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The Current Transcript for June 19, 2018

Host: Laura Lynch

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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VOICE: Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, like eight in a row. I thought it was something like a firecracker or something.

LAURA LYNCH: But in fact, it was actually gunfire. Shots fired at a Toronto playground where children were playing left two young sisters injured. The shootings once again made people anxious about gun violence. First up today, more than a decade after Toronto's infamous "Summer of the Gun." We're talking about why policing and prevention strategies don't seem to be able to stop the bullets from flying. Also, on today's show.

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Drum performance by Yoyoka Soma.

LL: So were you surprised to hear a young woman chuckle at the end of that epic drum solo? That is the 8-year-old drumming sensation, Yoyoka Soma. Her video entry in this year's "Hit Like a Girl" contest for women and girls who play the drums has been viewed millions of times online. And it may just be helping to beat down a stereotype about girls and drums. Coming up in about half an hour, we're talking about the taboos around women and drums and my guests will include none other than percussion powerhouse Sheila E. Also today, first one, then another, then another. A series of deaths in the Harrison family of Mississauga, Ontario were described by police as having undetermined causes, until a pattern came into view.

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VOICE 1: What did you do?

VOICE 2: I killed Bridget Harrison and Caleb Harrison.

LL: A confession, as the deaths were reclassified as homicides, but the case shines a light on a difficult problem for police and families, how to uncover so-called Concealed Murders. That discussion in an hour from now. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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Increase in Toronto shootings will continue without new strategy, argues anti-gun advocate

Guests: Mike McCormack, Wendy Cukier, Louis March

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VOICE: You know astonished is a word that doesn't even begin to describe my own feelings. I am horrified by this, but one thing I am heartened by and I think the family was, they had the superintendent there as well, is that the police are working aggressively and they're working with full resources deployed to track these profoundly antisocial kind of sewer rats down. And I'm just confident our police are good enough and they're working as hard as they possibly can to make progress on this and that's what the family really wanted to hear.

LL: That is Toronto Mayor, John Tory, speaking Friday about a spate of recent gun violence in Canada's largest city, including a particularly brazen shooting last week in a crowded playground. Two sisters, aged 5 and 9, suffered gunshot wounds. Both have undergone surgery and are said to be recovering, but the incident has shocked people across the city. We asked some residents who live near the playground for their reaction to the shooting.

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VOICE 1: I was working on that day, but my wife and my son staying at home. She called me probably after like the gunshot and I told them if you still feel unsafe, stay in the basement because we don't know what's going on.

VOICE 2: My kids was really scared. They don't want to come home and they say oh there is other way too can I come home and I say we cannot get in we have to pass this park. They were crying, my 5-year-old daughter, she was really crying and scared.

VOICE 3: I was shocked you know because my time staying here, it was very quiet. Every kids have fun. I play with the kids. It was something I wouldn't expect.

VOICE 4: What I heard from the neighbours, some of them they living here over like probably about like 29-30 years. This is the first time happened that and this is a very safety community. Very safe.

VOICE 5: The premier and the mayor have to do something about this gun control because they're like 19-20 years old and how are they obtaining guns.

VOICE 6: I think we need to keep a small neighbourhood watch kind of program, we should have. This could be helpful for us, especially my son, he's 11-years-old in a park bicycling with his class fellow and he told me from now on I'm not gonna go until you just go with me.

LL: Anti-gun advocates say the shooting illustrates a growing problem that's affecting several major cities across the country including Vancouver and Ottawa, but Toronto is being hit particularly hard. As of this weekend, there had already been 194 shootings in the city this year. If that pace continues, it would ensure a fourth straight year of increased gun crime in Toronto. We've invited three people who've been following this closely to share their perspectives with us and their ideas for how to stop the bloodshed. Louis March is the founder of Zero Gun Violence Movement, a community advocacy group he started in 2013 to reduce gun violence in Toronto. Wendy Cukier is president of the Coalition for Gun Control, a national organization that promotes strengthening the country's gun laws. She's also a professor at Ryerson University. They are both in our Toronto studio. And Mike McCormack is the head of the Toronto Police Association, which represents 7,500 uniform and civilian members and we've reached him on the phone. Hello to all of you.

WENDY CUKIER: Hi.

MIKE MCCORMACK: Good morning.

LOUIS MARCH: Good morning.

LL: Mike McCormack let's start with you. Why do you think we're seeing this surge in gun violence in Toronto?

MM: You know, we're seeing a surge in gun violence in Toronto for a whole number of reasons. You know socioeconomic reasons, the lack of opportunity within certain communities, the lack of value for lives, so we have a social aspect that's ongoing that causes increasing violence and some issues around the gun violence. And we also have a policing issue, education issue, gun control issue. So there's a whole melting pot of different things that are causing this spike gang activity, an increase in gang activity, a change in culture and what I mean by that is that, a more violent culture. When I started as a police officer almost 30 years ago, I'll never forget, you know people would come in and they say oh we've recovered a firearm. Officers would come in off the street to see that firearm and go wow you see, he got a firearm. I was in 51 Division last week, they recovered in eight days, eight handguns, arrested ten people and they had a picture on the wall of all the handguns they'd recovered this year. And the wall was full, so there's been a big change.

LL: Now a lot of people are drawing comparisons to the summer of 2005 what was called "The Summer of the Gun." Can you remind us what happened back then and how this current spike compares.

MM: Yeah again, you know, I don't like the term "spikes" because as you said in your introduction, this has been a four year trend. So in the "Summer of the Gun 2005," we had the Jane Creba shooting, we had the Eaton Centre shooting and then in 2012, we had the Danzig shooting. So there was a huge surge in 2005 in shootings in public places and there was a public outcry for that. But the difference here, so when I look at the trend over the last let's say from 2014, where we had 242 shooting victims, if I go back 10 years from that, we're roughly you know within if we look at a graph, it would be a few little ups and downs around that. But what we see is that in 2015, the number of shooting victims jumps up to 429, then in 2016 it's 581 and then in 2017 it's 594. And what we are is we're trending 18 per cent above that. So this is not a spike or a blip, this is a new reality in Toronto. We are trending over 600 shooting victims this year.

LL: New reality Louis March, what do you think is behind this rise in gun related violence?

