CANADIAN Music
ISSUES OF HEGEMON
AND IDENTITY
EDITED BY
BEVERLEY DIAMOND
AND
ROBERT WITMER
CANADIAN SCHOLARS' PRESS INC. TORONTO 1994
Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity
First published in 1994 by
Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.
180 Bloor St W., Ste.801
Toronto, ON M5S2V6
All original material copyright © 1994 by Canadian
Scholars' Press Inc., the editors and the contributing
authors. All rights reserved. All reprinted material
copyright the original publishers. No reproduction, copy
or transmission of this publication may be made without
written permission.
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-55130-031-3
1. Music - Canada - History and criticism. I. Diamond,
Beverley, 1948-. II. Witmer, Robert.
ML205.C3 1993 780'.971 C93-095584-6
Printed and bound in Canada
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contributors vi
Preface x
I. Introduction 1
1. Issues of Hegemony and Identity in Canadian Music
Beverley Diamond 1
II. 'Studying Up': The Structuring of Power and
Control Within Canadian Culture 23
2. "An Identity of Tastes and Aspirations":
Educating Performers and Their Audiences
Maria Tippett 29
3. The Role of the Church in the History
of Musical Life in Quebec
Marie-Therese Lefebvre 65
4. 'Multiethnic' Dance in Ontario:
The Struggle Over Hegemony
Nina De Shane 75
5. Culture and Scholarship:
The First Ten Years of the Canada Council
J.L. Granatstein 89
6. The Ethnicity Factor in Anglo-Canadian Folkloristics
Carole H. Carpenter 123
7. Narratives in Canadian Music History
Beverley Diamond 139
8. Radio Space and Industrial Time:
The Case of Music Formats
JodyBerland 173
01. Identities: Music and the Defining of Nation 189
9. What Can We Learn When They Sing, Eh?
Ethnomusicology in the American State of Canada
James Robbins 193
iv CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
10. 'Authority' Revisited: The 'Other' in Anthropology
and Popular Music Studies
Line Grenier and Jocelyne Guilbault 203
11. Canadian Culture: Colonial Culture
R. Murray Schafer 221
12. A Canadian Music Style: Illusion and Reality
Lucien Poirier 239
13. As Canadian as Possible.. .Under the Circumstances:
Regional Myths, Images of Place and National Identity
in Canadian Country Music
JohnLehr 269
14. "Dream, Comfort, Memory, Despair":
Canadian Popular Musicians and the Dilemma of
Nationalism, 1968-1972
Robert A. Wright 283
IV. Identities: Boundaries of Region, Class, Gender
and Ethnocultural Community 303
15. Canadian Ethnic Research and Multiculturalism
Norman Buchignani 311
16. Focus on Ethnic Music
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi 343
17. From Immigrant to Ethnic Folklore:
A Canadian View of Process and Transition
Robert B. Klymasz 351
18. Trinbago North: Calypso Culture in Toronto
Annemarie Gallaugher 359
19. The Metaphysics of North American Indian Art
Alfred Young Man 383
20. "The Kennedy-Campbell Debate"
Michael Kennedy and Robert Campbell 405
21. Ethnicity and Class:
Black Country Musicians in the Maritimes
NeilV Rosenberg 417
TABLE OF CONTENTS v
22. Musical Yankees and Tories in Maritime Settlements
of 18th-century Canada
Frederick A. Hall 447
23. Uneven Underdevelopment and Song:
Culture and Development in the Maritimes
R. Brunton, J. Overton and J. Sacouman 459
24. Inventing Metaphors and Metaphors for Invention:
Women Composers' Voices in the Discourse
of Electroacoustic Music
Andra McCartney 491
V. Identities: Individual Musicians
in the Canadian Context 503
25. From Culture Shock to Cultural Exchange:
Trichy Sankaran, Karnatak Musician in Transition
Steve Wingfield 509
26. The Odyssey of Dahlia Obadia:
Morocco, Israel, Canada
Suzanne Meyers Sawa 529
27. Lee Cremo: Narratives About a Micmac Fiddler
Gordon E. Smith 541
28. "Thunder, That's Our Ancestors Drumming":
Music as Experienced by a Micmac Elder
Franziska von Rosen 557
29. The Work and Words of Piping
Patrick Hutchinson 581
CONTRIBUTORS
Jody Berland teaches Cultural Studies in the Department of Humanities,
Atkinson College, York University. She has published widely on music, media,
and social space, and on Canadian perspectives in cultural theory. She is co-
editor of Theory Rules, an anthology on culture in Canada being published by
XYZ/University of Toronto Press.
Ronald Brunton plays numerous stringed instruments, many of which
he has made himself. He teaches at Hants West Rural High School, Newport,
Nova Scotia.
Norman Buchignani, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department
of Anthropology at the University of Lethbridge, has been involved in studies
of Canadian ethnic diversity for many years. Among his publications are Fijian
Indians in Canada (1993) and Continuous Journey. A Social History of
South Asians in Canada (1985—with Norman and Doreen Indra).
Robert Campbell, Dean of Arts at the University of Prince Edward
Island, is a native of Cape Breton. He has taught courses in Canadian litera-
ture for many years. He has a special interest in the literature of Atlantic
Canada and in Scottish ethnicity.
Carole H. Carpenter is Associate Professor of Humanities at York
University and Director of the Ontario Folklife Centre and Folklore-Folklife
Archive. In addition to numerous articles and reviews her publications include
Many Voices: A Study of Folklore Activities in Canada and Their Role in
Canadian Culture (1979) and, with Edith Fowke, Exp/orations in Canadian
Folklore (1985) and A Bibliography of Canadian Folklore in English
(1981).
Nina De Shane is Associate Professor of Dance and Coordinator of the
undergraduate program in Critical, Cultural and Historical Studies in the Fine
Arts at York University. Alongside her ongoing dance ethnology research on
First Nations cultures she is writing a doctoral dissertation in ethnomusicology
(Wesleyan University) on the subject of Trinidad Carnival.
Beverley Diamond, co-editor and contributor, is Associate Professor of
Music, Associate Dean of Fine Arts and Director of the Graduate Program in
Music at York University. She has done extensive research on music in
Canada, particularly among First Nations communities, and has published
widely on this as well as other topics. Her wide-ranging organological study,
Visions of Sound (with Michael Sam Cronk and Franziska von Rosen), is
being published by Wilfred Laurier University Press and the University of
Chicago Press.
CONTRIBUTORS VII
Annemarie Gallaugher is a Ph.D. candidate in the York University
Graduate Program in Music. Her research interests include the politics of ritual
and celebratory expression and issues of representation and identity in ethnog-
raphy, with particular reference to the Caribbean area.
Jack Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History at York
University and a pre-eminent scholar in the field of Canadian historical studies,
has produced or co-produced numerous books and articles widely used in uni-
versities across Canada and elsewhere. Among his recent publications are The
Generals (1993), War and Peacekeeping (1991) and "English Canada"
Speaks Out (1991—co-edited with Kenneth McNaught).
Line Grenier, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communications
at Universite de Montreal, has published widely on the sociology of popular
music with particular reference to Quebec. She currently heads a research
team engaged in a long-term study of la chanson quebecois.
Jocelyne Guilbault is Associate Professor of Music and Director of
Graduate Studies in Music at the University of Ottawa. A Caribbean specialist
with extensive fieldwork experience, she has published widely on traditional
and popular musics of the French Antilles and is the author of Zouk: World
Music in the West Indies (1993).
Frederick A. Hall is Associate Professor of Music and Associate Dean of
Humanities Studies at McMaster University.. His musicological research has
focussed on Canadian music history and has been published in a number of
sources.
Patrick Hutchinson is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at Brown
University. He is an accomplished piper and in 1992 became the first North
American to win an All-Ireland Uilleann piping title.
Michael Kennedy, from Montague, Prince Edward Island, is a doctoral
student at the School of Scottish Studies, Edinburgh.
Robert B. Klymasz is curator of the East European Program at the
Canadian Museum of Civilization. He is an authority on Ukrainian-Canadian
culture and has published several books and numerous articles on the subject,
in addition to mounting a number of major museum exhibits.
Marie-Therese Lefebvre is Professeure agregee, Faculte de Musique,
Universite de Montreal. She has been instrumental in fostering research on
music in Quebec, serving as president of the Association pour 1'avancement de
la recherche en musique du Quebec (1983-85), authoring numerous publica-
tions on Quebec musical life and mounting university courses on Quebec
music.
John Lehr is Professor of Geography at the University of Winnipeg.
VIII CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
He has published broadly on the settlement of Western Canada and more gen-
erally on the historical and cultural geography of the region, including
Reflections from the Prairies: Geographical Essays (1992—co-edited with
H. John Selwood).
Andra McCartney is an M.A. candidate in the York University Graduate
Program in Music. A composer as well as a scholar, her research is currently
focussed on the relationships between music, technology, and feminism.
Suzanne Meyers Sawa is Assistant Librarian at the Faculty of Music
Library, University of Toronto. Her research concentrates on women musi-
cians documented in medieval Arabic sources. She is also the percussionist of
the Toronto-based Traditional Arabic Music Ensemble.
James Overton is Associate Professor of Sociology at Memorial
University of Newfoundland. He is the author of Making a World of
Difference: Essays on Tourism, Culture and Development (1992) and a co-
editor of Violence and Public Anxiety (1992).
Lucien Poirier is Professeur titular et directeur, histoire de la musique et
musicologie, Universite Laval. He has published on a wide range of Canadian
music topics, with special emphasis on organ music and music of Quebec. He
is an accomplished organist and active as a recitalist.
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi is Professor of Music and Chair of the
interdisciplinary ethnomusicology program at the University of Alberta. She
has published broadly with particular emphasis on musical traditions of the
Indian subcontinent. She is the author of Sufi Music of India and Pakistan
(1986) and co-editor of two anthologies on Muslims in North America.
James Robbins is an Adjunct Faculty Member of the York University
Graduate Program in Music. Among his publications are contributions to the
Encyc/opedia of Music in Canada (1992) and Ethnomusico/ogy: Historical
and Regional Studies (1993). His 1989 paper, "Practical and Abstract
Taxonomy in Cuban Music" (Ethnomusico/ogy 33/3), was a winner of the
Society for Ethnomusicology's Jaap Kunst Prize.
Franziska von Rosen is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at
Brown University. She has done extensive fieldwork among Canadian First
Nations communities and has published River of Fire (1992—a video co-pro-
duced with Mike Francis) and is a co-author of Visions of Sound, being pub-
lished by Wilfred Laurier University Press and the University of Chicago Press.
Neil V. Rosenberg is Professor of Folklore at Memorial University of
Newfoundland. A seasoned performer of bluegrass music, he has published
extensively on North American folk and country music including Bluegrass: A
History (1985). He is the editor of Transforming Tradition: Folk Music
CONTRIBUTORS ix
Revivals Examined (1933) and some two-dozen bluegrass IPs.
James Sacouman, Professor of Sociology at Acadia University, is a spe-
cialist in Maritime political economy, development issues and social move-
ments. He is a co-editor of Restructuring and Resistance: Perspectives from
Atlantic Canada (1990) and Underdevelopment and Soda! Movements in
Atlantic Canada (1979).
R. Murray Schafer, one of Canada'a most prominent composers, is
also a prolific writer on a wide range of musical topics. Among his many writ-
ings on music are the much quoted and widely translated The Tuning of the
World (1977) and The Thinking Ear: Complete Writings on Music
Education (1986).
Gordon E. Smith is Assistant Professor of Music at Queen's University.
Prior to his current research into Micmac musical culture he completed his
Ph.D. degree (University of Toronto, 1989) with a dissertation on the life and
work of the pioneer Canadian folksong scholar Ernest Gagnon.
Maria Tippctt, a historian living in Vancouver, has written extensively on
Canadian art history and other topics. Her publications include By a Lady:
Celebrating Three Centuries of Art by Canadian Women (1992) and Art at
the Service of the War: Canada, Art, and the Great War (1984).
Steve Wingfield, a Toronto area musician, studied ethnomusicology in
the York University Graduate Program in Music. His current research interests
include Tibetan chant and Indonesian popular music.
Robert Witmer, co-editor, is Associate Professor of Music at York
University. He is the author of The Musical Life of the Blood Indians (1982),
the editor of Ethnomusicology in Canada (1990) and has written on an
assortment of North American and Caribbean music topics for a number of
journals, anthologies and music dictionaries.
Robert A. Wright teaches in the departments of History and Cultural
Studies at Trent University. Alongside his ongoing research on the pop music
industries in Canada he operates his own recording studio and record label,
AVA Music, in Peterborough.
Alfred Young Man is Associate Professor of Native American Studies at
the University of Lethbridge. A visual artist as well as a scholar and critic, he is
a co-author of Visions of Power: Contemporary Art by First Nations, Inuit
and Japanese Canadians (1991) and the editor of Networking—National
Native Indian Artists Symposium IV (1988).
PREFACE
This volume reprints 22 previously published studies and also contains
nine essays written expressly for it, as well as four short "bridging" essays by
the editors. Among the 22 previously published studies are three short articles
which have been batched under a new collective title, "The Kennedy-Campbell
Debate." One of the reprints, Neil V. Rosenberg's "Ethnicity and Class: Black
Country Musicians in the Maritimes," includes an extensive postscript written
by the author for this republication.
In editing this volume we have attempted to mollify differences in footnot-
ing and bibliographic styles among the contributions. In certain cases, howev-
er, it seemed to us advisable to maintain the original formatting, even at the
expense of a mild stylistic disunity of academic apparatus in the volume over-
all. Readers may also note that some of the essays we have reprinted do not
include bibliographies where endnotes give full citations.
The existence of a volume such as this would obviously not be possible
without the efforts of the authors whose work is included and, in the case of
reprints of previously published studies, also the largesse of their copyright
holders. We wish to thank all of the contributors and their agents for allowing
us to include their work in this anthology.
We are grateful to the York University Faculty of Graduate Studies for
providing funds for the engagement of two part-time editorial assistants during
the summer of 1993, York music graduate students William Echard and Jason
Stanley, whose valuable work is hereby acknowledged: they spared us numer-
ous trips to various libraries in search of bibliographic minutiae and many
marathon stints at the photocopying machine. The musical examples in
Gordon Smith's paper were prepared in Finale by William Echard. We also
wish to thank Nan Sawyer, of the office staff of the York University Music
Department, for general clerical assistance.
We owe thanks to Jack Wayne and his staff at Canadian Scholars' Press,
especially Managing Editor Pamela Hamilton and Academic Liaison Tim
Wayne. They not only showed a gratifying enthusiasm for the project from the
very beginning but were also consistently helpful, accommodating and compe-
tent throughout the production process.
For reviewing Beverley Diamond's translations from the French and offer-
ing suggestions for improvement we wish to thank Nicole Beaudry, Marie-
Therese Lefebvre, Lucien Poirier and especially Benjamin Waterhouse. We
also wish to acknowledge Universite Laval for subsidizing the cost of Mr.
Waterhouse's translation work.
PREFA XI
To our respective spouses, Clifford Crawley and Betty Witmer, is owed a
sincere thank-you for abiding our preoccupation during this project.
B.D. and R.W.
Toronto
October 1993
This page intentionally left blank 
SECTION I
INTRODUCTION
ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND
IDENTITY IN CANADIAN Music
BEVERLEY DIAMOND
This book brings together articles from various scholarly disciplines which
address different aspects of hegemony and identity in Canadian music. For
readers familiar with contemporary issues in the humanities and social sci-
ences, these emphases are already well worn, but for music students they may
be less familiar, at least within the context of academic study.
1
 At the outset, it
is interesting to query why power relationships or levels of identity have been
debated in such a lively manner in fields such as history, literary criticism, soci-
ology or anthropology but explored little in music, an academic discipline
which has continued to give greater prominence to interpretations grounded
in the 19th-century, Euro-centred belief in the autonomy of musical language.
This multidisciplinary anthology may imply some possible answers although
the issues are a complex web woven from strands which are social construc-
tions, academic conventions and the very abstraction of musical language
itself.
An interdisciplinary approach is central to our concept for we believe that
the diverse realities of our society can best be understood by the juxtaposition
of diverse intellectual perspectives. Many of the articles have been published
previously but, because students of Canadian music often become accustomed
to reading within the boundaries of the academic discipline of their program of
study, they may not have encountered some of the work in this anthology or
considered what may be learned by reading a paper by, for example, a histori-
an next to that of a folklorist or musicologist. Particularly within the discipline
of music, we are aware that the rigours of professional study—whether that be
in Kamatic, jazz, European concert music, or whichever of the many other
musical traditions practised professionally in the Canadian context—militate
2 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
against long afternoons of browsing in the history, sociology or folklore sec-
tions of the library. As a result, music students may be unaccustomed to 'read-
ing' the very structures of the knowledge they learn. A classic case in point
occurred within the seminar which first used some of the material in this
anthology as a course kit. Students were asked, in the first class, to discuss the
basis on which they would argue for five Canadian musicians who, in their
opinion, had made a significant contribution to cultural life in this country.
Most students were reluctant to respond, realizing the complexity of concepts
like "significant contribution" and "cultural life." One brave soul responded
quickly with a list which shall remain anonymous and the class was asked to
look for patterns which helped to shape her response. All five are composers
of "new" concert music, said one jazz student. All are over 60, said a young
composer interested in accessing that very 'new music' community. They're all
men, responded someone else. And, said the Maritimer, they're all from
Toronto. These biases were perhaps more striking than those underlying other
lists; that is not the point. Rather, the issue is that the student was unaware
that her list was anything but natural and obvious.
Further, it is not merely the processes of legitimating music which reflect
the values and ideologies of the people who create and consume it, but the
aesthetic structures for creating, performing and listening to music, as well.
This is not to say that musical gesture V means 'y'. It does imply, however,
that people pay attention to sounds, choose sounds, or create sounds; they
perform or listen to sounds in specific environments, interacting in codified
ways which may be learned so well that the codes seem natural rather than
constructed. To ignore these things while focusing exclusively on the formalist
analysis of specific musical pieces is, in our view, somewhat like missing the
forest for the trees. It is our experience that music students are increasingly
aware of this. They are excited about the social grounding of music in their
midst and they are often hungry for readings which address aspects of this.
Part of our impression about this relates to the fact that this anthology
was compiled as a seminar textbook and an earlier version was 'tested' with
both a fourth-year undergraduate class and a Master's seminar; it was effective
in both contexts. It is our hope, however, that the issues of hegemony and
identity which are central to this volume are discussed in any course on
Canadian or North American music/dance and that parts of this reader, con-
sequently, will be useful in generalist courses. Many of the articles will also
interest a general readership, one including patrons and connoisseurs of spe-
cific musical traditions as well as practitioners, one including individuals who
worry about the "erosion" of public funds in support of Canadian cultural
diversity as well as individuals who lobby for a legitimate share of those funds.
Both the subjects and the approaches in the anthology range widely. The
former are not delimited by a specific historical frame, by any genre or type of
lisiTRonnr.TioN 5
musical practice, or by any social community or contexts. The latter include
conventional historical documentation, textual analysis and structuralist
approaches as well as newer paradigms (frameworks of thought) including
recent reflections on "subjectivity," new assessments of nationalism, or femi-
nist interpretations. Readers may be able to trace some significant shifts in
approaches to similar issues over the past few decades.
To some extent, the book is organized from'the general to the specific.
Section Two, which focuses on the institutions which shape our musical expe-
riences, is somewhat anomalous in this regard since these institutions are inte-
grally bound to definitions of nation, explored in Section Three and to the
bounding of specific "communities of tradition" in Section Four. Some of the
institutions discussed in Section Two are explicit: for example, educational and
religious systems, granting agencies, or the transnational recording industry.
Some are implicit as in the case of gender codes or social ideologies of class.
Sections Three, Four and Five explore issues of musical "identity" on
three different levels: in the definition of nation, within sub-national communi-
ties and individual careers.
While the articles do not, for the most part, focus on specific musical
pieces, the "trees" in our earlier metaphor, we do suggest that this reader can
be used most fruitfully if works which are mentioned in the text are also
explored aurally and analytically. Many specific works, genres or composers
referenced in articles about the 19th or early 20th century (Tippett, Lefebvre,
Poirier, Hall) are published in the volumes of the Canadian Musical Heritage
Society. Relevant to articles by Lefebvre, Schafer and McCartney, contempo-
rary composers of concert music or jazz are represented in the CBC's multi-
volume LP/CD series, the Anthology of Canadian Music (individual volumes
are titled after specific composers except for one volume on electro-acoustic
music, one on jazz and a reissue of a centennial-year collection of folk music).
Recordings of song-writers in country, urban folk, popular or other commer-
cial traditions (relevant to articles by Berland, Lehr and Wright) are generally
available in record stores. The task of finding recordings of music of specific
communities (relevant to articles in Section Four) is more complex. For specif-
ic ethnocultural groups, the bibliographies and discographies of articles in the
Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (2nd edition, 1992) are useful; numerous
volumes published by the Canadian Museum of Civilization (formerly the
National Museums of Canada) include flexidiscs of traditional music; the world
music explosion in recent years means that specific Canadian cultural commu-
nities (including many local communities) may now be represented in record
stores, still, ironically, in the "international" section in most cases. Where
available, discographies for the individuals profiled in Section Five are included
with articles by Wingfield, Meyers Sawa, Smith, von Rosen and Hutchinson.
Before this exploration begins, however, some reflection on three of the
4 CANADIAN Mi Kir- KSIIFS OF HFP.FMONY AND IDFNTITY
deceptively straightforward words in our title is necessary. The purpose of this
reflection is not to present entirely new insights about "Canadian" "hegemo-
ny" or "identity" but rather to suggest the fruitfulness of new juxtapositions. In
this case, we will attempt to bring together recent issues in musicology and
ethnomusicology, in Canadian studies and in postmodern theory (the latter
given voice both in contemporary media and in academic publications).
CANADIAN
A story circulates within the folklore of Canadian academia, the origin(s)
of which—if, indeed, there was an actual event on which this story was
based—are creatively adjusted from one recounting to another. It tells of an
excellent course proposal on Canadian music which was prepared for a cur-
riculum review at an American university. The proposal was praised for its
substance but, in the end, the professor who wrote the proposal was asked:
"Could you leave 'Canadian' out of the title? It's just not sexy!" Canadians
enjoy a justifiable outrage when this story is told.
2
 But, in many cases, the
same music schools in which this story may be told do not explore the "gene-
ology" (after Foucault) of our own anguished and often parochial nationalism,
or consider the position of our cultural production in relation to the post-colo-
nial dialogue which has emerged in virtually every academic discipline over the
past two decades.
On one hand, then, use of "Canadian" as a frame for this volume invokes,
in relation to music, recent critiques of the concept of "nation" as an entity
which is generally thought to have "boundedness, continuity and homogene-
ity" (Handler 1988: 6). On the other, it tries to connect to even larger issues
about space and place, concepts of location which map—sometimes literally
and sometimes metaphorically—on to certain kinds of knowledge and certain
kinds of knowing.
The recent burgeoning of literature on "nationalism" reflects the crisis that
many nation states have experienced within recent years.3 Current literature
(much of it indebted to Benedict Anderson's influential book, Imagined
Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 1983)
is mostly based on several shared premises. One is that the concept of
"nation" is an artificial
4
 construction, invented in relatively modem times. The
most frequently cited criteria defining a "nation" may be the belief in shared
ancestry, a belief which is frequently grounded in mythologies which need not
align with provable evidence (see Connor 1992 or Bhabha 1990). Such a
belief, however, is but one way of establishing the boundedness of a group of
people who regard themselves as a "nation." A second aspect of nationalism
INTRODUCTION 5
explored in recent scholarly studies is that the concept is "profoundly 'histori-
cist' in character" (Smith 1992: 58), or, to use Handler's term (cited above),
that a nation must have "continuity." A third characteristic of recent theories
of nationalism is their convergence with studies of ethnicity which had former-
ly, as Anthony Smith observes, "been largely the preserve of anthropologists
and social psychologists and had focused on small-scale communities, often in
Third World areas" (Smith 1992: 1). It is this aspect of recent studies which
has problematized "homogeneity," Handler's third characteristic of national-
ism. Hence, while in reality virtually every nation has always consisted of
diverse ethnocultural groups, their nationhood was conceptually tied to the
belief that "they share essential attributes that constitute their national identity;
sameness overrides difference" (Handler 1988: 6). This belief has proven frag-
ile in both theory and practice.
All three of these features of current study have enabled a clearer view of
nationalism as it operates in relation to music, perhaps most evident in a spe-
cial topics issue on "nationalism" in the journal Ethnomusicology (34/3) in
1990 and a subsequent issue in 1992. The latter offers a mini-monograph by
Mark Slobin on "micromusics" of the West, a comparative study in which he
suggests new ways for mapping the relationships of musical communities with-
in larger state or transnational contexts. In the 1990 special-topics issue,
Christopher Waterman explores the construction of a pan-Yoruba identity in
the late 19th century and examined the role that music plays in the mainte-
nance of this fragile solidarity. Tom Turino looks at the distinctive perfor-
mance practices which serve to delineate members of different ethnic groups
at "national" Andean festivals. In both these articles, the tension between state
affiliation and the pluralistic affiliations of shared birthright are apparent.
Sameness does not override difference, at least with regard to the nation-
state. The third article in this landmark volume, by Line Grenier and Jocelyne
Guilbault, addresses this very issue of statehood versus peoplehood and, since
their perspective and some examples emanate from the Quebec context, their
work is included in this anthology. Many of the other articles in this volume
also problematize the definitional matrix of "boundedness, continuity and
homogeneity," exploring instead the contingencies of music and dance perfor-
mances, the interplay of different perspectives and the interruptions or discon-
tinuities which may be profoundly characteristic of a society's culture.
Outside of music, these issues have also been eloquently articulated in
Canadian studies. Not surprisingly, many recent investigations of nationalism
in Canada have focused on Quebec, whose quest for sovereignty is uniquely
shaped by its peoples' deep sense of common heritage and language. Richard
Handler's Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec (1988) is a
good introduction to the issues and one which is particularly relevant to
expressive culture since he reports extensively on folklore performance and on
6 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
the regulation of le patrimoine at the height of the fervour surrounding the
election of the Parti Quebecois in 1976. His sensitivity to the processes by
which unconscious lifeways become "objectified tradition"^—both by members
of that culture and by social scientists or historians who study it—is particularly
relevant for the study of music since music performance is a primary means by
which such objectification can take place.
6
A second aspect of Handler's work which is especially important for the
study of music is his recognition of the reinterpretation of established prac-
tices. For example, although a folkloric performance he witnessed strongly
resembled descriptions written 60 years earlier (he quotes Barbeau on a
Montreal soiree of 1919), the 1970s interpretations linked the revival of these
forms to the maintenance of family values and kinship responsibilities and to
the differentiation of Quebec's society as rural and traditional relative to mass
production-oriented cities elsewhere in North America.
7
 The search for a folk
society which he describes resonates with experiences of newer immigrant
communities described in other papers in this volume.
Within Canada, issues of "nationalism " have also been widely voiced with
regard to the Aboriginal peoples or First Nations, in themselves a large num-
ber of "nations" which, like the Yoruba (mentioned in relation to Waterman's
article, cited above), see themselves in some modem contexts as a solidarity.
Among First Nations, the struggle for distinct political and cultural status which
recognizes their historic right to deal as an equal with 'Canada' plays out many
of the features of recent nationalism debates: constructedness, historicity and
tension between solidarity and intra-community pluralism.
8
In the mainstream media, the recent acknowledgement of self-definitions
of sovereignty by First Nations leaders, however, might be contrasted with
another construction of nationhood in which Aboriginal people were concep-
tually appropriated. Here we refer to the way in which Nation cultures were
viewed by European immigrants in the colonial period as integral to
Eurocentric "imaginations" of the New World as nation. Kenneth Morrison
(1984), for example, has demonstrated how different concepts of nation with-
in England and France led to contrastive colonial relationships, the English
more oppositional in light of its ideologies of civilization and wilderness, the
French more collaborative.
