User:Bearcat/Music of Canada
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| Music of Canada | ||
|---|---|---|
| Maritime Provinces (NS, PEI, NB) | ||
| Newfoundland and Labrador | ||
| Nunavut, Northwest Territories, Yukon | ||
| Prairie Provinces (AB, MB, SK) | ||
| First Nations (Inuit, Dene, Innu) | ||
| Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec | ||
| Genres: Blues - Celtic - Classical - Folk - Hip hop - Jazz - Pop - Rock | ||
| Timeline and Samples | ||
| Awards | Junos, Félixes, Hall of Fame, ECMAs, WCMAs, CASBYs, CRMAs, CCMAs, MMVAs, CUMAs | |
| Charts | Jam!, Chart, Exclaim! | |
| Festivals | CMW, NXNE, Halifax Pop Explosion, VFMF | |
| Print media | CM, CMN, Chart, Exclaim!, The Record, RPM | |
| Music television | Much, MMM, CMT Canada, MusiquePlus, MusiMax | |
| National anthem | "O Canada" | |
Introduction - let's try to make this a useful introduction to the general concept of Canadian music and try not to allude to any specific artists or bands here; there's plenty of room for that later on.
Contents |
[edit] Characteristics
Are there any uniquely or particularly Canadian traits to be found in Canadian music?
[edit] Social identity
Class, gender, ethnocultural issues?
[edit] Folk music
Canadian folk music includes Acadian, Québécois, English, Irish, Scottish and First Nations and Inuit forms, as well as other genres from immigrant communities representing Vietnam, Haiti, India, China, and other countries.
[edit] French-Canadian music
French settlers brought music with them when inhabiting what is now Quebec and other areas throughout Canada. Since the arrival of French music in Canada, there has been much intermixing with the Celtic music of Anglo-Canada. French-Canadian folk music is generally performed to accompany dances like the jig, jeux dansé, ronde, cotillion, and quadrille. The fiddle is a very common instrument, played by virtuosos like Jean Carignan, Jos Bouchard, and Joseph Allard. Other instruments include the German diatonic accordion, played by the likes of Philippe Bruneau and Alfred Montmarquette, spoons, bones, and Jew's harps.
[edit] Quebec music
Main article: Music of Quebec
French immigrants to Quebec established their musical forms in the future province, but there was no scholarly study until Ernest Gagnon's 1865 collection of 100 folk songs. In 1967, Radio-Canada released The Centennial Collection of Canadian Folk Songs (much of which was focused on French-Canadian music), which helped launch a revival of Quebec folk. Singers like Yves Albert, Edith Butler, and, especially, Félix Leclerc and Gilles Vigneault, helped lead the way. The 1970s saw purists like La Rêve du Diable and La Bottine Souriante continued the trend. As Quebec folk continued to gain in popularity, artists like Harmonium, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Jim Corcoran, Bertrand Gosselin, and Paul Piché found a mainstream audience.
Since 1979, Quebec music artists have been recognized with the Felix Award.
[edit] Maritime music
The Music of Canada's Maritimes has included many artists from both the traditional and pop genres.
The traditional genre is heavily influenced by the music brought to the region by the European settlers, the most well known of which are the Scots & Irish celtic and Acadian traditions. Folk songs are those passed on orally, usually composed by unknown persons. In the Maritime Provinces (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island), sea shanties are widespread among the whaling and fishing workers. The lumber camps of New Brunswick have also produced their own body of folk songs. Irish and Scottish settlers in the eastern provinces of Canada brought traditions of fiddling and other forms of music. Having declined in popularity during the 20th century, a revival of Maritime traditional inspired music began in the late 1970s, lead by artists such as John Allan Cameron and Stan Rogers and later, the The Rankins, Mary Jane Lamond, Natalie MacMaster, Barra MacNeils, and Barachois.
