The next time you head out to a concert, don’t forget your bike — it might be the key to letting the show go on.

At least that’s what Toronto-based Afrobeat band Mr. Something Something is insisting. The Juno-nominated (the Grammy of Canada), six-piece band is striving to do far more than make stimulating music. It’s helping to save the planet with its revolutionary bike-fueled sound system, SoundCycle.

“Social consciousness is a big part of our music,” sax player and founding band member John MacLean said. “We’re musicians, but we’ve managed to put together this thing. You come to a show by bike and right off the bat you’re saving energy to get there. A big part of the energy used for shows is just the traveling.”

Mr. Something Something tries to have shows during the day and in venues easily accessible by bike to assist those who want to utilize a greener method of transportation. But the environmental activism doesn’t end once attendees reach the concert.

SoundCycle is a system that allows concertgoers to clip their bicycles into a stationary stand that connects to the band’s sound system. By pedaling, the bikers help generate electricity and power the show.

“This lets us go anywhere and put on a crazy concert independent of using coal and oil,” MacLean said.

“In practical terms, we’re saving some energy, but the amount isn’t the important part. It’s the social activism,” he said. “People will show up and ask you questions [about the system], and then they get ideas about how to do it better. We’re better at making music than engineering. It’s not an insult that we’re doing a bad job.”

About a third of Mr. Something Something’s shows incorporate SoundCycle. The system is the first of its kind, but MacLean is enthusiastic about the prospect of other bands soon following suit.

“For a while we were ahead of the curve, but a lot of people are on the bandwagon for pedal power. At first I thought, ‘We aren’t that special, there will be a lot of people doing similar things soonb so we better push it now.’ But now my feeling is regardless of whether other people are doing it or not, its still a really good show — a great environment is created by it, and it doesn’t matter if you were the first to do it or not.”

MacLean started the band with childhood friend and percussionist Larry Graves.

“We started playing music together by age 12. Later, the two of us moved to Toronto from Ottawa and found the rest of the band,” he explained.

One of these band members and a huge leader in the activism goals of the group is frontman Johan Hultqvist. Passionate about environmental activism and social justice issues, Hultqvist helped propel the band toward what it calls “dance floor activism.”

“All of our music is highly danceable — you have these grooves that aren’t going to stop. Sometimes our songs will go for 10 or 15 minutes or longer. As everyone’s dancing together, there’s that sense of people coming together to move, and as it happens you are changed by the experience,” MacLean said. “After a few minutes, this trance state happens and people start to receive social messages.”
It’s this projection of messages and ideas that motivates the group to keep SoundCycle going. “We want to get something across to people that is real and current. Maybe it’s not like going to church and getting beat over the head, but it gets you to think and allows you to make some self-improvement,” he said.

The group has witnessed first-hand the effect its music can have. MacLean told a story of a terminally ill man who came to a show.
“He was seated on a stool for the first five minutes, and then he leapt up and started dancing. He took a bad fall but got back up. He ended up dancing in a way he never had before. He found an avenue in our shows and allowed himself, despite everything, to open up and be ecstatic,“ he said.

Mr. Something Something is clearly in a field of its own. It’s hard to pinpoint an exact genre, both for listeners and the band itself.
“We wrestle with names because there are a lot of categories we don’t belong in. World, what is world music? Are we jazz? No. There’s a Swedish front band — so that word ‘afrobeat’ starts to peter off because we’re not Nigerians,” MacLean said.
So how would MacLean describe the group?

“I would say we’re accessible. I think the fact that the music is danceable, it’s a universal thing — all of a sudden language isn’t that important. Most of the music I listen to isn’t even in English, so I can’t understand it, but sometimes it’s nice to not have the lyric imagery. Worldwide, people can feel a pulse and a dance beat, it doesn’t matter.”