Art
He uses the art of stepping to shed light on the Black experience – CBC.ca
CBC Quebec is highlighting people from the province’s Black communities who are giving back, inspiring others and helping to shape our future. These are the 2023 Black Changemakers.
About 15 years ago, Kayin Queeley fell in love with the art of stepping. As the founder of the collective Montreal Steppers, he’s since taught it to thousands of students.
Ask him about the history of stepping, and Queeley’s eyes light up.
The art form, which revolves around the use of one’s body as a percussive instrument through footwork, hand clapping and spoken word, has deep roots in Black American culture.
Everything the collective does — from workshops in schools, CEGEPs and universities to live performances that also include singing and spoken-word poetry — makes the link between that history and the present-day Black experience.
It’s a critical part of the collective’s message: “We are going to help you engage in this art form, but you will not leave and you won’t engage without knowing where this came from,” explains Queeley.
“We cannot continue to share elements of our history and our art forms without the context.”
Bodies replaced banned drums
In 1739, there was an unsuccessful slave uprising in South Carolina, known as the Stono Rebellion.
Enslaved Africans were armed with weapons and used the beat of drums to signal each other.
Once the rebellion was quashed, South Carolina passed strict laws to better control the enslaved population, including banning the use of drums.
“It was now the inception of using your body to replicate the sound of the drum, which was now missing,” Queeley said.
Falling in love with stepping
Queeley, who was born and raised in the small dual-island Caribbean nation of Saint Kitts and Nevin, left home to study at the State University of New York College at Plattsburgh.
That’s where he saw his first live stepping routine, at a gospel concert in 2008.
“There’s something about that rawness of you creating the music with your body,” said Queeley. “… a group of people collectively doing this simultaneously, doing all of it together, synchronized, but at the same time doing different steps, as well, that all build and connect with each other.”
He soon joined a local step team, eventually going on to lead it.
Plattsburgh, where Queeley found stepping, is also where he met his wife, Liza Selvarajah, a fellow student and a Montrealer who eventually persuaded him to move to Quebec.
“I didn’t expect my life to end up in Montreal, I can tell you that, my friend,” he said.
“I’m an island boy through and through.”
More than just dance
Shortly after arriving in Montreal, Queeley began volunteering in schools, teaching students about stepping.
He was also part of a group that performed at McGill University in 2016, blending gospel songs with a step routine, followed by a brief presentation outlining the history of the dance style.
That presentation resonated with the audience and got Queeley thinking about starting a group whose mission would be to introduce people to the history of stepping, through the art form.
“I don’t want this just to be [about] performance. There’s an element missing when we only do performance,” he said.
“I want you to walk away realizing that there’s potential in yourself to use your body to explore this art form but I want you to walk away knowing this history.”
Montreal Steppers was officially born in 2019. Since then, Queeley says the Montreal Steppers have given 400 workshops, reaching about 11,000 students.
The group has about 20 members, including Winnie Daniel, who’s been involved from the beginning.
Daniel credits Queeley’s leadership and work ethic for the group growing its reach even as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on.
“He is a very humble leader. He knows how to generously put everybody where they will shine,” said Winnie Daniel.
Creating a dialogue
“If this was 150 years ago, why wouldn’t I be allowed in your school?” Queeley asks students at the beginning of every workshop.
Some of them pause, he says.
“Why, Mr. Kayin?” they ask. “I don’t know.”
“Because I am a Black man,” he tells them. “Back then there was segregation. We weren’t allowed in certain spaces. So, now I’m allowed in this space. What are we going to do today? How are we going to learn?”
Even if the history of stepping is tied to African slavery, Kayin and his fellow steppers want the dialogue to go beyond that.
“It changed a lot how I see myself as a Black woman, just by connecting with my history,” said Daniel. “Not through pain, but being inspired through art.”
Queeley says he’s hopeful that his work contributes in some way to making the world an easier place to navigate for his four-year-old daughter.
“We do all of that because we are recognizing what the past has led us to. And we are looking to make proactive decisions about our present that will shift and shape our future,” he said.
“We all do what we can, and collectively we will make a huge difference.”
The Black Changemakers is a special series recognizing individuals who, regardless of background or industry, are driven to create a positive impact in their community. From tackling problems to showing small gestures of kindness on a daily basis, these changemakers are making a difference and inspiring others. Meet all the changemakers here.
For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians — from anti-Black racism to success stories within the Black community — check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of. You can read more stories here.
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A trio plays a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy as a dozen people settle in for an intimate open mic night inside Derrick McCandless and Dawn Mills’s cozy spot off highways 6 and 68 in Manitoba’s Interlake.
Strings of antique-style light bulbs cast a soft glow over the mandolin, banjo and dobro guitar that hang on a wall behind the band. An array of pottery shaped in-house by Mills dots the shelves behind the audience.
The Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop is full of tchotchkes — like an Elvis Presley Boulevard street sign and vintage Orange Crush ad — that create the rustic country-living vibe the couple dreamt up before buying and transforming the vacant space over the past three years.
“I have met so many people in this community through them that I probably wouldn’t have … because of this hub,” says Mills’s cousin Dana-Jo Burdett.
Mills and McCandless are bringing people together in their rural community in more ways than one — though a return to Mills’s hometown wasn’t always in the cards.
The couple met in Winnipeg in 2011 while McCandless was playing a party at Mills’s cousin’s place. They had plans to settle in the Okanagan in McCandless’s home province of B.C. until he suffered a health scare. After that, they decided to head back to the Prairies.
WATCH | McCandless and Mills channel creative spirit into Eriksdale community:
Dawn Mills and Derrick McCandless host the RogerKimLee Music Festival in the Manitoba Interlake community of Eriksdale. They also turned a long-vacant space in town into a live music venue, instrument repair and sales store, and pottery and framing services shop.
It was the height of the pandemic in fall 2020 when the pair relocated to Eriksdale, about 130 km northwest of Winnipeg. They bought the old Big Al’s shop, once a local sharpening business that was sitting vacant.
“He was an icon in the community. He was a school teacher. He did a drama program here,” said Mills. “He brought a lot to the town.”
The building has become their own personal playground and live-in studio.
“It keeps evolving and we keep changing it and every room has to serve multi-function,” says Mills. “It’s a meeting place.”
While they love the quiet life of their community, they’re also a busy couple.
McCandless is a multi-instrumentalist with a former career in the Armed Forces that took him all over. Now, he’s a shop teacher in Ashern who sells and fixes instruments out of the music shop.
WATCH | McCandless plays an original song:
Derrick McCandless plays one of his original songs on acoustic guitar at the Eriksdale Music & Custom Frame Shop in March 2024.
Mills helped found Stoneware Gallery in 1978 — the longest running pottery collective in Canada. She offers professional framing services and sells pottery creations that she throws in-studio.
They put on open mic nights and host a summer concert series on a stage next door they built together themselves. They’re trying to start up a musicians memorial park in Eriksdale too.
One of their bigger labours of love is in honour of McCandless’s good friends Roger Leonard Young, David Kim Russell and Tony “Leon” — or Lee — Oreniuk. All died within months of each other in 2020-2021.
“That was a heart-wrenching year,” McCandless says.
They channeled their grief into something good for the community and started the RogerKimLee Music Festival.
Friends from Winnipeg and the Interlake helped them put on a weekend of “lovely music, lovely food, lovely companionship” as a sort of heart-felt send off, said Mills.
That weekend it poured rain. Festival-goers ended up in soggy dog piles on the floor of the music shop to dry out while Mills and McCandless cooked them sausages and eggs to warm up.
“It was just a great weekend,” says McCandless. “At the end of that, that Sunday, we just said that’s it, we got to do this.”
Mills says the homey community spirit on display during that inaugural year is what the couple has been trying to “encourage in people getting together” ever since.
The festival has grown to include a makers’ market, car show, kids activities, workshops, camping, beer gardens, good food and live music.
This summer, Manitoba acts The Solutions, Sweet Alibi and The JD Edwards Band are on the lineup Aug. 16-18.
Burdett has been a part of the growth, helping with branding, social media and marketing. McCandless and Mills’s habit of bringing people together has also rubbed off on Burdett.
“There’s more of my people out here than I thought, and I am very grateful for that,” says Burdett.
Their efforts to breathe new artistic life into Eriksdale caught the attention of their local MLA.
“The response from family and friend and community has been outstanding,” Derek Johnston (Interlake-Gimli) said during question period at the Manitoba Legislature in March.
“The RogerKimLee Music Festival believes music to be a powerful force for positive social change.”
Dolly Lindell, who has lived in Eriksdale for about three decades, said the couple is adding something valuable that wasn’t quite there before.
“There’s a lot of people that we didn’t even know had musical talent and aspirations and this has definitely helped bring it out,” Lindell says from the audience as McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie wrap their rendition of Take it Easy.
McCandless, 61, said there was a time in his youth where he dreamed of a becoming a folk music star. Now his musical ambitions have changed. He’s focused on using that part of himself to bring people together.
“I think it’s that gift that I was given that that needs to be shared,” he says. “I don’t think I could live without sharing it.”
WATCH | Trio plays song at Eriksdale music shop:
Derrick McCandless, Dave Greene and Mark Chuchie play a cover of The Eagles hit Take it Easy at McCandless and Dawn Mills’s music shop in Eriksdale in March 2024.
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- Duration 4:42
Joel Jamensky’s sunny disposition explains why the artist with Down syndrome uses the name ‘J-positive’ for his online art business, started with the help of his parents two years ago. “There’s a lot more going on in [Joel’s] art than may be at first glance – just like him,” said his dad, Mark.
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