Krystle Dos Santos’s BLAK celebrates notable Black Canadian women in music and beyond
Representation is at the core of the artist’s new cabaret-style show
Krystle Dos Santos. Photo by Chelsey Schwan
Shadbolt Centre for the Arts presents BLAK on November 1 at the Studio Theatre
KRYSTLE DOS SANTOS wants to reclaim the word black. She’s calling her new cabaret-style show BLAK, using the phonetic spelling of the term to purposefully put a new spin on it.
“The spelling to me references the real core of what the word is and what we’re trying to define,” Dos Santos says in a phone interview with Stir. “Oftentimes there’s so many negative connotations to the word black—the black sheep or the black plague; there are all these things that I think we naturally put a negativity to it. There’s darkness. Let’s say it in a wonderful, positive way with positive connotations. Let’s own our identity in a positive way without the negativity clouding over it.”
Identity and representation are key themes in BLAK, which celebrates notable Black Canadian women in music and other successful Black people. There are songs by Kellylee Evans, Dawn Pemberton, Dee Daniels, Tanika Charles, Eleanor Collins, Ruby Sneed, D’orjay The Singing Shaman, and more. Stories are shared about the likes of Valerie Jerome, a retired African Canadian track-and-field sprinter, educator, and political activist; Rosemary Brown, Canada’s first Black female member of a provincial legislature and the first woman to run for leadership of a federal political party; and Harriet Tubman, an escaped enslaved woman who became a conductor on the underground railroad, and who was also a nurse and women’s suffrage supporter.
“We’re highlighting the people who inspire me and who are important to me and who are my representation around me,” Dos Santos says. “Representation has only really become a super-highlighted buzz word or concept or idea in the past few years. Representation has always been the core of this show. People see themselves in this show whether they’re Black or not, whether female or not; I have tons of people coming up to me saying ‘Wow, I felt a connection there’, or ‘I felt seen’, or ‘I learned something’.
“That’s what I love to do with my entertainment,” she says. “I like to enlighten and educate but in a really spoonful-of-sugar kind of way that’s enjoyable, where people say ‘Yes I enjoyed that, but I learned so much’.”
Dos Santos, who created the hit cabaret-style show Hey Viola! about Viola Desmond in 2020, shares important accounts in BLAK about the underground railroad, the civil rights movement, and key events in Black history while weaving in songs from the eras in which the iconic women lived. The genres span spirituals, jazz, blues, soul, R&B, pop, and country. The artist says that BLAK is the type of show she would have benefitted from seeing in her youth.
“I think I could have certainly found my way easier in a career which is now coming upon 20 years if I had seen these examples in the past,” Dos Santos says. “For young Krystle, I would have been taken to the moon with this, all these people who are like me. Again it comes back to representation. I don’t think that many cultural groups have been represented and still aren’t represented in appropriate ways when it comes to excellence and achievements. It’s nice to have examples.”
Joining Dos Santos on-stage in BLAK are Pemberton, a local soul singer, and Daniels, a jazz and blues vocalist. She also has a backing band made up of bassist Ginger Chen Pimentel, who has opened for the likes of Dua Lipa, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Imagine Dragons; pianist and vocalist Mary Ancheta, who has performed with such acts as Khari Wendell McClelland, Kimmortal, iskwē, Buckman Coe, Ashleigh Ball, Jill Barber, and more; and Susana Williams, on drums, percussion, and backup vocals, who has graced stages at the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and the Victoria Jazz Festival alongside acclaimed artists including Arturo Sandoval, Poncho Sanchez, Johnny Rivera, Adonis Puentes, and Alex Cuba.
Dos Santos says she sees music as a transactional equation of energy “where the audience receives energy and puts their energy back and you get it, and then it’s this gorgeous cycle of giving and receiving of sound, of music, of information, of joy.
“Music is also this incredible spoonful of sugar, spoonful of honey,” she adds. “It’s this awesome vessel where you can give and share information and people are just ready to receive it. I think it’s built into our basic functionality as animals—as humans—to receive music. We all understand the language of music whether we know it deeply and intimately and technically or whether we just know basics in every culture, every race, every background as far as we can tell. Music has its roots in humanity. Music is life.” 
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