The theorizing of "nation" is a political dimension in a much broader
debate which constitutes a still more important context for the framing of this
anthology as 'Canadian'. We refer here to recent explorations concerning on
the one hand, the anthropology of place/space and, on the other, the concept
of diasporic communities. The latter will be discussed under "Identities" below.
With regard to the anthropology of place/space, the focus of attention has
shitted from descriptive accounts of societies' use of space in different ways
(e.g., Edward T. Hall's The Hidden Dimension, 1968) to assessments of the
INTRODUCTION 7
value-laden connotations of spaces/places in intercultural communication (see
e.g., D. Gregory and J. Urry 1985, E.W. Soja 1989, Adrienne Rich 1986 or
Richard Pardon 1990).
The assumption of recent theoretical work is that space is never neutral.
An important influence on the aforementioned ethnomusicological study by
Mark Slobin, and one of the leading theorists in this area, Arjun Appadurai
has observed that space implies distinctions between distance and scale, cen-
tres and boundaries, or (still more loaded) native—localized and conceptually
imobilized in academic study—and non-native—the traveller/visitor.
Furthermore, "the problem of voice ('speaking for' and 'speaking to') inter-
sects with the problems of place (speaking 'from' and speaking 'of')" (1988:
17). One of the things implied here is that "parts of places are made to stand
for all of them" (ibid.). His colleague, Fernandez, works with this idea as it
relates to the geographic divisions within nations and regions. He observes
that southern areas frequently come to represent the whole. If the whole of
North America be regarded as a area—as it is, for example, by many First
Nations who label the continent "Turtle Island"—his observation may ring true
with regard to the representation of North American music cultures, where
Southern U.S. musical traditions are arguably identified as the most distinctive
on the continent, or where southern urban centres in a Canadian province
such as Ontario have assumed that they stand for all. On the other hand, one
of the most prominent symbols of Canadianism—the image of "North"—has
worked in exactly the opposite direction.
Appadurai himself suggests that, in anthropology, localized subjects of
particular theoretical significance (which he labels "gatekeeping images and
concepts") have come to serve as metonymic misrepresentations of whole
societies. As cases in point, he lists "honor-and-shame in the circum-
Mediterranean, hierarchy in India, ancestor-worship in China, compradrazgo
in Hispanic America and the like, all [of which] capture internal realities in
terms that serve the discursive needs of general theory in the metropolis"
(1988: 46).
As a first-stage response to Appadurai, one might search for such
metonyms of 'Canadian' both as a whole and in its parts. Are we still stereo-
typed by notions of wilderness as in Richardson's "Wacousta" syndrome (see
McGregor, 1985, for one interpretation) and the subsequent "garrison mental-
ity" labelled by historians with reference to our inward-looking propensity? For
whom are these images partially true? Do metonyms become, in fact,
mythologies which enrich rather than reduce when they are constructions of
insiders rather than outside observers? Would Schafer's "North/Nord,"
Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" or Stompin' Tom's "Bud the Spud"
be metonyms or mythologies? Is it significant that these textual metaphors are
not congruent with the emphases of theorists of Canadian music in the 1930s
8 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
or of historians who wrote textbooks about the same subject in the 60s, 70s
and 80s (see Poirier, Diamond in this anthology).
In response to these questions, we might again consider Appadurai's
advice about several directions which a space-delimited study of culture could
take to avoid the pitfalls of metonymic representation:
Assuming that such topological stereotypes cost us more in terms of the rich-
ness of our understanding of places than they benefit us in rhetorical or com-
parative convenience, how are we to contest their dominance? Here three
possibilities present themselves. The first...is to remain aware that ideas that
claim to represent the 'essences' of particular places reflect the temporary
localization of ideas from many places. The second is to encourage the pro-
duction and appreciation of ethnographies that emphasize the diversity of
themes that can fruitfully be pursued in any place. The third and most difficult
possibility, is to develop an approach to theory in which places could be com-
pared po/y£heiica//y.... In such an approach, there would be an assumption
of family resemblances between places, involving overlaps between not one
but many characteristics of their ideologies. This assumption would not
require places to be encapsulated by single diacritics (or essences) in order for
them to be compared with other places, but would permit several configura-
tions of resemblance and contrast. (1988: 46)
Renato Rosaldo, a colleague of Appadurai's in the 1986 panel on issues
in the emerging discourse about place/space (published in Cultural
Anthropology, 3/1, 1988), addressed the other side of the coin: the areas
where no representations of culture at all seemed possible within current theo-
retical paradigms. He candidly recounts the concern which he and Michelle
Rosaldo felt about the lack of culture in the Philippines, a concern reflected in
their 1970s fieldnotes, where they observed that "the concept of culture could
barely describe, let alone analyze, flux, improvisation and heterogeneity"
(1988: 77). He identifies several "zones of 'zero degree' culture," which are
marginal, isolated, insulated, or subordinated. These zones include a social
hierarchy's top and bottom as well as "the zone of immigration, or the site
where individuals move between two national spaces" (1988: 81).
Rosaldo's analysis might be applied to Canada, which has frequently been
declared something akin to a zone of zero degree culture.
9
 Its indigenous pop-
ulation—"marginal, isolated, insulated and subordinated"—has, until very
recently, fulfilled Rosaldo's claim that the communities at the bottom of a
social hierarchy are not culturally recognized. Its immigrant communities fre-
quently choose to remain between two national spaces, not within a linear
paradigm of development but within a more pragmatic and emotionally satis-
fying one of plural identities. Although the claims of "two founding nations"
have been a vigorous attempt to imagine an authentic Canadian culture, with
Rosaldo we suggest that "the view of an authentic culture as an autonomous
internally coherent universe no longer seems tenable in a postcolonial world"
(1988: 87).
INTRODUCTION 9
HEGEMONY
A buzzword of critical theory in the 1980s, hegemony, which may be
defined as the asymmetrical relations of power, 10 is acknowledged to be an
important issue in all studies within the human sciences. Fundamentally, the
emergence of hegemony as a major issue in scholarship coincides with the
growth of interest in the "post-modern"
11
 and the "dialogic."
12
 Knowledge
that is seen to be produced interactively is, invariably, nuanced with the power
relations of that interaction. Issues of hegemony are dauntingly complex
because there are, of course, as many relations of power as there are rela-
tions. Logically, hegemony could imply the power relations between (1) large
units and the components within them (e.g., governing forces—be they politi-
cal, economic, aesthetic or whatever—and the governed); (2) between hierar-
chically equal individuals or groups who regard themselves as distinct; or (3)
between an entity and a representor of that entity (e.g., a subject and the artist
or writer who paints or writes about that subject).
On all of these levels, music, like all other forms of communication and
expression, plays a role in negotiating hegemony. Exploration on the first
hegemonic level (between units and components) might, for example, address
the impact of the economically controlling multinationals on other players in
the recording industry, the processes of legitimation implicit in the regulations
of granting agencies, or the behaviour required of conservatory students, con-
cert audiences, religious worshippers or whomever.
But how does the hegemonic struggle impact on the language of a specif-
ic musical tradition? Let's consider one scenario. A composition student who
departs on a radically different direction from the work of his/her teacher is,
in effect, renegotiating hegemony. This example, however, suggests a more
complex dimension to the issue in that certain "radically new directions" would
be applauded while others would be dismissed as incompetent or inappropri-
ate. A radically new direction in avant-garde composition would probably be
applauded more readily than one in bharata natyam dance. A young woman
who had been told "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" (a
phrase used as a springboard by Margaret Atwood, 1990) would perhaps risk
more than her male colleagues to break the rules. A motive for studying hege-
mony, then, is the desire to understand the factors which constrain its negotia-
bility at any point in time or place.
This question, of course, implies that "musical" situations are contingent
upon much larger and deeper codes which we are conditioned to accept even
where they don't reflect our experience. For example the appropriateness of
certain kinds of innovation, the norms of respect between youth and elder, the
ways in which knowledge is defined and transmitted, the gender-nuanced
styles of behaviour which vary from one social context to another, are all
10 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
factors affecting the response to a "radically new direction" taken by a young
artist.
Many recent scholars have tried to generalize about these deeper codes in
relation to Euroamerican culture. It has become customary to list these power
asymmetries as dichotomies where one side is valued positively and the other
negatively. Donna Wilshire, for example, has made the following list (1989:
95-96):
Knowledge (accepted wisdom) / Ignorance (the occult and taboo)
higher (up) /
positive (good) /
mind (ideas), head, spirit /
reason (the rational) /
cool /
order /
control /
objective (outside, "out there") /
literal truth, fact /
goals /
light /
written terxt, Logos /
Apollo as sky-sun /
public sphere /
seeing, detached /
secular /
linear /
permanence, ideal (fixed) forms /
"changeless and immortal" /
hard /
independent, individual, isolated /
dualistic /
MALE /
To what end should we reflect on this list? Should we use it as a warning,
a guideline for corrective action (where the disadvantaged side should be
affirmed), as a tool in social action which seeks "equality" and justice for all?
The third might seem obvious but naively Utopian if a fixed position of "equali-
ty" is the expectation. Rather, as the papers in this volume imply through their
lower (down)
negative (bad)
body (flesh), womb (blood)
Nature (Earth)
emotion and feelings (the
irrational)
hot
chaos
letting-be, allowing, spontaneity
subjective (inside, immanent)
poetic truth, metaphor, art
process
darkness
oral tradition, enactment, Myth
Sophia as earth-cave moon
5
private sphere
listening,
6
 attached
holy and sacred
critical
change, fluctuations, evolution
7
process, ephemeras (performance)
soft
dependent, social, interconnected,
shared
whole
FEMALES
INTRODUCTION 11
juxtaposition, hegemony is a process of on-going negotiation. If a true dia-
logue, a real polyvocality can be achieved, the possibility of a society which
accepts power shifts from one situation, event, or issue to the next may be a
desirable end. Many would argue, however, that this too is a Utopian vision
which exploits the concept of dialogue to do further violence to the ugly facts
of domination.
During the past two decades, probably the most attention has been paid
to gender asymmetries and to the construction of the 'Other' in the social sci-
ences and popular culture. The alignment of asymmetries—e.g., instances of
double prejudice against minority women—has been addressed more recently.
Issues of differential power, however, were not explored in relation to music
until the late 1980s. Early landmarks among feminist studies are Ellen
Koskoff's Women and Music in Cross-cultural Perspective (1987), Susan
McClary's Feminine Endings (1991) and Ruth Solie, ed., Music and
Difference (1993). Studies exploring the social grounding of music more gen-
erally include John Shepherd's Music as Social Text (1991).
The construction of the 'Other' is a purposely ambiguous phrase so that it
can be applied to many forms of difference. Feminists have demonstrated, for
example, that where a male subjectivity is dominant in a culture, women may
be the silent, ahistorical mirror of that subjectivity
13
 rather than an indepen-
dent subjectivity permitted to construct the world in simultaneously different
manners. This description is similar, indeed, to the colonial view of 'Other'
cultures, which (as discussed earlier in relation to Appadurai) were seen as
localized, totalized and ahistorical; they were exotic inversions, hence confir-
mations of normalcy, and they were clearly regarded as unequal. The con-
struction of a social science such as anthropology as a tentacle of colonialism
has been thoroughly explored in studies such as Johannes Fabian's Time and
the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (1983) or George Marcus
and Michael Fisher's Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental
Moment in the Human Sciences (1986). The confluence of discriminatory
processes applied within the realms of gender relations and ethnocultural rela-
tions has, similarly, been extensively discussed at this point by, for example,
bell hooks (1990), Gayatri Spivak (1988) or Trinh T. Minh-ha (1989).
The third hegemonic dimension cannot so easily be separated from the
first. The representation of cultural distinctiveness—whether through images,
sounds, movement, or words—is, of course, a powerful means of legitimation
and control. The point of contact between an art and its languaging, between
creators/consumers of expressive culture and the individuals who write about
or otherwise represent that expressive culture through interpretations, transla-
tions or other glosses, is a contested site. Many writers have explored assump-
tions about "authority" which underlie acts of representation. Bourdieu, for
example, describes authority (such as writing) as something which "consists in
12 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
circumscribing the country, the territory...in imposing the legitimate, known
and recognized definition of frontiers and territory—in short, the source of
legitimate di-vision [sic] of the social world" (1991: 222). He emphasizes that
representations actually bring something into existence. Naming, imaging,
describing, sounding—all are means of calling something into being. This is
exactly why expressive culture is so powerful.
Many issues of representation have been touched upon earlier. We have,
with many other contemporary scholars, critiqued the implications of bound-
edness, continuity and homogeneity which marginalize some individuals and
many experiences which defy those criteria. We have referred to anthropolo-
gists who have identified problems of allowing one part of a culture's experi-
ence, or one place, to stand for all.
We wish to raise two further problems relevant to the study of Canadian
music. One has been voiced by experimental film-maker Trinh Minh-ha who
queries whether knowledge can ever circulate without "a position of mastery"
(1989: 41). "Clarity is a means of subjection," she contends, "a quality both of
official, taught language and of correct writing, two old mates of power:
together they flow, together they flower, vertically, to impose an order"
(1989: 17). Here she touches on an issue that relates to the "critique" of any
form of expression but none so contentious as music. The reduction of the
meanings of music to words is, in essence, clarity as subjection (does she mean
subjugation?) and this, perhaps, is why the tenuous relationship between com-
posers/performers and musicologists or music academics has a different quali-
ty than that between, for example, novelists and literary critics or even
painters and art historians. The languaging of music has been, we would con-
tend, more vigorously controlled than have other expressive media because of
the very abstraction of the musical language. How has this affected the dis-
course about Canadian music?
Another hegemonic issue of representation relevant to the study of
Canadian music has been cogently identified by African-Canadian writer and
activist Marlene Nourbese Philip in relation to literary debates about writers
and the appropriation of voice. She speaks of the privileging of issues of cen-
sorship over issues of racism in an argument which she characterizes as "argu-
ment by the white middle class, for the white middle class, about the white
middle class" (1990: 209). She observes that the privilege to write using any
perspective, any voice, is moot where "certain groups have not had access to
any of the resources necessary to enable any sort of writing to take place, let
alone writing from a particular point of view" (1990: 213). The appropriation
of musical materials has been widely contested in recent years. What of the
use of "borrowed" musics in the Canadian context? Have we faced the difficult
choice of privileging one issue over another, or, indeed, of working to give
resource access to people who may voice radically different musical perspec-
iNTPoni irriON 1 5
tives within the legitimate institutions of our society?
These two issues, are, in our opinion, important challenges for us and for
others who would attempt to write about music in Canada, where the privi-
leged position of white middle-class writers has been, perhaps, even more
firmly entrenched than in literary circles.
14
 The privileging of issues implies,
furthermore, that writers about music serve particular hegemonic interests
and that they themselves are positioned within power asymmetries.
Musicologists, more often perhaps than social scientists or even literary critics,
have sometimes played the role of publicity officer for specific composers,
musical traditions, or regions. We have rarely served as brokers or co-ordina-
tors of polyphonic interpretations of expressive culture. Still more rarely have
we engaged in debates about the structural racism which permeates cultural
institutions. Hence, we might argue, as Canadian musicologists we have been
unaware of the order we have imposed through writing. This volume, of
course, is complicit like any other, in subjecting human experience to invari-
ably partial representation, albeit with a certain degree of polyvocality
achieved through its multiple authors.
IDENTITY
While it is apparent that a monolithic "essentialized" Canadian identity is
increasingly untenable in the 1990s, scholars are, more than ever, struggling
with appropriate frameworks for interpreting this complex concept and
beyond the theoretical, for guiding sociocultural policy toward a greater degree
of equality for all members of our society. On one hand, the arguments which
continued to be presented for a national Canadian culture are now com-
pellingly voiced with regard to specific groups within Canadian society. In his
recent book A Country Not Considered (1993), for example, Tom Wayman
observes that "generations of Canadians have grasped that when the literature
we are taught omits the experiences of Canadians.. .then this literature teaches
us our own experiences—past, present and future—have no value" (1993:
31). But more frequently, people query "what Canadians?", "Whose experi-
ences?" Wayman's statement transposes exactly to the many silences about
women, about cultures originating from nations other than Britain and France,
about the very young or the very elderly, the very poor, or a myriad of other
groups marginalized within Canada. Curiously, ephemeral notice is more likely
given to those who seek marginalization by adopting dramatically different
lifestyles.
 1J
> Might we, then, conclude that in everyday life we are currently in a
phase where cultural difference is emphasized more than sameness and
where, indeed, the very boundedness we criticized earlier is especially
14 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
pronounced? In their emphasis on separateness, titles such as Milly Charon's
Worlds Apart. New Immigrant Voices (1989) or Linda Hutcheon's and
Marion Richmond's Other Solitudes (1990) are literary cases in point. So too
are the culture-specific festivals of dozens of ethnocultural groups in urban
centres across the country.
Wayman's predicament of "nation" and its easy transferability to "commu-
nity" suggests a return to the problematic definition of nationalism. Returning
to Handler, we read again: "Nationalism is an ideology about individuated
being. It is an ideology concerned with boundedness, continuity and homo-
geneity encompassing diversity" (1988: 6).
While Handler addresses the problems of this definition with regard to
Quebec, all three of the criteria are clearly even more problematic for recent
immigrant groups. They may not, for example, see themselves as bounded
within Canada but as part of a diasporic community which crosses national
lines. Their history is not continuous but broken by major disruptions and per-
sonal/social upheavals. Homogeneity may be seen not as a positive aspect of
community but as a source of oppression when, for example, outsiders
impose racist stereotypes. It is obvious that opinions will differ radically with
regard to the advantages of emphasizing sameness over difference and that
the agendas of the nation-state will often be justifiably resisted.
Individuated being, then, defined by boundedness, continuity and homo-
geneity, can refer to many units: the nation state, the people as nation, the
subcultural group (defined by age, economic class, shared interests, shared
knowledge or heritage, gender, kinship or whatever), or the individual person.
Each of these levels is a site of still further hegemonic struggles over what are
appropriate and legitimate expressions of sameness or difference. Pierre
Bourdieu distinguishes between criteria for difference which are, on the one
hand, "mental representations, that is, of acts of perception and apprecia-
tion, of cognition and recognition, in which agents invest their interests and
their presuppositions," and on the other, "objectified representations, in
things (emblems, flags, badges etc.) or acts, self-interested strategies of symbol-
ic manipulation which aim at determining the (mental) representation that
other people may form of these properties and their bearers" (1991: 220).
A mental representation shaped by societal attitudes toward female "spec-
ularity" or male innovativeness might underlie a decision by a female musician
to focus on performance rather than composition, or conversely, a decision to
do the opposite might indicate conscious or unconscious resistance to the
same societal attitudes. Lippard (1990: 51) has observed that Black artists
may choose literary or musical media rather than visual arts because the word
(and the word in music) has greater legitimacy within a white-dominated aes-
thetic. The wealthy may choose to subscribe to the symphony through a deci-
sion shaped in part by a lingering legacy of the European court-derived class
INTRODUCTION 15
connotations of "classical" music. A calypsonian might incorporate stylistic
elements from many sources in a statement about the variety and diversity
which are celebrated in his culture but valued less in Euro-America where sin-
gle works are sometimes rated for their stylistic consistency. A Chinese ensem-
ble might present a panorama of regional musical styles to a Vancouver or
Toronto audience but not to a Beijing audience because the framing of nation-
alism operates differently in the Canadian and Chinese contexts. In every
case, the verb "might" indicates one choice in relation to but not necessarily in
conformity to hegemonic structures. In every case, "might" implies a wide
range of other choices in the on-going process of negotiating cultural hegemo-
ny. The articles in Section Four of this volume explore such issues further.
On the other hand, beyond the Canadian context, a number of important
revisionist approaches to the study of cultural identity have already occurred.
Among the most important, in our opinion, are several which recognize that
our world consists of interacting people and that our individual and group
identities are constructed in this very process of interacting. Some of the new
approaches to expressive culture (e.g., Seeger 1987, Pegley and Caputo
1992, Vander 1988) focus on the experiential, tracing moments in an individ-
ual/group's history which were marked by music of a very specific type.
Others contrast individual readings of specific works, although, to date, this
approach has been more widely used in literary criticism and visual art (see,
e.g., Lippard 1993). Others examine patterns and networks of musical inter-
action (e.g., Ruth Finnegan's Hidden Musicians, 1989, traces the "musical
pathways" of musicians in the contemporary English town of Milton Keynes;
these pathways delineate several musical worlds which are partially bounded
and partially interactive). New theorizing has emerged about diasporic cultures:
Stuart Hall (1990), for example, has suggested a reexamination of concepts of
identity in light of the strong links but often painful separations among dias-
poric communities. Others have suggested that travel itself is a "translation
term" for identity at this point in history. We have already touched upon this
theme in relation to Appadurai's work in which "native" was problematized as
a category which was confined to the local in the mindset and writing of colo-
nial anthropology. James Clifford has been among those who have taken off
from this critique to suggest new questions as a basis for investigating cultural
identity: "why not focus on any culture's farthest range of travel while a/so
looking at its centers, its villages, its intensive field sites? How do groups nego-
tiate themselves in external relationship and how is a culture also a site of trav-
el for others? How are spaces traversed from outside? How is one group's
core another's periphery?" (1992: 101).
This reader includes studies which see identity as something fixed and
bounded by social givens such as ethnic origin or sex, or by social construc-
tions such as ethnicity, religion, class or gender. It also includes studies which
16 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
reflect the aforementioned recent work on identity as a fluid product of daily
social interaction which crosses many boundaries. Some studies acknowledge
the inherent tension between these approaches. Together, they provide a
resource for critical thinking about differing paradigms.
CONCLUSIONS
Music is a significant symbol which can be manipulated in the creation and
contestation of nationhood and identity. At the beginning of this introduction
we suggested that this social grounding of music occurs when repertoire is
selected, when its stylistic parameters are chosen and when it is composed or
performed by specific people in specific ways which say who "we" are. In this
regard, it becomes a means of bounding identity and providing continuity or
homogeneity, perhaps with the past, perhaps with a community elsewhere.
Music may be in one sense, then, the most localized of expressive media, but
in another it has, to a greater degree than any other form of expressive cul-
ture, the capacity to travel. It can be heard at a distance, after all. It has also
been perhaps the most extensively commodified of the arts and, in packaged
form, it traverses boundaries of all sorts, both physical ones such as the bor-
ders of communities or nations and mythical ones. Hence, we would suggest
that music has a role to play in the new discourse about the meaning of
place/space which has not yet been explored. It is, therefore, no surprise that
musical terminology such as 'polyphony' is prevalent as a metaphor in the
new anthropology of place.
16
 Within the study of Canadian music the implica-
tions of this are yet to unfold.
It may be that there are new sorts of images (or reinterpretations of old
ones, as we have just suggested) which can serve as "unifying" forces within a
pluralistic society such as ours. But more likely, the continuing critique of
boundedness, continuity and homogeneity will lead us, not to new conceptions
of unity, but to new types of association and interaction, both as a stratagem
for cultural interpretation and as a direction for cultural policy. The creative
uses of sound, then, will be recognized both for their potential to mark bound-
aries and to cross them, to facilitate entitivity and to shift the emphasis to con-
nectivity.
By considering the boundaries and relationships among the articles in this
anthology, the reader may begin to move in some of these directions.
INTRODUCTION 17
1. In our everyday lives, such issues are given voice and reported in the media on a
daily basis.
2. Somewhat less enjoyable are other dismissals of Canadian culture during politi-
cal negotiations such as the North American Free Trade Talks.
3. Some indication of the intensity of the intellectual effort toward understanding
the ways in which "nation" has been constructed may be evidenced quantitative-
ly; our university library has catalogued over 80 new English- or French-lan-
guage books on "nationalism" with imprints of 1992 or 1993 alone.
4. The word choice here is debatable. Handler, for example, prefers to speak of a
"subjective" construction: "Objective boundedness means that the group actually
exists as a group and can be shown to exist by an external observer. Subjective
boundedness is the sense that group members themselves have of forming a
group; that is, national or ethnic self-consiousness. It is customary to point out
that an objectively existent group may not be subjectively self-conscious and that
nations and nationalisms become possible only after the emergence of group
self-consciousness" (1988: 7).
5. See, especially, Chapter Three, "In Search of the Folk Society: Folk Life,
Folklore Studies and the Creation of Tradition" (1988: 52-80).
6. A vivid description (1988: 12-13) of a staged exhibition of folk dancing at the
1978 Quebec Winter Carnival was used as an initial case in point. Here, the
representation of a farmhouse parlour (with handmade rug, grandfather clock
and blazing hearth) in which an ensemble of accordion, fiddle and guitar played
for a lively dense carree is interpreted as "a piece of 'native' nationalist anthro-
pology, a self-conscious representation or objectification of authentic national
culture" (1988: 13). He draws strongly the relationship between nationalist ide-
ology and social-scientific discourse.
7. His interpretation is based, partially, on his experience as a vacancier in several
rural Quebec homes. Of this experience, he says: "That a folk tradition has
been created for urban Quebecois who are no longer folk seems unquestionable.
That tradition has been created for the folk themselves is a less common asser-
tion, but one that recent research supports. I have documented the activities of
folklorists well back into the period when Quebec is said to have been a folk
society and suggested that the canonization of their lifeways prompted the folk
to reinterpret aspects of their routine existence.... The final irony is perhaps
represented by the farm families of Vacances-Familles whose income depends
more and more on tourism. By marketing themselves as farmers they lessen
their economic dependence on farming. At the same time, the unobjectified
round of their daily lives becomes a series of staged performances" (1988: 79-
80).
Most ethnomusicologists would dispute Handler's equation of the "folk" with
rural society and many would challenge the firm line he seems to draw between
everyday activities and staged performances, but the point about reinterpreta-
tion is significant here.
ENDNOTES
18 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTI
8. As we were preparing this introduction for publication, a leadership conventio
of the federal Progressive Conservative party occurred. Significantly, in ou
view, two of the candidates avoided the label "First Nations" in their conventio
speeches, using instead either "First Peoples" or "First Canadians." Clearly, th
concept of nationhood for an entity other than the statehood of Canada wa
not-so-subtly rejected.
9. Beckwith cites such a comment made by Garant "stating that there wasn't an
music of interest" in the 1950s as well as the oft-quoted statements b
Applebaum and Pentland declaring that they were the first generation o
Canadian composers (1993: 10). Eye magazine cites, in its June 10, 199
issue, that Paul Murphy, U.S. negotiator for N.A.F.T.A., regards Canadian cul
ture as "a joke" (p. 15). Then, there is the anecdote which we cited earlier i
this introduction.
10. While, for the most part, we have presented simple glosses on some of th
terms we use, the label of "hegemony" provides an opportunity to emphasiz
that definitions, themselves, often have complex histories and non-neutra
nuances. Raymond Williams' Keywords explains hegemony as the "predomi
nant practice and consciousness" (1983: 145); the Fontana Dictionary of
Modern Thought, similarly tells us that the label means "the success [of a domi
nant classl in projecting its own particular way of seeing the world, human and
social relationships, such that this is accepted as 'common sense' and part of
the natural order by those who are in fact subordinated to it" (1988: 379).
Feminist definitions, on the other hand, often differ from those in these "refer-
ence" works by emphasizing the process of negotiating or establishing power
and the discomfort felt by those who are disadvantaged. Compare, for example,
Lorraine Code's explanation: "Hegemony is always contingent, derivative from
happenstance, dependent on and constitutive of prevailing power structures,
achieved through the elision of other projects. It is always unstable" (1991: 50).
11. A label applied to so many different things that a simple definition is difficult. 
presumes that no single perspective (aesthetic, social code, or whatever) is main-
stream or pre-eminent but, rather, that the late 20th century is characterized by
plurality and heterogeneity.
2. From the same root as "dialogue," this term asserts that any knowledge is th
product not of a single author or inventor but of an interaction among entities.
See also the Introduction to Section V.
13. This silence may take many forms. One of the most persistent has been the fa
that "legitimate" histories of the arts rarely include the work of many (or an
women or 'Others'
14. There are, for example, a growing number of "multicultural" literary anthologi
(e.g., Linda Hutcheon and Marion Richmond (eds.), Other Solitudes: Canadian
Multicultural Fictions 1990 or Milly Charon (ed.), Worlds Apart: New
Immigrant Voices 1989), as well as poetry, fiction and essays by a host of writ-
ers from diverse ethnocultural backgrounds, some of which choose to project
their different voice more self-consciously than others.