LM: The raise in gun violence as Mike says there's several factors. What we've noticed is the characteristics of the violence has changed. Access to guns, kids are still saying it's easier for them to get guns than it is to get jobs. The caliber of the guns that are being used, they're not firearms anymore, they're semi-automatics. The age of the people using the guns, the shootings in broad daylight, innocents being shot and so on and it's been fueled a lot by gang activity, yes and also social media streams, where they use that to promote, compete, threaten what they're going to be doing. So the characteristics, the dynamics have changed, but the response to it from the government has not changed. They're still using the same tools and strategies that they used to many years ago. It's time for them to actually throw those reports, data and stuff out the window and take a look at what's going on in 2018. This has been trending this way for years and their response has been minimal, at best.

LL: OK. We'll get to what can be done about it in a moment, but I just want to ask Wendy Cukier, you've said this is a national problem that you're seeing playing out in Toronto. How so?

WC: For the last three years, we've seen an increase in gun homicides, we've seen by 60 per cent. We've seen an increase in gun crime generally and we've seen in other jurisdictions not just Toronto an increase in crime guns that are actually traced to Canadian sources. So from our perspective, I couldn't agree more with Mike and Louis. There are multiple factors driving this, but from our perspective, one of the things that's contributing is the relaxation in the controls on firearms.

LL: Tell me about that. What do you mean when you say relaxation?

WC: Well, the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police recently testified before the federal government and said since the end of the long gun registry, police have been effectively blind to the number of transactions by licensed individuals. With respect to non-restricted guns, we saw for example in the first four months of this year, police recovered almost as many rifles and shotguns in crime as they did handguns. In B.C., the B.C. Task Force on Illegal Firearms traces the surge in firearms to the relaxation of laws, not just the elimination of the registration of rifles and shotguns, but the relaxation of controls over handguns. Changes made it effectively possible for someone who's a restricted firearms owner to have their firearm anywhere in the province where they live. There were also changes to the sales and how sales are tracked. So even in 1977, if you bought a rifle or a shotgun, a record was kept in the store of that purchase. And when they eliminated the registry, they also failed to reinstitute the controls that were on gun sales 40 years ago. Those are controls that we see even in the United States, so there have been a number of fairly technical changes to our gun control regime, but the overall impact has been doubling the number of restricted and prohibited weapons in the hands of civilians. And as you increase legal ownership of guns, you increase opportunities for those guns to be diverted to illegal markets.

LL: Mike McCormack I'm wondering what you think of that, have relaxations of gun laws made it harder for police?

MM: Again, you know I think that that is a factor and that's something that we're looking at, but you know when I go back to what's going on in Toronto and I look at exactly what's happening in Toronto and I just spoke about eight firearms that we recovered in a ten day period in 51 division. Great work from our officers. Our officers are recovering guns almost on a daily basis. And that's you know, what we're recovering there are handguns and the guns that we're seeing used in these types of shootings are handguns. So the issue for us is the willingness, as Louis was saying, the brazenness, the gang activity and then the lack of policing around that and the lack of resources we have. Like I heard the mayor's comments at the beginning about going up there and I agree with the mayor on this point, we have the best investigators. We as you saw in the media in the last few days, apprehended somebody for the shooting, however we have to do stuff that proactively prevents these types of shootings. And when we have a city that has grown by 10 per cent over the last eight years, had a population grow by 400,000 and we had a police service that has been downsized by 800 uniformed police officers.

LL: So the mayor has pointed that to the hiring of 200 more officers, is that part of the solution then?

MM: Well I, when the mayor's saying 200 officers and this is where I think that for all of us, whether it's Louis, Wendy, myself, you Laura, we all have to, everybody has to sit down and have a real honest discussion about facts and what is going on and look at all the aspects. So when the mayor says we hired 200 police officers, the reality is so far, we have lost 202 police officers this year so far, 232 last year and we've only seen 20 officers this year. So the whole notion that we hired 200 officers is misleading. So when we're down 800 police officers, it's about properly deployed proactive policing, which is a huge component that has an impact on this type of crime.

LL: Louis March, more officers are they going to help fix things or not?

LM: I think when the mayor announced that the 200 new officers, I scratch my head and I'm saying to myself, this is a very simplistic and very reactionary response that seems to pander to the climate of the time. If it's not part of a more comprehensive plan then I really can't take it seriously. The signs have been under wall for the longest time about the growing trends in terms of gun violence. People have spoken about the socio economic conditions. For me it's about economics, supply and demand. The demand for guns has increased because we're not dealing with the socio economic conditions in the neighborhoods. We know the neighborhoods, we know the conditions that exist, there's a difference between living in Rosedale and Rexdale. In Rosedale you don't have to worry about it because things are looking nice in Rosedale. People are feeling good, they have great aspirations, great resources, great support. In other parts of the community, communities are traumatized, they live in fear. There's no expectations for long life. Someone who was 20-years-old the other day and I said happy birthday to him and he said I didn't even think I was going to make it to 20. This is Toronto the great. Internationally acclaimed, very resourceful and very internationally known and this is not something that just showed up overnight. OK.

LL: I want to broaden this out a little bit more because obviously it's very acute in Toronto, but it's not the only city in Canada. Wendy Cukier how are other cities in the country being affected by gun violence?

WC: We're seeing very similar patterns and I think both the conditions that Louis and Mike talked about apply not just in Toronto, but in other parts of the country as well. We know that the disparity between rich and poor has a huge impact. The United Way, the Greater Toronto and York Region released a report that showed we basically have two realities and that's true in large cities like Winnipeg. It's true in large cities like Vancouver, it's true in places like Montreal, as well. We also see the kind of patterns that I described have been documented in other parts of the country, the increase for example, in straw purchases in gun theft. Gun theft is up more than 50 per cent. That's by definition, stolen guns or legal guns that enter the illegal market. The national trends in our view, have been driven by broad changes in socioeconomic conditions, but also the proliferation of firearms.

LL: Wendy Cukier, I was at a news conference with Ralph Goodale in Surrey, B.C. last November, when he was announcing funding for anti-gang initiatives, which he suggested was going to get at this crime. Recently, just several days ago, two teenagers were shot dead in Surrey, B.C. and I'm wondering when you look at all of that, what federal legislative changes are you calling for to address the problem of gun violence?