Successful pop acts from all genres have had degrees of national and international success since the beginning of recorded music period. Performers as diverse as Hank Snow, Anne Murray, Matt Minglewood and April Wine have all experienced tremendous success as popular music acts with considerable national and international tours and record sales. Since the 1990s, bands such as Sloan, Joel Plaskett, Matt Mays and Buck 65 have made a considerable impact.
[edit] Newfoundland music
Anglo-Canadian folk ballads are particularly well-preserved in Newfoundland. The widespread "Barbara Allen (song)" is found in dozens of variations, as are songs like "The Farmer's Curst Wife", "Lord Randall", and "The Sweet Trinity". With the advent of printing, broadside ballads were found throughout Canada, many of them Anglo songs telling sad songs about unfulfilled love. In addition to the influence of English West Country folk music and sea shanties, Newfoundland music heavily incorporates themes from Irish music, with elements of the provinces French and Portuguese history also represented.
As with the Maritime provinces, contemporary artists were the catalyst for a revival of interest in traditional music. Great Big Sea, Figgy Duff and Irish Descendants carried the traditional sounds of Newfoundland across Canada and around the world. The most popular being Great Big Sea.
[edit] Western Canada
Among the lumber camps of Ontario and British Columbia, and among the homesteaders and farmers of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, Anglo settlers adopted numerous American songs. "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie", for example, and the song known as "Prairie Land", "Saskatchewan" or "Alberta Land", which is adapted from an American song called "Beulah Land".
[edit] First Nations
The native peoples of Canada are of a number of diverse ethnic groups, each of which have their own musical traditions. There are some general similarities, however. Music is usually social (public) or ceremonial (private). Public, social music may be dance music accompanied by rattles and drums. Prive, ceremonial music includes vocal songs with accompaniment on percussion, used to mark occasions like Midewivin ceremonies and Sun Dances.
Folk songs may be written by an individual, or they may be passed on from generation to generation, said to have been received through a vision or dream. These songs generally have one melody, which may be performed by an individual or a group.
Instruments include drums, rattles and flutes, constructed from natural objects.
Powwows are a common part of native music today. These are meetings and intertribal celebrations of music, dance and culture. The musical traditions of powwows draw on those adapted from the Plains Nations.
Few First Nations bands have gone mainstream in Canada. Arguably, the band that became the most popular was Kashtin, a duo that released their self-titled debut in 1989 an album that would eventually go double platinum despite that all the songs were in the band's native language, Innu.
[edit] Inuit music
Approximately 25,000 Inuit live in Northern Canada, primarily spread across Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavik (northern Quebec). Prior to European contact, Inuit music was based around drums but has since grown to include fiddles and accordions. Music was dance-oriented and requested luck in hunting, gambling, or weather, and only rarely, if ever, expressing traditional purposes like love or specialized forms like work songs and lullabies. In the 20th century, Inuit music was influenced by Scottish and Irish sailors, as well as, most influentially, American country music. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has long been recording Inuit music, beginning with a station in Iqaluit in 1961. Accordion players like Charlie Panigoniak and Simeonie Keenainak quickly found an audience, with the latter notably incorporating musical influences like polkas and jigs from Quebec and Newfoundland.
Throat singing has become well-known as a curiosity. In katajjaq, female singers produce melodies from deep in their throats. A pair of singers stare at each other in a sort of contest. Common in Northern Quebec and Baffin Island, katajjaq singers perform in sync with each other, so that is producing a strong accent while the other is producing a weak one. The contest ends when one singer begins laughing, runs out of breath or the pair's voices become simultaneous. To some extent, young Inuit have revitalized the genre, and musicians like Tudjaat have even incorporated pop structures.