15. On the day when this was written, the Toronto Star reported on cultural pra
tices of a growing number of "urban primitives" who write upon their bodies
with brands and piercings. The ritual process of this writing is, like most rituals,
INTRODUCTION 19
accompanied by music described as follows: "For the last couple of hours three
drummers have been beating out a steady tattoo, led by a bare-chested man
who blows into an Australian didgeridoo and periodically strikes a hanging
square of sheet metal to approximate thunder..." (1993: Gl).
16. Polyphony is also the title of the periodical series of the Multicultural History
Society of Ontario.
REFERENCES
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1988. "Introduction: Place and Voice in Anthropological Theory."
Cultural Anthropology. 3/1: pp. 16-20.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1988. "Putting Hierarchy in Its Place." Cultural Anthropology.
3/1: pp. 36-49.
Atwood, Margaret. 1990. "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all," in
Scheier, Libby et al. (eds.), Language in Her Eye: Writing and Gender.
Toronto: Coach House Press.
Beckwith, John. 1993. "The Canadian Musical Repertoire." A Winthrop Pickard Bell
Lecture, SackviDe, NB: Centre for Canadian Studies, Mount Allison University.
Bhabha, H. (ed.). 1990. Nation and Narration. London: Routledge.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Bullock, Alan et al. 1988. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought. 2nd edition.
London: Fontana Press.
Charron, Milly (ed.). 1989. Worlds Apart: New Immigrant Voices. Dunvegan:
Cormorant.
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clifford, James. 1992. "Traveling Cultures," in Grossberg, Lawrence et al. (eds.),
Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge.
Code, Lorraine. 1991. What Can She Know? Feminist Theory and the Construction
of Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Connor, Walker. 1992. "The Nation and its Myth," in Smith, Anthony D. (ed.),
Ethnicity and Nationalism, Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Cooke, Philip. 1990. "Locality, Structure and Agency: A Theoretical Analysis."
Cultural Anthropology. 5/1: pp. 3-15.
20 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Pardon, Richard (ed.). 1990. Localizing Strategies: Regional Traditions of Ethno-
graphic Writing. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, and Washington:
Smithsonian Institution Press.
Fernandez, James W. 1988. "Andalusia on Our Minds: Two Contrasting Places in
Spain As Seen in a Vernacular Poetic Duel of the Late-19th Century."
Cultural Anthropology. 3/1: pp. 21-35.
Finnegan, Ruth. 1989. Hidden Musicians: Music-making in an English Town.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gregory, D. and J. Urry (eds.). 1986. Social Relations and Spatial Structures.
London: Macmillan.
Hall, Edward T. 1966. The Hidden Dimension. Garden City: Doubleday.
Hall, Stuart. 1990. "Cultural identity and diaspora," in Rutherford, J. (ed.), Identity,
Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence Y. Wishart.
Handler, Richard. 1988. Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
hooks, bell. 1990. Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South
End Press.
Hutcheon, Linda and Marion Richmond (eds.). 1990. Other Solitudes: Canadian
Multicultural Fictions. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Kallmann, Helmut et al. (eds.). 1992. Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. 2nd edition.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Koskoff, Ellen (ed.). 1987. Women and Music in Cross-cultural Perspective. Urbana-.
University of Illinois Press.
Lippard, Lucy. 1990. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New
York: Pantheon.
Lippard, Lucy. 1992. Portia/ Recall. New York: The New Press.
Marcus, George and Michael Fisher. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An
Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
McClary, Susan. 1991. Feminine Endings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press.
McGregor, Gaile. 1985. The Wacousta Syndrome. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
Morrison, Kenneth M. 1984. The Embattled Northeast: The Illusive Ideal of
Alliance in Abenaki-Euroamerican Relations. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Nourbese Philip, Marlene. 1990. "The Disappearing Debate: Racism and Censorship,"
in Scheier, Libby et al. (eds.), Language in Her Eye: Writing and Gender.
Toronto: Coach House Press.
Pegley, Karen and Virginia Caputo. 1992. "Growing Up Female(s): Retrospective
Thoughts on Musical Preferences and Meanings." repercussions. 1/1:
pp. 65-80.
INTRODUCTION 21
Rich, Adrienne. "Notes toward a politics of location," in Blood, Bread and Poetry:
Selected Prose, 1975-1985. New York: Norton.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1988. "Ideology, Place and People without Culture." Cultural
Anthropology. 3/1: pp. 77-87.
Seeger, Anthony. 1987. Why Suya Sing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shepherd, John. 1991. Music as Social Text. Oxford: Polity Press.
Slobin, Mark. 1992. "Micromusics of the West: A Comparative Approach."
Ethnomusicology. 36/1: pp. 1-87.
Smith, Anthony D. (ed.). 1992. Ethnicity and Nationalism. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Soja, E.W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassert/on of Space in Critical
Social Theory. New York: Verso.
Solie, Ruth A. (ed.). 1993. Musicology and Difference. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics.
New York: Routledge.
Trinh, T. Minh-ha. 1989. Woman, Native, Other. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Turino, Thomas. 1990. "Structure, Context and Strategy in Musical Ethnography."
Efhnomusico/ogy. 34/3: pp. 399-412.
Vander, Judith. 1988. Songprints. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Waterman, Christopher. 1990. '"Our Tradition is a Very Modem Tradition': Popular
Music and the Construction of Pan-Yoruba Identity." Efhnomusico/ogy.
34/3: pp. 367-380.
Wayman, Tom. 1993. A Country Not Considered: Canada, Culture, Work.
Concord: Anansi.
Williams, Raymond. 1983. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Revised
edition. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wilshire, Donna. 1989. "The Uses of Myth, Image and the Female Body in Re-vision-
ing Knowledge," in Jaggar, Alison and Susan Bordo (eds.),
Gender/Body/Knowledge: Feminist Reconstructions of Being and
Knowing. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
This page intentionally left blank 
SECTION II
'STUDYING UP':
THE STRUCTURING OF POWER A
CONTROL WITHIN CANADIAN CULTUR
The phrase, "studying up," which we have chosen to incorporate in the
title of this section, is not widely used among musicians. It was invented by the
American anthropologist Laura Nader who used the term in several articles
(see, for example, "Professional Standards and What We Study," in Michael
Rynkiewich and James Spradley, Ethics and Anthropology, 1976) about the
dangerous divisions in scholarship between humanists who tend to be trained
to "study up" and social scientists whose training was, at least in colonialist
anthropology, oriented "down." The title implies a concern not only with the
morality of research but also with social justice more generally. She assumes, a
priori, that nothing can be studied without understanding the social and partic-
ularly the institutional structures which define, facilitate or constrain the object
of study. Further, she assumes that most of these social and institutional struc-
tures are founded in notions of differential power. Who is privileged and what
are the mechanisms by which privilege is maintained? These are her ques-
tions.
Since Nader's work, issues of hegemony have become central to a much
larger body of social scientific and humanistic research. Both scholars and
artists of all kinds have begun to realize that we are implicated in the questions
of social justice not only as a matter of ethics but as a matter of fundamental
understanding. That is to say, the study of social structures and their privileges
of power has become not an ethical contingency but a central object of
inquiry.
"Studying up" is an ironic phrase in relation to Canadian music. Many of
the sources we read, the courses we take or teach, and the institutions we
work for continue to assume and/or imply the centrality of European tradi-
tions. Our own musical life, then, has been cast in a colonial light by others
24 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
and by ourselves. A particularly striking example of this is the fact that many
Canadian universities include Canadian subject matter in "World Music" cours-
es as part of the 'Other' rather than the 'Self (see Diamond Cavanagh 1991).
"History of Music" courses, on the other hand, sometimes still exclude
Canadian subject matter.
Since the mid-70s, however, and, in music scholarship, particularly since
the mid-80s, a number of scholars have begun to unravel the structures of
power and control which were previously widely assumed to be normal rather
than constructed. The papers in this section look at a number of these struc-
tures. Related themes permeate the papers in Section IV and readers are
encouraged to draw comparisons as indicated in the comments below.
Maria Tippett and Marie-Therese Lefebvre both examine historical materi-
al. In a chapter excerpted from her monograph Making Culture (1991), on
Canadian arts institutions prior to the 1950s, art historian Tippett looks at the
value systems of English Canadians with regard to the arts in the early 20th
century. She demonstrates ways in which the value system of that period
assumed that members of a certain class and gender had privilege and she
shows how music was used to help solidify one's position within these hierar-
chies. Women, who were disadvantaged within the gender hierarchy, often
played a major role in the negotiation of class advantage. Her interdisciplinary
study enables us to see forces of nationalism, conservatism and commercial
interests at play in the arts. The gender-related values which she articulates
might be compared with those discussed by Andra McCartney in Section IV as
well as with the contemporaneous constraints outlined by Lefebvre in the arti-
cle following Tippet's; the class-related aspects bear comparison with the
more regionally and ethnoculturally specific issues described by Neil Rosenberg
in Section IV; attitudes about nationalism bear fruitful comparison with the
contemporaneous French-Canadian theorists discussed by Lucien Poirier in
Section HI.
In an article oriented to non-musicians, Montreal musicologist Marie-
Therese Lefebvre presents an overview of the Roman Catholic church as a
major force in Quebec's musical life. Music students who have read only
English-language histories of European music will find it instructive to compare
with those English-language histories, for example, Levebvre's consideration
of the Council of Trent, especially those aspects which most affected French
Canada. Her work, which outlines the changes of official policy about such
things as modernist music styles or the involvement of women as church musi-
cians, reveals how similar issues are regarded differently in different times and
places and how these different constructions affect the genres and styles of
music as well as the quality of our community life.
Jack Granatstein and Nina De Shane both consider issues of government
patronage of the arts with particular reference to the relationship between pol-
'STUDYING UP' 25
icy and practice. Historian Jack Granatstein outlines a series of events in the
1950s, the first decade of the Canada Council's existence; a reprint of his
anecdotal but rigorous classic is particularly valuable since it is little known by
music students.
Dance ethnographer Nina De Shane reports on a more recent period, the
1980s, in the history of national and regional granting agencies which offer
support to multicultural dance troupes. Like Granatstein, she positions her
work in relation to questions about the ideological bases of financial support
for the arts. The 30-year gap between their articles, however, suggests how
and why the issues in Canadian society have changed in some respects but
remained the same in others. Both authors touch upon the negotiation of cen-
tre and margin, the belief that the "best" culture must emanate from the cul-
tural mainstream, but while these issues were played out mainly in terms of
region in the 1950s, they have become, at least in part, questions of ethnocul-
tural identity in the 1980s. Nationalism, a force which invariably relates to
hegemony (as we discussed in the Introduction to the volume) is frequently
encountered in these articles; this important force is further explored in the
papers in Section IE.
The articles by Carole Carpenter and Beverley Diamond indicate how aca-
demics are also involved in the creation and maintenance, indeed in the reifi-
cation of value systems; they may even be complicit in the maintenance of val-
ues which they would not overtly own. Folklorist Carole Carpenter, writing
after the widespread popularity of John Porter's Vertical Mosaic (1965)
reveals how the metaphor of a "mosaic" for all Canadians other than the
anglophone majority served to legitimize a hierarchy of centre/margin,
self/other, mainstream/periphery. Readers may wish to consider to what
extent her contrasting of French and English ideologies is implicitly supported
by other English-Canadian and Quebec (Lefebvre and Poirier) authors in this
volume.
Ethnomusicologist Beverley Diamond's analysis of textbooks on Canadian
music history reveals, further, how a hierarchy of region and subject matter
has been determined and strengthened within the musicological world in the
past two decades of textbook publishing. Her comparison of Canadian and
U.S. music history textbooks clarifies different ideologies operating in work by
writers of the two countries. That the mainstream Canadian ideology uncov-
ered by her analysis is characterized by the same qualities of the under-privi-
leged in Tippett's study (presumptions of class, conservatism, etcetera) may
give pause to those who assume that the vestiges of colonialism no longer
remain.
Finally, Jody Borland's article on the structures which define and constrain
contemporary radio programming takes us into the hegemony of the transna-
tional. Going far beyond the Canadian context, but using examples which are
26 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Canadian, Berland's article is part of a burgeoning body of work in "cultural
studies." Consideration of some aspects of our mediated and commodified
music culture reminds us that identities are not merely a product of heritage
and social interaction but also of active listening and symbolization processes.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
The suggestions in this and subsequent section introductions are not in
any way intended to be comprehensive. They indicate some of the editors'
favourites among a vast range of published material on subjects relevant to the
papers in this anthology.
Studies of the institutions of music in Canada (or elsewhere) have been
less prevalent than studies of pieces of music and musicians/musical groups.
Attempts to describe and/or analyze the institutional history of Canadian
music, however, have an interesting history. Readers may wish to compare a
1950s survey (Ernest MacMillan (ed.) Music in Canada, 1955) with a 1960s
one (Arnold Walter (ed.), Aspects of Music in Canada, 1969) and with Maria
Tippett's Making Culture (1990), from which her article in this anthology is
excerpted.
The most comprehensive music research specifically focused on Canadian
educational institutions is Nancy F. Vogan's and J. Paul Green's Music
Education in Canada: A Historical Account (1991). Vogan's and Green's
descriptive approach contrasts with that of Henry Kingsbury in Music, Talent,
and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (1988), a controversial
but stimulating exploration of the ideologies which underlie music education in
20th-century American conservatories. Also relevant is Josef Musselman's
treatment of high school band culture in The Uses of Music (1974).
A few other studies of religious music in Canada touch on some of the
issues discussed in the Lefebvre article: John Beckwith's long-standing investi-
gation of Anglo-Canadian hymnody, a repertoire he regards as a deep-level,
aural soundscape for millions of Canadians, is partially represented by his own
article, complemented by others in the conference proceedings Sing Out the
Glad News! (1987). The impact of religious philosophy and the ways in which
communities, in this case First Nations communities, resist and reinterpret
Christian belief is explored in John Grant's Moon of Wintertime (1984).
Many studies of religious musical traditions in Canada have focused on specific
ethnocultural communities, e.g., Wesley Berg's From Russia With Loue
(1985) on the Prairie Mennonites, or F. Mark Mealing's "Our People's Way: A
Study in Doukhobor Hymnody and Folklife" (1972).
Those who want to relate the systems of Canadian patronage to a larger
picture will find studies of European and American music patronage relevant.
Several of the articles in Richard Leppert's and Susan McClary's Music and
'STUDYING UP' 27
Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception (1987)
and Paul DiMaggio's "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century
Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in
America," (Media, Culture and Society, 4/1, 1982) are cases in point.
Reflexive studies of the "narratives" which underlie scholarly work have
been particularly numerous since the late 1980s. Classics include James
Clifford's Writing Culture (1986), his subsequent The Predicament of
Culture (1988), and Marcus's and Fisher's Anthropology as Cultural
Critique (1986). An exploration of a dramatic change of narrative in North
America is Edward Burner's "Ethnography as Narrative" in Bruner's and
Turner's The Anthropology of Experience (1986).
Several pieces of work relevant to Berland's in Canadian communication
studies were published in the journal Cultural Studies, 5/3 (1991). Earlier
descriptive accounts include Paul Audley's Canada's Cultural Industries:
Broadcasting, Publishing, Records and Film (1983). Among the recent stud-
ies is Mary Vipond's The Mass Media in Canada (revised edition, 1992).
Theoretical studies abound in this area, of course. Readers might wish to
acquaint themselves with the mass media theories of the Frankfurt School
(see, e.g., Adorno's Introduction to the Sociology of Music, 1976).
Additionally significant is the so-called Birmingham School, the journal
Popular Music or monographs/essay collections such as Simon Frith's Music
for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop (1988) and Richard Middleton's
Studying Popular Music (1990). Perhaps the most useful single volume is the
landmark international compilation titled Cultural Studies (1992), edited by
Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler.
REFERENCES
Adomo, Theodor. 1976. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. Translated by E.B.
Ashton. New York: Continuum.
Audley, Paul. 1983. Canada's Cultural Industries: Broadcasting, Publishing,
Records and Film. Toronto: Larimer.
Beckwith, John (ed.). 1987. Sing Out the Glad News! Hymn Tunes in Canada.
Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music.
Berg, Wesley. 1985. From Russia With Love: A Study of the Mennonite Choral
Singing Tradition in Canada. Winnipeg: Hyperion.
Bruner, Edward and Victor Turner (eds.). 1986. The Anthropology of Experience.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
28 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clifford, James and George Marcus (eds.). 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and
Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cultural Studies. 1991. The Music Industry in a Changing World 5/3.
Diamond Cavanagh, Beverley. 1991. "Canadian Music Studies in University
Curricula." Newsletter of the Association of Canadian Studies (Canadian
Music Issue). 12/3: pp. 16-18.
DiMaggio, Paul. 1982. "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-century Boston: The
Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America." Media,
Culture and Society. 4/1: pp. 33-50 and 303-322.
Frith, Simon. 1988. Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. New York:
Routledge.
Grant, John. 1984. Moon of Wintertime: Missionaries and Indians of Canada in
Encounter since 1534. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Green, J. Paul and Nancy Vogan. 1991. Music Education in Canada: A Historical
Account. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Grossberg, Lawrence, Gary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds.). 1992. Cultural Studies.
New York: Routledge.
Kingsbury, Henry. 1988. Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural
System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Leppert, Richard and Susan McClary (eds.). 1987. Music and Society.- The Politics of
Composition, Performance and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
MacMillan, Ernest (ed.). 1955. Music in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
Marcus, George E. and Michael M.J. Fisher. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural
Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Mealing, F. Mark. 1972. "Our People's Way: A Study in Doukhobor Hymnody and
Folklife." Ph.D. dissertation. University of Pennsylvania.
Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University
Press.
Musselman, Josef A. 1974. The Uses of Music. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Nader, Laura. 1976. "Professional Standards and What We Study," in Rynkiewich, M.
and James Spradley (eds.), Ethics and Anthropo/ogy. New York: John Wiley
and Sons.
Porter, John. 1965. The Vertical Mosaic. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Tippett, Maria. 1991. Making Culture: English Canadian Institutions and the Arts
Before the Massey Commission. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Vipond, Mary. 1992. The Mass Media in Canada, revised edition. Toronto: Lorimer.
Walter, Arnold (ed.). 1969. Aspects of Music in Canada. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
"AN IDENTITY OF TASTE
AND ASPIRATIONS
EDUCATING PERFORMERS
AND THEIR AUDIENCES
MARIA TIPPETT
English Canadians could not have participated in cultural organizations
without having first received some form of training. Art and music instruction
in public and private schools, academies and conservatories and, indeed,
teaching in the home itself were a very important part of the institutional sub-
stratum underpinning the country's cultural life. Because this was so, educa-
tional institutions, in their broadest sense, were the vital link between two very
important elements—the concern to encourage an indigenous culture and the
desire to build a strong national identity. Madame Josephine Dandurand was
very much aware of this when on a winter's day in Ottawa in February 1902
she rose from her chair and, in her capacity as president of the Committee for
the Promotion of Industrial and Fine Arts in Canada, presented a report to 28
members of the executive committee of the National Council of Women. She
was concerned, she told the group, that drawing was not a compulsory part of
the school curriculum and that there were too few art schools and museums
and other "public amusements...[with which to] develop the artistic tastes of
the people."
1
 But Madame Dandurand wanted to do more than suggest that
the National Council of Women's local branches help further artistic educa-
tion. Several months earlier she had invited Lady Minto, wife of the Governor
General of Canada, to join with senators, members and heads of provincial
governments, university professors, journalists and other influential men and
women across the country in the formation of a Standing Committee for the
Promotion of Industrial and Fine Arts in Canada, and in January of 1902 she
had circulated among these distinguished persons the draft of a recommenda-
tion to be sent to the federal government arguing that Canada must maintain
its "rank among civilized nations" by ensuring that talented people did not
leave the country for lack of encouragement and that they were not over-
50 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
looked in the first place because cultural education was "left to chance and
privilege."2
2
Madame Dandurand's draft recommendation made it clear that it should
be seen as the responsibility of all levels of government—and most especially
of the federal government—to cultivate public taste, to endow schools and cul-
tural societies and to encourage gifted children "whose genius can accrue to
the country's renown." Specifying "Two Systems," it attempted to make it
clear how the federal government could do these things, preferably through a
council of art composed of members of her committee itself. The first scheme,
"The Scholarship System," would involve awarding travelling bursaries to
enable students of music, painting, singing and oratory to study abroad; estab-
lishing provincial schools where "sound preliminary tuition" would prepare stu-
dents for further study in Europe or the United States; and creating "a
Museum of Art in a central city of Canada wherein lovers of Art could study
classical models in Painting and Sculpture and the public's taste [could] be
enlightened by standard masterpieces, or reproduction of the same."3 The
second scheme, "The National Conservatory System," added to the main ele-
ments of the first proposal the founding in either Ottawa or Montreal of a
"Canadian National Art Institute," where courses in "music, painting, sculp-
ture, architecture, engraving, languages, elocution and oratory etc." would be
taught to some 400 students by 20 of "the greatest living authorities of the Art
World." Besides regular courses to be offered in the summer as well as during
the ten-month academic year, the institute would sponsor dramatic clubs—one
French and one English—a choir, an orchestra, an operatic group and a
"National Salon," where works by professional Canadian artists would be on
display throughout the year. Scholarships corresponding to the Prix de Rome
would be awarded not only to outstanding students enabling them to under-
take further study in Berlin, Paris or London but also to those unable to afford
the fees for the institute's three-year program. Both the scholarship and con-
servatory schemes would be funded by student fees, by private donations and
by healthy contributions from every level of government. The first scheme
would, the committee estimated, cost $30,033.33; the second—the institute
only—$53,266.4
The "Two Systems" for the promotion of art in Canada was a remarkable
document. It echoed J.W.L. Forster's earlier pronouncement, in the fourth
volume of Canada: An Encyclopedia of the Country, that the prerequisite
for a unique national culture was the establishment, by the federal govern-
ment, of art schools and galleries.5 It was consistent with W.A. Sherwood's
1894 observation in the Canadian Magazine that a country's national stand-
ing was most clearly indicated by the quality of its cultural achievement.6 And
it recognized the pedagogical role that the art gallery, as Sir John George
Bourinot noted in 1893, could play to "educate the eye, form the taste and
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 51
develop the higher faculties of our nature amid the material surroundings of
our daily life."7 Furthermore it anticipated the thinking that would later go into
the efforts of John Edward Hoare, Ernest MacMillan, Eric Brown and others
as they argued for the founding of national theatres in Vancouver, Winnipeg,
Toronto and Montreal, for the establishing of a national school of music and
for the granting of more funds to the National Gallery of Canada's acquisition
and education programs8
8
The idea that cultural education, broadly defined, could function as a vehi-
cle for helping the nation mature was, then, much in evidence both before and
after Madame Dandurand had assembled her committee. Some of that idea's
advocates sought to have the specialist assisted and campaigned for the estab-
lishment of new, or the expansion of old, educational programs and institu-
tions. Others, by far the majority, tried to achieve the same goals by educating
the amateur and the public in general and so chose the art exhibition, the
drama and music festival, the lecture podium and the university extension
course as the preferred means. Though seemingly at odds, these approaches
were in fact complementary, which was clear enough to the members of
Madame Dandurand's committee—and to the commentators and cultural
activists who preceded and followed its formation. All of this, however, would
be worked out in practice only with the passage of time.
One of the principal obstacles to the kind of government involvement that
such a program would require was the individualist bias of the age. It was, as
McGill architecture professor Percy Nobb's 1907 report to Agriculture
Minister Sidney Fisher on "State Aid to Art Education in Canada" argued, "no
part of a Government's business to institute or countenance art teaching."
Schools and art and design were "best left to care for themselves" because
government interference caused "a loss of spontaneity, of individualism [and]
of life."9 Any prospect that the Dandurand Committee's "Two Systems"
would get a favourable response in this kind of climate was small, and the edu-
cation of artists, musicians, writers and dramatists continued to follow a path
that began with instruction from parent, friend or private teacher, continued
with study in a secondary public or private institution and ended with travel
and further study abroad.
Before being put under the tutelage, at age eight, of the Toronto organist-
choirmaster Arthur Blakeley, Ernest MacMillan discovered the rudiments of
music from his father at the pipe organ keyboard in Reverend Dr. Alexander
MacMillan's Presbyterian church. Vancouver composer Jean Coulthard studied
music with her mother, Mrs. Walter Coulthard, who "was a great exponent of
what was then 'new music'—specifically, the works of the Impressionists, the
French Six and Stravinsky."10 The tenor Edward Johnson got his first voca
lessons at Miss McLean's Private School in Guelph. Musician Eddie Mather
"shot jack rabbits and sold them to the butchers" in order to raise enough
52 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
money to purchase a violin and bow from Eaton's catalogue—it cost him
$2.25—and to take lessons from local musicians in Saskatoon to learn how to
play it11
1
 And Emily Carr received drawing lessons once a week at Mr
Eraser's private school for children and, later, took classes on Saturday mom-
ings with the San Francisco-trained painter Eva Withrow.
In the years around the turn of the century most teachers of art, music,
dramatic expression and elocution were women. They wore tight-bodiced,
ankle-length, leg-of-mutton-sleeved dresses and presided over closed-off par-
lours and dining-rooms. If they had the right connections or the money, they
taught in studios that were located above stores, in church or community hall
basements, or in the backs of their husbands' or fathers' offices. Even in the
early decades of the 19th century such women as Maria Morris of Halifax ran
schools in their homes "for the instruction of young ladies in drawing," oil and
water-colour painting.12The problem of "what to do with girls...with time not
completely filled by domestic and social duties" brought private studios such as
Morris's and later private institutions such as Toronto's Margaret Eaton School
of Literature and Expression into being. 13*3 But it should not be thought th
these schools gave young women no more than an accomplishment with
which to win them a suitor; Dora Mavor Moore, for example, was inspired to
pursue a career in the theatre following her attendance at the Margaret Eaton
School.
The instruction of women in the fine arts—or what some pejoratively
referred to as the acquisition of "ornamental skills"—brought many of the
country's first art and music institutions into being. Music, drawing and paint-
ing were taught at the Wesleyan Academy (the forerunner of Mount Allison
University) in Sackville after a "female branch" was added to the male institu-
tion in 1854.14
14
 When the Owens Art School (1884) was moved from Sa
John to Sackville in 1893, it was attached to the ladies' college rather than the
university at large and did not become the Owens College of Fine Arts until
1904. The Halifax Conservatory of Music (1887) was founded in conjunction
with the Halifax Ladies' College. And when music was introduced as a subject
at McGill University in 1884, it was taught exclusively to women until the
McGill Conservatorium opened in 1904.
Yet male as well as female students were, of course, admitted from the
outset at many private conservatories of music—the Music Academy of Saint
John (1872), the Hamilton Musical Institute (1888), the Dominion College of
Music in Montreal (1894), the Conservatory of Music in Regina (1907) and
the Saskatoon Conservatory of Music (1932)—as well as at colleges of art: the
Saint John Academy of Art (1878), the Halifax Art School (1881), the Art
Students' Leagues in Toronto (1886) and in Hamilton (1895), the Victoria
School of Art and Design (1887)—from 1925 the Nova Scotia College of
Art—and the Winnipeg School of Art (1913). And wherever men were admit-
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 5
ted, the program offered was far broader than that available in institutions
open only to women. Regina's Conservatory of Music, for example, prepared
its students "not only for the drawing-room and social circle, but also for con-
cert, church and platform work and for the teaching profession."1515 But no
matter what kind of program was available there were almost always more
women than men taking it.
These academies, schools, institutes, colleges and conservatories of art
and music emerged out of a variety of circumstances. The Halifax Art School
was formed after the Royal Canadian Academy held its annual exhibition in
the Nova Scotia Parliament Building in 1881. The Ontario School of Art
(1876)—in 1912 it became the Ontario College of Art—was begun by the
Ontario Society of Artists. A school was attached to the Art Association of
Montreal when that city's art gallery acquired permanent premises in 1879.
The Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts was founded thanks to
a small group of patrons, artists and educators who formed the British
Columbia Art League (1920) to lobby the city's government for funds with
which to establish an art school and a gallery. Finally, Saint John's Owens Art
School, Toronto's Canadian Academy of Music (1911), and Montreal's McGill
Conservatorium were established thanks to the generosity of wealthy patrons:
shipbuilder and merchant John Owens, Toronto financier Albert Gooderham
and the Canadian Pacific Railway's Lord Strathcona.
Universities were reluctant, because of their vocational-professional bent
and their problems with funding, to offer courses in art and music, or to found
departments in these subjects. There were exceptions, however, to this gener-
al pattern. Regina College (1907) made courses in music, art and dramatic
expression a regular part of its curriculum from the outset. Acadia University
in Wolfville offered courses in music as early as 1845, in Canadian literature in
1919 and in Canadian cultural history in 1938. The University of
Saskatchewan allowed artist Augustus Kenderdine to open a studio on its cam-
pus in 1920 and 16 years later acquired the Emma Lake property, 35 miles
north of Prince Albert, on which it established the University of Saskatchewan
Summer School of Art. Even practising writers and art critics were sometimes
involved in these sorts of activity—as the University of British Columbia
demonstrated when it invited Charles G.D. Roberts to present ten lectures on
Canadian literature in 1927 and H. Mortimer Lamb to give six lectures on art
in 1925.
It was, of course, the thrust towards institutionalized, department and fac-
ulty-based instruction that would be the most important. Complying with many
forward-looking educationalists' demands that teachers be prepared to lead
their students in music, craft-making, drama, dance and art, universities and
provincial departments of education offered courses in these subjects during
the summer months when teachers were free to take them. And, responding
54 CANADIAN Music-. ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
to the eagerness of some cultural organizations, conservatories and other insti-
tutions to acquire higher standards, and certainly higher status, universities
moved to bring these institutions into their fold. The Kingston Art and Musical
Club (1929) was the impetus, for example, behind the founding of Queen's
University's Department of Fine Arts in 1933; the Western Ontario
Conservatory of Music—which comprised the London Conservatory of Music
(1892) and the London Institute of Musical Art (1919)—brought a school of
music to the University of Western Ontario when it joined that institution in
1934; the Dominion College of Music affiliated with Bishop's University a
year after its founding in 1859; the Halifax Conservatory of Music joined
Dalhousie University in 1898; and, finally, English Canada's most prominent
school of music, the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto, begun as a pri-
vate institution, the Toronto Conservatory of Music (1886), became attached
in 1888 to Trinity University (later Trinity College of the University of
Toronto), moved in 1896 to the University of Toronto itself, came under its
control in 1921 and was joined three years later by the Canadian Academy of
Music.
The fact that English-Canadian universities were willing to take on estab-
lished institutions does not mean that they always had the financial resources
necessary to make a significant place for instruction in art, music and the like.
It was, in fact, only when money began to become available from private foun-
dations that some institutions were able to move into this area at all. Acadia
University, for example, established a lecture course in art history under
Walter Abell in 1928 thanks to funding from the Carnegie Corporation and
aid from the same source enabled the subject to be taught by Lester D.
Longman at McMaster University, Goodridge Roberts at Queen's University
and John Alford at the University of Toronto in 1932, 1933 and 1934
respectively. Chairs in music, such as that occupied by Arthur Collingwood at
the University of Saskatchewan in 1931, were also instituted by the Carnegie
group. Though, in sum, it was not easy, the universities moved in a variety of
ways to play a part in the overall build-up of institutions and programs con-
cerned with instruction in various fields of cultural activity in these years.
Committed at one and the same time to raising standards of taste and to fos-
tering creative work itself, their role was of major importance.
The fact that an extensive network of agencies, institutions and programs
concerned with instruction in artistic and cultural endeavours had come into
being by 1939 did not, of course, ensure that the activity they sustained would
always be carried out at a high level. Quality of teaching was, in fact, an ideal
often honoured more in the breach than in the observance. There was, cer-
tainly, damage done to music students who had been exposed to what one
observer called the "wrong methods," and this, he continued, was always
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 5
"difficult to eradicate."1616 Often that damage was the result of exposure to
teachers who might have had some potential as musicians themselves but
were ill-suited or ill-prepared to instruct others. Laura Macaulay, in Bertram
Brooker's Prairie novel Think of the Earth, very much represented the type.
Though "a bom musician," her father's poverty and his consequent inability to
"send her away where there would be great teachers, old men with tragic
faces and long white hair, like the picture of Liszt he had seen once" made
Laura abandon the idea of becoming a concert pianist and offer "lessons in a
little room across the hall."1717 Stories abound during these years of such
incompetent teachers as the man who taught "his piano-forte pupils to pla
backwards, in order that they may become more familiar with the music."
According to the anonymous writer who made this observation of the
Canadian scene in Britain's Musical Times, the teaching profession in Canada
was "badly overcrowded," fraught with "dollar-chasers," and with people who
possessed "worthless diplomas" and taught because they were incapable of
doing anything else18.
18
From the late 19th century teaching associations attempted to establish
and maintain at least minimum standards of competence by requiring the reg-
istration of music teachers and by raising the standards of music
examinations.1919 The music examination was enormously popular. It enab
students from all parts of the country to gain credit for their studies in harmo-
ny, counterpoint, fugue, music history and performance, among other sub-
jects, when the examining officer passed through their communities once a
year. Initially the programs were run by British institutions. London's Trinity
College of Music (1872) examinations were conducted by the Dominion
College of Music through Bishop's University from the mid-1890s. The
Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (1892) and the Royal
Academy of Music (1887) were also operating in Canada from the mid-1890s
and, in 1902, established a link with McGill University. These, as well as the
other British and American examination systems which followed, came to play
what Ernest MacMillan described in 1936 as "an important role in the life of
the Canadian student of music," serving to raise "the general standard o
work." Yet it remained true, as MacMillan also noted, that many diplomas
were earned through examining bodies "which maintained low standards with
a view to gaining high profits."12020 English-Canadian teachers from Brita
urally preferred to have their pupils assessed in accordance with what they
knew in the British system and, as a result, helped prolong the lives of often
inferior programs. It was in order to offer an alternative to just such programs
that McGill University established its own in 1909, soon making its examina-
tion system—notwithstanding the fact that the University of Toronto's
Conservatory of Music had been founded in 1898—what one music student
from Saskatoon described as "the 'one'" to take during the 1910s2121.
21
5 6 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Attempting to improve the quality of instruction itself also became a major
goal of those concerned with standards and again, what was happening in the
world of music made the nature of these efforts especially clear. There was,
certainly, a problem, for even teachers who may have had a good background
too often passed on to their students styles, methods and conceptions which
were out of date. The Conservatory of Music in Toronto "was graced with two
splendid musicians of the old school, Sir Ernest MacMillan and Healey Willan,"
but, according to Jean Coulthard, "there was not enough possibility to assimi-
late new musical ideas in Canada during these early years."
22
 John Weinzweig
left what for him was that institution's stifling atmosphere and enrolled at the
Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, in 1938 in order to study
20th-century music. The difficulty of hearing contemporary music anywhere in
Canada even as late as the 1930s was, in fact, astonishing: during that
decade, as musicologist Helmut Kallmann put it, students "discovered
Schoenberg, Bartok or Stravinsky almost by accident; radio broadcasts and
recordings of such music were still rare and music libraries were few."
23
Teachers inhibited their students not only by clinging to old styles, but by
adhering to old forms of music. The extent to which oratorio, for example,
was favoured over opera throughout the period under discussion was suggest-
ed by Morley Callaghan's 1932 novel It's Never Over. The principal character
was, in fact, a bass soloist at a wealthy Toronto church who had "had enough
oratorio singing and...[wanted] to study opera in another country." Seeking
help from his teacher proved a disappointment, for Hobson "had never done
much himself in opera...had no use for teachers of it and advised all his pupils
to study for oratorio."
24
This sort of discouragement was not, of course, confined to the world of
music. Teachers of the visual arts were similarly steeped in attitudes and pos-
sessed mind-sets that belonged to an earlier generation. While institutions such
as the Toronto Art Students' League did give their students "freedom from
examinations and awards," most did not.
25
 Carl Schafer's experience as a
first-year student at the Ontario College of Art in 1921 under the traditional
painter William Beatty was typical:
We all had our places, our easels and we had about six square feet marked
out... I had my initials in the middle. "Schaefer, that's your place all year"
[Beatty told him]. "If you can't see the model from there, well that's your hard
luck."
Beatty was clearly a "tyrant." And, as with many teachers of his era, he
was wed to the teaching methods of "the old Academie Julien in Paris."
26
Even when instructors did show a certain flexibility and openness, they could
be constrained by the milieu in which they were operating. Walter J. Phillips,
for one, found it difficult to teach life drawing when public feeling in Winnipeg
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 7
disapproved the practice of allowing students to sketch from the nude model.
"We are still provincial up over the border," as a character in John Murray
Gibbon's novel Pagan Love put it, "and there is the prejudice against posing
in the nude."
27
The shortcomings of the teachers were not the only factors affecting the
quality of instruction: frequently institutions themselves were characterized by
lack of direction and narrowness. Conservatories were generally "conglomera-
tions of private studios" which saw their purpose as preparing students for a
career in the concert hall.
28
 University departments of music, on the other
hand, offered courses in "historical background, theoretical knowledge and
analytical skill" with a view towards turning out teachers or music theorists.
29
No institution excelled in both areas.
Art schools, for their part, tended to focus on the development of com-
mercial skills. The Victoria School of Art and Design in Halifax encouraged
"artistic tendencies of economic value."
30
 Upon its inception in 1925 the
Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts announced that it would
"fill a long felt need in training not more artisans, but artists to convert British
Columbia's wealth of raw material into greater wealth of artistic finished prod-
ucts. "
3 1
 Even the Ontario College of Art and the Winnipeg School of Art rec-
ognized from the outset the value not just of fine but also applied art.
The idea that art was the handmaiden of commerce had, in one form or
another, gained popularity among artists, administrators and politicians before
the turn of the century. Several factors contributed to its emergence, ranging
from the influence exerted by the British Arts and Crafts movement to the
opportunities the booming pre-war economy gave for employment of design-
ers and illustrators in such firms as Brigden's in Winnipeg and Gripp Limited
in Toronto. Demand for Canadian designed products also encouraged the
application of artistic skills to commercial purposes and some educators even
sought to protect the artistic profession against charges of dilettantism and
Bohemianism by arguing that it could play, and was playing, a useful role in
the commercial world. So important did the stressing of this link become that
National Gallery director Eric Brown could note in 1920 that art was "insepa-
rable from commerce, because commerce is largely dependent upon design of
every kind which art only can supply."
32
 The federal government itself sought
to promote the association. Having first involved itself in technical and voca-
tional education in 1910 through the establishment of a Royal Commission on
Industrial Training and Technical Education, it proceeded in 1919 to enter
directly an area of jurisdiction normally reserved for the provinces alone. The
Technical Education Act of that year empowered it to contribute up to 50 per-
cent of a province's expenditure on vocational education over a ten-year peri-
od, with the result that art courses such as that established by Violet Gillett and
Julia Crawford at the Saint John Vocational School in New Brunswick bur-
5 8 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
geoned. And not only did new courses and programs get established: institu-
tions such as the Winnipeg School of Art tailored their curricula to meet
"practical objectives" in order to qualify for a share of the ten million dollars
allocated by the federal government to technical education.
33
Not everyone was pleased with the trend towards associating art with
industry and commerce. Group of Seven artist Arthur Lismer accused those
who taught commercial art courses of being "in a conspiracy, unconscious and
unarmed, with Industrialism, to smother the voice of art consciousness." In
"the adaptation of man to the machinery of production" art had capitulated
"to the economic and the utilitarian." Courses in applied art were appropriate
subjects for study in the craft or technical schools but had no place, Lismer
insisted, in a school devoted to fine art.
34
 Artist and advertising executive
Bertram Brooker agreed that it was the craftsman's function "to make things"
and the artist's "to see things." But in the circumstances prevailing, artists'
work was assigned value only if it could be shown to have practical utility.
"Not until art education is tightened into a commercial course in the technical
schools, or concentrates on the making of craftsmen in art schools," Brooker
continued in 1931, "is it taken seriously by boards and teachers."
35
 As clearly
and forcefully articulated as it was, however, this kind of thinking had little
effect on what was taking place: art continued to be widely subordinated to
various commercial purposes.
If those involved with technical and vocational education had a clear
idea—whatever it might be—of the manner in which art fitted into their enter-
prise, university administrators were, on the whole, rather unsure of its place.
Along with most English-speaking Canadians they favoured the amateur over
the professional and saw art and music as leisure-time activities, not profes-
sional ones. The cultural education of their students was thus generally left to
extramural clubs and societies which "on the one hand served as a necessary
outlet for self-expression, and on the other...demanded a culture of conformity
consistent with the 'respectable' middle class lives for which [those students]
were being prepared."
36
Such clubs and societies were certainly very much in evidence. Choral
groups—Toronto's University College Glee Club (1879) was one example—
had been on the scene since the last decades of the 19th century. By the end
of the First World War dramatic clubs were staging Christmas or spring pro-
ductions once a year. By the 1930s extramural art groups such as Acadia
University's Fine Arts Club (1934) were bringing students together to discuss
art, partake in linocut printing and outdoor sketching activities and share a life
model. Those universities where departments of music and art did exist were,
of course, able to offer their students a little more. John Alford gave fine art
lectures to students at the University of Toronto during the noon-hour and
Arthur Collingwood "drew a pretty good crowd" to his weekly music lectures
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 9
at the University of Saskatchewan's Convocation Hall. Seated at the piano
with the university's symphony orchestra behind him, he would introduce the
students to the different instruments in the orchestra and then explain "the
structure and the formation of the symphony as the theme developed or was
laid out." In this way, one member of the orchestra recalled, "he'd educate the
unenlightened people who were perhaps only used to following melodic
line."37
Notwithstanding the interest that it frequently attracted at this level, cultur-
al activity often had a difficult time establishing its right to a more serious and
structured place in university curricula. Even when given financial assistance to
establish chairs or departments of music and art, university administrators fre-
quently demurred. When the University of Toronto's president, Sir Robert
Falconer, was offered a chair of fine arts for his institution by the Carnegie
Corporation in 1926, he suggested the money go to the Ontario Society of
Artists instead on the ground that it was more suited to offer instruction in
such a field.
38
 McGill University experienced "considerable reluctance to
accept...[the Department of Music] as a department of the Faculty of Arts,
since it was felt not to be academically respectable and the problem was only
solved when in 1920 the department was elevated to an independent
faculty. "39 Other institutions responded in much the same way. As Ernest
MacMillan boldly told a group of university administrators at the National
Conference of Canadian Universities in 1927, they were "accustomed to think
of music as a mere passive indulgence in emotionalism" and therefore had a
distrust "of admitting to an arts course any subject whose ultimate justification
is purely aesthetic."
40
 This kind of thinking, in fact, not only prevented cours-
es from being created, it also limited funds for their operation in those places
where they did manage to get established. Arthur Collingwood was expected,
in consequence, to teach music at the University of Saskatchewan without the
aid of a permanent piano, recordings of operatic and chamber music and a
gramophone on which to play them. While attitudes did begin to change in
the 1930s—by then university presidents would actively lobby foreign founda-
tions to establish chairs and departments of music and art—the period leading
up to that decade saw relatively little done to encourage the teaching of these
subjects.
Getting an education in art and music in Canada was not an impossibility.
For the most part, however, such Canadian programs and institutions as exist-
ed functioned as stepping stones to study abroad. This almost always meant
Britain and Europe, although, as cultural life in the United States matured, it
could also mean going there.
In 1902 A.S. Vogt encouraged his piano students at the Toronto
Conservatory "to round up [their]...musical training in the atmosphere which
40 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
exists in some European capitals."
41
 Four years later the young Montreal
music student George Brewer mused over the possibility of receiving a
travelling scholarship:
If I do win this, what a break it will make in my life. From 18 years of age to
21 or 22 to be spent in England and after that what! God knows! Perhaps
concert touring—perhaps a responsible church position—perhaps love—or
perhaps sorrow and death.
4
^
The importance both of concluding one's education abroad and of being
suitably prepared before one went was made clear to art student Yvonne
McKague Housser when she travelled to Paris in 1921. Housser enrolled in a
class at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and immediately set about vis-
iting museums, art galleries and salons where paintings were hung "from the
floor to the ceiling, room after room"—at which point, she recalled, she found
herself "sadly unprepared for the modem painting of the day to be able to
appreciate it much less understand it." William Beatty, her teacher at the
Ontario College of Art, had been opposed to "the so-called modems" and
thus had simply done nothing to prepare his pupil to understand them.
43
Nor were Canadian students' encounters with 'modem' influences always
aided by the kind of critical response they got after they returned home. Colin
McPhee's modernist Piano Concerto No. 2—composed under the influence of
his studies at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore—was performed by the
New Symphony Orchestra in 1924 to a unanimously negative response by
Toronto critics, who did not like its "almost riotous freedom of expression,
regardless of any of the accepted notions of harmony or melody."
44
The critics were an important—if not always entirely positive—educative
force in their own right. More plentiful than is usually supposed,
45
 they did
not, of course, function in the way their successors were to do. Hector
Charlesworth, Archibald MacMechan, Roy Franklin Fleming and others were
reluctant—and, for that matter, perhaps not able—to apply critical analytical
tools to the works at hand. Afraid of stifling indigenous effort, they shied away
from any very rigorous judgements concerning the work they were consider-
ing. Framing their reaction in terms of the degree to which a cultural product
fostered national and patriotic sentiments or adhered to traditional internation-
al standards, they were quick to criticize—the term is the late British cultural
historian Raymond Williams'
4
**—"emergent" forms which deviated from those
sentiments or standards. They paid excessive attention to content and almost
none to formal or structural qualities and so, not surprisingly, tended towards
the sort of conservative position that allowed them to take the Confederation
poets' marriage of indigenous symbols and themes with standard international
forms as the measure by which work should be judged. As a result they divided
modernist from traditionalist; the internationally inspired modernist from the
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 41
locally rooted one; and, inevitably, the English-Canadian cultural producer
from the European. Though seeing themselves as helping to build the
country's culture, they did just the opposite; by functioning in ways that
encouraged the isolation of English Canada's cultural life from what was hap-
pening internationally, they retarded rather than enhanced its growth.
Critics also did something else. In demanding that the poems, the play,
the composition, the novel and the painting express nationalist and patriotic
sentiment as well as conform to a certain standard of moral behaviour, they
were casting writers, dramatists, painters and musicians themselves in the role
of educator. As Lilian Jory had put it in 1900, it was the poet's mission "to
open the eyes of men and women that they walk not through this great Palace
Beautiful asleep."
47
 Over the next four decades even literary critics of the
stature of W.A. Deacon would adhere to the idea that "literature's basic pur-
pose was didactic, that good literature infused its readers, willy-nilly, with direc-
tions and patterns for the moral and ethnical enhancement of living and that
Canadian literature in particular had a high and holy mission in the building of
Canada and her people."
48
 What the composer did, too, could be understood
in essentially the same way. "Great music," insisted Edward Johnson, was
altogether capable of bringing "us together irrespective of birth, position, cul-
ture or ability."
49
 The artist as well had an educative function for what he or
she did—the words are Brooker's—was "more significant than ever before as
the only unifying experience that remains to us" given the fact that "orthodox
religions are losing their hold."
50
 And, finally, the dramatist, asserted Herman
Voaden, must see that the theatre was "a place of immortal visions and enthu-
siasms" where the imagination and the beauty of art could lead man to divini-
ty.51
The artist's educative role was assigned to him or her by more than what
the critics were saying. A variety of circumstances were in fact giving the cul-
tural producer that function. The decline of traditional religion, as Brooker had
suggested, was one; the need to fit immigrants into their new society was
another; a continuing urge to stimulate national feeling was a third; and there
was also a feeling that art could teach people to cope with urbanization and
mechanization.
A concern with all of these things led the newly formed United Church of
Canada to commission Ernest MacMillan and E.J. Pratt to write music and
verse for its Massey Hall pageant in 1927; the Imperial Order of Daughters of
the Empire's (IODE) interest in encouraging patriotic sentiment caused it to
make reproductions of Canadian paintings of the Great War and distribute
them among schools in 1919; and the anxiety of ministers throughout the
country to reach their congregations more effectively played a part in the
many invitations extended to artists to decorate the walls of churches. Writers
and poets could also be seen at work when the Canadian Chautauqua Institute
42 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
(1921) brought Bliss Carman, Charles G.D. Roberts and other poets together
in 1931 at the Muskoka Assembly to stimulate "culture, character and the
promotion of national ideals" among those gathered there.
52
 Dramatists were
pressed into service by Canadian National Railways, which commissioned his-
torical radio plays that would "encourage Canadian national consciousness"
among its listeners.
53
 And Ralph Connor made it clear that song and music
could stimulate faith when he had the minister in his 1901 novel The Sky
Pilot attempt to convert an old man and his daughter to the ways of
Christianity by leading them in hymn-singing. "It was easy to pass to the old
hymn, '"Nearer, My God, to Thee,'" Connor wrote, and then to simply say,
"May we have prayers?"
54
If seeing the artist as a kind of formal educator broadened the range of his
or her activities, it very much narrowed their character. Critics and public alike
maintained that art could teach only if it was of a familiar and accepted sort.
"As self-appointed guardians of the arts, women's organizations [in Toronto
kept a criticall watch on every aspect of the city's cultural activities, especially
the commercial playhouses downtown which were blamed for showing
'unwholesome' drama."
55
 In the same city the Reverend John Cobum donned
green goggles and false whiskers. In this startling costume he appeared to cen-
sor the Star Theatre's production of Legrand Howland's problem-play
Deborah. In Montreal Andrew Macphail lashed out at the Little Theatres'
obsession with "shanty-stuff," plays whose "characters are mean and unwor-
thy—miners lusting for gold, drunken lumbermen, ruined pioneers, insolent
city picnickers"—all of whom spoke "a coarse jargon."
56
 In 1933 the Toronto
Public Library banned Morley Callaghan's novel Such Is My Beloved, while
two years later his They Shall Inherit the Earth was available only upon
request. Frederick Philip Grove's novel Settlers of the Marsh was kept off the
shelves of the Winnipeg Public Library following its appearance in 1925. And
although Ryerson Press editor and former Methodist minister Lome Pierce
had published that controversial work, he refused the following year to distrib-
ute the Canadian edition of E.J. Pratt's The Witches' Brew. There were limits
for painters, too, as the reaction to the fact that the Fine and Graphic Arts
Exhibition at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition in 1927 included an
unprecedented number of nude paintings showed: not only, as Royal
Canadian academician F.J. Brigden reported, was there "a rush to the Gallery
by thousands who had no other motive than a morbid curiosity": there was
also a healthy number of letters to the editor condemning the pictures as
"indecent and demoralizing."
57
The insistence that art have a certain moral content had implications not
only for what got produced but also for the producers of it. Just as it was held
that paintings of nudes and characterizations of drunks and lumbermen gave
the public poor rather than good examples of behaviour, so too, it was fre-
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 45
quently asserted, the often bizarre life-style of the culture producer offered
something less than a perfect example of how life should be lived. "The pub-
lic," as Brooker noted in 1936, "is sometimes inclined to forgive idiosyn-
crasies and even 'immorality' on the part of the artist, once he is recognized
as great."
58
 But it would not tolerate the Bohemian antics of someone who
had not attained that status. Artist F.H. Varley's behaviour—he drank and fre-
quently seduced his female students—thus cost him portrait commissions,
while Morley Callaghan's fictional character John Hughes, who had an
'immoral' relationship with his girlfriend, lost his position as lead bass in a
Toronto church.
59
 "The Singer," as a writer in Musical Canada had put it in
1907, "should be possessed with certain spiritual convictions in order to give a
sincere rendering of the song."
60
 The same was demanded of the artist by
those who believed that he or she touched "the handiwork of the Creator"
through painting.
61
 Producers of art, music, drama and literature, then, were
generally expected to offer in their private lives guides to moral action which
would be as exemplary as those given in their work. Proper fulfilment of their
responsibility as the nation's teachers demanded no less.
There was a general agreement in English-speaking Canada's cultural cir-
cles that members of the public were capable of being taught how to play a
musical instrument, act, build stage settings, or paint a picture. Nor was there
much doubt that people were generally willing to expose themselves to what
the talented writer, musician, or dramatist might be doing—which, according
to some commentators, was reason enough to educate them. As the young
journalist Beckles Willson told the Montreal branch of the Canadian Club in
1914, "Our people, I am convinced, have the receptivity—the potentiality of
appreciation."
62
 And, as Walter J. Phillip's "Art and Artists" column showed
(it appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press from 1926 to 1941), there was a
similar confidence in the capabilities of the Prairie public. That confidence was
not, to be sure, always warranted. Phillips told, for example, the story of the
farmer who was willing to pay a vast sum for a painting by Turner until he dis-
covered that it was 'second hand'. There was also the tale of the elderly
woman, who, upon leaving an exhibition of a painting by Rembrandt, whis-
pered to the uniformed attendant at the door: "Very good, Mr.
Rembrandt...very good indeed, I do hope that you will be able to sell it."
63
Interest was developing, nonetheless and it was becoming informed. Four hun-
dred people might crowd into the Vancouver Art Gallery to hear lectures on
Canadian art; there were reports of a western Canadian public "hungry" for
poetry readings by English-Canadian authors and of music festivals keeping
large audiences enthralled until after midnight; and one heard of festival adju-
dicators listening to some fourteen thousand competitors over a two-week
period.
64
 The capacity of audiences to appreciate fully what was being put
44 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
before them should not, of course, be exaggerated. They might, for example,
respond to the novelty—especially the lighting effects—of Herman Voaden's
difficult symphonic expressionist work Earth Song while entirely missing "the
emotional meaning of the play," which required what R.V. Howard described
to his Saturday Night readers in 1932 as "a trained audience."
65
 That capac-
ity was, nonetheless, very clearly held to exist.
The idea that adults were keen to learn and could be taught through
observation or participation was not new. The Mechanics' Institute movement,
begun in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth century, had come to St.
John's, Newfoundland, in 1827, to Montreal, Toronto, Saint John and
Halifax in the 1830s and within three decades, to such remote places as Fort
Hope and Barkerville in British Columbia. Though usurped in the 1890s by
the literary and scientific societies and other organizations which had also
taken root early in the century, the Mechanics' Institutes' reading rooms and
museums, lecture programs, evening courses and art exhibitions had played
no small part in preparing the way, not only for demands by British
Columbia's loggers' union that camps be provided with reading rooms, but
also for the establishment of such organizations as Winnipeg's All Peoples'
Mission (1907), the Workers' Education Association (1918), the Canadian
Bureau for the Advancement of Music (1919), the National Council of
Education (1919), the Dominion Educational Film Association (1931) and the
Canadian Association for Adult Education (1935).
To those involved in these and similar associations, cultural activity—
whether one was involved in it as participant or observer—had much to offer.
It allowed constructive use of the public's ever-increasing leisure time and so
helped prevent the disorderly behaviour which, many believed, was being
induced by shorter working days; it served as an elevating alternative to unsuit-
able forms of popular culture; and it reinforced national sentiment. The All
Peoples' Mission in Winnipeg and the YMCA in Edmonton, J.S. Woodsworth
thus insisted, were to be seen as positive forces because they provided a
"counter attraction to cheap theatre, the dance hall and the poolroom" by
offering "wholesome amusement [such as the production of plays] that would
be interesting to young people and at the same time elevating and enlighten-
ing."
66
 Service clubs won approval through sponsorship of national literary
competitions "to encourage that which is beautiful and inspiring" in order to
"combat the harsh material spirit...[and] the strain of every day life."
67
 Aware
that education was "an all-comprehensive process which can be used to shape
a people's character and a nation's destiny," the National Council of
Education organized nation-wide performances and lectures by leading British
singers, actors and authorities in literature, drama and fine arts.
68
 Churches in
Toronto turned their basements into centres of "entertainment for children to
oppose the pestilence of unwholesome attractions continually featured at
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 4 5
downtown theatres."
