Kenny Robinson is 'elbows up' for Canadian comedians

23:20Kenny Robinson is “elbows up” for Canadian comedians

For the past 30 years, on the last Sunday of every month, Yuk Yuk's in Toronto has hosted the Nubian Comedy Revue — one of the top showcases for Black and racialized comedians in Canada. Founded by comedian Kenny Robinson, the show has not only served as a launch pad for Canadian talent, but has also featured top American talent, such as Dave Chappelle and Kevin Hart.

But producing a show like the Nubian Comedy Revue (and keeping it running for three decades) is no easy feat. "At first we had lineups down the street, but a very, very shallow talent pool," Robinson tells Q guest host Garvia Bailey in an interview. "So sometimes I'd need a last-minute filler."

In the past, Robinson would call up some of his American comedy connections in cities like Detroit, Baltimore or Philadelphia to find a last-minute headliner. He remembers comic Big Daddy Fitz driving across the border from Baltimore as a favour, but it was always a mutually beneficial relationship.

"He goes, 'How far is Baltimore from Toronto?'" Robinson recalls. "'I got some comics with me, can you put a couple of them up?' Because he was taking young comics on the road with him, going from Detroit to his gig in Baltimore and putting a couple of them on stage…. I said, 'I'll try, and I'll even try to see if I can pay them a little bit of something.' And he'd pull up in this big old Cadillac he had, and about 500 or 600 comics piled out of the car."

I'm sorry. We're strictly elbows up here! I'm going all-Canadian now.- Kenny Robinson

Now, with the ongoing U.S. trade war, Robinson says he's exclusively booking Canadian comics.

"In the past month [or] six weeks, I've been getting more and more calls from American comics," he explains. "But then Trump started his nonsense. So I'm saying, 'I'm sorry. We're strictly elbows up here! I'm going all-Canadian now.' And it hurts because I've known some of these guys [for] 15, 20 years."

If the Canadian talent pool was shallow 30 years ago, it certainly isn't now. Some of our country's fastest rising comedians, like Hassan Phills, Frankie "Trixx" Agyemang and Zabrina Douglas, are making names for themselves on both sides of the border.

"We definitely got the chops and we're not like the American comics," Robinson says.

So what does he think sets us apart? "Health-care and milk with no hormones in it," he jokes. "Our education system, a lack of easy accessibility to firearms — I think it's a reflection of just being a superior society…. I think that because we were and we are multicultural, we have that influence, whereas stateside, it's more segregated."

You can catch Robinson in the new documentary People of Comedy: Celebrating 30 years of The Nubian Show on Crave starting April 9.

The full interview with Kenny Robinson is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Kenny Robinson produced by Liv Pasquarelli.