The Study of Music in Canada
As Canada moves into the 21st century, it is due for a re-assessment of its “national” music. Canada is now one of the most multicultural countries in the world because of its very conscious decision to add significant numbers of immigrants to its nation-building future. It is no longer possible to speak of Canadian music, only Canadian musics, reflecting the cultural diversity without the insidious effect of the vertical mosaic (John Porter, 1965). Even western art music is under review as it now understood to occupy a niche place along with all the other musics, despite its reputation as a core cultural place-marker. This new perspective runs counter to the traditional view of various Canadian music histories based on First Nations, and the Second Nations of Britain and France. But there also appears to be an interest in the possibilities of musical and cultural hybridity where new ethnic groups combine their musical traditions with existing, older Canadian musics. Mixed in with this possibility is the wild card of Popular Music which is simultaneously Anglo-American and global. Given this dynamic yet confusing scenario, you will be introduced to the major players and decide for yourself how the story will play out in the future. In doing so, you will find yourself in the company of the international world of Canadianists.
You will begin your tour of this cultural landscape with a survey of the issues of music and multiculturalism, followed by introductions to the traditional sites of Canadian music, from earliest times to modern times. You will then explore example of the musics of early and later immigrants who transplanted their musical customs to the new homes and communities they established in Canada. The music of Canada’s First Nations will be examined in order to determine the extent of change that has occurred in the music that has the greatest credibility for being truly indigenous. Finally, the question will be posed in regard to the future of music in Canada as either a hybrid of all the new and old citizens or a melange of ethnic musical sounds that are unique and inviolate members of a culture of relativity.
Textbook
Elaine Keillor (2006) Music in Canada: Capturing Landscape and Diversity
Lecture schedule and reading list:
Note that each “week” in a summer course is equal to one evening’s class.
Week 1 Introductions and expectations
Gelbart, Matthew (2007) The Invention of “Folk Music” and “Art Music”: Emerging Categories from Ossian to Wagner
Biddle, Ian (2007) Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local
Week 2 A survey and thematic guide to the music in Canada
Atwood, Margaret (1972/2004) Survival: a Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature
Morey, Carl (1997) Music in Canada: a Research and Information Guide
Week 3 The 3 D’s: dress, dance, diet
Shay, Anthony (2002) Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power
Cho, Lily (2010) Eating Chinese: Culture on the Menu in Small Town Canada
Week 4 Music from pioneer times: New France and “New Britain”
McKay, Ian (1994) The Quest of the Folk: Antimodernism and Cultural Selection in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia
Gallat-Morin, Elisabeth and Jean-Pierre Pinson (2003) Vie musicale en Nouvelle-France
Week 5 Canada’s great songcatchers
Jessup, Lynda, Andrew Nurse and Gordon Smith (2008) Around and About with Marius Barbeau: Modelling Twentieth-Century Culture
Greenhill, Pauline (2003) “Radical? Feminist? Nationalist? The Canadian Paradox of Edith Fowke,” in Canadian Folk Music, volume 37, number 3
Week 6 The development of the fiddle
Hart, Laurie and Greg Sandell (2011) Dance Music of Quebec
Bertin, Johanna (2009) Don Messer: The Man behind the Music
Week 7 Popular music in Canada
Edwardson, Ryan (2009) Canuck Rock: A History of Canadian Popular Music
Durand, Alain-Phillipe (2002) Black, Blanc, Beur: Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture in the Francophone World
Week 8 Musics of Early Minorities
Robert Klymasz (1970) The Ukrainian Winter Folksong Cycle in Canada (with music transcriptions by Kenneth Peacock)
Taïeb Moalla (ca. 2006) The Irish of Quebec: at the crossroads of two cultures
http://english.republiquelibre.org/The_Irish_of_Quebec:_at_the_crossroads_of_two_cultures
Week 9 Musics of Later Immigrants
Yoshihara, Mari ((2007) Musicians from a Distant Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music
Roy, Anjali Gera (2011) Bhangra Moves: From Ludhiana to London and Beyond
Week 10 First Nations
Ellis, Clyde, Luke Eric Lassiter and Gary H. Dunham (2005) Powwow
Hoefnagels, Anna and Beverley Diamond (2012) Aboriginal Music in Contemporary Canada: Echoes and Exchanges
Week 11 Canadian Music Identity, Hybridity and Relativism
Mitchell, Gillian (2007) The North American Folk Music Revival: Nation and Identity in the United States and Canada, 1945-1980
Steingress, Gerhard, editor (2002) Songs of the Minotaur – Hybridity and Popular Music in the Era of Globalization
Moran, Albert and Michael Keane (2010) Cultural Adaptation