69
 And summer camps—the YMCA's Canadian
Recreational Institute at Lake Couchiching, Taylor Stratten's Camp Ahmikin
in Algonquin Park and the Chautauqua Institutes among others scattered
throughout the country—kept men, women and children profitably occupied
during the summer months with literary, artistic, dramatic and musical activi-
ties.
Consistent with Arthur Lismer's belief that art was "the normal and right-
ful heritage of every individual," art galleries across English-speaking Canada
held public lectures and offered Saturday morning art classes to children and
evening classes to adults.
70
 Such cultural organizations as the Alberta Society
of Artists sponsored summer schools (A.C. Leighton took eight members to
Brewster's Dude Ranch for a two-week session in the summer of 1933). The
Ontario Department of Agriculture, the Junior Farm Associations and the
Girls' Junior Institute organized drama groups in rural Ontario which, insisted
one writer, "not only...benefit those who participate in them but...give a great
deal of pleasure to the community."
71
 "The need to educate the listening pub-
lic" was a primary impulse behind the establishment of the "Free Concert
Movement" of the 1920s in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.
72
 It played a key
role, too, in the Toronto Star's Good Music Concerts, which were intended
to make "good music available to 'the people'." Seated at the piano, Star
music critic Augustus Bridle "would discuss the music to be heard, playing
appropriate musical excerpts by way of illustration."
73
 The Prom Concerts
hosted by Reginald Stewart a decade later in the same city were also geared
towards developing "a taste for music in substantial numbers of people who
were able to pay the modest admission of 80 cents for the best seats, [or] 30
cents to rent a cushion on the floor."
74
What, precisely, music could do was spelled out by many observers.
Singing "the popular melody, the tender ballad, the sacred song," as a writer
in the Methodist Magazine and Review had observed in 1902, made "a swift
and tender appeal to the sentiments of faith, love and loyalty. "
7
^ Playing a
musical instrument, according to the Canadian Bureau for the Advancement
of Music, taught hand-to-eye skills, perseverance, self-control and mental disci-
pline. Listening to music softened the heart and rendered it, in the mind of
one 1933 commentator, "responsive to the most sublime thoughts."
76
 And
attending Saskatchewan's Chautauqua music festivals in the midst of the
Depression might even mitigate the effects of that social and economic disas-
ter: it was, recalled a 1933 audience member, "a wonderful help in a flat,
empty-pocket time."
77
 "I do not know," an habitue of the Proms wrote in a
similar vein, "anything about music but I like the effect it has on me," adding
that he left the "concerts exhilarated and refreshed."
78
 Attending or partici-
pating in a play had its benefits too. According to some observers, the theatre
taught manners and social grace, moulded "national character and sentiment,"
46 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
and provided audiences with "an education that they could not get elsewhere
in the world."
79
 During the Depression it also permitted the amateur per-
former "a temporary escape from the overwhelming realities of life." "Think
what it means to the tired wife of an unsuccessful farmer," British Columbia
dramatist Major Bullock-Webster told a group of educators in 1938, "if she
can be Queen Elizabeth for a little while."
80
The contemplation of pictures might not allow for exactly this kind of
relief, but, asserted one observer, it did make viewers "take a greater interest
in the people and natural beauties around them," and it improved their
taste.
81
 It was also, thought another commentator, "a potent force in the
moulding of national characteristics."
82
 The act of painting, it was believed,
could be equally beneficial. Those who attended the Children's Art Centre
established by artists Marian Scott and Fritz Brandtner and Dr. Norman
Bethune in Montreal in 1936 were taught to express themselves creatively
through art. Three years later patients taking Brandtner's art classes in the
orthopaedic ward of the Children's Memorial Hospital were able to "regain
confidence in their ability to do things and to show themselves that, though
handicapped they were capable of expressing experiences in their own
way."
83
 The Reverend Bentley in Sinclair Ross's 1941 novel As for Me and
My House found the activity of painting equally therapeutic: it provided noth-
ing less than a means through which he could transcend the spiritually debili-
tating life of a small Prairie town.
84
The belief, then, that either passive or active involvement in cultural activi-
ty could "refine and elevate" and, as another early twentieth-century commen
tator put it, exert a "splendid influence upon national character" was widely
shared—so widely, in fact, that it gave rise to one of the most common forms
of cultural education in the period: music and drama festivals and competi-
tions.
85
 Local music festivals had existed in English Canada since the mid-
nineteenth century; it was not, however, until 1903 that the first nation-wide
festival, the First Cycle of Music Festivals of the Dominion of Canada, was
held. In its case, it must be said, nation-building was subordinated to what was
held to be refinement. The festival organizer, A.E. Harriss, considered it his
"duty and privilege to foster a better knowledge of British works in Canada,"
which, he felt, could best be accomplished by bringing "a great conductor and
composer amongst us to stimulate and educate the musical amateurs to
greater music and offer the musical profession the needed opportunity of
exchanging musical thought with the foremost musicians of the times...and fit
us as a nation capable of holding place second to none as a musical communi-
ty."
86
 The distinguished British composer and principal of Britain's Royal
Academy of Music, Sir Alexander Mackenzie, was therefore engaged to orga-
nize 33 concerts in cities from Halifax to Vancouver. In each place Sir
Alexander and the six vocal soloists accompanying him from London assem-
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 47
bled local choirs and musicians, and, following a single rehearsal, staged a
concert of British oratorio music, often of Mackenzie's own composition. The
results of the venture were impressive: it set "between three and four-thousand
voices...a-singing" across the country; it led Harriss to go on to organize the
Festival of English Cathedral Music five years later; and it prompted others to
establish festivals too.
87
 In 1907, for example, Governor General Lord Albert
Henry George Grey founded the nation-wide Earl Grey Musical and Dramatic
Trophy Competitions, which were held in Ottawa in 1907 and 1908, in
Montreal in 1909, Toronto in 1910 and Winnipeg in 1911. In 1908, partly
under Grey's influence, music educators in Edmonton organized the Alberta
Musical Competition Festival. The same year the Western Canadian Music
Festival was organized in Winnipeg; a year after that the Saskatchewan Music
Festival Association was established "to promote the appreciation, perfor-
mance and study of music through competitive festivals and concerts," and in
1912 the Toronto Music Festival came into being.
88
 Following the hiatus
caused by the Great War, the Manitoba Music Competition Festival was estab-
lished in 1918 and the Spring Festivals of the Halifax Philharmonic Society in
1919. By 1928, the Willingdon Arts Competitions—comprising literature and
the visual arts as well as music and drama—had been organized, followed by
the Alberta Drama Festival in 1930, London, Ontario's, Canadian Music
Festival in 1936 and festivals devoted to New-Canadian music, dance and
crafts such as those sponsored by the Canadian Pacific Railway in many parts
of the country from 1927 to 1931 and that organized as the Vancouver Folk
Festival from 1933.
Around this myriad of competitions and festivals rose a labyrinth of larger
organizations. The Federation of Canadian Music Festivals united the four
western provinces' festival associations in 1926 largely for the purpose of
sharing adjudicators' costs, which could be substantial when these officials
came—as they usually did—from Britain. The Dominion Drama Festival
brought existing local and provincial amateur drama associations under one
umbrella in 1932 by organizing annual provincial and national competitions.
And in the early 1930s the Canadian Music Festival Adjudicators' Association
was formed "to promote, encourage and assist Canadian adjudicators."
89
Whether devoted to music or drama, or, as was less frequently the case, to
art and literature, festivals were "a means of fostering a better type of perfor-
mance" and "of developing a critical taste among the public."
90
 According to
two of its most ethusiastic supporters—Arthur Collingwood and Ernest
MacMillan—the music festival was "a healthy stimulus to the music student,
[and] an ideal public forum for the competent teacher," for it encouraged play-
ing "the right kind of music in the right way" and gave "the student a sense of
proportion, showing him where he stands in relation to others."
91
 And
besides, while all this was happening for the student performer, the audience
48 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
was "being educated in the art of listening to music" and thereby "developing
a critical taste" towards what it heard.
92
Festivals did more than enhance "the critical appreciation of the man in
the street. "93 Their purpose, as MacMillan pointed out during a radio talk in
1935, was "by no means purely musical."
94
 Lord Grey intended music and
drama festivals to be "a really useful school, both for good manners and beau-
ty and purity of diction."
95
 Drama adjudicators were to deduct marks for "flat
a's and other barbarous pronunciations" as well as for "breaches of good man-
ners."
96
 Governor General Lord Vere Brabazon Ponsonby Bessborough,
founder of the Dominion Drama Festival in 1932, also saw his creation as
having "a great educational influence" in all parts of the Dominion.
97
The stan-
dards of judgment applied under Grey's auspices were evident here too: marks
were deducted where "the enunciation was careless and often vulgar, the
understanding of the thought of the dramatist poor and the manners of the
depicted characters deplorable."
98
 Nor was all of this seen simply as an exer-
cise in creating imperial solidarity. By performing British music and plays and
conforming to British standards Canadians were not only bringing Canadian
culture into line with that of the mother country; they were also, in Grey's
words, binding the Dominion itself together by giving it "an identity of tastes
and aspirations."
99
Canadians took this view as well. MacMillan certainly thought these festi-
vals and competitions could "affect our national life as a whole." They welded
"together the many divers(e] elements that compose the population of
Canada" and, he continued, helped overcome "the geographical difficulties
that confront us as a nation."
100
 The Manitoba Music Competition Festival
was, another enthusiast observed in 1938, "a very important agency in pro-
moting better feeling between English speaking Canadians and their fellow-citi-
zens who had come from other countries" and who "by reason of...language,
fail to take part in the ordinary community activities."
101
 Indeed, Manitoba's
first competition in 1919 not only was composed of musical groups such as
the predominantly anglophone Men's Musical Club; it also saw the participa-
tion of the Icelandic Choral Society, the Ukrainian Choir, the Young
Mennonite Association Choir and the Chorale Mixte de St. Boniface. When
the Canadian Pacific Railway festivals were organized at the end of the 1920s
they were intended to bring various ethnocultural organizations together in
order to "create more mutual understanding between the...racial groups."
102
And the Vancouver Folk League's gathering together of "up to twenty-seven
ethnic groups in the conference rooms of the Hotel Vancouver" during the
1930s was designed to make British Columbians "more tolerant...[of] people
of other racial origin, who are willing to help us build a strong united
Canada."
10
3
On whatever level it operated—whether for the benefit of the individual,
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 49
the audience, the nation, or the Empire as a whole—the festival movement
caught the imagination of the country. Clergymen, cinema owners, business-
men and civic officials gladly handed over their church basements, theatres,
stores and community halls to the annual three- or four-day event. Municipal
councils, provincial governments, private patrons and voluntary organizations
contributed funds for scholarships and prizes or simply to help meet the oper-
ating costs that could not be covered by door sales and entrance fees.
104
Universities, provincial departments of education and conservatories provided
adjudicators and sometimes a venue. The public gave its support, too, by trav-
elling for miles—frequently in poor weather conditions—in order to attend a
gala performance.
The adjudicators were, of course, particularly important, for their involve-
ment was essential to a festival's success. The job was a rigorous one.
Working during the 1930s for the School and Community Branch of British
Columbia's Department of Education, Phoebe Smith spent an arduous but not
untypical few days adjudicating three festivals in the Peace River communities
of Fort St. John, Dawson Creek and Prince George. She spent "hours and
hours of listening to elocution, choral speech and plays" performed by "little
girls in their best dresses, hair curled—and the boys having been given a good
going over by their parents." She visited a child in the hospital, so that he
could recite his part. She read and listened to the poems and the plays of a
group of adults who had taken a creative writing course during the winter and
were anxious to have some criticism of their work. She participated in discus-
sion panels sponsored by service clubs. She saw the Murphees, the Hoys, the
Yankowls, the Shoonovers and the McLeods whom she described as "the new
citizens of the future in the Peace River." She witnessed the enthusiastic
response of the public—so large was the turnout of the final performance in
Fort St. John that "a long line of disappointed patrons" could not be accom-
modated. Phoebe Smith ended her tour convinced that "pioneers in the north
country, [involved in]...growing wheat, discovering oil and minerals to enrich
our province, are not neglecting the cultural side of life for a new
generation."
105
The festival movement was one vehicle for the encouragement of an
informed interest in art, music and drama among members of the public.
Another was the extension of continuing studies programs established by uni-
versities and provincial departments of education. Speaking in Montreal at the
Twelfth National Congress of Canadian Universities in 1928, one participant
was at particular pains to stress their importance. "In recent years," he said,
"the idea has spread very rapidly that universities extend their direct influence
to persons other than those who actually come within their walls for their reg-
ular work."
106
 This had been happening in a modest way since the 1870s,
50 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
when English-Canadian universities "were much influenced by the university
extension movement that had originated in England."
107
 It was not, however,
until the turn of the century that the trend gathered real momentum. Trinity
University (later Trinity College of the University of Toronto) introduced
Saturday afternoon lectures in art history in 1904 to an audience "composed
largely of ladies, but with a sprinkling of the sterner sex."
10
** Following "the
desire of the great English Universities to carry to the great mass of people
information disclosed by the rapid advance of the natural sciences," the
University of Alberta established an extension department in 1912 which
offered tutorial classes to working men, correspondence courses to those out-
side the city limits and a travelling library to residents of isolated
communities.
109
 Eight years later the People's School was founded at Saint
Francis Xavier University in Antigonish "to help impoverished farmers, fisher-
men, lumbermen and miners to solve their problems through the formation of
cooperatives and credit unions."
110
 And in 1927 a radio station operated by
Acadia University maintained "an educational programme of high grade" by
broadcasting, among other things, "more good music...than...any other sta-
tion" to listeners in Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
111
The idea that the university was not only the keeper of the moral and
intellectual values of the country's elite but also had a role to play among its
citizens at large was a function of the declining authority of the church, the
rise of the social sciences, increasing public involvement in the financing of
universities, the emergence of co-operative groups such as the Antigonish
movement, post-war inflation and, ultimately, the dislocation of world trade
and the unemployment of the 1930s. All these factors worked together to
shift many educators away from the notion that education's primary purpose
was moral and patriotic; they began, as a result, to concentrate more attention
on the teaching of technical skills, on helping the public understand political,
social and economic questions and on orienting it towards international affairs.
The conviction that "continued learning throughout life was not only possible
but necessary if democratic institutions were to survive" certainly motivated the
formation of the Canadian Association for Adult Education.
112
 Acting from
1935 as a clearing house for adult education programs in public and private
cultural institutions and organizations, it sought to respond fully to contempo-
rary circumstances: making "better citizens" might still be important, as
University of Toronto president Sir Robert Falconer told the association in
1936, but it now had to be done "by creating new interests" among the
Canadian public.
113
Notwithstanding its preoccupation with public affairs and the practical, the
movement was far from neglecting cultural activity. As Walter Abell told a
Maritime radio audience in 1935, there were four ways in which the arts could
help mitigate "the breakdown of civilization in the war and the depression."
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 51
The enjoyment of beauty "brings us joy and peace"; the vision of the artist
was a "stimulus toward fine workmanship"; the "love of art to make our coun-
try more beautiful"; and, finally, cultural activity could "help us understand
other countries."
114
 Given what so clearly seemed to be its "practical," "con-
temporary" relevance, no small amount of attention was devoted to that activi-
ty. Concerts, lectures, play-writing competitions, exhibitions, study groups,
conferences, dramatic productions and festivals of music and drama were
organized under the auspices of various adult education groups. Often these
activities drew on university resources—drama and music groups and faculty,
in particular—and took place on campus. Equally, however, they might be
conducted beyond the university gates. Extension departments at the
Universities of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba and provincial education
departments in British Columbia and New Brunswick encouraged drama pro-
duction in major rural centres by setting up play-lending libraries, by organiz-
ing festivals and by sending instructors to coach amateur drama groups.
Departments of Music at McMaster University, Queen's University and the
University of Saskatchewan conducted choral work, gave concerts and spon-
sored lectures in music both on and off the campus. Classes in folk dancing,
commercial art and singing were given by the Department of Education in
British Columbia's relief camps and at cultural recreation centres that were set
up throughout the province "for dealing with the leisure hours of the unem-
ployed. "
11
^ At the University of Alberta an old Ford truck outfitted with pic-
ture racks, crates and a slide projector and accompanied by a lecturer from the
extension department, took paintings, prints and crafts borrowed from the
Canadian Handicrafts Guild in Montreal, the National Gallery in Ottawa and
the Alberta Society of Artists to rural areas of the province. The same universi-
ty established a permanent adult education centre off campus when it created
the Banff School of Fine Arts, which offered courses in drama from 1933 and
art and music from 1935. Not even those living beyond the radius of the
extension circuit escaped. Concerts, plays and lectures on art, literature and
music were broadcast by radio stations like the University of Alberta's CKUA
that were owned and operated by extension departments.
University and provincial government adult education programs not only
provided an extensive network through which vast numbers of people became
involved in cultural activity; they also gave the artists, musicians, dramatists
and others who ran the programs opportunities to practise their various crafts
which could not have been found elsewhere. Ernest MacMillan's founding of
the Sir Ernest MacMillan Fine Arts Clubs (1936) in secondary schools across
the country gave him the chance to extend cultural activity well beyond the
Toronto Conservatory of Music. McGill University's extramural relations
department provided Montreal artists Andre Bieler, John Lyman, Elizabeth
Frost and George Holt with the resources they needed to found a progressive-
52 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ly minded, unstructured art school modelled on the Art Students' League in
New York. The Atelier, as it was called, became a "God-send" to one student
because it was "the first sign of modem contemporary art in Canada."
116
Herman Voaden's position as English teacher at Toronto's Central High
School of Commerce gave him the base he needed to further his experimental
work in the theatre of symphonic expressionism and, in particular, the staging
of plays with "an exterior northern setting" consistent "in mood or subject
matter [with] the paintings of artists [which the dramatists] considered
Canadian in character."
117
 Gwen Pharis Ringwood gained invaluable experi-
ence during 1936 when she produced half-hour radio dramas for the
University of Alberta's CKUA radio station in a series titled "New Lamps for
Old." And the same year composers Healey Willan, Leo Smith and Arnold
Walter established the Vogt Society through the alumni association of the
Toronto Conservatory of Music, thereby creating a wider audience for the per-
formance of works composed by Canadian musicians.
If musicians, dramatists and painters could work through extramural pro-
grams and extension departments, they could also be—as the case of Elizabeth
Sterling Haynes clearly shows—products of them. Haynes' interest in theatre
was almost entirely a result of her sojourn as a student at the University of
Toronto. Introduced to drama through the Victoria College Women's
Dramatic Club (1917), of which she became president in 1919, she was
"totally converted to the cause of the threatre" by Roy Mitchell, the director of
the just-opened Hart House Theatre. In 1922, a year after graduating and
with more directing and acting experience behind her, she moved to
Edmonton, where she headed the University of Alberta's Dramatic Society.
From 1929 she instructed teachers of drama for the university and the provin-
cial departments of education, became artistic director of the Edmonton Little
Theatre (1929) and acted and directed in the province's Chautauqua drama
festivals. In 1932 she became the first full-time drama instructor in the univer-
sity's extension department. Five years later she took her enthusiasm, energy
and organizational skills to New Brunswick to assist in the establishment of a
summer school for teachers of drama. Though hired for the summer-school
term only, she remained a year and when she finally left in the late summer of
1938 the province had a well-established drama school for teachers; as well,
the University of New Brunswick Drama Society had an expanded repertoire;
the province, a drama festival; teachers of drama, a play-lending library; and
the province as a whole, the benefit of Haynes' instruction on the radio and in
person, for she travelled eleven thousand miles over the course of the year.
118
Notwithstanding that Madame Dandurand's "Two Systems" failed to get
established for lack of interest on the government's part, there was no short-
age of instruction in the arts, or of people who took it seriously. Many were,
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 5
to be sure, amateurs. Others were mainly educators. And even those who had
credentials in the field in which they were working—MacMillan, for example—
tended to see cultural activity as geared to some such purpose as nation-build-
ing or assimilation of immigrants or moral improvement. Spurred on by the
declining authority of the church, the need to assimilate New Canadians, the
rise of the social sciences, the growing importance of technology, the increas-
ing presence of the university and above all by the country's heightened sense
of national awareness, institutions evolved to educate the professional and the
amateur alike. They ranged from campus radio broadcasts, noon-hour con-
certs, continuing studies programs and music and drama festivals to the found-
ing of academies, conservatories and departments of music, art and drama
within universities. And whatever form the education of the professional and
the amateur took, it showed an awareness that culture was a key element in
the building of a society, not just in the political sense, but in terms of what it
could do to give that society's members a rounded, full and developed sense of
what a well-lived life might be.
This chapter is taken from pages 35-62 of Maria Tippett's Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts Before
the Massey Commission. Copyright O 1990 University of Toronto Press Incorporated. Reprinted by permission of University of
Toronto Press Incorporated.
ENDNOTES
1. NAC, National Council of Women Papers, MG 28 I 25, vol. 6, 'Minutes of
Annual Meetings of the Executive Committee,' 14 Feb. 1902, 145-9.
2. AO, RG 2, P-2 no. 13 Temporary Box 10, To the Members of the Art
Committee' [Jan. 1902, 1-2]. Members of the committee included, among oth-
ers, Lord Strathcona, Senators George Drummond and Raoul Dandurand,
Premiers Frederick Haultain of the Northwest Territories, George Henry Murray
of Nova Scotia, and L.J. Tweedie of New Brunswick, Adelaide Hoodless,
founder and president of the Ontario Normal School of Domestic Science and
Art, Lady Margaret Taylor and Lady Grace Julia Drummond of the National
Council of Women, and Ontario minister of education Richard Harcourt.
3. Ibid., Two Systems to Be Submitted to the Consideration of the Federal
Government. Preliminary Suggestions Scholarship System,' 3-6.
4. Ibid., 'Canadian National Art Institute,' 1-7.
5. J.W.L. Forster, 'Art and Artists in Ontario,' in J. Castell Hopkins (ed.), Canada:
An Encyclopedia of the Country 4 (Toronto 1898) 352.
6. W.A. Sherwood, 'A National Spirit in Art,' Canadian Magazine 3, no. 6 (Oct.
1894) 498-50.
7. John George Bourinot, Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness (Toronto
1973) 54. The title essay of this collection, from which the quotation is taken,
was originally published in the Week [Montreal], 2 June 1893, 630.
:iss
8. John Edward Hoare, 'Plea for a Canadian Theatre,' University Magazine
[Montreal] 10, no. 2 (April 1911) 239-53; Ernest MacMillan, 'Canadian Musical
Life,' Canadian Geographical Journal 19 (Nov.-Dec. 1939) 336, and 'Music in
Canada,' in Calendar of the Royal College of Organists 1935-36 (London
1936) 181; NAC, Eric Brown Papers, MG 30, D 25, series 3, vol. 2, Typed
Notes,' n.d., 12.
9. TFRBL, Edmund Walker Papers, Box 22, Percy Nobbs, 'Report on Proposals
for State Aid to Art Education in Canada,' 4 May 1907, 6.
10. Jean Coulthard, 'Canadian Music in the 1930s and 1940s: A Personal
Rememberance,' n. pag. [copy in author's possession] (transcript of talk given at
'Pioneers and Pioneering: Music in Canada in the 1930s and 1940s,' Queen's
University, Kingston, Ont. 8 Nov. 1986).
11. SAB, taped interview with Eddie Mather, 8 April 1974 [transcript] 2.
12. Collections of the Nova Scotia Historical Society 18 (Halifax 1914) 138.
13. 'Margaret Eaton School of Literature and Expression,' Musical Canada 4, no. 9
(Dec. 1909) 240.
14. John G. Reid, Mount Allison University: A History to 1963 (Toronto 1984)
61, 59.
15. URA, Regina Conservatory of Music Papers, Regina College, Annual
Calendar 1907-08 (Regina 1907) 1.
16. Ibid., 2.
17. Bertram Brooker, Think of the Earth (Toronto 1936) 74, 16.
18. "The Truth about Music in Canada,' Musical Times 74, no. 1087 (Sept. 1933)
846-7.
19. Among the first organizations of this sort was the Ontario Music Teachers'
Association (1885), which became the Canadian Society of Musicians in 1887.
The Canadian Federation of Music Teachers' Associations (1935), comprising
the four western provinces, and the Nova Scotia Music Teachers' Association
(1937) were formed for the same purpose.
20. MacMillan, 'Music in Canada,' 192.
21. SAB, Florrie Elvin Papers, taped interview [transcript], 2-7 May 1975, 3. The
Regina Conservatory of Music developed an examination program in 1932.
22. Coulthard, 'Canadian Music in the 1930s and 1940s,' n. pag.
23. Helmut Kallmann, 'Music Composition in Canada, from 1867,' Musicanada,
no. 20 (1969) 9.
24. Morley Callaghan, It's Never Over (1932; Toronto 1972) 37, 91.
25. Bertram Brooker (ed.), Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1928-29 (Toronto
1929) 65.
26. Carl Schaefer quoted in Margaret Gray, Margaret Rand and Lois Steen, Carl
Schaefer (Toronto 1977) 7.
27. John Murray Gibbon, Pagan Love (Toronto 1922) 123.
28. Arnold Walter, Aspects of Music in Canada (Toronto 1967) 251.
CANDIAN MUSIC: ISSUES OF HECEMONY AND IDENITY
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 5
29. 'Music in Canada Higher Education' (Appendix B), in Watson Kirkconnel and
A.S.P. Woodhouse, The Humanities in Canada (Ottawa 1947) 218.
30. Annual Report of the Superintendent of Education in Noua Scotia, Province
of Nova Scotia, for the Year Ending 31 July 1915 (Halifax 1916) 184.
31. Vancouver Board of Trustees, Twenty-Third Annual Report for the Year
Ending December 31 1925 (Vancouver 1925) 19. The Vancouver School of
Decorative and Applied Arts did offer courses, however, in both fine and
applied art and there was some move to interest manufacturers in art. See A.C.
Ferguson, 'Work of the BC Art League, Successful Manufacturing Depends
upon Art,' Province [Vancouver], 5 Aug. 1922, 24.
32. PABC, Provincial Arts and Industrial Institue Papers, Eric Brown to the
Secretary of the Provincial Arts and Industrial Institute, 11 Nov. 1920.
33. Marilyn Baker, The Winnipeg School of Art (Winnipeg 1984) 62. The school
was rescued from bankruptcy in 1924 when funds became available from the
federal government.
34. Arthur Lismer, "The Value, Meaning and Place of Art in Education,' Dalhousie
Review 8, no. 3 (Oct. 1928) 383.
35. Bertram Brooker, 'Nudes and Prudes,' in William Arthur Deacon and Wilfred
Reeves (eds.), Open House (Ottawa 1931) 100.
36. Paul Axelrod, 'Class, Culture and Canadian Youth: Student Life at Dalhousie
University in the 1930's,' in Canadian Historical Review Papers (Montreal
1985) 27.
37. SAB, Eddie Mathers Papers, taped interview with Eddie Mather, 8 April 1974
[transcript] 17.
38. CCA, University of Toronto Papers, Falconer to F.P. Keppel, 25 Feb. 1926.
39. Stanley Brice Frost, McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning
(Montreal 1984) 2:144.
40. Ernest MacMillan, 'The Place of Music in a University Curriculum,' in Eleventh
National Conference of Canadian Universities (London, Ont., 1927) 69.
41. A.S. Vogt, 'Piano Study at Home and Abroad,' Cbnseruatory Bi-Monthly 1,
no. 1 (Jan. 1902) 10.
42. NLC, George Brewer Papers, 'O-vyelopadia,' 4 (5 June 1906) n. pag.
43. NAC, Yvonne MacKague Housser Papers, MG 30, D 305, vol.2, 'Biography of
Story of My Life as a Painter,' n.d. 14.
44. Kallmann, 'Music Composition in Canada, from 1867,' 8.
45. See, for example, J.A. Radford, 'Canadian Art and Its Critics,' Canadian
Magazine 29, no. 6 (Oct. 1907) 517-18; A.J.M. Smith, 'Wanted—Canadian
Criticism,' Canadian Forum 8, No. 91 (April 1928) 600-1; A.M. Stephan,
'Canadian Poets and Critics,' Neu; Frontier 1, no. 5 (Sept. 1936) 22-3; and
Brooker (ed.), Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1928-29, 7-10.