WC: So again, legislation and controls over firearms are a very small piece of the picture. It is of course important to ensure that we have effective enforcement. It's important to ensure that we have support for victims, so we break the cycle of victimization and as both Mike and Louis pointed out, we have to invest in kids because you can see, even in my neighborhood in High Park, Toronto, you can see the kids who are at risk and the circumstances that breed the potential for violence. But from a legislative point of view, we really think that we need to restore stronger controls over firearms to reduce the chances legal guns will enter illegal markets, to hold people accountable for their firearms. And as I said, it's a small piece of it, but if you compare, everyone compares Canada to the U.S. and of course we look great, relatively speaking. We have about 200 gun murders a year, they have 11,000 and it's driven by the availability of firearms. But if you look at the U.K., which has twice as many people as all of Canada, they have about the same number of gun murders each year as Toronto does and no one can argue that the United Kingdom does not also have issues around social disparity and inequality and challenges, but the availability of guns turns conflicts into murders and that's one of the big things we have to keep in mind. The availability of a firearm increases the toll of violence.

LL: I want to talk to Mike McCormack about this, Wendy Cukier is calling for tighter gun control, what do you think of that?

MM: You know, I'm gonna go, I agree that the gun controls that we have here have an impact and what Wendy is saying and that's why I get frustrated as well, when people are comparing us to the United States. We're not the United States, culture is different. Gun control is something that we believe in, in policing and not only gun control, but people who are using guns in crimes, sentencing and stuff like that we look at. But going back to Louis' point, like what we're talking about are these young kids because when we look at these shooters and then we look at the people who are involved in this and working in at-risk communities as I spent most of my career doing, like you've got somebody who's a teenager wherever, what's going through their head? When they're making that step that they're going to walk up and put a gun to the back of somebody else's head and blow their head off or shoot them, taking that person's life and ruining their life. That's a huge issue when people are making that leap to use a firearm to murder somebody else and that's something we need to deal with from the economic standpoint and the social standpoint as Louis said, Rexdale to Rosedale, but also.

LL: Mike I've only got, I've got less than a minute left and I just want to ask Louis March, are there lessons that we can learn from policing strategies in other cities that have worked well?

LM: I think it's about time we bring all the stakeholders to the table again and find what was working, what is not working. We have a lot of wasted time and effort and resources, for example impact dollars, they call them all the money that is spent. Communities are not under served they're poorly served. There's a difference between quantity and quality. We need to bring the stakeholders back to the table and say let's look 2018, things have changed. Let's look at policing strategies, right. Police are trained to enforce the law.

LL: Louis March, I'm sorry we're going to have to leave it there. We have run out of time. There's much more to talk about, but I thank all three of you.

WC: Thank you.

MM: Thank you.

LL: Mike McCormack is head of the Toronto Police Association. Louis March is founder of the Zero Gun Violence Movement, a Toronto advocacy group. And Wendy Cukier is president of the Coalition for Gun Control, a national organization and a professor at Ryerson and they are all in Toronto. Well the CBC News is coming up next. Then, who says it's a bad thing to "hit like a girl?" A viral video of a young girl playing the drums like a rock star, has got the internet excited and it's got us talking about breaking down the taboo of female drummers. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you are listening to The Current.

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Back To Top »

Drummer Sheila E. encourages female musicians to keep smashing taboos

Guest: Sheila E., Kayleigh Hughes, Lynette Gillis

LL: Hello. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and you're listening to The Current.

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LL: Still to come, after three deaths in one Mississauga family, each with an undetermined cause according to police, the pattern finally became clear. Members of the Harrison family were being murdered. Those cases were finally reclassified as homicides and now police are looking back on other undetermined deaths to see if they too should be classified as murders. Coming up in half an hour, I'll speak with a close family friend of the Harrison family and I'll ask investigators about the challenges of recognizing homicides. But first, girl power with a beat you can dance to.

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Drum performance by Yoyoka Soma.

By now you may have seen the video of the 8-year-old Japanese girl, Yoyoka Soma, rocking out on the drums to Led Zeppelin's "Good Times, Bad Times." Soma was one of the finalists in the latest edition of "Hit Like a Girl," a contest for female drummers and the video of her performance took the internet by storm. Young drummers from all over the world showed off their chops in that contest, including 14 year old Jillian Van Daalen of Tillsonburg, Ontario. Here are some of her beats as she explains what draws her to the drum kit.

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I love drumming because when I hear a song I really, I love music so much and so when I start drumming, it's almost like, I'm also, I'm a part of the music as well. And yeah just like hitting things and making it sound really good is just fun. When I tell people that I'm a drummer and they see me and they're like whoa, a girl drummer, that is so cool, like you don't see those very often, you know what I mean. It's a different reaction every time, some people look at you like really I don't really believe you, but some people think that it's just awesome.

Now as Jillian said, she gets a lot of different reactions when people find out she's a girl who drums, female drummers are still a bit of a cultural rarity it seems, but if there's one woman who's been blazing the path for decades, it's my next guest. Sheila E's career took off in the 1980's as a solo performer, but she may be best known as Prince's long-time collaborator and band mate.

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Clip from "America" by Prince.

LL: That is Sheila E. on percussion on Prince's song, "America." Sheila E. has become an idol for a lot of women drummers. We've reached her at home in Los Angeles. Hello.

SHEILA E: Hi. How are you?

LL: Good, thanks. I'm wondering what goes through your mind when you hear a young female drummer like Jillian Van Daalen talking about just how much she loves drumming.

SE: It sounds familiar. I mean, you know, growing up in a musical family where my dad practiced and played every day, percussion not drums, but I can understand what she's saying because when I hear the music I was very excited even growing up listening to my dad. When you want to play, you hear the beats. I got excited when I first heard James Brown and the drums being played on that particular record and I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to be, I wanted to feel like I was a part of the band. Once you start playing you feel like you're with the band.

LL: How old were you when you started drumming?

SE: Drumming, I didn't start till you know in my teens. I auditioned for a local band in Oakland, California, where I was raised. I think I was around 14-years-old and my dad at the time was performing and playing with Carlos Santana. So they heard that my dad was in the band and said, "Hey, I heard you played drums, would you like to audition?" This was my first audition and I said sure. I had never really played drums before I, you know, dabbled in percussion and by that time I was already playing violin. So I said, yeah, I can play drums and not a problem. I borrowed my cousin's drum set and asked him if he could help me set up the drums, like I looked like I knew what I was doing. But I didn't really know how to set a drum set up and that's when I really first started playing drums.

LL: So how much you think has changed for young female drummers since you started out in the business?

