Jan Blake - Live from Victoria, BC

On Wed, April 8th 2026, Jan Blake brought her Re-Rooting final evening to life - African folktales carried through the diaspora, ancient bone-memory made present through story, rhythm, and song.

Percussion and soundscape by Reg Wilford weaving through it all. Forbidden chambers. A girl in the skin of a dog. Rules bent, taboos broken, and something in the room that's hard to name but impossible to forget.

If you were there, you know. Yet with the live recording, now's your chance to enter that world. 

Jan Blake is one of Europe's outstanding storytellers, performing worldwide since 1986. Born in Manchester to Jamaican parents, she specialises in folktales and myths from the Caribbean, West Africa, North Africa, and the Arab world - a repertoire alive with powerful women, ancestral memory, and tales that can seize any room.

She has performed at most major international storytelling festivals, served for a decade as Storytelling Consultant at the National Theatre, and in 2011 became the first non-German recipient of the Thüringer Märchen Preis - awarded to those who have devoted their lives to the service of storytelling.

With a powerful singing voice and an international reputation for exhilarating, generous performance, Jan Blake brings ancestral memory back into the bone.