[edit] Other immigrant communities
Montreal's large immigrant communities include artists like Zekuhl (a band consisting of a Mexican, Chilean and a Quebecer raised in Cameroon), Karen Young, Eval Manigat (Haiti), and Lorraine Klaasen (South Africa), while Toronto has a large Balkan and Turkish community that has produced, most famously, the Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band and Staro Selo, alongside Punjabi by Nature, who incorporate bhangra, rock, dub, and English Punjabi pop, and the Afro-Nubians, who included musicians from across North America, Europe and Africa. Outside of these major cities, important artists include Uzume-Taiko and Silk Road Music from Vancouver and Finjan from Winnipeg.
[edit] Caribbean music
Around the year 2000, Canada has begun to developed itself as a new pole in Caribbean music industry. This is especially true of the genres Soca and Calypso. The recent changes in Canada's immigration laws have seen several prominent music artistes from the Commonwealth Caribbean like David Rudder and Anslem Douglas resettle with their family to Canada and developed a burgeoning Caribbean music industry based in Canada.
This trend has also been reinforced by a decrease of the industry in the New York City area, mainly spurred by factors like the rebranding of the 30+ year old Caribbean radio station WLIB 1090-AM by Inner City Broadcasting Corporation in 2004. The ICB rebranding was a tremendous setback to the Caribbean community and in a essence splintered the Caribbean music industry again across the New York City metropolitan area. In Canada, station's like Flow FM and CHIN, both located in Toronto, Ontario have served to bind the Caribbean music industry with their regularly rotated scheduling for Soca and Calypso music. During this time several of the leading Caribbean music DJs industry (which just happen to be based in Ontario) take to the air and launch several new songs or mixes. Some song mixes have been entered for various Caribbean Carnivals back in the Caribbean region and have created awareness in the Caribbean of new Soca and Calypso talent based in Canada.
[edit] Classical music
Classical music in Canada is performed by a variety of orchestras, such as the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and many smaller orchestras and groups; such as the Canadian Brass.
Several important musicians of international stature were born and raised in Canada. These include the pianist Glenn Gould, violinist Lara St. John, tenor Ben Heppner, soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, and many more.
With regard to composition, the earliest composers of classical music in Canada were generally Quebecois Catholics who wrote religious music. In the twentieth century Canada has had many internationally-known composers, such as R. Murray Schafer, Srul Irving Glick, John Beckwith, Louis Applebaum, Violet Archer and Lucio Agostini.
[edit] Popular music
Overview of popular music
[edit] Jazz
Jazz is a genre of African American music (with influences from French Impressionism era music), present in Canada since at least the 1910s. In 1919 and 1920 in Vancouver, Jelly Roll Morton, a legendary New Orleans pianist, played with his band. During this period, Canadian groups such as the Winnipeg Jazz Babies and the Westmount Jazz Band of Montreal also found regional acclaim.
During the swing boom of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Canada produced such notable bandleaders as Ellis McLintock, Bert Niosi, Jimmy Davidson, Mart Kenney, Stan Wood, and Sandy De Santis. In the 1940s, Bert Niosi and Oscar Peterson became widely known. Peterson became internationally acclaimed, and is a widely-respected Canadian jazz musician.
During the 70s and 80s, the Jazz Fusion band Uzeb was a well known domestic and international jazz group.
In the 2000s, the best known Canadian jazz artist is the singer and pianist Diana Krall.
[edit] Blues
The blues is a vocal and instrumental form of music based on the use of the blue notes, often with a repetitive twelve-bar structure, which evolved in the United States in the communities of former African slaves. Canadian blues refers to the blues and blues-related music (e.g. blues-rock, folk blues, etc.) performed by blues bands and performers in Canada.
In Canada, there are hundreds of local and regionally-based Canadian blues bands and performers. As well, there is a smaller number of bands or performers that have achieved national or international prominence. These bands and performers are part of a broader Canadian "blues scene" that also includes city or regional blues societies, blues radio shows, and blues festivals.