SE: Oh it's changed a lot tremendously, you know. And especially because the internet, you know you try to go on the internet and this is when I've noticed how many there are. There are a lot of female drummers and growing up for me the only drummer that I knew of and the first time I saw a woman playing was Karen Carpenter and I might have been around nine or ten, I'm not sure. And I said daddy, daddy, look at she's playing drums on television with her brother, how come I don't have a TV show, I can play drums.

LL: It's funny because I think a lot of people even to this day, wouldn't have remembered or realized that Karen Carpenter did play the drums. They remember her for her voice. When you were at the beginning of your career as a drummer, what was the reaction that you got from people? You heard Jillian Van Daalen, the 14 year old, saying people react, when they hear I'm a girl who drums, wow. What was it like for you?

SE: Growing up in the Bay Area in Oakland, California, there were a lot of jam sessions. People knew my dad. So me getting on the percussion, to me, I don't remember anyone saying oh my God, she's a girl she's playing. Plus my parents never said to me, you're a girl, you can't play. However, later on in my years, as I left the Bay Area to go to Los Angeles or record with other people, the artist hired me, but the other band members did not know that I was coming. And they just heard, so there's going to be a percussion player, well I show up and that's when I noticed that I was different and people were kind of shocked. It was good and it was bad because then once I got all the attention and the drummers in the band were very, they didn't like it. They were very jealous of me coming and playing percussion.

LL: They didn't like it because you were female, is that why they didn't like it?

SE: They didn't like it because they were intimidated by a female, which I did not even, you know. Why would they be intimidated? Well, I just so happened to be female and I was great. My dad, when I had a conversation with him, I said why are these drummers being so hateful to me and saying awful, they would say awful things to me. They would say you're just here because you know the artist, you're not really that good. You're not going to make it and then sexual things to me. You know, I can get you a career, I can get you a record deal if you have sex with me kind of thing or you know let's meet for drinks or come to my room and I've been offered drugs. I mean, it was insane. At a young age, when it first started happening and I told my dad, you know my parents continued to mentor me and tell me you know, anyone messing with you, you know always let us know. If it's not a good situation, we won't have you go back, we'll take you away, we'll talk to them. You know, don't ever be afraid to stand up to who you are and what you can do because you're a great musician and that was the other big issue with a lot of the other drummers in the band. It's because I tried to every single time come in, prepared, ready to play, knowing what the songs might be, listened to it, paid attention, wrote down notes or whatever and a lot of the drummers were not prepared so they felt inadequate, basically.

LL: Wow. You Had to be twice as good just to be seen as measuring up.

SE: Absolutely.

LL: Let's just keep on this topic for a second because you obviously worked very hard to achieve your goals. But still, I want to play a clip for you from an interview that you did with Fox back in 2014.

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VOICE 1: One thing that I found wild, that really struck me is like, wow, here's this very beautiful woman, playing the drums and playing that whatever that was.

VOICE 2: Does that mean girls can't play drums, is that what you're trying to say?

VOICE 1: Forgive me. Prejudiced perhaps, when I was growing up, but it was not something that a lot of us associated with women.

LL: OK, now you sound a little bit exasperated and frustrated and I'm wondering how often you had to deal with that kind of commentary about your looks.

SE: Yeah, a lot and actually what I learned was I loved playing and I didn't like I guess clothing on my arms, so I was you know, dressing with a little bit less not saying than normal, but I wanted to still feel like a woman and look like a woman and I thought that was okay and at times you know probably sexy. I mean, but I was joking with him, I can hear that you know in my voice I'm joking with him by saying so what are you saying, girls can't play drums? You know. That was always the running joke, oh who said girls can't play drums, you know. Every time I talk to young people now or especially older people and grandmothers or people my age, they say to me you know, I always wanted to play. Women would say this to me and my parents wouldn't let me or the school didn't let me.

LL: You played with a lot of great musicians, Gloria Estefan, Lionel Richie, of course Prince, do you think you brought something different to the game as a female drummer?

SE: I think I brought confidence. I was very strong. I wasn't afraid. I knew that I was a great musician because I was told by my parents, it showed in my work ethic. People knew that if Sheila came, she was coming with 250 per cent no matter if there's one person or 20 million people, I play the same.

LL: So then what is Sheila's message for girls and women who are keen to take up drumming?

SE: It's okay to be better than the guys sometimes. You know what, the key is to really go out there with confidence. Be prepared, be yourself. It's a gift and it really is and just be who you are, be yourself and people will love you. Be kind to people, you have to be kind to people, but if you know there's a place where you feel uncomfortable and things are not right, tell someone and get out of that situation.

LL: Sheila E. you are iconic. It's a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you.

SE: Thank you very much.

LL: Bye-bye.

SE: Bye-bye.

LL: Sheila E. is a recording artist and a percussionist, whose latest album is called "Iconic" and she was in Los Angeles. The history of women and drums goes back a long way. According to Drum Magazine, the first named drummer in history was a Mesopotamian priestess back in 2380 B.C., but since then, across many cultures there have been barriers to women participating in drumming, especially as part of traditional and religious ceremonies. Some women have been breaking the taboos though. Have a listen.

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VOICE 1: The bata drum is used in the Yoruba religion in Nigeria. It was transplanted to Cuba during slavery and became part of the Afro-Cuban religion, Santeria. For thousands of years, women have been strictly forbidden from playing, touching or even being in the same room with the drum on certain occasions. But in the 1990s, an all female bata orchestra called, Obini Bata, broke those rules and since then more women have followed their lead.

VOICE 2: Traditional Korean drumming has been an almost exclusively male domain until the 1990s. Percussion instruments were associated with masculine strength and there was a perception that women couldn't handle the physical demands of drumming, but Korean women have started to shatter those perceptions. Park Eunha is one of the pioneers of traditional Samulnori drumming.

VOICE 3: In Canadian Indigenous traditions, the drumbeat is often referred to as the "heartbeat of Mother Earth." The drum is often seen as possessing a feminine spirit, but a woman's place around First Nations drum circles has been highly contested. Still, since the 1970s, many women have been forming their own drum circles across Canada, including the All Our Relations Metis Drum Circle from Ontario.

LL: As we heard from Sheila E. the world of popular music hasn't exactly been welcoming to female drummers either. Nevertheless, they have persisted, even in the face of a lot of criticism from fellow musicians and critics who sometimes argue about whether women are even capable of being rock and roll drummers. Just like in the Jack Black comedy, "School of Rock."