46. Raymond Williams, 'Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,' New
Left Review 82 (Nov.-Dec. 1973) 11.
56 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
47. Lillian Jory, 'Some Canadian Poets,' Canadian Methodist Magazine 51, no. 5
(May 1900) 425, as quoted in Karen C. Altfest, 'Canadian Literary Nationalism,
1836-1914' (Ph. D. diss., City University of New York, 1979) 240.
48. Clara Thomas and John Lennox, William Arthur Deacon: A Canadian
Literary Life fToronto 1982) 13-14.
49. Edward Johnson, 'The Singer and His Audience,' in Singing: The Well-Spring
of Music (New York 1933) 42. This book comprises a series of radio talks given
under the auspices of the American Academy of Teachers and Singing.
50. Brooker, 'Nudes and Prudes,' 102.
51. Voaden quoted in Anton Wagner, 'Herman Voaden's "New Religion,"' Theatre
History in Canada 6, no. 2 (Fall 1985) 190.
52. QUA, Lome Pierce Papers, Box 6, Janet C. Perrins, The Canadian
Chautauqua,' [1929, untitled clipping in 'Historical Scrapbook, 1923-31*1 46.
53. NAC, E.A. Weir Papers, MG 30, D 67, vol. 26, Barrier Examiner, 21 May
1931 [clipping].
54. Reverend Charles Gordon [pseud. Ralph Connor], The Sky Pilot (Toronto
1901) 130.
55. R.B. Scott, 'A Study of Amateur Theatre in Toronto, 1900-1930,' (MA thesis,
University of Western Ontario, 1966) 28.
56. Andrew Macphail, 'Our Canadian Speech,' Saturday Night 50, no. 34 (29
June 1935) 2.
57. F.H. Brigden, 'Fine and Graphic Arts at the Canadian National Exhibition,'
Journal [Royal Architectural Institute of Canada] serial no. 26, 4, no. 10 (Oct.
1927) 370. For a response see Brooker, 'Nudes and Prudes,' 93-106.
58. Bertram Brooker (ed.), Yearbook of the Arts in Canada (Toronto 1936) xvii.
59. Callaghan, It's Never Over, 121.
60. Edmund Hardy, 'The Soloist in the Church,' Musical Canada 2, no. 5 (Sept.
1907) 214.
61. J.W.L. Forster, Under the Studio Light: Leaves from a Portrait Painter's
Sketch Book (Toronto 1928) vii.
62. Beckles Willson, 'Canada's Undeveloped Literary Resources,' in Addresses
Delivered before the Canadian Club of Montreal 1913-1914 (Montreal 1914)
202.
63. Walter J. Phillips, 'Second-Hand Pictures,' Winnipeg Euening Tribune [undated
clipping], and 'On Appreciation,' Winnipeg Euening Tribune, 4 Feb. 1928, as
quoted in Maria Tippett and Douglas Cole (eds.), Phillips in Print: The
Selected Writings of Walter J. Phillips on Canadian Nature and Art
(Winnipeg 1982) 11, 10.
64. NLC, Arthur Lismer Papers, Charles H. Scott to H.O. McCurry, 5 April 1932;
QUA, Lome Pierce Papers, Box 1, A.M. Stephen to Pierce, 14 July 1924;
Edgar L. Bainton, 'A Tour through the Dominions of Canada and Australia,'
Musical Times [London], 1 Mar. 1931, 220.
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 7
65. R.V. Howard, 'Earth Song,' Saturday Night 48, no. 8 (31 Dec. 1932 ) 6.
66. J.S. Woodsworth, My Neighbour (1911; Toronto 1972) 208.
67. T.A. Browne, 'The National Literary Competition,' Canadian Magazine 53,
no. 4 (Aug 1919) 365.
68. NAC, National Council of Education Papers, MG 30, D 245, vol. 5, 'National
Lectureship Scheme,' [typescript], Ottawa 1920, 2.
69. Scott, 'A Study of Amateur Theatre in Toronto, 1900-1930,' 25.
70. Arthur Lismer, 'Art Education and Appreciation' [incomplete manuscript, n.d.],
Montreal Museum of Rne Arts, as quoted in Gemey Kelly, Arthur Lismer:
Nova Scotia, 1916-1919 (Halifax 1983) 14. Art courses were given at, among
other galleries, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Toronto, the
Winnipeg Civic Art Gallery, the Edmonton Museum of Fine Arts, the Owen's
Museum of Fine Arts and the Norman Mackenzie Art Gallery.
71. G.E. Patton, 'Drama in the Community,' Echoes no. 129 (15 Dec. 1932) 15.
Manitoba's Department of Agriculture encouraged drama groups in rural areas
of that province by providing over five hundred study groups with a play-lending
library and a travelling drama instructor, Helen Watson.
72. Clifford Ford, Canada's Music: An Historical Survey (Agincourt, Ont, 1982)
12.
73. Peter Frederick Bishop. 'Canadian Music Criticism from 1918 to 1939 as
shown in the Toronto Star and Saturday Night' (MA Thesis, University of
Victoria, 1979) 29.
74. Floyd S. Chalmers, Both Sides of the Street: One Man's Life in the Business
and Arts in Canada (Toronto 1985) 118.
75. T.E. Colling, 'The Ministry of Music,' Methodist Magazine and Review 55, no.
2 (Feb. 1902) 143.
76. Bruce A. Anderson, 'Education, Beauty and Culture,' Musical Life 1, no. 3
(Mar. 1933) 4.
77. [no author, no title], Student's Bulletin [Regina] 1, no. 3 (30 May 1933 ) [1].
78. Reginald Stewart, 'Good Music Made Popular,' address given to the Empire
Club of Canada, 13 Dec. 1934, in Empire Club of Canada, Addresses
Delivered to the Members during the Year 1934-1935 (Toronto 1935) 175.
79. Herbert A. Bruce, 'The National Drama League of Canada,' address given at
the conclusion of the performance of the Dominion Drama Festival Finals at
Hart House Theatre, 26 Mar. 1934, in Our Heritage and Other Addresses
(Toronto 1934) 201; William Faversham, 'The War As It Affects the Theatrical
Profession,' address delivered to the members during the session 1915-1916, in
Albert Hall (ed.), Empire Club of Canada (Toronto 1917) 8.
80. PARC, Department of Education Papers, Box 12, 354, L. Bullock-Webster,
'Community Drama As a Part of Adult Education,' lecture delivered to the 10th
Annual Conference, Western Teachers of Speech, Seattle, Washington, Nov.
1938, 8. Bullock-Webster was director of school and community drama for the
Department of Education from 1932.
5 8 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
81. PAPH, Harris Family Papers, James Harris, 'Charlottetown Public Library and
Harris Memorial Art Gallery: The Library As a Civic Institution,' talk given at the
Gyro Club, 20 Jan. 1930, 7. See also NAC, Eric Brown Papers, MG 30, D 25,
3, vol. 2, Typed Notes,' n.d., 11.
82. John Edgcumbe Stanley, To Foster Canadian Art,' Maclean's Magazine 27,
No. 113 (July 1914) 17.
83. Helen Duffy and Francis K. Smith, The Brave New World of Fritz Brandtner
(Kingston 1982) 37.
84. J.A. Wainwright, 'Motives for Metaphor: Art and the Artist in Seven Canadian
Novels' (PH. D. diss., Dalhousie University, 1978) 136.
85. 'An Art Museum,' Mail and Empire, 10 Feb. 1900; NAC, Royal Canadian
Academy of Arts Papers, MG 28,1 126, 'Scrapbook,' undated clipping [1906],
33.
86. NLC, A.E. Harriss Papers, Harriss to Lady Minto, 10 Dec. 1902; Charles A.E.
Harriss, 'Introduction,' First Cycle of Music Festivals of the Dominion of
Canada, 31 Mar.-9 May 1903, 1.
87. Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie, A Musician's Narrative (London 1927)
209. The Festival of English Cathedral Music was held in numerous cities and
towns across the country and was conducted by the Westminster Abbey organist
Sir Frederick Bridge, who formed and trained a choir which then gave musical
examples of English cathedral music to accompany his lecture on the same sub-
ject.
88. Helmut Kallmann et al. (eds.), Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (Toronto
1981) 844.
89. Ibid., 149.
90. Ernest MacMillan, 'Problems of Music in Canada,' in Bertram Brooker (ed.),
Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1936 (Toronto 1936) 199.
91. CCA, University of Saskatchewan Papers, 'University of Saskatchewan:
Carnegie Chair of Music, Report and Financial Statement Re Carnegie Grant
Dated October 19th 1933,' 4 [report most probably made by Arthur
Collingwoodl; NLC, Ernest MacMillan Papers, Box 8, MacMillan to Mrs. J.H.
Farmer, 21 Mar. 1939.
92. Stanley Bligh, 'Music Festivals in B.C.,' Curtain Call 7, no. 6 (Mar. 1936) 13;
MacMillan, 'Music in Canada,' 199.
93. MacMillan, 'Music in Canada,' 190.
94. NLC, Ernest MacMillan Papers, Box 3, 'Radio Talk, Calgary Festival 8 May
1935,' [typescript] 1.
95. NAC, Grey of Howick Papers, MG 27, II B2, vol. 12, Grey to Lewis V.
Harcourt, Colonial Office, 2 May 1911.
96. Ibid., The Earl Grey Musical and Dramatic Trophy September 1906-April
1911, 55.
97. Betty Lee, Love and Whiskey: The Story of the Dominion Drama Festival
(Toronto 1973) 88.
98. 'The Front Page,' Saturday Night 51, no. 22 (4 April 1936) 3.
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 5 9
99. NAC, Grey of Howick Papers, MG 27, II B2, vol. 12, Grey to Lewis V.
Harcourt, 20 April 1911.
100. MacMillan, 'Radio Talk,' Calgary Festival 8 May 1935, 1.
101. NAC, Govenor General's Office Papers, RG 7, G 26, F.H. Coleman to A.S.
Redfem, 7 Jan. 1938.
102. CPRCA, E.W. Beatty quoted in John Murray Gibbon, 'The Autobiography of
John Murray Gibbon' [typescript, n.d.] 49.
103. PARC, Department of Education Papers, Box 25, L. Bullock-Webster,
'Vancouver Folk Festival' [typescript of a speech], 30 Oct. 1937.
104. For a good example of the diversity of funding see the 'Cash Book' of the
Lethbridge Music Festival (1921-1939), in PAA, Lethbridge Music Festival
Papers.
105. VGA, Phoebe Smith Papers, 'Drama Festival in the Peace River' [typescript,
1930s] 2, 3, 6.
106. Dean J. Matheson, 'Extra-Mural Work in Canadian Universities,' in Twelfth
National Congress of Canadian Universities (Montreal 1928) 71.
107. Rod J. MacLennan, Joan Gregson Evans and William S. Shaw, Royal
Commission on Post-Secondary Education (Halifax 1985) 225.
108. TFRBL, Edmund Walker Papers, Box 6, Rev. Dr. Madden to Walker, 4 Nov.
1904.
109. UAA, Department of Extension Papers, Director's Rles [no title, no author, no
date, typescript].
110. MacLennan et a/., Royal Commission on Post-Secondary Education (Halifax
1985) 229.
111. CCA, Acadia University Papers, F.W. Patterson to F.P. Keppel, 27 Dec. 1935.
112. E.A. Corbett, We Have with Us Tonight (Toronto 1957) 110.
113. Falconer's speech to the Canadian Association for Adult Education meeting in
Toronto, 23-24 Nov. 1936, as quoted in Annual Report of the Department of
Education New Brunswick 1936 (Fredericton 1937) 331.
114. RFA, Outside Activities-Organizations, Radio Broadcasts File, Walter Abell,
'Radio Talk Given from Station CKIC at Wolfville, Nova Scotia, February
1935,' entitled "The Fine Arts and Good Citizenship,' 1-4.
115. PABC, Department of Education Papers, Box 12, [L. Bullock-Webster], 'Notes
for an Address on Adult Education in British Columbia' [1936] 2-3.
116. QUA, Frances K. Smith Papers, Allan Harriison to Smith, 18 Feb. 1975. The
Atelier's association with McGill University lasted only one year. According to its
chairperson, Hazen Sise, it was accused of being 'a suspicious and probably sub-
versive organization of which McGill had better beware.' See Hazen Sise, 'The
Thirties: A Very Personal Memoir,' in Victor Hoar (ed.), The Great Depression
(Toronto 1969) 193.
117. Herman Voaden (ed.), Six Canadian Plays (Toronto 1930) viii.
118. Moira Day and Marilyn Potts, 'Elizabeth Sterling Haynes: Initiator of Alberta
Theatre,' Theatre History in Canada 8, no. 1 (Spring 1987) 8-35.
A60                                                            CANADIAN MUSIC:ISSUESOF HECEMONY AND IDETITY 
Anonymous. 1916. Annual Report of the Superintendent of Education of Nova
Scotia, Province of Nova Scotia, for the Year Ending 31 July 1915.
Halifax: Government of Nova Scotia.
Anonymous. 1900. "An Art Museum," Mail and Empire, 10 February: 3:4.
Anonymous. 1936. "The Front Page," Saturday Night. 51/22: 3.
Anonymous. 1933. [no title] Student's Bu//etin. [Regina] 1/3: 1.
Anonymous. 1933. "The Truth About Music in Canada," Musical Times. 74/1087:
846-47.
Anderson, Bruce A. 1933. "Education, Beauty and Culture," Musical Life. 1/3: 4.
Axelrod, Paul. 1985. "Class, Culture, and Canadian Youth: Student Life at Dalhousie
University in the 1930's." Canadian Historical Review Papers. 27,
Montreal.
Baker, Marilyn. 1984. The Winnipeg School of Art: The Early Years. Winnipeg:
University of Manitoba Press.
Bainton, Edgar L. 1931. "A Tour through the Dominions of Canada and Australia,"
Musical Times. [London] 72/1057 (March 1): 219-21.
Beckles, Willson. 1914. "Canada's Undeveloped Literary Resources," In Addresses
Delivered before the Canadian Club of Montreal 1913-1914. Montreal:
n.p.
Bishop, Peter Frederick. 1979. "Canadian Music Criticism from 1918 to 1939 As
Shown in the Toronto Star and Saturday Night," M.A. Thesis, University of
Victoria.
Bligh, Stanley. 1936. "Music Festivals in British Columbia," Curtain Call. 7/6: 13.
Bourinot, John George. 1973. Our Intellectual Strength and Weakness. Reprint of
the 1893 edition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Brigden, F.H. 1927. "Fine and Graphic Arts at the Canadian National Exhibition,"
R.A.I.C. Journal. (Royal Architectural Institute of Canada) October: 369-75.
Brooker, Bertram. 1936. Think of the Earth. Toronto: Thames Nelson and Sons.
Brooker, Bertram, ed. 1929. Yearbook of the Arts in Canada 1928-29. Toronto:
Macmillan.
Browne, T.A. 1919. "The National Literary Competition," Canadian Magazine.
53/5: 364-67.
Bruce, Herbert A. 1934. Our Heritage and Other Addresses. Toronto: Macmillan.
Callaghan, Morley. 1972. It's Never Over. Toronto: Macmillan.
Chalmers, Floyd S. 1983. Both Sides of the Street: One Man's Life in the Business
and the Arts in Canada. Toronto: Macmillan.
Colling, T.E. 1902. "The Ministry of Music," Methodist Magazine and Review. 55/2:
139-45.
REFERENCES
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 61
Corbett, E.A. 1957. We Have with Us Tonight. Toronto: Ryerson Press.
Day, Moira, and Marilyn Potts. 1987. "Elizabeth Sterling Haynes: Initiator of Alberta
Theatre," Theatre History in Canada. 8/1: 8-35.
Deacon, William Arthur, and Wilfred Reeves, eds. 1931. Open House. Ottawa:
Graphic Publishers Ltd.
Duffy, Helen, and Frances K. Smith. 1982. The Brave New World of Fritz
Brandtner. Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Gallery.
Ford, Clifford. 1982. Canada's Music: An Historical Survey. Agincourt, ON: GLC
Publishers.
Forster, J. W. L. 1898. "Art and Artists in Ontario." In J. Castell Hopkins, (ed.),
Canada: An Encyclopedia of the Country. Toronto: The Linscott Publishing
Company, Vol. 4, pp. 347-52.
Forster, J. W. L. 1928. Under the Studio Light: Leaves from a Portrait Painter's
Sketch Book. Toronto: Macmillan.
Frost, Stanley Brice. 1984. McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning.
Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press .
Gibbon, John Murray. 1922. Pagan Love. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Gordon, Charles [pseud. Ralph Connor]. 1899. The Sky Pilot. Toronto: Westminster.
Gray, Margaret, et a/., eds. 1977. Carl Schaefer. Agincourt, ON: Gage.
Hall, Alfred, ed. 1917. Empire Club of Canada. Toronto: T.H. Best.
Hardy, Edmund. 1907. "The Soloist in the Church," Musical Canada. 2/5 (Sept.):
214-15.
Harris, Charles A.E. 1903. "Introduction," First Cycle of Music Festivals of the
Dominion of Canada, n.p.
Hoar, Victor, ed. 1969. The Great Depression. Vancouver: Copp Clark.
Hoare, John Edward. 1911. "Plea for a Canadian Theatre," University Magazine
(Montreal). 10/2: 239-53.
Howard, R.V. 1932. "Earth Song." Saturday Night 48/8: 6.
Johnson, Edward. 1933. "The Singer and His Audience." In Singing.- the Well-Spring
of Music, a series of radio talks sponsored by the American Academy of
Teachers of Singing. New York: New York, pp. 35-42.
Jory, Lilian. 1900. "Some Canadian Poets," Canadian Methodist Magazine. 51/5:
421-27.
Kallmann, Helmut, et a/., eds. 1981. Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Kallmann, Helmut. 1969. "Music Composition in Canada, from 1867," Musicanada.
20: 5-9, 14-16.
Kelly, Gemey. 1983. Arthur Lismer: Noua Scotia, 1916-1919. Halifax: Dalhousie
Art Gallery.
Kirkconnell, Watson, and A.S.P. Woodhouse. 1947. The Humanities in Canada.
Ottawa: Humanities Research Council of Canada.
62 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Lee, Betty. 1973. Love and Whisky: the Story of the Dominion Drama Festival.
Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Lismer, Arthur. 1928. "The Value, Meaning and Place of Art in Education."
Dalhousie Review. 8: 378-89.
Mackenzie, Sir Alexander Campbell. 1827. A Musician's Narrative. London: Cassell.
MacLennan, Rod. J., et al. 1985. Royal Commission on Post-Secondary Education.
Halifax: The Commission.
MacMillan, Ernest. 1939. "Canadian Musical Life," Canadian Geographical Journal.
19/6: 336-39.
MacMillan, Ernest. 1936. "Music in Canada," Calendar of the Royal College of
Organists 1935-36. London: Royal College of Organists, p. 181.
MacMillan, Ernest. 1927. "The Place of Music in a University Curriculum." In
Eleventh National Conference of Canadian Universities. London, ON.
MacMillan, Ernest. 1936. "Problems of Music in Canada." In B. Brooker, (ed.),
Yearbook of the Arts in Canada, Vol. 2. Toronto: Macmillan.
Macphail, Sir Andrew. 1935. "Our Canadian Speech," Saturday Night. 50/34 (June
29): 24-27.
Matheson, Dean J. 1928. "Extra-Mural Work in Canadian Universities." In Twelfth
National Congress of Canadian Universities. Montreal: p. 71.
Patton, G.E. 1932. "Drama in the Community," Echoes. 129: 15.
Radford, J.A. 1907. "Canadian Art and Its Critics," Canadian Magazine. 29/6: 517-
18.
Raff, Mrs. Scott. 1909. "Margaret Eaton School of Literature and Expression,"
Musical Canada. 4/8 (December): 240-41.
Reid, John G. 1984. Mount A//ison Uniuersity: A History to 1963. 2 Volumes.
Toronto: published for Mount Allison University by the University of Toronto
Press.
Scott, R.B. 1966. "A Study of Amateur Theatre in Toronto, 1900-1930." M.A.
Thesis, University of Western Ontario.
Sherwood, W.A. 1894. "A National Spirit in Art," Canadian Magazine. 3/6: 498-50.
Smith, A.J.M. 1928. "Wanted—Canadian Criticism," Canadian Forum. 8/91: 600-
01.
Stanley, John Edgcumbe. 1914. "To Foster Canadian Art," Mac/eon's Magazine.
27/9 (July): 17-18, 113.
Stephan, A.M. 1936. "Canadian Poets and Critics," New Frontier. 1/5: 20-23.
Stewart, Reginald. 1935. "Good Music Made Popular," in Empire Club of Canada,
Addresses Delivered to the Members during the Year 1934-1935.
Toronto: T.H. Best.
Thomas, Clara, and John Lennox. 1982. Wi//iam Arthur Deacon: A Canadian
Literary Life. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Tippett, Maria, and Douglas Cole, eds. 1982. Phillips in Print: The Selected
AN IDENTITY OF TASTES AND ASPIRATIONS 6 5
Writings of Walter J. Phillips on Canadian Nature and Art. Winnipeg:
Manitoba Record Society.
Vancouver Board of School Trustees. 1925. Twenty-Third Annual Report for the
Year Ending December 31 1925. Vancouver: Vancouver School Board.
Voaden, Herman, ed. 1930. Six Canadian Plays. Toronto: C. Clark Co.
Vogt, A.S. 1902. "Piano Study at Home and Abroad." Conservatory Bi-Monthly.
1/1: 10.
Wagner, Anton. 1985. "Herman Voaden's 'New Religion'." Theatre History in
Canada. 6/2: 187-201.
Wainwright, J.A. 1978. "Motives for Metaphor: Art and the Artist in Seven Canadian
Novels." Dissertation, Dalhousie University.
Walter, Arnold, ed. 1969. Aspects of Music in Canada. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Williams, Raymond. 1973. "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory." New
Left Review. 82: 3-16.
Woodsworth, J.S. 1911. My Neighbor. Toronto: The Missionary Society of the
Methodist Church.
ARCHIVAL SOURCES
Archives of Ontario:
"To the Members of the Art Committee," January, 1902
"Two Systems to Be Submitted to the Consideration of the Federal Government.
Preliminary Suggestions Scholarship System"
"Canadian National Art Institute"
CCA:
Acadia University Papers
University of Saskatchewan Papers
University of Toronto Papers
Candian Pacific Railway Company Archives:
John Murray Gibbon, "The Autobiography of John Murray Gibbon" (typescript,
n.d.)
National Archives of Canada:
E.A. Weir Papers
Eric Brown Papers
Governor General's Office Papers
Grey of Howick Papers
64 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
National Council of Education Papers
National Council of Women Papers
Yvonne MacKague Housser Papers
National Library of Canada:
Arthur Lismer Papers
Charles A.E. Harriss Papers
Ernest MacMillan Papers
George Brewer Papers
Public Archives of Alberta:
Lethbridge Music Festival Papers
Public Archives of British Columbia:
Department of Education Papers
Provincial Arts and Industrial Institute Papers
Public Archives of Prince Edward Island:
Harris Family Papers
Queen's University Archives:
Frances K. Smith Papers
Lome Pierce Papers
RFA:
Outside Activates—Organizations, Radio Broadcasts File
Saskatchewan Archive Board:
Eddie Mather Papers
Florrie Elvin Papers
TFRBL:
Edmund Walker Papers
University of Alberta Archive:
Department of Extension Papers
University of Regina Archives:
Regina Conservatory of Music Papers
VCA:
Phoebe Smith Papers
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN
THE HISTORY OF MUSICAL LIFE
IN QUEBEC
MARIE'THERESE LEFEBVRE
(TRANSITED BY BEVERLEY DIAMOND)
To attempt to present a synthesis of the role that the Church has played
in the history of music in Quebec since its origins might seem to be a reckless
enterprise if one considers that research on our musical patrimony is quite
recent.
However, because music has made an entrance into this Association of
Canadian Studies today, it would seem to be important to make an overview
of research in this domain and to present some of the work accomplished by
musicologists and historians, several of whom are members of the Association
for the Advancement of Research on Music of Quebec (ARMuQ.).
1
 We will,
therefore, present a picture of the situation of liturgical and religious music in
Europe at the moment of New France's founding, and we will unfold in three
stages, corresponding to broad historical periods, the position of the Church
with regard to the education and training of musicians, its decrees concerning
the interpretation of church music, and the religious repertoire that was
encouraged.
Anyone who is either closely or distantly interested in the history of music
will certify the primordial role that the Church has played in the development
of western music, the origins of which stem from the first Christian chants.
Gregorian chant, the official music of the Catholic liturgy is characterized
as follows: it is sung in unison, its word rhythm is free, inforcing the accents of
the Latin language, and its melodic structure reflects the defunct scales of the
ancient modes. This chant was transmitted orally up to the Carolingian era,
the period when it was first notated; it was then named 'Gregorian chant' after
St. Gregory the Great. It is the basis of polyphonic development in the Middle
Ages.
66 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Music then became more complex, voices were superimposed, the rhythm
became more measured, and the vernacular began to infiltrate in the 13th
century, in the polyphony of the Ars Antiqua. We witness later the flowering
of the great contrapuntal works of the Renaissance, works in which human
and secular elements are increasingly affirmed so that one can no longer trace
a definite boundary between religious and secular elements in church music.
Added to the many other reasons invoked by Luther and followed by
other reformers in order to separate from the Catholic church, this intrusion
of the secular into church music is the basis of decisions taken following the
Council of Trent concerning liturgical chant and sacred music. As several his-
torians have outlined, the history of the foundation of New France is intimately
linked to the grand religious debate of the Reformation and Counter-
Reformation and to its political consequences. Let us recall that the year 1534
witnessed the discovery of Canada by Jacques Cartier, Luther's publication of
the Bible in German, Calvin's flight into Switzerland, the founding of the
Company of Jesus by Ignace de Loyola and of the religious community known
as the Ursulines by Angele Merici. In light of these coincidences and before
coming to the heart of the matter, we present briefly the musical entreaties
argued by Luther and by the Council of Trent and the decisions which defined
the aesthetic orientation of each.
The biggest reproach that Luther addressed to the music of the Catholic
church was aimed at its inaccessibility, and the learned and complex character
of compositions. Suppressing the hierarchies between clergy and worshippers,
he preached a ceremony where the faithful could participate, where they could
understand the Biblical text and could use their vernacular language. He urged
composers to write simple music so that the faithful could sing not only in the
liturgical context but also within their families; thus the Kirchenlied, German
religious songs used later by the Jesuits in their system of popular religious
education, were developed. The objective being to facilitate the memorization
of texts, music became a means by which religious messages were propagat-
ed. A functional music, therefore, encouraged by obligatory music education
for all facilitated the development of choirs, amateur musicians and musical
clubs which became very popular in England in the next century.
On the other hand, the Council of Trent sought to cleanse liturgical chant
of all secular and popular elements in order to regain the primitive purity of
Gregorian chant. Regarding this chant as a means of reflection and communi-
cation with God, it remained priestly, sacred and only trained voices could
interpret it. It is this which led the Council in its pronouncement on music edu-
cation in 1563 to ordain the formation of a musical elite in the colleges and
seminaries controlled by the clergy. Only Latin, the language of the Church
and the learned, was authorized in services. "In the mass," said the Council,
"there are things which must remain hidden from the people and to that end,
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE HISTORY OF MUSICAL LIFE IN QUEBEC 67
we command that the original language be retained."
2
But, if the Council set forth strong positions on the return to Gregorian
chant, the hierarchy of church musicians, and the utilization of Latin, it
remained silent about which kind of appropriate religious composition could
be presented in the church; it delegated to the committee of cardinals and
bishops the power to rule on musical questions and to take a position on
aesthetics.
