Foon Yap eating dirt, for some reason — it’s probably symbolic.

DETAILS

Foonyap & The Roar with Scars As Scarves
Tubby Dog
Saturday, February 6 - Saturday, February 6

More in: Rock / Pop

Find It...

Tubby Dog

“I hated violin,” says violinist Foon Yap, who took up her instrument at the tender age of four. “I never practised. I was always late for rehearsals; always smoking in the practise rooms…. I hated everything about classical music. Now that I look back, it’s nothing to do with the music, I was probably just an angry kid.”

The daughter of traditionally minded Chinese parents (her mother is from Hong Kong and her father is Malaysian, of Chinese descent), music came into Yap’s life as a form of discipline, rather than creative expression. “I remember wanting to play violin just because everyone older than me, like my sisters and cousins, played violin,” she says. “Then I started and I realized how not fun it was. We used to get spanked if we didn’t practise. We weren’t allowed to play sports because of my hands. I remember gym class, it was like, ‘Watch out for your hands, you’re a violinist,’ or ‘Always wear your mittens.’ ”

At 17, just one year away from completing her Royal Conservatory certificate, Yap dropped out and terminated her formal musical education, pursuing a path quite different from the one her parents had hoped and expected.

Now, Yap is best known to Calgary audiences for her work with baroque folk ensemble Woodpigeon. Her tenure began like so many other local indie rock stories: “I was drunk one night at Broken City, and I had my violin on me,” she recalls. “The club was packed and I needed to sit down. I crawled across this table and introduced myself to all these guys, and they were like, “‘Hey our friend needs a violinist for his CD release.’”

Three rehearsals later, Yap joined Mark Hamilton and company onstage for the release of Woodpigeon’s debut, Songbook. “My relationship to violin changed when I started playing with Woodpigeon,” she acknowledges. With her years of disciplined study, combined with a rekindled passion for musical expression, Yap quickly became a force to be reckoned with. The past year has been particularly profound for her creative journey.

“I think for me, the turning point was when we did a show of Bjork covers for last year’s High Performance Rodeo,” she says. “It went over really well. I thought, ‘Oh, I can actually sing, like in a way that’s not lame.’ ”

For this year’s Rodeo, Yap debuted her song cycle, The Mes The Mys and the Swimming Pool, a conceptual multimedia performance with her band, The Roar, which includes members of The Summerlad and Woodpigeon. Surprisingly, Yap only began writing songs last May, and The Roar has been playing together for a scant three months.

The music for the song cycle is full of yelping dance-punk and no-wave noise, a dramatic departure from Yap’s other project. Despite the intensity, though, the concept behind the cycle is decidedly cerebral. “I was really taken by Hegel,” Yap explains. “The Mes and the Mys relate to Hegel’s idea that we’re unaware [of the forces that direct our lives]. Our idea of us existing as individuals is a social construct. Other societies don’t have that. Other societies don’t grow up with people telling them that they’re individuals — you’re special, you’re unique. A lot of other societies, people grow up telling them, you do this, you do that and you never have that sense of individuality. The swimming pool, in the song cycle, is the force of reason. Everything you do, every conflict you have is the force of reason trying out every single path in the universe.”

She concedes the influence of the cultural clash that has shaped her perspective and creative vision. Like a swimming pool, it’s definitely deep. “My family is very strict, very religious,” she says. “On one side, I have a culture where there really is no sense of ‘I.’ But I live in this culture where there is this sense of ‘I.’ Growing up with these social constructs, we think that we’re in control, but really, who knows what’s beneath us?”