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Scene from "School of Rock."

LL: Now those are two kids from the movie, "School of Rock" arguing over Meg White of the rock band, The White Stripes. She was a polarizing figure in the music world. To talk more about the world of women drummers, I'm joined now by two guests. Lynette Gillis is a musician and drummer who started out with the Halifax band, Plumtree, and now plays in the Toronto band Overnight. Lynette is in Toronto. And Kayleigh Hughes is a music journalist who's written for Pitchfork and Bustle. She's in Austin, Texas. Hello to both of you.

LYNETTE GILLIS: Hello.

KAYLEIGH HUGHES: Hello.

LL: Lynnette let's just start with you. What was it like for you to follow Sheila E. and talk about drumming?

LG: Oh, it's pretty exciting. I was just, it was so great to hear her speak and a real honour to be even part of the same segment. So, thank you.

LL: And Kayleigh Hughes, what did you think of what she had to say?

KH: You know, she made so many points that I've heard so many other times from women drummers and it's kind of stunning that, you know, even who we consider one of the greatest musicians of all time, Sheila E. is having all these same experiences and she's able to elucidate them so intelligently. I thought it was just a pleasure.

LL: Right. And Lynette I'm wondering, how does Sheila E.'s experience as a female drummer resonate with you and your experience?

LG: Quite a lot. Yeah. Other than playing with people like Prince, I thought it was pretty familiar. What kinds of things really struck you. Well you know, having female always attached, you know rather than just being a drummer, being female drummer. And I think the thing about having to kind of prove yourself and be quite a bit better to be maybe treated like an equal.

LL: How do people respond when they find out that you're a woman who plays the drums?

KH: I think that there's, I would say three of the most common responses, one like what Sheila E. was saying, excitement and like that is so cool. Two, like whoa, I would have never pinned you for that. I would have never guessed you were a drummer. And the third one is actually, I've sometimes got like a smirk and I have no idea how to interpret that response. It's like maybe a little bewildered.

LL: What is it about the drums that appeals to you?

LG: Oh so many things. It's such a powerful instrument it's so versatile. You can play super loud and it's physical and that feels really incredible. You can play quiet and delicate, it's a sensitive instrument. I'm a collaborator by nature and it just lends itself to collaborating. So yeah, so many things.

LL: Kayleigh you wrote about Meg White, who we were just talking about in the introduction. How do you explain how fans and critics respond to her?

KH: Well there's this interesting, this seeming hypocrisy where it's common to talk about the White Stripes as being one of the greatest rock and roll bands of you know the past several decades and it's also just as common as that School of Rock clip showed to talk about how Meg White is an inadequate drummer. And those things don't seem to fit together to me. There must be something going on where critics will you know fawn over the White Stripes, who are an incredible band, but then completely negate the contributions of one half of the band. In the past, Pitchforks called you know her drumming, "pancake-handed."

LL: Which is I guess heavy handed?

KH: Yeah and floppy, like as if it's not technically precise enough for what they want out of a drummer.

LL: So what's your take then, why is she attracting that kind of criticism?

KH: Well I think in her case in particular, there's the element of being in a you know, two-person band with Jack White, who is a very dominant figure. He's a very virtuosic musician and so his level of technical attention can contrast with her approach, which is so powerful, so raw, so primal, so focused on you know maintaining a heavy beat and contributing a solid foundation to the song to further the song's intentions that well to a lot of people, she can sort of get you know washed away in the background. But I also think it's so often a conversation about her as a woman and her body, which seems completely inappropriate.

LL: What do they say?

KH: Like album reviews will mention how many pounds she weighed and described the pigtails that she wore, as if that has you know much to do with her musical contribution.

LL: Lynette, you're listening to Kayleigh there, what do you think of that situation of Meg White's experience? What does it tell us about attitudes toward female drummers?

LG: It was very familiar and it's really frustrating. I think that that still exists. I think that there's a lot of emphasis on appearance and a lot of questioning of whether you can play or not. I think that's still a thing. It's less overt in journalism because it's kinda not cool anymore.

LL: You're talking about the MeToo movement, I guess.

LG: Yeah, MeToo and just like gender norms like what is appropriate for different gender roles and I think that there's so much more conversation around that, thankfully. There's more awareness.

LL: We don't seem to be shocked by women who play the cello. I'm wondering what it is about rock and roll that makes female musicians seem like a novelty.

LG: I have so much to say about that.

LL: Okay, go ahead Lynette.

LG: I'll try to be concise. I was thinking a lot of about this. Ever since being, I started when I was 11, playing drums and people say what do you play and you say drums and they go really or whatever. And I think that there's really drums, they're loud, they take up a lot of space. They're all the things a lot of girls aren't really socialized to do or you know, we're not socialized to take up space.

LL: Yeah, there's also that seeming aggression involved in playing the drums right, you're just bashing away. Do we have a hard time do you think accepting women might enjoy the sheer physicality of drumming?

LG: Yeah, perhaps and maybe not always. I think maybe girls not always getting kind of the permission to do that. I know I've taught drumming too and I've seen that quite often where I think from a young age there's a lot girls who haven't been kind of given that freedom. Like I'll hand them a drum and go make noise and they're still, it's like, oh really am I allowed to do this. And this is from different ages, like I've taught kids and also adults and just as many women who are like oh man, I've always wanted to do this and I'm like yeah, let's do it.

LL: Kayleigh?

KH: Oh, I'm just over here clapping and cheering on what you're saying because I can completely relate and I've spoken to a lot of drummers trying to get a sense of exactly that question and that's exactly what they said. It's a chance to move your body and be loud and take up space where you're not otherwise allowed to in regular society. So that just warms my heart.

LL: Kayleigh, I'm just wondering how encouraged you are by the sight of all these young girls from all over the world who are entering these drumming contests like "Hit Like a Girl" then.

KH: I mean, I think it's fantastic. I think it's really inspiring and the more that we can make drumming accessible, the better. I think that one other element is it seems like there's a perception that men are more savvy with like complex gear and like technical, you know the physical items of making music, where you know a drum kit is a very elaborate set up that requires a lot of knowledge of gear and it seems like the common assumption is that you know men are the gearheads. One of the most wonderful things I think about Meg White is that she inspired and there's a great Jack White quote about this, she inspired you know people to bang on pots and pans. She you know made drumming something that you didn't have to be a gearhead to enjoy. And so many of those you know beautiful clips you played earlier from different cultures, like drumming is something that should be organic that anybody can do.

