North America's largest free South Asian culture, arts and heritage festival — which takes place annually at Celebration Square in Mississauga — is gearing up for its best year ever!
With 10 successful years under its belt entertaining the South Asian masses, TD Mosaic is ready to celebrate a milestone with you. The event is set to take place August 14–15 and will be hosted by dynamic media personality and event host Randy Persaud along with Dilshad Burman, an award-winning TV host and Canadian media personality.
Randy Persaud and Dilshad Burman
Actor Gabe Grey, Dilshad Burman, MISAFF director Arshad Khan, Supinder Wraich, Rock the Coliseum director Farrell Tremblay, actor Huse Madhavji
The visual arts section of Mosaic, which kicked off August 11, presented Alluvial Return, a retrospective exhibit by well-known Bangladeshi artist Kalidas Karmaker. The exhibit was curated by the festival's co-founder and fellow artist Asma Mahmood.
Artist Kalidas Karmaker, festival co-founder and artist Asma Mahmood and festival founder Arshad Mahmood
The exhibition, which opened at the Promenade Gallery in Mississauga, was attended by the Bengali community of Canada and art lovers of Chicago. Kalidas himself will present a live painting demonstration during the outdoor festival on August 15, with the exhibit ending August 30.
In collaboration with the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto, the outdoor festival will also offer a special workshop of Aboriginal arts and crafts this year.
Mosaic Mushaira — the literary section of the festival — will host a poetry recital by poets and writers in English, Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi August 13 at the Rogers Theatre Living Arts Centre.
The one event that pulls in the largest crowd of all ages is Rock The Coliseum, the Indie Music Festival that will take place August 14–15 at the North Celebration Square Amphitheatre.
To help kick off the 10-year milestone, an opening ceremony will include a smudge ceremony as a blessing performed by Garry Sault, Ojibwe Mississauga elder of Credit Rivers. The focus will be on Canadian Aboriginal dance, music, art and crafts — this year’s honoured feature.
In keeping with the South Asian element, Enakshi Das Sinha — a classic Bharatnatyam dancer — will present her tribute to the Indian subcontinent by performing a traditional grass dance with native dancers.
Day 1 of the concert will feature performances by Spellz among others and conclude with a full concert performance by the Mekaal Hasan Band, known to combine themes of rock, jazz, Sufi and Punjabi poetry, creating a sound they dub "Punjabi prog-rock." They’ll be performing along with Coke Studio–famed artists such as Humaira Channa and Jimmy Khan and Bollywood playback singer Sharmishtha Chatterjee — who, rumour has it, will be performing a special treat for the Mosaic Festival’s Bengali audience.
Day 2 will go on to feature more crowd-pumping performances, with the highlight headliner being Vancouver-based band Delhi 2 Dublin in a powerful “Bhangra meets Celtic” concert.
Make sure you stick around for a special dance performance celebrating the festival’s 10-year history. Get ready to be blown away by two different full concerts and dance performances by the Shiamak Dance Toronto team with its special tenth-year tribute to TD Mosaic Volunteers and its faithful audience — you!
For more info on the festival, visit http://www.cre8iv80studio.com/2015/index.asp.
All images courtesy of : www.cre8iv80studio.com/2015/index.asp, The Black Umbrella Photography Studio
Monika Bhondy
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Monika Bhondy (@monikabhondy) is one of the original editors at ANOKHI. She wore many hats through the developmental years including creating the first Holiday Gift Guide as The Style Editor, putting down the first building blocks of ANOKHI's global blog community, handling the video department and ...