Ruby Singh

Artist in Residence | Multi Year

Ruby Singh’s Vox.Infold II explores the gateways on either side of life with songs that welcome incoming souls, mark our time on this earthly plane and honour the outgoing spirits to our ancestors. The album plays within cyclical time echoing (mirroring) the transitions between spirit, birth, life, death and the return to spirit. From the opening song “Solar” that invites the spirits to return to this earthly plane, to the last track “Mojuba,” a Vox.Infold take on a traditional Yoruban Hymn, that the ancestors sing for us, as we cross over into the next world, inviting us to return to our eternal home. The ensemble consists of PIQSIQ’s Tiffany Ayalik and Inuksuk Mackay, Dawn Pemberton, Russell Wallace, Shamik Bilgi, Tiffany Moses, Hussein Janmohamed and Singh himself to bring together a full bodied, resonant and sensorial expression of our spirits journeys housed in polyrhythm, polymeter, lush harmonies, and polyphonic poetry.

“Over the past number of years I’ve lost many elders in my family and, at the same time, a whole lot of beautiful little babies have come into our community. This album was created both as a welcome to the new ones joining us and as prayer for those that have passed, for so much of human history we have used song as a ritual marker for two of life's biggest events: birth and death. Well composing the album I began to think about the music I would like to hear on my own deathbed and realized how similar that would be to a lullaby, on all sides of life we want to feel the love of our dear ones. So this album is an expression of that love we carry for our young ones and our elders as they journey to and from the spirit world.”

Ruby Singh is a multi-award-winning composer, producer, performer, and educator living on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ Nations (Vancouver, BC). His artistic practice spans music, poetry, photography, and film, exploring myth, ecology, justice, and speculative futures. Singh’s soundscapes are deeply rooted in the sonic worlds around us—from coastal rains and planetary movement to birdsong—and are known for their immersive, visual quality. His compositions, which bridge traditional and emergent practices, have earned multiple Jessie and Leo nominations and reflect a bold reimagining of the human experience.

In 2022, Singh received the Lieutenant Governor’s Jubilee Award for excellence in Art and Music. In 2023, he was nominated for a JUNO, and won both the WCMA Global Artist of the Year and the BC Touring Council’s Artist of the Year.

In 2024, he was awarded the WCMA Electronic/Dance Artist of the Year. His recent projects include Vox.Infold, an acclaimed a cappella collaboration centring Indigenous, Black, South Asian and Inuit voices; RupLoops, an interactive solo live-looping performance; and kraKIN, a boom-bap ecology of West Coast flora, fauna, and fungi. Singh also produced Polyphonic Garden, an ambient audio-visual world, and Jhalaak, a Sufi hip-hop album recorded in Rajasthan, India.

Whether building interactive installations or live performances, Singh believes in art’s ability to reimagine futures, to repurpose aesthetic freedoms toward civil and environmental justice.

"Singh isn’t just crossing genres, he’s straddling astral planes." – Globe and Mail

rubysingh.ca

Vox.Infold

Juno Award Nominated 2023

Ruby Singh presents Vox.Infold: a powerhouse vocal ensemble based on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlí̓ lwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh Nations (Vancouver BC). This dynamic squad uses traditional and emergent sonic

practices to create compositions that express the vast spectrum of the human experience. They remind us that the voice is an adaptation of the metabolic activity most crucial to our existence – breathing, this is how the atmosphere enters our beings. Evoking

loneliness, joy, the mysterious and supernatural, Vox.Infold brings together musical luminaries, Dawn Pemberton, Inuksuk Mckay, Russell Wallace, Tiffany Ayalik, Tiffany Moses, Shamik Bilgi and Ruby Singh.

Hear about the Vox.Infold process in this interview!

Polyphonic Garden

The album was built and shaped using field recordings captured on the beautiful west coast of Turtle Island. Ruby also used plantwave technology to convert electrical data from plants and fungi into midi, Uno, Arutria & Micrologue synths, and analogue delay pedals. It's a 5 part audio/visual series aligned with the solar cycle. It began on last year's winter solstice, and will continue forward until this year's winter solstice.

"This suite was created to be a source of reflection, respice and rejuvenation. Reflecting on our relationships and connection with ourselves, each other and the more than human world. Rejuvenating a sense of wonder for the natural world and how we might be able to move into right relations with the lands, waters and sky that nurture us.

Ancestral remedies
Spacious ceremony
Medicine for the stone
Broken claims of mystic noise

Walk lightly on the earth
Enter the ritual of relation
Transformative potentiality
Liberate the flesh for the realm of spirit

Ingest these transcendent tinctures
Of the Polyphonic Garden
And behold
And be held"

-Ruby Singh

Created with support from Canada Council of the Arts.