LL: Okay Lynette, last word to you. What's your message to young girls about why they should give drumming a try?

LG: Cause it's the most fun. It's such a fun instrument and this is as much for adults as it is for kids, to be honest. Just try it out and yeah it is a big instrumental, it's a bold instrument and see how exciting that is. It can be pretty empowering I think to sit down and have the experience of playing something that's bold and powerful and so just say give it a try and enjoy it.

LL: Lynette and Kayleigh, thanks to both of you. I think I'm going to go home and bash a few pots today. I appreciate your time, thanks a lot.

LG: Thank you so much.

KH: Thank you.

LL: Lynette Gillis is a musician and drummer in Toronto who plays with the band Overnight. And Kayleigh Hughes is a music journalist in Austin, Texas. Well, coming up in our next half hour, how an Ontario family's tragic experience of three deaths is finally shining a light on so-called concealed murderers. I'm Laura Lynch sitting in for Anna Maria Tremonti and this is The Current.

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What makes it a murder? Coroner's office inquiry into 'concealed homicides' after Mississauga deaths

Guests: Wanda Jamieson, Lorimer Shenher, Lisa Steele, Barry Heath

LL: I'm Laura Lynch and you're listening to The Current. When a police officer and paramedic were called to Caleb Harrison's home in 2013, after his lifeless body was discovered in a bedroom upstairs, they both had the same feeling of deja vu: they had been here before. And they had. Three years earlier, both had been called to the same Mississauga, Ontario home where Caleb's mother Briget Harrison was found lifeless at the bottom of the stairs. And a year before that, his father Bill Harrison died in the same home. While Bill's passing was initially ruled a natural death, the case was reopened after his wife's suspicious death, but nothing came of that follow-up police investigation and both deaths were classified as undetermined. That i,s until Caleb's death. This past January, following extensive investigative reporting by the Toronto Star, Caleb's ex-wife and her common-law spouse were convicted of first-degree murder in his death. Caleb Harrison had been locked in an ugly custody battle with his ex. That common-law spouse was also found guilty of first-degree murder in Bridget's death, but not guilty of second-degree murder in Bill's death. The Harrison family believed Caleb's murder and perhaps Bridget's could have been prevented, if police had properly investigated the earlier deaths. And now the Ontario Chief Coroner's Office wants to find out if they're right. The office announced last week a review of so-called concealed homicides going back almost three decades to determine what can be learned from past mistakes. And that's on top of a review of the Harrison cases specifically. A little later we'll speak to a panel of investigators about the challenges of investigating deaths, but first I'm joined by Wanda Jamieson. She is a long-time friend of and spokesperson for the Harrison family and she joins us from her home in Merrickville, Ontario. Hello.

WANDA JAMIESON: Good morning.

LL: First off, how are you and the family doing? The convictions earlier this year, now this review, it's all been such a long time coming.

WJ: Well Laura, I think we've really lived with tremendous pain and sorrow since Bill died, as you mentioned a so-called natural death, in April 2009. It was just unbelievable that we could lose him. He was such a healthy and fit man. And then a year later, we lost Bridget, also unbelievable. She was such an amazing woman and she was found in the same house a year later. And so you can imagine how it became really our horrifying nightmare when Caleb was found murdered in his bed in the same house in 2013. So it's been quite a journey and I think that you know, after Caleb's death, the police really started to take our family's concerns seriously and the trial itself was incredibly intense. But you know in the end, I think that we would feel that you know the loss of Bill and Bridget and Caleb is really nothing short of an immense tragedy. So you know we've gone through a lot, but at the same time we are pretty resilient. I think we're really grateful that we've had a lot of support from each other and we've drawn a lot of strength from an incredible network of people from all walks of life. So in all, I think we're doing okay and we're now focused on finding out what happened and why. And really what needs to be fixed so that no other family has to endure what we've been through.

LL: It must be so difficult to live with the belief that perhaps one or two other murders could have been prevented, had this been properly investigated.

WJ: Yes. And that really has been so difficult. You know our concerns really remained our own private nightmare until Caleb's murder in 2013. And it's just it's unbelievable when you think about it. You know a period of a number of years in which these deaths happened and we lived with that throughout.

LL: What in your mind were the biggest problems with the initial investigation of Peel Regional Police into Bill and Bridget Harrison's deaths.

WJ: Wow, that's quite a question. I think there were mistakes made and quite honestly, I just don't think we believe that all the facts are known. We don't know them and I don't think they really will be known until there is a more overarching and independent inquiry, if you will, something that's publicly transparent and quite rigorous.

LL: So this current review is not good enough for you then.

WJ: No.

LL: Why not?

WJ: It isn't because essentially, we're looking at a death investigation system. And I think there's a critical interplay between the work of the coroners, the forensic pathologists and the police. And you know communication and coordination is absolutely vital. Listening to the family is also vital. And you know, I just don't think that, I don't think any of us think that this probe or this review will be able to address that. It doesn't have the mandate really to address the death investigation system as a whole and in particular, how it played out in our case. And so that's really why we're still asking for a fully independent overarching inquiry.

LL: Alright, but you keep mentioning that word independent. Why is that so important?

WJ: Well it's important for a number of reasons. First of all, in the case, in both, in the case of say the coroner's office, you know we certainly have been appreciative that Dr. Huyer and Pollanen have reached out to us and they've done so in a very genuine way. But it must be acknowledged that there is a potential for actual or perceived conflict of interest because they were involved. They participated in some aspects of the death investigations of Bill and Bridget. And I think that from that perspective and from a public perspective, we do need to have an independent look at these particular cases. Now we know that they are I think are aware that, they have expressed that you know this review should or could be peer-reviewed as a start, but ultimately we need a broader look at the system and we feel that needs to be done with independent focus on the police and also from the coroner's office.

LL: Okay, but this is what you've got for now. What do you think could be learned from re-examining other concealed homicides?