The God that the Church of the baroque period introduces is no suffering
and mysterious God of the Middle Ages but a powerful, vibrant, glorious, and
magnificent God. The religious compositions of this period convey these quali-
ties through the solemn, majestic character of both vocal and instrumental
music and through the search for a bolder musical language. The tendencies
between the stile antico in a capella music and the stile moderno defended
by contemporaneous theoreticians who opened the pathway to modem har-
mony (the change from ancient modes to major and minor) reverberated in
religious music. One can observe, consequently, that certain episcopal com-
mittees adopted positions on music writing: the fugal style, for example, was
frowned upon because it masked the intelligibility of the text. Hence, if the
music of Palestrina (1525-1594) is characterized by a search for equilibrium
between the two tendencies, in France musicians displayed some opposition
to the Council's directives; several composers of the 17th and 18th centuries
published new religious works, set in the modern style of the period; we wit-
ness the development of large-scale religious works at the Versailles school,
while the Jesuits encouraged pious songs in the French language (cantiques
spirituels) in reaction to the huge wave of Huguenot psalms.
It is this repertoire and this musical culture which was brought to New
France in the 17th century and developed there in the 18th. Thanks to the
research completed by Louise Courville, Andree Desautels, Elizabeth Gallat-
Morin, Charlotte Leclerc-Bonenfant and Eric Schwandt, we know now that
this music from the School of Versailles reverberated within the churches of
New France. In our archives, these scholars have discovered works by French
composers such as Nicolas Bemier (1664-1734), Marc Antoine Charpentier
(1635-1704), Andre Campra (1660-1714) Henri Du Mont (1610-1684),
Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre (1659-1729), Nicolas Lebegue (1630-1702),
Louis Marchand (1669-1732), Jean-Baptiste Morin (1677-1745), Guillaume-
Gabriel Nivers (1632-1714) as well as repertoires of cantiques composed on
French opera airs and composition treatises by Nivers and Rameau.
The existence of this repertoire in New France, therefore, bears witness to
the beginnings of our musical life in which the Church participated mainly in
education. The first schools, founded by the Jesuits, included the teaching of
Gregorian chant and musical notation within their curriculum. It was the same
among the Ursulines where there is documentation that Mother St. Joseph
68 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
taught religious chants with the accompaniment of a viol. It is also known that,
in the Messe de Minuit of 1645, Martin Boutet, the first lay professor at the
Jesuit seminary and founder of the first choir, accompanied religious chants
on the violin.
There has been lengthy criticism about the role that Bishop Laval played
in the musical life of New France. After bringing an organ from Paris in 1663,
he instituted Gregorian chant as a subject in the curriculum for the training of
clergy; he defined the role of music in the Church and established the service
of the Holy Family (la Sainte-Famille) in 1684. Furthermore, we believe that
Charles Amador Martin, the second Canadian priest, was the composer of a
Mass that Bishop Laval had commissioned for the occasion. He has, however,
been more severely criticized for his attitudes toward women, as indicated in a
letter from Marie de 1'Incamation complaining that Bishop Laval prohibited
the Ursulines from singing in the church. An inventory of a repertoire of
approximately 120 motets written between 1675 and 1740, compiled by E.
Schwandt from the archives of the Ursulines, permits us to declare that music
was very vital among the religious communities of this era, as illustrated by this
Ave uirgo, a little motet in two voices, found in the archives, interpreted by
the Nouvelle France ensemble (SISCOM-SC08211).
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Montreal parish purchased its
first organ at the initiative of the Sulpicians. A young Sulpician cleric, Jean
Girard, originally a schoolmaster and organist from Bourges, arrived in New
France in 1724, carrying under his arm the Treatise on composition, and the
first Livre d'orgue of Nivers (organist and choirmaster of the school of
Mademoiselle Maintenon at St. Cyr)—an anthology of more than 400 pieces,
now called Le Hvre d'orgue de Montreal.
The author of this discovery, Madame Elizabeth Gallat-Morin, has identi-
fied some of the pieces as being written by Nicolas Lebegue, a French com-
poser whose organ works borrowed several formal elements from secular
music and were inspired by the theatrical music of Lully. Thus the liturgical
spirit evolved more and more toward a more 'mundane' ambience.
3
In 1760, France, exhausted by religious wars and political struggle, ceded
"quelques arpents de neige" (some acres of snow—a well known arrogant sen-
tence of Voltaire describing the loss of this territory) to England; the Company
of Jesuits was suppressed and the cultural exchanges with France were inter-
rupted, at least until 1855, the year of the reopening of the diplomatic rela-
tions with the return of the sailing slip La Capricieuse. However, during this
period, the music of the Church evolved in parallel with the romantic move-
ment of the 19th century. Borrowing more and more theatrical elements from
opera—the glistening and dissonant harmonies of secular music—churches
rapidly became concert spaces where, in the guise of religious inspiration,
organists and choirmasters transformed the organ into a veritable orchestral
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE HISTORY OF MUSICAL LIFE IN QUEBEC 69
instrument.
It is in this context that Jean-Chrysostome Brauneiss II (1814-1871) pre-
sented in 1835 in Montreal a Mass with organ, violin, viola, flute and bassoon
and, via an announcement in La Minerve, in November 1842, invited women
and men to take a course in vocal music, aiming toward the interpretation of
sacred music. A critique of the period commented on the initiative of the com-
poser thus:
We are grateful to Monsieur Brauneiss for his efforts in introducing modem
music to our churches. Gregorian chant undoubtedly has something divine
but our great composers have made great works otherwise. What could be
more beautiful than Mozart's Requiem and all the religious music of
Beethoven!
During the ensuing months, however, the director of the Seminaire St.
Sulpice prohibited a concert of works by Haydn in the Church because there
were women in the choir, a decision contested by a critic in La Minerve, who
stated on December 12, 1842 that this same Superieur had approved two
opera directors and a celebrated pantomimist in a performance of a sung
mass.
It is true that the romantic spirit increasingly displeased the clergy who
envisaged that the souls of the faithful were in peril because of these musical
extravagances, "where the text of the mass," said Norbert Dufourq, "is
increasingly treated like an opera libretto."
4
 But it is by means of a musicologi-
cal change of direction that the purification of Gregorian chant was brought
about; stripped of accompaniments coloured by tonal harmony, it recovered
its sinuous melodic line, its free rhythm, its modal structure and, consequently,
its sacred character within the Catholic liturgy. An interesting fact to note but
one which it is impossible to elaborate in this study, this rediscovery of the
ancient modes or modal music is also connected to the emancipation of the
tonal system and the new adventure of French music in the 20th century from
Debussy to Messiaen.
But let us return to the musicological detour. Louis Niedermeyer, a French
composer of Swiss origin, founded a school which bears his name in 1853 in
Paris. Fascinated by the religious music of the Renaissance and drawn by the
Catholic liturgy, he took on the task of restoring Gregorian chant. Supported
by the Archbishop of Paris, he organized a program of study and published, in
1856, in collaboration with Joseph d'Ortigue, Traite theorique et pratique
d'accompagnement du plain chant. This historical study was pursued in par-
allel by the Solesmes school who revised the Gregorian chant by studying the
original sources. Dom Mocquereau proposed a new interpretation of neumatic
70 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
notation, the Motu Proprio of 1903, pronounced by Pius X, rested its deci-
sions with regard to liturgical chant on those musicological studies.
Research on Gregorian chant was also the basis of great debates about
accompaniment, modal or tonal, ancient or modem, and later on the musical
language permissible in church. One of these debates took place in Quebec in
the middle of the 19th century.
Father Pierre-Minier Lagace (1830-1884), vicar of the basilica of Quebec,
had studied the theories of Niedermeyer during a sojourn in Paris; there, in
1860, he published Les chants d'Eglise, harmonises pour I'orgue suivant
les principes de la tonalite gregorienne, a work which Ernest Gagnon
praised in his journals.
However, Antoine Dessane, a composer trained by the illustrious
Cherubini and organist at the Quebec basilica from 1848 on, came to the
defence of modem harmony in religious music and engaged in a debate with
Ernest Gagnon, a debate which ended with the dismissal of the composer.
Dessane, whose archives were recently deposited in the library of the
Universite Laval, wrote several masses. Diane Cloutier transcribed the Mass in
Eb Major which was recorded April 12, 1992, in the small Quebec Seminary
and in which one can observe stylistic borrowing from opera and modern
harmonies.
Between 1867 and 1914, Canada underwent important social and politi-
cal changes: the newly confederated country entered the industrial era in
which commercial and cultural exchange multiplied with the United States and
with Europe. Theatre and opera troupes came frequently to Montreal to pre-
sent their shows and local troupes developed. The clergy were anxious about
the moral principles of the parishioners, about the female presence in the the-
atre, and about the invasion of secular music in the churches, as these procla-
mations by the Bishop of Montreal in 1878 show:
After June 1, 1879, it will no longer be permissible for women to sing in
Church.... However, we do permit women to sing, but alone, in the privacy
which is given to them.
And in 1881, he added:
Unfortunately, it happens that, either by inattention, negligence or culpable
connivance on the part of those who have power over them, some organists
are not afraid to present waltzes, polkas or other pieces taken from popular
operas.... If an organist does not know to choose and perform music with the
solemnity and respect owed to the sacred rites, I order him to close the organ.
From 1892 on up to 1903, these proclamations became more and more
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE HISTORY OF MUSICAL LIFE IN QUEBEC 71
numerous and severe:
The orchestra may not be admitted into the Church to accompany chant and
soloists on violin, clarinet etc. are absolutely forbidden in the holy
place.(1892)
The music of the Church must be serious, noble and pious: it must lead to
prayer and not to the reminiscence of opera or theatre airs.... (1896)
Let it be well known that choirs comprised of men and women are absolutely
forbidden and that women may never be admitted to become part of an
orchestra. (1896)
In spite of these clerical recommendations, however, Guillaume Couture,
composer and chapel master at the Montreal Cathedral (1851-1915) wrote a
Requiem Mass in 1900 for soloists, mixed choir, orchestra, and organ.
Furthermore, this situation was not unique to our country: similar abuses
were observable in Europe. As well, in 1903, Pius X promulgated the Motu
proprio by which he established a code for sacred music and affirmed the
position of the Church with regard to liturgical chant and religious music.
Proclaiming a return to the practice of traditional Gregorian chant, the
Pope deplored the abuses which had been introduced into sacred music; he
reiterated the supremacy of the Latin language in liturgy, affirmed that only
the organ and sometimes "within wise limits" some wind instruments were
permitted. He confirmed the necessity of supplying church singers, both
priests and laypersons who had, as he said, "a true liturgical calling.
Consequently, women being incapable of fulfilling such a mission, can not be
permitted to take part in the choir." He commanded the creation of a Schoh
Cantorum in the seminaries and parishes and the foundation of advanced
schools for sacred music.
Thus, at the very moment when musical language was undergoing pro-
found transformations in works by Debussy and Schoenberg, the Motu pro-
prio of 1903 set forth his position uis-a-uis modernism.
The Church has always recognized and countenanced progress in the arts
while permitting in the service of worship all that talent can find of the good
and the beautiful in the course of the centuries, the liturgical orders remaining
intact. Modem music is thus accepted in the Church for it offers some com-
positions which, by their beauty, dignity, and seriousness, are in no way
barred from liturgical functions.
At the same time, because modem music is especially destined for secular
usage, it is necessary to take precautions that musical compositions in the
modem style, authorized in the churches, contain nothing secular, no sugges-
tion of motifs developed in the theatre, or modelled, even in their exterior
forms, on the spirit (mouvement) of secular pieces.
These ideas were repeated in pastoral letters from the Bishops of
72 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Montreal where, however, secular music and the modem spirit were confused;
conservatism continued to manifest itself in music education, and up to 1950
we witnessed a profusion of religious compositions including many masses.
The founding of the Schoh Cantorum in 1915, created on the model of the
one in Paris, supported by Bishop Gauthier and affiliated for some time with
the University of Montreal, favoured the emergence of a traditional religious
repertoire.
The Divini Cultus of Pius XI in 1928 presented directives which again
approximated those of Pius X but we can notice a certain difference vis-a-vis
modem music:
It is necessary to avoid the mixture of sacred and secular through the fault of
certain organists too indulgent toward productions of ultra-modem music....
We would not but complain about attempts made today to introduce a secular
spirit into the Church thanks to completely modem forms of music.... If this
genre of music begins to be introduced, the Church must condemn it
absolutely.
But what were the attempts at modernism in religious music to which
Pope Pius XI was referring? Without being able to reply precisely to this ques-
tion, we know that Olivier Messiaen, then a young French composer who
defined himself as a musicien theologique and who had a marked influence
on the evolution of music in the 20th century, was an organist and, every
Sunday at the Church of the Ste. Trinite in Paris, he presented very personal
improvisations, improvisations which he synthesized in the Messe de la
Pentecote in 1950 and in the Livre d'Orgue of 1951.
Underlying Messiaen's music is a spiritual and religious dimension which
cannot be ignored: it is a music which evokes the mysteries of Glory and of
Joy: the composer is inspired by a glorious God. Thus, in his Trois petites
Liturgies, a work which caused a scandal in 1945 because of its modem writ-
ing and religious inspiration, Messiaen glorified the divine force and perma-
nence of the Church, the Creation and Eternity, drawing his inspiration from
Biblical texts which served as a point of reference. In order to explain his aes-
thetic stance, he commented on a text by Thomas d' Aquinas: "Music leads us
to God, through the absence of truth, up until the day when he himself daz-
zles us by an excess of truth. This is perhaps the signifying and directional
import of music."
5
The final, jubilatory stretto of the second movement of Messiaen's Trois
petites Liturgies, entitled "Sequence du Verbe" (God reveals himself to us), is
an example of the religious positions of the composer and his musical explo-
rations.
In 1947, the encyclical Mediator Dei of Pius XII seemed to give way to
Messiaen and presented a great opening of the spirit concerning changes in
music composition:
THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH IN THE HISTORY OF MUSICAL LIFE IN QUEBEC 75
It is extremely important to leave the field of art in our time free; thoughtful
about the respect owed to the churches and to the sacred rites, [art] places
itself in their service.
And in 1955, the encyclical Musicae sacrae disciplina added:
We should not altogether exclude modem music and song from the Catholic
religion. Rather, provided that it has nothing secular or unseemly, given the
holiness of place and of the sacred offices, and provided that it does not evi-
dence a search for bizarre and unusual effects, it is indispensable to permit its
entrance into our churches, for together, they can greatly contribute to the
magnificence of our ceremonies, as well as to the elevation of souls and to
true devotion.
In Quebec, however, resistance to modernism was still very strong: the
creation in 1950 of the Faculty of Music at the Universite de Montreal at
which the principal direction favoured the training of Church musicians and
the development of teaching of sacred art is an example of this.
But already some dissonant voices began to be heard; a number of our
young composers, confronted by post-war cultural stagnation, went to Paris to
study with Messiaen. Among them, Gilles Tremblay, one of the remarkable
Quebec composers of the young generation, was the most influenced by the
musical and spiritual thought of the French musician.
Much of Tremblay's work from the Cantique de durees (1960), Oral-
leluiants (1975), Fleuves (1976), Compostelle I (1978) to Dzei, uoies de feu
(1981), draws its spiritual substance from theological texts, and the composer
developed his own language as a result of reflection on the structure of
Gregorian chant. Evidence of this is the long melisma constructed on the word
Alleluia that may be heard in OraHeluiants, a word constructed in the form
of a trope (alleluia interpenetrated with o rants), the text of which comes from
the first alleluia of the Mass of Pentecost.
It is with this spiritual music that we conclude this survey of the important
role that the Church has played in the musical evolution of Quebec. We might
say, in passing, that the decisions taken in 1964 following Vatican n regarding
liturgical and religious music have definitely put on the brakes in the produc-
tion of original religious works capable of interpretation in churches. These
decisions in the name of liturgical renewal, left to local authorities the power
to choose the modalities of applying the new liturgy.
The Church, which had encouraged musicians to put their talent and
sometimes their genius in its service, extolled from now on a simple, accessi-
ble, and facile music in the language of the people and promoted the partici-
pation of the faithful. It represented a strange return to the very Lutheran
ideas against which the Council of Trent had fought, and it gave reign, in
Quebec, to a multitude of popular airs. The influence of the Jesuit J. Gelineau
74 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
on the decisions of the Council regarding the style of Church chant perhaps
underlies the desertion of contemporary composers and the disappearance of
Gregorian chant and polyphonic repertory. Said Galineau in 1962:
In principle, the Church takes no part in technique and it leaves the field free
to artists.... However, the evolution of musical language and its technical con-
quests often provoke a shock and surprise.... Now, the liturgy can neither
deliver its field of experience to serve technique nor accept a disconcerting
and hermetic art.... Since religion must assist the faithful to enter into the
mystery by means of palpable signs, all evidence suggests that these signs
must be accessible to them.... It is, thus contradictory in religion to call upon
forms of art which disconcert the assembly of the faithful.... That is why the
Church refuses in its liturgy novelty which astonishes....^
This spiritual and sacred dimension of music which, according to the
Church Fathers, favoured reflection and communication with the Divine Spirit,
resides today in certain works which henceforth remain outside of places
reserved for worship. As Gilles Tremblay emphasized in 1974 in an interview
on the future of liturgical music: "human works are like participating in the
Creation. It is for that reason that one can say all creation is sacred: they
come from the same spirit.... Faced with the contemporary situation...I
believe that spiritual utterance...expresses itself in all sorts of unheeded ways
and, moreover, part of this expression finds itself misplaced. I believe that it
will return to the Church for the greater good and for the Christian communi-
ty."
7
This chapter is taken from pages 274-286 of Canadian Issues 7. Copyright © 1985 The Association for Canadian Studies.
Reprinted by permission of The Association for Canadian Studies.
ENDNOTES
1. Association pour 1'avancement de la recherche en musique du Quebec
(Association for the adcancement of research on music of Quebec).
2. Weber, Edith. 1982. Le Concile de Trente et la musique, Paris, Honore
Champion, p. 168.
3. Several works from the Livre d'orgue de Montreal were performed by Kenneth
Gilbert at a concert given in 1981 on the occasion of the inauguration of an
organ of the 18th-century French type, constructed in Redpath Hall of McGill
University where, in addition, a series of radio broadcasts was produced by
Radio-Canada in September and October 1983.
4. Rolland-Manuel, dir. 1963. Histoire de la Musique, Encyclopedie de la Pleiade,
tome n, N.R./F., p. 844.
5. Halbreich, Harry. 1980. Olivier Messiaen, Fayard, Paris, p. 59.
6. Gelineau, J. 1962. Chant et musique dans le culte Chretien, Fleurus, Paris,
pp. 61-62.
7. Tremblay, G. 1974. "Le point de vue d'un compositeur." Vie Spirituelle, Paris,
Mars-Avril, pp. 234-245.
'MULTIETHNIC' DANCE
IN ONTARIO:
THE STRUGGLE
OVER HEGEMONY
NINA DE SHANE
In the spring of 1986,1 was commissioned by the Ontario Arts Council to
prepare a report that would provide an overview of the state of
"multicultural"
1
 dance in Ontario. This paper summarizes the results of the
ensuing study which, in the course of 18 months of research, brought me into
contact with several hundred multiethnic dance groups throughout the
province. The data collected regionally indicate certain patterns of cultural
oppression that can only be characterized as the ghettoization of non-Western
dance forms of all types, whether they are labelled classical, sacred, ritual or
folk. Although our research conservatively estimates that there are approxi-
mately 1,000 multiethnic performance ensembles in Ontario, these groups are
rarely seen beyond the boundaries of their specific ethnic communities and
almost never outside their regional locations in Ontario.
Before we proceed to an examination of the specific problems which con-
tribute to this ghettoization, as well as to national and provincial consultations
which have taken place subsequent to my research to address questions of
minority access and funding equity within mainstream cultural institutions, it is
necessary to clarify the concepts of culture, art and ethnicity. As they are cur-
rently understood among arts administrators in Canada, these concepts have
impacted negatively upon the multiethnic dance community in Ontario.
THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE
AND CANADIAN CULTURAL POLICIES
In the interests of developing Canadian cultural policies that are respon-
sive to the needs of our artistic communities, a definition of the term 'culture'
76 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
has necessarily evolved among policy makers. Within that definition, 'culture'
has come to mean 'high art' forms such as ballet, modern dance, opera,
orchestral music or literature. By extension, a cultured person is one who
attends the theatre, is 'well-read', 'well-travelled', knows which wine to drink
with dinner and generally has enough money to sustain this style of so-called
'gracious living'.
A more appropriate definition of 'culture' would be the anthropological
understanding of the term which refers to the customary ways of thinking and
behaving that are characteristic of a particular population or society.
2
 The cul-
ture of a social group, then, is composed of its language, general knowledge,
laws, religious beliefs, dances, music, work habits, food ways, folklore and so
on. By extension of this definition, there is no such thing as an 'un-cultured'
person owing to the fact that everyone is born and grows up within a context
of language, general knowledge, laws, etc.
The shaping of arts council policies by means of the first, rather than the
second, definition of culture has served to maintain an ethnocentric bias.
3
Although the rapidly changing demographic makeup of Canada now boasts a
population that is more than 30 percent non-European and although most
federal and provincial governments have fostered the teaching of multiple lan-
guages in the public school system,
4
 the criteria identified in the first definition
are undoubtedly indicative of an elitist view of culture, derivative, for the most
part, of upper-class, Western European behavioural ideals, performance pref-
erences and tastes in art consumption.
5
 The granting parameters based on
such criteria have successfully served the needs of the artistic constituency for
whom they have been designed but they continue to exclude most non-
Western classical, folk and other traditional performing arts. This is partially
attributable to the preoccupation these policies have with professionalism and
the way it tends to be equated, axiomatically, with excellence. 'Professional'
artists, schools and institutions are considered worthy of public funding while
others are excluded and are, by implication, unworthy of funding. This insinu-
ation was probably never intended and certainly has never been explicitly stat-
ed, but the result has, nevertheless, been discriminatory. Creative forms that
qualify for funding gain increased visibility and credibility; others are forced to
survive at the level of subculture, outside of the so-called artistic mainstream.
As the Canadian anthropologist Frank Manning has astutely observed, there is
a striking correspondence centred on the distribution of power within and out-
side the orbit of performance. "When those who control the performance/cel-
ebration complex are also those who dominate the social order, there is a ten-
dency to ritualize that dominance in order to sustain and legitimize it" (1983:
7).
'MULTIETHNIC' DANCE IN ONTARIO: THE STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY 77
THE CONCEPTS OF ETHNIC IDENTITY,
ETHNICITY AND EXPRESSIVE CULTURE
Ethnic identity is directly linked to our earliest patterns of socialization.
Through these experiences we develop cultural preferences based on a partic-
ular set of norms and traditions. We tend to value these life-ways more than
alternative possibilities which we can observe in other cultural groups. Ethnic
identity is, therefore, often closely aligned with patterns of social organization
and social stratification. Although changes in social status may alter the way in
which we choose to relate to our ethnic heritage, the reality of our original life
experiences within a given cultural milieu tends to remain highly significant.
Dance ethnologist Judith Lynne Hanna has observed that, as diverse cul-
tural groups move into contact with one another, a heightened sense of ethnic
identity frequently occurs (1987: 199-229). Furthermore, the external percep-
tion of the group is often categorized and labelled in a way that is not always
in agreement with the internal organization and perception of the group. A
good case in point is the Toronto Caribbean community which is perceived
externally as a unified whole. Internally, however, distinctions are maintained
among members who identify strongly with specific Caribbean nations.
Further separations occur linguistically among those who have English,
French, Spanish or Dutch as a mother tongue. Within this complex there are
additional racial, religious, class and educational distinctions which may or may
not be maintained at various times. For this reason, various ethnic and racial
alliances may be exercised at various points in time whenever advantageous
for individuals or groups. This community demonstrates that, in circumstances
of multicultural and intercultural contact, the expression of ethnic identity or
ethnicity becomes a delicate and deliberate matter of symbol selection, mainte-
nance, and manipulation. These symbols of representation are deeply
enmeshed in all aspects of expressive culture including dance and music.
Minority cultural groups
6
 may find it safest and most expedient to repre-
sent cultural ideals and values in sharply framed performance mediums. In
non-verbal performance settings, ideas become abstract metaphors which
serve as expressions of ethnicity, in and of themselves.
7
 Dance and music can
connect a particular group with precious traditions of their past while simulta-
neously recording processes of intercultural development or projecting images
of potential change. Performance events provide important opportunities for
communication across perceived cultural boundaries. In the process of such
boundary crossing, however, all performance forms are frequently employed
by various interest groups—ethnic, political, religious, etc.—both as devices to
promote cultural understanding and as forms of power brokerage.
78 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
THE RESEARCH PROJECT
As stated at the outset, I was commissioned in the spring of 1986, by
Susan Cohen (Dance Officer at the Ontario Arts Council) to prepare a report
that would provide the Council with an overview of the state of multicultural
dance in Ontario. I began my research with the following objectives:
(1) to identify the Ontario multiethnic dance community;
8
(2) to assess the artistic needs of the constituency;
(3) to review available funding;
(4) to report on general observations; and
(5) to develop a series of recommendations based on the above findings.
To fulfill these objectives, it was decided that we would:
(1) distribute questionnaires to all regional Folk Arts Councils and multi-
cultural associations affiliated with the Ontario Folk Arts Council;
9
(2) conduct interviews with the following funding agencies, institutions
and associations: the Ontario Arts Council; the Ontario Folk Arts
Council; regional affiliates of the OFAC to whom we sent question-
naires; multicultural festival organizers; individual dancers, choregra-
phers, and group directors; regional officers of the Federal Secretary
of State; and
(3) develop recommendations with a view to enhancing the quality of
multiethnic dance in Ontario.
We mailed out 600 questionnaires and received responses from all areas
of the province. Due to extenuating circumstances, our return rate was rather
low: 10-15 percent. These circumstances are, in themselves, useful data. In
general, regional Council offices are busy places, overworked and under-
staffed. Some offices exist on budgets so low that they cannot afford any sec-
retarial staff. In at least three such cases, questionnaires were never forwarded
to dance groups but were only available if group members dropped into the
regional office on other business. Several Council offices supplied us with a list
of ethnic communities sponsoring dance but did not indicate the actual num-
ber of dance ensembles in each association; cultural associations filled out only
one form, in some cases, although they might sponsor multiple groups. Not all
major dance groups in a city are registered with their regional Councils. From
time to time, disagreements with administrative policies or operating philoso-
phies result in a split within a performance group and only one faction is per-
mitted at the regional Council. Sometimes disagreements with the administra-
tive decisions of the regional Council have resulted in the withdrawal of a
'MULTIETHNIC DANCE IN ONTARIO: THE STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY 79
member group. We know of one important instance where an entire commu-
nity opted out of the OFAC although the region is active with two major festi-
vals each year. Some excellent dance groups have never been affiliated with
the Folk Arts Councils. Finally, one of the most important reasons for the low
response to these questionnaires is the general feeling of suspicion about gov-
ernment intentions and fear of how such information might eventually be
used. These suspicions are, partially, the result of extra-Canadian cultural
experiences.
Follow-up interviews were conducted with association directors, co-ordina-
tors, dancers, choreographers, and dance group leaders in 24 urban centres.
In-person interviews were conducted in Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo,
London, Oshawa, Ottawa, Rainy Lake, Thunder Bay, Toronto and Windsor.
Telephone interviews were conducted with individuals in Brantford, Brockville,
Cornwall, Guelph, Kingston, Oakville, Port Colborne, Quinte, St. Catharines,
Samia, Sault Ste. Marie, Sudbury, Timmins and Welland.
Meetings seemed to fall into a pattern. We were cordially, if somewhat
apprehensively, received. Group representatives then proceeded to voice their
complaints. This stage of the interviewing process revealed a tremendous
sense of resentment towards all levels of government and their funding agen-
cies over perceptions of perjorative attitudes. Group representatives then pre-
sented constructive suggestions about the best ways to assist them in keeping
their traditions alive.
