Mary Abdel-Malek Neil is a singer, songwriter, community musician, and founder of KW Junk Music. KW Junk Music was founded to support communities and organizations by offering creative, educational music-making opportunities using items diverted from landfills and recycling plants. As a community musician, Mary hosts events and workshops inspiring participants to compose music through a collaborative process, with the desire of bringing music-making into diverse settings for the masses. To date, Mary has released two community albums, Songs of Kitchener and I’m Who I Am, available on streaming platforms. For more information, visit www.maryneil.ca.
I met Mary in early March of 2020 at Marit Collective’s International Women’s Day conference. She was the MC for the event and I was moderating a panel at the event. We got chatting about her work and we have stayed in touch since then. Her second community album I’m Who I Am was released earlier this month. We caught up to talk about the album.
I'm Who I Am Album Cover. Photo by Jeff Cowell
Mary was the City of Kitchener Artist in Residence in 2019. Her tenure as Artist in Residence gave her the opportunity to experiment with her process and explore possibilities. It was the first time she dabbled in impromptu song writing sessions encouraging people to share stories of their identity, as well as how they connect with their neighbourhoods and the city at large. They used nothing but dice and post-it notes! Through this experience she learned how to create open, welcoming spaces for people to be vulnerable and create music together.
Normally, the artist that holds the Artist in Residence position is a visual artist and would be commissioned to provide artwork that could be housed in a municipal building. As a community musician, she had to consider how to get these “community compositions” out for people to listen to them. Ultimately, she decided to create studio recordings of the songs they created in 2019. That’s how the Songs of Kitchener album was born and released in 2021 on streaming platforms. At the end of her residency, she started to think about the next step in her musical practice. She started to see a lot of posts at the time around the controversy of a safe consumption site in the Region of Waterloo. That was when she saw a photo floating around Facebook:
https://maryneil.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/blog_memorial_bench_photo.jpg
It was hard for her to think about people dying on our streets, and that we have failed people. And the pandemic only reinforced the inequities that exist in our community. She started to work on collecting stories from people with lived experience of social issues in our community, writing songs with them and giving their voice power through music.
Her work has always been deep in community through musical storytelling. The experience of the process is powerful. Working on I’m Who I Am, they walked alongside people with lived experience of homelessness, with stories of discrimination, with stories of resilience as refugees. She never thought about becoming a recording artist, but she felt these songs should be heard widely. She wanted these voices to be as part of as many conversations as possible to disrupt societal norms, to challenge lack of resourcing, to advocate for more effective policy, to fight for basic human rights. As a musician, she could contribute by sharing these stories in a compelling medium – music. Her hope is that when these songs are heard on the radio, when they are streamed online, when they are part of public exhibitions, when they are shared on social media, that listeners stop and reflect that all human beings want their basic needs met and to feel a sense of belonging. She hopes listeners consider how we can make changes on individual, community, institutional, and government levels because, at the end of the day, “we’re all looking for the same house”.
Who should listen to this album?
Everyone. I don’t mean to sound flippant when I say that. But whether you are intimately familiar with these stories or not, whether you deal with these issues daily or feel you are distant from them, we all need to hear what is happening in our community and decide how we want to engage in what is happening on our streets. We vote for the people who make the policies and allocate the resources. We can support the community organizations who are working on the ground. We can change how we view the people we pass on the street or in our daily lives. When we talk about housing, discrimination, sustainability, this is a community conversation and we all have our role to play in it.
How many of the songs on I’m Who I Am were recorded during the pandemic? What was it like making an album during a pandemic?
This album probably took an extra year and a half to complete due to the pandemic. When we had to bring musicians into the studio, we were delayed by lockdowns and restrictions. I know, for myself, my creativity suffered during the pandemic as I am most inspired and motivated by the people I connect with. This process of creating this album required a lot of grace, patience, and understanding. We all had to work at our own pace given the situation.
Six of the songs were recorded during the pandemic and all the songs were mixed and mastered during the pandemic. The pandemic caused some challenges. Initially, I was going to create some of the songs in community through workshops I had during my residency. Those workshops were scheduled at the KPL late-March 2020, and I quickly had to switch gears once we were in lockdown. I created online surveys to engage communities in creating the lyrics for the songs. I hosted several interviews and conversations that informed these songs via Zoom or phone calls.
