Playing the resistance: Comic Martha Chaves reveals her musical side for the first time

Martha Chaves loves playing her little blue guitar (which she affectionately calls Luna). But she has never played Luna in front of an audience — until Now or Never invited her to take the stage as part of its show at the Winnipeg Comedy Festival.

The veteran Toronto comedian and playwright has no illusions about her musical talent. She said her singing voice sounds as "if a cat were trapped in the throat of Don Corleone".

Chaves was raised on revolutionary music. She grew up in Nicaragua in the 1960s and '70s, a time when people communicated their resistance to the Somoza dictatorship through coded folk songs.

When she was 17, she arrived in Canada as a refugee and realized people didn't understand her music.

"Somebody told me it sounds like Old MacDonald Had a Farm," she recalled. "And I said, 'Yes, but old MacDonald on the farm oppressed the peasants. That's what I'm singing about."

Chaves stopped singing folk songs and found her voice and community in comedy and theatre.

She still sees herself as a revolutionary. She joked that she has no time for Zumba classes because she's so busy attending protests. And she said now is the time for her to share her songs with the world. 

"I am terrified that Twitter and Facebook will go away and then we will have to communicate the message through guitar and humour in the streets. So I have no choice but to start playing the guitar and singing again."

Chaves is currently working on a new one-person show, tentatively titled Rebel Without A Pause.

To hear her debut musical performance, click the listen button at the top of this page.