A small number of Canadian blues bands and artists have achieved national or international prominence by touring across Canada, the US, or Europe, and releasing recordings that have received critical or audience acclaim in Canada and abroad. The performers below are listed according to the decade during which they first achieved national or international prominence:
- 1960s: Ronnie Hawkins
- 1970s: The Downchild Blues Band; Norman "Dutch" Mason
- 1980s: David Wilcox; The Powder Blues; Jeff Healey
- 1990s: Colin James
- 2000s: Jack de Keyzer; Sue Foley
Canadian blues recording labels include: NorthernBlues Music [1] (launched in 2001 by President Fred Litwin); Stony Plain Records, an Alberta-based label founded by Holger Petersen; and Electro-Fi Records [www.electrofi.com], launched in 1997 by founder and president Andrew Galloway.
Canadian blues societies help to promote the appreciation and performance of blues music. Blues societies are often involved in the organization or promotion of local blues festivals and educational activities. Blues society educational activities include presentations on blues history, elementary school "outreach" activities, and workshops. Some blues societies organize awards for blues musicians.
[edit] Country music
Country music evolved out of the diverse musical practices of the Appalachian region of the United States. Appalachian folk music was largely Scottish and Irish, with an important influence also being the African American country blues. Parts of Ontario, British Columbia and the Maritime provinces shared a tradition with the Appalachian region, and country music became popular quite quickly in these places. Fiddlers like George Wade and Don Messer helped to popularize the style, beginning in the late 1920s. Wade was not signed until the 1930s, when Victor Record's, inspired by the success of Wilf Carter the year before, signed him, Hank Snow and Hank LaRivière.
Canadian country as developed by Carter, Snow and Earl Heywood, used a less nasal and more distinctly pronounced vocal style than American music, and stuck with more traditional ballads and narratives while American country began to use more songs about bars and lovers quarrels. This style of country music became very popular in Canada over the next couple decades. Later popular Canadian country stars range from Stompin' Tom Connors to Shania Twain.
Radio and television stations in Canada which play country music, however, are often more flexible in how they define the genre than their counterparts in the United States. Canadian country stations sometimes play artists more commonly associated with folk music, such as Bruce Cockburn, Leahy and The Rankin Family.
[edit] R&B and soul
Is there really enough that can be written about Canadian R&B to warrant a specific subsection, or should we cover it under "other niche styles"? Specifically, other than listing individual performers, is there anything that makes Canadian R&B distinct from American R&B beyond the nationality of the performer?
Artists to consider: The Philosopher Kings, Nelly Furtado, Jully Black, Jarvis Church, Shawn Desman, Glenn Lewis, Remy Shand, Billy Newton-Davis, Liberty Silver, Jackie Richardson, Toya Alexis.
[edit] Rock, metal and punk
Rock overview
[edit] Hip hop/rap music
Hip hop overview
[edit] Industrial
Canadian artists have had a significant impact on industrial music worldwide, and Canada is considered by many to be one of the birthplaces of modern industrial.
The first wave of Canadian industrial was born out of the Juno Award winning New Wave act, Images in Vogue. From this Vancouver-based band, guitarist Don Gordon went on to found Numb, and percussionist Kevin Crompton left in 1985 to focus on his side project, Skinny Puppy. Quickly signed to Nettwerk Records, the band is considered by many to be the single most influential industrial act of all time.
Out of this environment also came Front Line Assembly, formed by former Skinny Puppy member Bill Leeb in 1986. Joined by Rhys Fulber (and later by Chris Peterson), FLA became one of the most commercially successful electro-industrial acts of the 90s, and spawned a host of sideprojects, including (but not limited to) Conjure One, Pro-Tech, Synæsthesia, Will, Intermix, Noise Unit, Equinox, Cyberaktif, Mutual Mortuary, and the vastly successful Delerium, which began life as an ambient project.
[edit] Government, politics and law
Legal regulation: Canadian content, P2P file-sharing, excise taxes on blank recordable media, etc.
[edit] Music industry
Record labels, media, etc.
[edit] Music education
[edit] Musical scholarship
[edit] Holidays and festivals
- music festivals
- Huron Carol