WJ: Well, I think there are some things that can be learned, but I would like to make a couple points about that. I think first we disagree with the term concealed homicides, mostly because it seems to imply that a death might not be readily identified as a homicide to the police or maybe to the coroner or to the pathologist. But why? Is it because the manner of death is staged or hidden or is it because they're not looking at things through the right framework or using the right tools or an objective lens or is it because they've made mistakes? And I think that's why we're preferring the term "missed homicides" to concealed homicides. So I think that would be the first point that I would like to make on that. Secondly, I think that you know we, I mean I think I've made the point that there is this critical interplay between the work of all the people involved, the coroners, the pathologists, the police and I'm not sure that this particular review will get down to those specifics.

LL: Alright, what chances do you think that coming out of this review there will be the real change that you and the family want to see.

WJ: Well I don't know if there's a chance, but I think we do hope is that it will start a conversation. That it will provide some insight, I think into why and how the homicides are missed. It might identify some lessons that might help to inform policy change. It might help to, I'm hoping that it's going to help to focus efforts on prevention and on practical solutions. That's I think what we really hope out of it, but I think it can only do that if it is very rigorous. I also think we would like to see that families are offered the choice to be meaningful engaged in the review. We have been fortunate in that we have reached out to. I don't know if there are other families in the same situation that are wondering now what's happening with this review. And I think the other thing is that we just want to make sure that the results are publicly shared and that we all have a chance to contribute to the dialogue and to change.

LL: Wanda Jamieson, I thank you for your time.

WJ: Thank you.

LL: Wanda Jamieson is a long-time friend and a spokesperson for the Harrison family. We reached her in Marrickville, Ontario. Finding out exactly how someone died can sometimes be difficult. So we've convened a panel of death investigators to discuss the challenges of recognizing homicides and suspicious deaths. Lorimer Shenher is a former homicide and missing person detective with the Vancouver Police Department. He's worked on the Robert Pickton case and he's also the author of "That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away," He's in Vancouver. Dr. Lisa Steele is a pathologist at Royal Inland Hospital with B.C.'s interior health authority. She also includes forensic pathology in her practice and she's responsible for all infant autopsies in the province of B.C. We have reached her in Kamloops, B.C. And Barry Heath was a coroner in Saskatoon from 1983 until 2007. He detailed his experiences in his book "Saskatchewan Coroner." He joins us from Saskatoon. Hello to you all.

LORIMER SHENHER: Good morning.

BARRY HEATH: Good morning.

LISA STEELE: Good morning.

LL: Lorimer Shenher, we'll start with you. What were you thinking listening to Wanda Jamieson?

LOR: Well I was thinking, primarily just what a terrible tragedy that was and I had to agree with a lot of what she had to say, specifically that you know the idea of missed versus concealed homicide. To me it's clear that this was missed through what appeared to be some errors or at the very least, just a failure to recognize a pattern, which you know could be the result of a number of factors. You know, it's to my mind, as a police former, the buck stops with the police in terms of the collection and pursuit of evidence, which I think is what we're talking about in these cases.

LL: Well in what circumstances are police brought in to investigate a death because they're not there for every single death.

LOR: No, that's true. I know in Vancouver, the general policy is anything that is not in a I should say, a hospital or a care home, is investigated by the police. We will actually attend, wait for the coroner to attend and make sure that the body removal process has been completed. If there's a situation where there are valuables that need to be returned to family or those kinds of things then the police will be involved with that. So that tends to be the policy in Vancouver, but even then, there's some flexibility there. If there's anything suspicious or if anyone has a concern, the police may attend in a situation where we might not normally. So there's some flexibility there.

LL: Lisa Steele, what's the process for you? When do you autopsy a body?

LIS: So the process here in British Columbia is under the offices of the British Columbia Coroner System Service and the coroner who is investigating the case will decide if an individual needs to be autopsied or not. And that's part of their investigation and they base that opinion on the information that they're receiving from the police in the scene and if they deem an autopsy is then necessary, they then provide me with what's called a Form B and that is an authorization to perform an autopsy with or without toxicology at their discretion. And once that Form B is provided, I'm in contact with the coroner to arrange body transport and a time to do the case and then the case proceeds from there.

LL: So how definitive can you be then in determining a cause of death?

LIS: So cause of death is, the definition of it is the process that underlies the entity that set everything into motion that then caused the death of this individual. So in natural circumstances, the cause of death would be related to their natural disease processes that then resulted in their death. So for example, coronary artery disease or cancer would be a process underlying what ultimately would be your heart stopping and your systems shutting down. In cases that are unnatural death resulting from either gunshot wounds, stab wounds or some kind of traumatic injury, the process is the like in the case of a gunshot wound, exsanguination due to gunshot wounds.

LL: You mean bleeding out when you say exsanguination.

LIS: Exactly, like blood loss due to then the process that caused that to happen.

LIS: Do you ever have times though when you simply finish your autopsy and you say I don't know for certain why this person died?

LL: So yes, infants are in many ways a different kettle of fish. And the reason is that little ones don't necessarily show injuries the way adults do in terms of bruising on the external surfaces of the body and if you don't have injuries in a case of an infant who's being autopsied, you have other studies that are going to provide additional information that could give you a cause of death. So for example, all of the infants that I autopsy have microbiology cultures taken so all of them have nasopharyngeal swabs to look for respiratory viruses. They all have blood cultures and cultures of lung tissue and cerebral spinal fluid to look for other microbiology bacterial agents that could cause death. Anyway and they all have toxicology studies as well, to see if there's other substances in their system. So all of those studies, when you get those back, can give you a cause of death. And then in some cases you're left with an undetermined.

LL: Barry Heath, you are a coroner unlike Lisa Steele, who is a pathologist. What makes your job different?

BH: Well, we get called out initially when somebody has declared a person dead and that's where we enter the case. And we can be called by either the police, ambulance personnel, somebody in a nursing home, even hospital staff if a person dies in hospital and they weren't expected to based on the diagnosis they had at the time or if they died soon after admission because of an incident that happened that led them to being admitted.

LL: But you also deal with the living, in addition to dealing with the dead. Family and friends left behind, correct?

BH: Oh certainly, that's a major part of my investigative work is talking to family, friends, neighbours, co-workers, social workers, family doctors.

LL: And how often when you have these conversations, do these people suggest to you that this was a suspicious death, even if the evidence is telling you otherwise.

BH: Rarely. Although, that doesn't mean that we have our own suspicions or we want to pursue things a little bit more closely, along with the police. I guess my main example would be infant deaths and people used to know the term SIDS one time, they don't use that in Canada anymore.

LL: That's Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, you're right we don't use that anymore.

