Songs by Maja Bannerman

This rare three-song demo documents Maja Bannerman’s involvement in Toronto’s early-1980s independent music and arts community. Bannerman emerged from the Queen Street West scene, where musicians, poets, visual artists and performance artists regularly shared venues, collaborators and audiences. Her work belonged naturally within that crossover environment rather than to a single conventional genre.

The cassette opens on a folk-rock footing, while ‘Knock On My Door’ provides its clearest connection to new wave. More importantly, the recording captures Bannerman working with guitarist Rusty McCarthy, bassist and guitarist Shane Adams, and drummer Benjamin Cleveland, with Adams also producing. McCarthy would remain an important collaborator throughout her later career.

Bannerman subsequently expanded her combination of songwriting, poetry and performance through projects such as the 1984 cassette Future Perfect with the Bill Smith Ensemble and its companion collection, Songs, Poems, and Performance Pieces. This otherwise undocumented demo offers an early glimpse of that developing practice and preserves a small but valuable piece of Toronto’s independent cassette and Queen Street West history.

-Robert Williston