TAR SANDS SONGBOOK

What is Tar Sands Songbook?

Tar Sands Songbook is a dynamic, musical, multimedia piece that asks us to consider our personal relationships to oil. Creator Tanya Kalmanovitch knows these relationships all too well. Born in Fort McMurray, Canada, near the site of the Athabasca Oil Sands, the world’s largest bitumen reservoir, she made her decision to become a musician as a teenager because “it had nothing to do with oil.” But when Fort McMurray shot to international attention as the flashpoint of clashes over energy, the environment, and the economy — “ground zero for climate change” — Kalmanovitch was called to go home. Now, she is embarking on a journey to share her own oil history and urge other people to think about theirs.

What is The Pipeline Tour?

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2018 report, global society must radically reduce carbon emissions by 2030, if we want to limit the worst impacts of global warming. Tar Sand Songbook’s goal is to perform in communities most impacted by Alberta oil and effects — those located along all of the pipelines, crude-by-rail, and sea lines that carry Alberta bitumen and its byproducts into global markets.

Along the tour routes, community audiences will be brought together for a 75-minute performance, and a 120-minute co-creation session where they will be led in developing their own songs and stories about oil. These experiences will be incorporated into future performances of Tar Sands Songbook, in an effort to track developments in this fast-moving story. Together, the script and the stories will document the choices we make at this most pivotal time in human history.

Why Red Hook?

When asked where she would like to begin the ten-year tour, Tar Sand Songbook’s creator, Tanya Kalmanovitch, knew the answer immediately. Having called Red Hook home since 2008, Tanya holds this community near and dear to her heart. The moment Hurricane Sandy hit Red Hook nearly eight years ago served as a major turning point in her thoughts around climate change. It was then she realized that climate change wasn’t about some community somewhere else-- it was about her, her neighbors, her friends. She is eager to come together virtually with fellow members of the Red Hook community to share experiences, reflect, and explore our community’s “oil story” through games, image-making, dialogue, songs, stories and lots of laughter.