Normally, we would invite all the musicians to come into the studio and we would collaboratively work together to record music. Throughout the pandemic, we had to take a more isolated approach to music-making. We often started with a base track and built on that track one musician at a time. What is really interesting about that approach is that when we are in studio, we are often influenced by the others in the room and people may look to me as the facilitator of the project for guidance and direction. Having musicians record in isolation meant that they were free to put their own creativity and musical voice into the mix. We were also able to engage musicians from far and wide, not limited to people who were able to drive to KW.
Tell me about the group of local musicians you work with, the Grounded Theory Collective.
The Grounded Theory Collective is a group of musicians who are invested in using music for social advocacy and community building. It is open to any musician interested in being a part of this work. When I started the I’m Who I Am album project, I engaged artists to provide their support as a collective for granting and promotional purposes. Amazing musicians like Tim Moher, Juneyt Yetkiner, Jeff Cowell and Len McCarthy jumped onboard without hesitation. Since this project was very free flowing from the beginning, the musical lyrics and style was heavily influenced by the research and interviews that went into collecting the stories for each song, I was not even sure what instrumentation would go into this album! As the project continued, other musicians joined the collective to be part of this project including Tamara Menon, Karen Sunabacka, Glenn Marais, and many more. All the musicians involved are listed in the liner notes on my website: maryneil.ca/im-who-i-am-liner-notes
In the liner notes for Lifted High, you write “And we are re-shaping how music is made.” What do you mean by that?
While I bill myself as a singer songwriter, I really see my role as a facilitator and an organizer…and maybe a bit of a disrupter, if I’m being honest. Before I even consider what to write a song about, I spend many hours digging into what is happening in our community. I pour over local media, discussions in local Facebook groups, comments on social media – I want to know what people are talking about. And then I connect with people who are directly connected to the lived experience. Over the course of this project, the issues raised have included homelessness, the opioid crisis, sustainability, immigrant and refugee resiliency in the face of transition, discrimination and, more broadly, the need for action to provide dignity and safety for all people.
I have spent time with community organizations doing the work on the ground (e.g., Social Development Centre of Waterloo Region, KW Multicultural Centre), politicians, local experts, and most importantly residents who are dealing with these issues directly. The songs on this album came out of all the conversations. There were times I worked alongside a resident with lived experience to create these songs, at other times I gathered insight through online surveys. Without a doubt, this is a community album – made with community, for community, by community. I may have written these songs, but I did so on the backs of many people in our community who deserve to be heard, seen, included, and valued. That is why there are extensive liner notes on my website for each song because these songs are so much more than just the title and my artist name that shows up on your device when you are listening to them.
What has the response to I’m Who I Am from the community been like so far?
When I first started this project, I needed to gain community support to apply for grants so I could pay artists to create this music. I began with one song and an abstract concept of how this music-making would work. I also only had 2 weeks from when the inspiration hit me to do this album and an upcoming granting application. Within those 2 weeks, I had 5 musicians donate their time, 8 hours of free recording studio and sound engineering time, and 8 letters of support from artists and community organizations. And since then, the support has been overwhelming.
The artists involved in this work, The Grounded Theory Collective, has grown to over a dozen musicians that I’ve called on to work on several different parts of this album but also other projects I am working on in the community. My community support has grown to include many organizations such as Commons Studio, Reep Green Solutions, The Working Centre, the City of Kitchener, and many more. THEMUSEUM has featured this work as an exhibit for 2021. Local radio stations and podcasters have welcomed me to speak to this album over the course of the last 2 years.
I cannot truly express the range of emotions that have accompanied the journey of this album: the profound sadness and grief hearing some of the stories in our community, the moments of joy and hope with people who saw the importance of this work and happily gave their support for this project, the acts resiliency and strength of those who continue to advocate for basic human rights and dignity. The community response has been overwhelming and has been my driving motivation to persevere in making this album a reality.
Are there any plans for live shows/concerts this year?
I am not quite the typical musician when it comes to live shows. Several songs will be featured as part of an exhibit at the Homer Watson House and Gallery exhibition later this year. I am also engaged as a sound designer in a community engaged theatre production with Watercourse Theatre called Living Below the Line. This production engages residents with lived experience of living below the poverty line to share their stories as part of a workshop presentation in June 2022 in various locations across the Region of Waterloo.
The pandemic has curtailed some of my plans for a public display of this album. But I do hope to bring all the musicians who performed on this album together for a concert in the near future.
Interview by Glodeane Brown
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