Duane Forrest is a singer-songwriter and multimedia artist from Toronto, Canada. His unique sound blending jazz, reggae, bossa nova, and soul and smooth vocals draws on his experiences traveling the world, falling in love, and finding wonder in the joys and sorrows of a common human experience. He has toured in Canada, Europe, and Central America.

In 2017, Duane debuted his first theatre production, Climb, a live album experience based on his concept album, The Climb. Climb hit the stage again at the 2018 Toronto Fringe Festival, where Toronto Fringe Festival founder Gregory Nixon described Duane’s show as “an engaging, multilayered work of song, storytelling and movement” and “one of the highlights of this year’s Fringe.” His forthcoming double jazz and fusion album Sol e Sol builds on themes of love, heartbreak, and self-discovery, reflecting musically Duane’s growth as an artist and a human being.

Aside from his innate drive to create beautiful things, Duane also has a passion for arts education. In 2011 he founded Genesis Community of the Arts, a registered Canadian charity offering music and arts education to marginalized children and youth in Toronto and Central America.

To find out more about Genesis, please visit www.genesisartschool.com.

It's not been set in stone
It's not been written by the hand of God
Still Lines left in our story
Faults lines in our theories
Are we willing to hear it
We might be missing something that we never knew


Take ego off of the throne
Set fire to it on the mountain top
Story's not over yet
Time to turn the pages
meet the protagonist

Bet you never knew that it was you
Discover something new
Change your point of view

The thing your running from
Is the very thing that chased you around the globe
Where can you go
To escape what you know
But you don't know
That God is always making something new

[Bridge]
Break the tablet of thought
Use a piece as a cornerstone
That you again can build upon
So love and mercy fill your home

Dagger in your hand
Before you lays the precious lamb of God
There's blood on your hands
Blood cries from the sand
There’s blood in our veins

It’s time we change our point of view

The Story of Jonah is really interesting. When you take a deeper look at it, and hold the story up to what is happening in the world today, you can see how easily it is for all of us to view people as “other”. The story of Jonah challenged me to change my point of view. When we do that, it is much easier to see each other as we are, family. It becomes much easier for us to extend grace and kindness to each other, and I think that is precisely what the world needs right now.

Waves and breakers over me
Wake me from my deep sleep
Calling me to dip my feet, into mysteries

Expand my boundaries
Waters of destiny
But I prefer my own study and then God speaks

How can you know
The unknown
How can you grow
In your pot of Gold

In My house up on a hill
Feeling proud of what I built
Religiously with skill
So all can see

On the wind I heard a shrill
A storm that will fulfill
The breaking of what I built
Throws me to the sea

How can you know
The unknown
How can you grow
In your pot of Gold

Waves and breakers from the deep
Find ways of breaking parts of me
Drowning in unrelenting seas
Of mercy

So dark that I can see
The forest for the trees
The Details in leaves
Then i speak

How can I know
The unknown
How can I give you counsel

Even though Jonah is a prophet, he clearly needs to be humbled. Like all of us do. I found it interesting how someone who can know God on this level to literally be his mouthpiece, at the same time not know Him at all. It makes me think of my own life, how I reach new levels in my faith journey and then think I know all that there is to know, only to realize that once again what I know is a drop in the ocean of knowledge.

[Verse]
In trouble, deep trouble
Where can I go but to my knees

Sinking to a watery grave
I can hardly breathe

Afraid, to face the day but you
always attend to my needs

[Chorus]
In the bottom of the sea
In the bottom of my sea

[Verse]
Cast me out of your sight
Oversight, I'm surrounded by mercy

Here in the darkest night
Your holy temple I can see

My breathing become tight
I struggle wrapped in seaweeds

Chorus]
In the bottom of the sea
In the bottom of my sea

[Bridge]
Oh! I'm singing out to you
I'll do what I promised to
Yeah I'll do it
Yeah ill do it

Oh! Now I see what you're like
You're light and you give life,
Your burdens light
Cast my burdens

The part of Jonah’s story that impacted me the most was his descent into the sea. I thought about all that might have been in his mind as he went deeper and deeper. The fear, the darkness. His prayer from inside the fish I found so beautiful. It took me back to a very difficult time in my own life when I was battling depression. It felt like a deep darkness where it was difficult to breathe, but it was down there where I found God and myself, it’s where I could finally see His holy temple.