BH: No it's Sudden Unexpected Infant Death, but you know something like Shaken Baby Syndrome, SIDS as it used to be called, it's very difficult to know whether it was unintentional infanticide so to speak where it was an intentional layover or smothering or accidental. Those are the kind of cases that I tended to concentrate on when I got called to them because one never knows and often in the circumstances when you come across infants that have died in those situations as people that maybe have a lower socio-economic scale, people who might be in a situation where the police can tell me they're involved. In drugs and other issues they've had arrests for various things so we want to concentrate a little bit more on the actual death of the child to know if it might have been something that was done on purpose.

LL: Well, Lorimer Shenher when you were investigating women disappearing from Vancouver's downtown eastside, they were initially missing persons cases and you may have suspected foul play, but I'm wondering how difficult it is investigating homicides when you don’t have a body.

LOR: Well it's a huge challenge and really at that time we're talking about the late 90s, the prevailing thought was that if you didn't have a body, it was impossible for you to lay a charge. Fortunately, that has changed, thanks to DNA technology and some other technologies that have come along. But at that time yeah, it was very difficult and I actually had an excellent relationship with a corner here at that time, it was now Senator Larry Campbell was the corner and he actually enabled me to access the medical records of what would turn out to be victims of homicide, but at the time they were missing. And we were trying to create a time line for those women and it was very helpful to determine to be able to say, they haven't accessed medical care since they were reported missing, which for me when I was trying to I think make a case that they met with foul play. To be able to say look they went missing and they've never been to the doctor since, they've never been in an emergency room and these were people that were highly, highly dependent on medical care, that you know I smell a rat here. There's a problem. And so that was very helpful to me, ultimately it didn't lead to the outcome that I had hoped for, but it certainly, that relationship with the coroner was helpful.

LL: OK. And that is a systemic issue of everybody should be consulting with each other. I'm wondering Lisa Steele, what systemic problems do you see that could lead to suspicious deaths not being spotted?

LIS: So I like to point that Wanda made that communication is so important and I at least in my practice here, I'll echo Lorimer's description that I feel like I have a good open relationship with the coroners that are investigating the cases. And they do provide fulsome information and you're able to discuss the case by telephone, either during the case if you do find something that is unsuspected or it goes off the rails and bring police in at that moment to continue and go in a different direction. So I do 100 per cent agree with her comments around communication because it does feed and drive a better investigation, for sure.

LL: And Barry Heath, the same question to you, what are institutional problems that you could see that lead to failures in determining the manner of death?

BH: Well certainly, corners are under budgetary constraints from the head office. At one time we were told that Saskatchewan had a 70 per cent autopsy rate on corners' calls. We were asked to reduce it to 50. So cases might be missed in that regard.

LL: So what you're saying is you weren't doing as many autopsies.

BH: Yeah. So we had to make a better judgment so to speak, at the scene. I think another thing that issue that comes up is people aren't followed when they move province to province and again getting back to infanticide or supposed infanticide or a child death. A person may live in a different province and the investigation may not follow-up on the person's past to know where they live before and there's any record of a similar child dying under similar circumstances. I think that's an issue that could be followed as well.

LL: I want to ask of you, popular culture is flooded with these true crime and police procedural television shows, some movies and they seem to be able to solve all the cases and they seem to have access to limitless resources, I'm wondering how the TV obsession with forensic science affects the expectation of certainty in the work that you do. Any one of you.

LOR: I'll start with that, it's Lorimer. You know, I think it in some ways it may create an expectation, but I don't feel it's an unrealistic expectation. You know, we're talking about a lot of things that sound sometimes like needles in haystacks, but you know for me some of the cases that come to mind are simply cases of mistaken suicides or you know where you have somebody falling to their death and not pursuing a vigorous investigation to ensure that it's not homicide. You know a case that comes to mind for me is one of a woman named Bella Laboucan-Mclean and she fell from a 31-storey Toronto apartment building in 2013, in the middle of a family party and her family has been in a relentless pursuit of answers ever since. And that was never investigated as anything, but a suicide, despite the concerns of everybody at that party. So there's another one in Vancouver, in the downtown eastside, a young Indigenous woman named Ashley Machiskinic, who fell from the fifth storey building on the Balmoral Hotel on the downtown eastside, again written off as a suicide and you know despite a lot of concern that it was a homicide. So these are, these cases are there and so I don't think people are wrong to expect you know some television, you know granted the police don't have the resources that they have on a TV programme, but I don't think that we're wrong to try to pursue the proper end to a death investigation.

LL: OK. We've just got a minute left. Barry Heath how can the process of investigating deaths, be improved or made more accurate?

BH: Well, certainly cooperation amongst all the parties is certainly an important issue, which has been brought up before. Thinking of the Wettlaufer case in Woodstock where somebody had said "no death in a care home is unexpected.".

LL: That is the nurse who is now been jailed.

BH: That's kind of a ludicrous expectation and certainly somebody shouldn't walk into a situation like that with blinders on. And elder abuse is another issue that I would want to bring up where I think a lot of those cases have to be investigated further because there could be issues of an inheritance where a son or daughter decides to push their dad or mother down the stairs to get an early inheritance. Things like that.

LL: Lisa Steele, 30 seconds, last question to you. How could things be improved?

LIS: So I have to agree with Barry around the funding of the coroner's service and that funding would lead to the ability to do more autopsies, definitely the autopsy rate has decreased over years.

LL: We've run out of time, my apologies. Thank you. Lorimer Shenher is a former homicide and missing person detective with the Vancouver Police Department and he worked on the Robert Pickton case. He is also the author of "That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away. He was in Vancouver. Dr. Lisa Steele is a pathologist who has forensic pathology in her practice at Royal Inland Hospital with B.C.'s interior health authority. We reached her in Kamloops. And Barry Heath was a coroner in Saskatoon from 1983 until 2007 and he was in Saskatoon. Well that's our program for today. Stay tuned to Radio One for Q. Today, American singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams will be on the show. And finally today, speaking of Q, Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, was recently in studio with Q host Tom Power for an interview that they will bring you on Friday. But here's how it sounded when Tom pulled out the laptop to screen that amazing video of eight-year-old Yoyoka Soma, drumming along to some classic Led Zeppelin. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

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Clip of Tom Power reacting to video of Yoyoka Soma drumming to Led Zeppelin.

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June 19, 2018 episode transcript

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