I watched a room full of strangers cry through this record

It's been a couple of days since we finished our Milton Nascimento and Lô Borges Clube da Esquina listening night, and something happened that I still haven't fully sat with.

Before I played a single note, I passed the microphone around the room and asked people what this record actually means to them.

One woman told me it was the record her father played over and over in their house growing up, and he's no longer with her, so hearing it again in a room full of strangers brought him right back.

Then before the sound bath, I asked what the vibe of Brasil is like and a woman took the mic and didn't talk about music at all. She talked about smell, the diesel, the beach air, the food cooking somewhere close by, like she was describing a person rather than a place.

Then I played the sound bowls into the record.

The majority of the room was Brazilian, and they sang and cried and laughed their way through it in a way that told me this was never just about the music. It was about remembering who they were as people, and where they've landed now that they're building a life in Toronto.

What moved me most came after, in the conversations I had one by one at the DJ booth. Almost every single one circled back to the same thing, that I had actually taken the time to learn their culture before I ever played it back to them.

One person told me that some of this history had been kept from her growing up in Brasil. "They kept this hidden from us in school," she said. She learned her own country's history in a room in Toronto, from a guy who has never lived there.

Ben told me he hopes I keep doing this, not just for the Brazilians in the room, but for everyone who has left a country behind, because it's rare to feel like someone still cares about where you came from once you've gone.

My friends who grew up in Toronto were grateful they could take it all in, all of us knowing our parents were immigrants, and one of them turned to me afterward and said they were all singing, you can feel how much this night means.

I'm not sure a room reacts like this every week. But that uncertainty is exactly why I think we need more nights like this, here and everywhere.