suited to capturing the ambience of one’s location.   

I’ve been living and spending most of my time downtown Toronto. As a lover of music and a musician myself, I naturally found myself gravitating towards musical spaces here, both at the university and outside of it. As I’ve gotten involved with working for Demo and as I’ve attended lots of local shows, I’ve come to be involved in a sort of community brought together by music. The musicians and the fans at these shows fall into the same age group as me, they pick up on the same cultural references, they live in the same city, they hang around the same venues and sometimes they go to the same schools. Surrounded by like-minded people like this, it’s not hard to make friends and acquaintances, and at the very least feel the satisfaction of understanding that everybody in the room is appreciating the performance the same way. At the best times, these shows can feel like everyone is participating in the same thing as the artist on stage speaks to experiences everybody there understands.

For me, our theme this year is about the cultivation of a community through musical expression within a specific place. It can also be about the way that music becomes imbued with the vibe of a particular place and time, whether that’s because of the artist themselves or because of your history of listening to it. Through the journalism we’ll publish this year in our printed zines and on our website, as well as through the shows we’ll be hosting, we aim to highlight the musical communities which exist in our own location here at the University of Toronto and the city as a whole, as well as the ones which connect students here to places they care about throughout Canada and the world. — Hayden Zahary

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To me, “place” tends to be nimble and flitting. As I move toward certain places over the course of time, others are slipping away and taking with them any sense of belonging that I had cultivated within them to date. As it turns out, music is one of the few things that are able to hold these places down. When I hear the choruses of my parents’ favourite songs, I revisit the apartment I was raised in, where they would come in from the other room through our ratty, staticky player. The most generic and commonplace songs—repeated a thousand times on the radio—sit me once again in the backseat of my best friend’s family car. The songs that soundtracked my last year of high school reunite me with those stark white hallways and the rush of people getting to class. And so music becomes a way of holding onto “place”—of keeping me acquainted with and inseparable from everywhere that I have passed through.

That’s why the concept of whereabouts seemed so fitting for this year’s iteration of our magazine. My co-editors and I wanted to draw attention to how music could contain a place, and in doing so, take us back to it and what lay within it—the communities, the feelings of familiarity, the putting down of roots. We wanted to celebrate the capacity of songs to keep places intact for us regardless of circumstance. In an attempt to do this right here on campus, we’ve scheduled more shows for you to attend, opportunities for you to submit your pieces. Now, it’s your turn to tell us where you come from and where you’re going. Tell us everything. Tell it with music. — Jane Wen