SIZE AND STRUCTURE
OF MULTIETHNIC DANCE GROUPS
Multiethnic dance groups are viewed as important ways of retaining the
traditional ways and values of a community's cultural heritage. Many interview-
ees value dance as a way of teaching children self-discipline and respect for
tradition, factors which many immigrant parents find sadly lacking in the
Ontario school system. Performance opportunities are limited and mostly
restricted to occasions within the local community. Many groups perform once
or twice a year at a local (often multiethnic) festival where, due to time con-
straints, they may be permitted to show only one or two pieces of a full reper-
toire. A number of groups, however, have an international profile as described
below.
Groups range in size from very large, with 60 to 150 or more persons
involved in a single performance unit, to solo dances. Large groups such as
those in Croatian communities
10
 may include several generations in a single
performance ensemble. For middle-sized (12-60 members) and large groups,
80 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
choreography is set by resident teachers/choreographers. Ensembles increase
their repertoire by inviting guest choreographers from within their own cultural
networks.
Classes/rehearsals are usually held two or three times a week with an
acceleration of these activities as performance dates approach. Some groups
also send senior dancers and teachers to advanced courses and schools in their
homelands in order to broaden their performance knowledge. Eastern
European countries often permit gifted Canadian dancers to spend prolonged
periods of time working with some of their finest performance ensembles.
Many classical traditions, e.g., Balinese, Cambodian, Indian, Japanese,
Javanese, Laotian and Scottish Highland, depend almost entirely on the mem-
orization of a hierarchically arranged set of solo dances.
11
 Young children
move through an increasingly difficult syllabus of steps and performance
pieces. The most technically demanding dances are learned by the most
advanced and proficient performers who work toward regular public perfor-
mances and competitions. Many Canadian dancers who have virtually matured
as artists within these dance forms cherish a dream to perform, compete
and/or study in the countries from which their terpsichorean traditions
emanated.
Other processes of transmission complement dance classes/rehearsals.
Some groups—Ukrainians, for example—who have been effectively cut off
from their cultural roots for political reasons, have an effective underground
system of hot tapes. Regularly smuggled out of the Ukraine, these tapes are
widely circulated in order to keep dancers up-to-date with recent develop-
ments.
12
 With the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and its ban of televised
dance performance, a similar system of Oriental Baladi tapes is widely circu-
lated and sold in Middle Eastern communities throughout North America.
PROBLEMS OF SUPPORT IDENTIFIED
BY MULTIETHNIC DANCE GROUPS
COSTUME COSTS
For many multiethnic dancers, costumes represent a major capital expen-
diture. In some cases, expensive handiwork is a factor. For example, it can
take as long as a year to complete the hand embroidery on Croatian or
Hungarian hand-woven costumes. These costumes become family treasures,
lovingly passed on from older-to-younger siblings and, through the genera-
tions, from grandparent to grandchild.
In other cases, the materials required for costumes or accessories are
expensive. Accessories may include gold or coin necklaces, earrings, head-
'MULTIETHNIC' DANCE IN ONTARIO: THE STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY 8 1
dresses, footwear, stockings or special undergarments. Classical Asian, East
Asian and Southeast Asian dancers frequently require costumes made of costly
silk or hand-dyed batik fabric. In Thai traditional dance, the classical court
dancers wear gold crowns decorated with semi-precious jewels. Many
European dances require hand-made boots that range in price from $150-
$300. Furthermore, footwear, like other parts of costumes, are also region- or
village-specific; hence, a full performance representing a panorama of regional
traditions requires multiple sets of costumes and accessories, each set intimate-
ly connected with the movement vocabulary of the dances.
Groups unanimously requested financial assistance in this area, especially
strongly recommending the dropping of import taxes. While duty is not
presently levied on finished costumes, imported textiles, shoes, wigs, jewelry
and other accessories are taxed.
LACK OF ADEQUATE REHEARSAL SPACE
AND PRESTIGE PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITIES
The quest for adequate rehearsal space is a common problem for all
groups, regardless of size, unless their cultural organization is in possession of
a hall. For financially disadvantaged groups, this is obviously not an option.
The demand for adequate performance and rehearsal space is often a pri-
mary factor in motivating marginalized ethnic minorities to build their own cul-
tural facilities. It is frequently within these "clubs" that a subcultural network of
performances flourishes. Many cultural centres are fully booked every evening
and during the days on weekends just to meet the class and rehearsal require-
ments of their own performance groups.
Despite the fact that many multiethnic groups are frequently invited to
perform internationally,
13
 they express frustration over being denied access to
mainstream theatres which serve the "professional" community.
14
 Groups
resent that these mainstream theatres are supported through tax dollars and
yet large multicultural groups of 120 or more must finance their own perfor-
mance centres.
TOURING AND TRANSPORTATION COSTS
Many groups tour internationally although there are few opportunities for
groups to come together in Canada. A few examples among the Ontario
groups who reported international tours were "Vive la joie" (Welland) to
Switzerland, Paris, and Brittany; "Concordia" (Kitchener) to Germany and
Austria; "Schwaben" (Kitchener) to Germany and the U.S.; "Queen Helena"
(Kitchener) to Yugoslavia and the U.S, as well as Newfoundland; "Polish
Dancers" (Toronto) to Poland; "Bharata Natya" (Toronto) to India, the U.S.,
82 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HFCFMONY AND IDENTITY
and Hong Kong; "Kathak" (Toronto) to India, China, and Puerto Rico; and
the world champion "Irish Dancers" (London) to Ireland.
The groups complain that "When we travel abroad, we travel at our own
expense, *5 yet we travel as representatives of Ontario and Canada. We carry
the Canadian flag and never get a thank you or any other form of recognition
from our own governments in our own country."
Travel costs, even within Ontario, are a burden. To charter a bus from
Windsor to Toronto, for example, costs more than $1,000 (plus food, accom-
modation and travel insurance). As a result, groups must often refuse invita-
tions to perform because they cannot afford to travel.
PROBLEMS OF ACCESS TO FUNDING PROGRAMS
Lack of funding was a problem for most groups. My investigations indicat-
ed a series of problems of access. Within a single government agency, for
example, there were contradictory interpretations of the same stated criteria.
Most government authorities agree, however, that there is no funding available
for any aspect of multicultural performance. Within specific ethnocultural com-
munities, frequently no one knows where funding is available or how to apply
for it.
1
^ Matching grants offered by Wintario
17
 are considered to be unfair
because they do not cover all the costs of the group's activities. ^
PROBLEMS OF COST RECOVERY
Multiethnic dance groups are usually expected to perform free of charge
at community festival events. Furthermore, they may be sent the bill for such
associated costs as the erection of dance floors and stages. In large urban cen-
tres, they also incur the cost for bus transportation to public performance sites
for such events as Canada Day celebrations
19
 when there is more than one
venue involved. It was reported that, in one case, when the Toronto Arts
Council was approached for a transportation subsidy, the Council responded
that these groups did not perform "art" (and therefore they did not qualify for
funding) but that, rather, they were a form of social service activity.
20
Considering that multiethnic groups are frequently invited performers for such
events, and that they are not paid for their performance, it does seem exces-
sive that they should also be left with a deficit. Many groups seriously consider
withdrawal from public events of this nature.
COOPTATION OF FESTIVALS
One of the angriest and most frequent complaints is that multiethnic festi-
vals are constantly being taken over by various levels of government. Almost
'MULTIETHNIC' DANCE IN ONTARIO: THE STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY 85
every regional Folk Arts Council assists in the organization and maintenance
of at least one major festival a year in their community. Often after groups
have spent years building up these events to the height of their success, the
festivals are co-opted by one level of government or another. This recurring
theme partially accounts for the bitterness dance groups feel towards govern-
ment inquiries.
There are numerous examples of festival co-optation. In Windsor, for
instance, the Freedom Days festival was taken over by the municipal authori-
ties, who then imposed high rental fees for kiosks and, in addition, demanded
that multicultural groups prepare several hundred meals a day as part of their
involvement. Gambling tables were introduced and the performances—which
had previously been the main attraction—were removed from the festival.
Multicultural groups responded by organizing another festival, Carousel, at a
different time of year.
Canada Day festivities in Ottawa, which had traditionally been organized
by multicultural associations, were co-opted into a mainstream 'high-profile'
event by the federal government. Multicultural organizations were left totally
out of the picture.
In spite of these problems, most groups acknowledge that festivals are
worthwhile. Some suggest a rotating regional Ontario festival to address afore-
mentioned problems of travel costs.
LACK OF RECOGNITION
A repeated demand is made that governments at all levels recognize the
amount of time, money, creative energy and talent that are put into multieth-
nic dance forms. Groups know that their traditions are worthy of the highest
respect and want authorities to be aware of the high level of performances
happening throughout Canada, in spite of the lack of public funding.
RESPONSE OF FUNDING AGENCIES
AND PERFORMANCE VENUES
Among mainstream venues, an example of one which has become more
open to local and international artists from minority cultural traditions is
Toronto's Harbourfront. During 1992-93, for example, the American Indian
Dance Theatre (Native American), Ballet Creole (Caribbean), New Directions
in Indian Dance (performances of classical Indian dancers from Indian,
Canada, the U.S. and U.K.) all played to sold-out houses at the Premiere
Dance Theatre. This confirms the view generally held among minority perfor-
84 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
mance ensembles that they deserve access to publicly funded theatre spaces
since their performances constitute sound business investments.
Subsequent to this study, the Ontario Arts Council has initiated a new
funding program, directed by the well-known classical kathak dancer Rina
Singha, for "Culturally Specific Dance." This represents an important new
direction in funding and is the first attempt to address the needs of the multi-
ethnic communities. Problems continue, however, since the program has a
very small budget for a very large number of groups. The funding was
designed to assist groups to enhance performance standards to the point
where they would be able to apply through professional programs available
through the OAC, but in practice, it has remained a way of marginalizing mul-
tiethnic performance and separating it from the mainstream.
A round of consultations with Ontario artists in the spring of 1992, spon-
sored by the provincial Ministry of Culture and Communications, concluded
that profound shifts in attitude would have to be reflected in funding policies in
order to represent fairly the diverse communities which live in Ontario. The
report from this exercise concluded that arts funding policies clearly discrimi-
nated against definitions and practices of culture in Ontario.
21
Although there has been an increased awareness of the need for cultural
equity in all areas of government administration and funding bodies, the
response remains unsatisfactory in many respects. While minority appoint-
ments are now commonplace in government agencies, such appointees
express concern about their freedom to comment during policy meetings, the
very place where their input is most important. Individuals who serve in these
potentially significant new positions are enormously frustrated in that they feel
they are perceived as token appointments to satisfy public demands for equal
access to funding organizations. Where agencies do not hear what minority
members are saying, these individuals have little alternative but to resign their
positions in protest against organizational stone-walling. Many feel that,
although they are no longer on the outside looking in, they are now on the
inside looking in.
CONCLUSIONS
In our rapidly diversifying, pluralistic society, the struggle over cultural
hegemony has been situated at the aesthetic boundary which has enshrined
Western European performance traditions through a complex system of
awards and grants, educational systems and prestige performance opportuni-
ties. These aesthetic biases are govemmentally sanctioned and promoted. On
the other side of the boundary, all non-Western genres of dance and music are
relegated to a less significant—many within the multiethnic community would
'MULTIETHNIC' DANCE IN ONTARIO: THE STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY 8 5
argue 'insignificant'—status.
The demands for funding multiethnic art forms must be understood within
the historical development of such groups within our province. Multicultural
groups are mostly non-profit organizations. They seldom receive financial sup-
port from any level of government and, in instances where some level of sup-
port has been received, it has been modest in relation to the total production
costs.
Nevertheless, as this research project confirms, large groups of people are
working at a grass-roots level with a wealth of human resources, though few
financial ones, to create a cultural environment which has the capacity to
reach beyond the boundaries of language, religion and ethnicity. Their classi-
cal and folk dance forms represent a kind of cultural synthesis, a performance
metaphor, a symbolic representation of the group's sense of self, encoding
religious beliefs, gender definitions and movement ideals. In some cases,
dances provide models of appropriate behaviour with regard to socialization
processes within a particular group. For these reasons the entire issue multi-
ethnic dance is emotionally charged.
The responses of the dance groups who participated in this research pro-
ject express anger and hostility about the sharp divide between what are per-
ceived to be the 'have' and 'have not' groups within Ontario's culture. Many
favour dropping the term "multicultural" because they believe that this is sim
ply a buzzword that equates with marginalization and denies them access to
the mainstream. Indeed, the demographic shifts in Canadian society lead one
to conclude that we are rapidly approaching a time when "minority culture"
will be a term more aptly reserved for Western European art forms.
Especially in the face of rapidly decreasing funds, it is essential to under-
stand the ferocity of the arguments that are directed towards the government
on both sides of the equation. Dance organizations such as the National Ballet
of Canada or the Toronto Dance Theatre, which have been able to count on a
continuing funding base, are now faced with such drastic cuts in their operat-
ing budgets that they may not be able to continue their current high-level pro-
fessional training programs. On the other side, multiethnic groups which have
never received substantial funding are collectively reaching a demographic pro-
portion which is forcing the government to recognize their just claim to cultur-
al recognition.
Recent responses by funding agencies recognize the need for a major shift
in attitude and orientation, and a massive reorganization of funding priorities.
What has not been clearly understood by policy makers is the fundamental
importance of dance—all dance (including Western classical and contempo-
rary forms)—like that of music and other forms of expressive culture, as a win-
dow of understanding on the societies which create, support and perpetuate
specific art forms. To disrespect these performances is to demean the groups
86 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
and the systems of movement symbols or sound ideals which they have select-
ed as a positive metaphorical representation of themselves.
ENDNOTES
1. As used by the OAC in 1986, the term refers to any dance traditions other than
Western European-based classical genres.
2. This sweeps over many nuances of the complex debates, historically and cur-
rently, which have raged in anthropology about appropriate definitions of cul-
ture.
3. An ethnocentric bias occurs when we take the factors that regulate our own
reality, our own perceptions of an external and independent world, and super-
impose these regulating devices as the absolute criteria for validity, correctness
and excellence upon other cultural views and artistic realities.
4. In personal communication, Anne Marie Stewart, Director of Personnel for the
Toronto Public School Board, reported that in 1990, 75 heritage languages
were taught in Toronto schools.
5. It is somewhat surprising that these prejudicial attitudes continue to exist despite
the fact that Canada has legally espoused a policy of multiculturalism within a
bilingual framework since 1971, when legislation was first introduced by the
then Prime Minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. For a more detailed exploration of
the history of official multiculturalism in Canada, see Alan B. Anderson and
James S. Frideres, Ethnicity in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives (Butterworth
1981), pp. 99-129.
6. In fact, any form of dance or music may be regarded as an expression of ethnic-
ity as Kealiinohomoku clearly demonstrated in her seminal article, "An
Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance" (1983).
7. See Anya Peterson Royce's related discussion in Ethnic Identity: Strategies of
Diversity (1982), pp. 145-183.
8. There is no central registry of multiethnic dance groups or individuals in
Ontario. With the co-operation and support of Mary-Lou Dannenberg,
President of the Ontario Folk Arts Council, we were able to contact each of
their regional council offices.
9. This is a non-profit umbrella organization for regional folk arts and multicultural
councils. Elected representatives are sent to the OFAC on an annual basis. The
organization is minimally funded by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and
Culture and operates under the auspices of the Ontario Arts Council.
10. At the 1990 Eastern Canadian Croatian Festival, in Kitchener, I saw several
performance groups with 150 or more members.
'MULTIETHNIC' DANCE IN ONTARIO: THE STRUGGLE OVER HEGEMONY 8 7
11. Without on-going patronage, these dancers experience great difficulty in main-
taining these traditions when they arrive in Canada. This is especially true for
former Court dancers. I interviewed two Thai dancers who are currently workin
in a fender factory and have rare opportunities to perform in Canada.
12. Many point to these tapes as an indication of rapidly changing Ukrainian dance
traditions, a process sometimes referred to as the "Russification" of Ukrainian
traditional dances.
13. The international opportunities may outnumber those in Ontario.
14. This includes ballet companies and modem dance ensembles, but amateur and
semi-professional theatre troupes are also given access to large urban theatres.
Furthermore, many of the dance forms which are supported in mainstream
venues have elements which are aesthetically offensive to some multiethnic
dance traditions. These elements include explicit exposure of the body in tights
and leotards as well as frequent touching between male and female partners.
15. Members often arrange to take their holidays to coincide with their group's per-
formance schedule abroad.
16. At the time when the research was conducted, a directory of funding sources
was in preparation in several languages.
17. Wintario is an Ontario Provincial lottery system. Non-profit organizations may
apply for 50 percent of funds needed for various cultural projects, provided they
match the grant from other sources.
18. In some cases, assistance has been provided for costumes, for example, while in
other cases, it has been denied.
19. In Toronto, for example, each of the five cities constituting the Metropolitan
area hosts Canada Day celebrations on July 1st in city halls located in far-flung
parts of the city.
20. This decision was appealed and overturned but such financial burdens are
endemic. In the instance cited, the group was left with a shortfall of $3,000 in
transportation expenses.
21. Lillian Allen, Special Advisor and Freelance Cultural Strategist, First Steps on
the Road to Cultural and Racial Equity: From Multiculturalism to Access, a
report to the Honourable Karen Haslam, Minister of Culture and
Communications, March 1992, p. 9.
REFERENCES
Allen, Lillian. 1992. First Steps on the Road to Cultural and Racial Equity: From
Multiculuralism to Access. A report to the Honourable Karen Haslam,
Minister of Culture and Communications. Submitted by Lillian Allen, Special
Advisor and Freelance Cultural Strategist. Toronto.
88 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Anderson, Alan B. and James S. Frideres. 1981. Ethnicity in Canada: Theoretical
Perspectives. Toronto: Butterworth.
Hanna, Judith Lynne. 1983. To Dance is Human: A Theory of Nonverbal
Communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Keealiinohomoku, Joann. 1983. "An Anthropologist Looks at Ballet as a Form of
Ethnic Dance," in Copeland, Roger and Marshall Cohen (eds.), What is
Dance. New York and London: Oxford University Press.
Manning, Frank E. 1983. "Cosmos and Chaos," in Manning, Frank E. (ed.), The
Celebration of Society. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University
Popular Press.
Royce, Anya Peterson. 1982. Ethnic Identity. Strategies of Diversity. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP:
THE FIRST TEN YEARS
OF THE CANADA COUNCIL
J.L GRANATSTEIN
The two men walked to work together each morning, striding from
Rockcliffe to their offices in Ottawa's heart. John Deutsch, the Secretary of
the Treasury Board, was a long way from the Saskatchewan farm that had
given him birth, but he still looked fit enough to take the plough. His compan-
ion, J.W. Pickersgill, was the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, a for-
mer political adviser to Mackenzie King and Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent
and once the senior public servant in the land as Clerk of the Privy Council.
Pickersgill had been raised on a Manitoba farm, and that, along with years of
working together in Ottawa, had helped to make the two men into friends.
"It's a shocking thing to think that we're going to get a hundred million
dollars of unexpected revenue out of two estates," Deutsch remarked out of
the blue one day in mid-1956. Times were still good in Canada that year, and
the federal government was in surplus yet again; now even fate had smiled on
the government with the death duties that would bring a huge windfall from
the very large estates of Izaak Walton Killam and Sir James Dunn, two
Maritimes entrepreneurs. That windfall pleased Deutsch, the man in charge of
saying no to departments asking for money for their programs and plans. But
it didn't please him that the $100 million would be "just piddle[d] away" on
ordinary expenditures.
Pickersgill was equal to the task of spending the money more creatively.
"John," he said, "how would it be if we persuaded the government to provide
50 million of this 100 million to meet these capital needs—or some of them—
of the universities. And another 50 million to provide an endowment for the
Canada Council.... He thought this was a pretty good idea." As Pickersgill
now recalls it, Deutsch passed that suggestion on to Maurice Lamontagne, the
economics adviser in the Privy Council Office.
1
Lamontagne had been pressing the Prime Minister for some time to move
90 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
toward the establishment of the Canada Council, but all his efforts had been
blocked by St. Laurent's lukewarm attitude to things cultural and, it was said in
Ottawa, by the opposition of C.D. Howe, the 'minister of everything' who sat
at St. Laurent's right hand. According to Lamontagne's recollections, deliv-
ered to the same celebratory dinner as Pickersgill's, he and Deutsch had dis-
cussed the $100 million in succession duties, and Lamontagne, asked by the
Prime Minister to suggest things he might say to the National Conference on
Higher Education in November, suggested the doubling of federal grants to
universities and, he remembered, "vous pouvez annoncer la creation du
Conseil des arts avec une dotation de $100 millions."
St. Laurent looked at him as if he had "devenu fou." But when
Lamontagne explained about the succession windfalls, "le visage du premier
ministre commenca a alors a s'eclairer." St. Laurent said he would discuss the
question with Howe, and a few hours later he called Lamontagne at home,
told him that he and Howe were agreed, and asked his adviser to begin
preparing the speech for the November conference.
2
There can be little doubt that Deutsch, Pickersgill, and Lamontagne were
present at the creation, all trying as good bureaucrats and public servants
should to make their Prime Minister do what he ought. And with great suc-
cess. But in fact, the true origins of the Council go back further, to the Royal
Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters, and Sciences,
begun in 1949. That inquest, headed by Vincent Massey, the former Liberal
minister, envoy to the United States, and High Commissioner to Great
Britain, had produced a wide-ranging report in May 1951 and had recom-
mended the establishment of a "Canada Council for the Encouragement of the
Arts, Letters, Humanities and Social Sciences," responsible to Parliament but
in no way an arm of government, largely as an attempt to overcome the small
population, great distances, and the overpowering presence of the United
States that had stifled development of a national culture. The Council was also
suggested as the progenitor of scholarships in the social sciences and humani-
ties.
3
 "I had hoped," Massey wrote in his memoirs, "that the Canada Council
would be established several years before it was."
4
 But there had been difficul-
ties. For example, on 4 January 1955, St. Laurent brought Massey, by now
Governor General, a copy of the Speech from the Throne, prepared for the
new session of Parliament:
I expressed my disappointment over the omission of any reference to the
Canada Council. He proceeded to explain why it had been left out. It was
thought that it might have an unfortunate effect on the present issue between
Ottawa and Quebec. I said that it was impossible to placate Duplessis. The
P.M. agreed but said that moderate opinion might be affected adversely if
they thought the Canada Council was a centralizing instrument. We talked
about it at some length and I expressed the deepest regret. I said it would dis-
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 91
appoint many to find the project dropped. The P.M. suggested that those
interested would not be very numerous. I said that their importance could not
be measured by numbers or by material strength....5
The Quebec issue, behind which St. Laurent was sheltering, was a serious
one involving the near total breakdown of communications between Duplessis'
autonomist and anti-centralist regime and the federal Liberals. A year later,
however, nothing had changed and the new Throne speech still omitted refer-
ence to Massey's project. The Governor General "wasn't surprised," he wrote
in his diary. "However I avoided any discussion of the subject...as usual the
P.M. seemed shrouded in an impenetrable veil of politeness."
6
Pickersgill, Lamontagne, and Deutsch had torn the veil aside, and when
Massey saw St. Laurent on 22 September 1956, at Rideau Hall, "He told me
that the Cabinet had decided to introduce legislation on the Canada Council.
This time I think it will happen. An endowment of $100,000,000 is to be
given the new body!" A month later, the Prime Minister told Massey that "he
had asked Brooke Claxton to head the Canada Council and that he had
accepted. Gave me the names of others to be asked to join the Council.
Wonderful!"
7
 So it was, and at the head of the list of names of the Council's
founders must be added that of Vincent Massey. It was his greatest contribu-
tion to Canada. "Speaking in his most patriarchal, and self-confident manner,"
or so Claude Bissell described it,
8
 St. Laurent duly informed the National
Conference on Higher Education on 13 November 1956, that his government
intended to establish the Council with $50 million so it could finance "its activ
ities from the annual income to be derived from the investment of that capi-
tal." In addition, the astonished educators also heard that the Canada Council
would receive an additional $50 million so it could make capital grants to the
universities equal to 50 percent of the cost of specific building or capital equip-
ment projects. The Prime Minister was not yet finished, for he added the
announcement that he was doubling the 50 cents per capita grant for universi-
ty education.
9
 It was a day of miracles, and Bissell later wrote that a "new age
had dawned...the days of poverty and self-justification were over." At last
Canadian intellectuals and artists had achieved a measure of state support.
"They had attained, in fact," Carl Berger wrote, "the intellectual parallel to the
system of bounties that other social groups and classes had received since the
inauguration of the National Policy."
10
The resolution that led to establishment of the Council was moved in the
House of Commons by the Prime Minister on 18 January 1957, and the sub-
sequent bill passed its second reading on 13 February with only the Social
Credit MPS opposing it.
11
 He was not against culture or the stimulation of
cultural activities, Socred leader Solon Low wrote to a supporter, but he did
object to the fact that the government was spending $100 million for a non-
92 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
essential when it was doing nothing for old-age pensioners or veterans.
12
 Not
only Social Crediters felt that way. Senator Tom Crerar wrote to a friend that
"I fancy an Opposition could make a good play of this—taking $100 million
for culture and starving the country's schools."
13
As those remarks suggest, 'culture' made many Canadians reach for their
guns. And Brooke Claxton, the long-time Liberal politician and the first chair-
man of the Canada Council ruefully wrote a private note to himself after the
1957 election had turned the Liberals out of office: "To the list of causes of
the defeat of the Liberal party must be added the establishment of the Canada
Council...." Although the opposition in the House had been slight, "there was
not much enthusiasm and it is doubtful if any elector voted for the Liberals
because of this measure" which had added to the complex of issues that made
voters feel that the government was arrogant and inconsiderate. A great
believer in the Council and a patron of the arts himself, Claxton concluded
that the Council's creation in 1957 was "premature" and an element in build-
ing up sentiment hostile to the government.
14
 Probably that is a slightly exag-
gerated assessment, even if made by one of the most astute students of party
politics and an experienced practitioner of the art. If true, it was a sad com-
mentary on the Canadian public in 1957. There were much better reasons to
drive the government from office.
The Canada Council's Act enjoined the new body to "foster and promote
the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in the arts, humani-
ties and social sciences." This was a sweeping task, but one that was com-
pletely undefined, and how the Council was to proceed was left unclear. The
new organization was obliged to report to Parliament each year and its
finances were subject to the examination of the Auditor General; on the other
hand, its employees were not subject to public service regulations or to the
rules and procedures of the Treasury Board, and it was also able to accept
gifts and donations and carry money forward from one year to the next. The
Council then was in some ways a public agency and, in others, a private foun-
dation—it was a distinctively Canadian hybrid.
15
The Council began its work in April 1957 in temporary quarters of the
best sort—the Prime Minister's offices in the Centre Block of the Parliament
Buildings.
16
 With an election campaign about to begin and with Parliament
dissolved, St. Laurent had handed his office space to the new body and its first
four permanent staff: the Director, Dr. A.W. Trueman, formerly president of
the Universities of Manitoba and New Brunswick and chairman of the National
Film Board; Eugene Bussiere, the Associate Director; Lillian Breen, the
Secretary of the Council; and one stenographer. There was also the Chairman
of the Canada Council, Brooke Claxton.
In the first days, Claxton was everywhere. He took an interest in finding
the Council its office space, in the furnishings, in the staff and eventually in
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 95
the policies on grants, scholarships and fellowships.
17
 The vice-president and
general manager for Canada of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company,
Claxton had more than enough energy to run the Canada Council too. And
he was serving without pay. The order-in-council setting up the new organiza-
tion had provided $5,000 a year for the Chairman, but Claxton told the Prime
Minister that he was "most anxious that there should be no honorarium even
authorized for him much less paid to him."
18
 A good Liberal, Claxton had
likely assumed that his term of five years would proceed uninterruptedly under
the Grits; the voters decided otherwise on 10 June 1957. Concerned about
the propriety of his occupying the Chairman's post, Claxton asked the
Governor General privately if he should resign. Massey said no: "It would be
as much as to say that the chairmanship of the Council and the Council itself
were political. Diefenbaker would probably be embarrassed by any such
action...." If the new Prime Minister wanted a change, Massey said, a hint
would suffice to produce a vacancy.
19
 That was good advice, and Claxton
stayed at his post until his death in June 1960.
Under Claxton was the Vice-Chairman Father Georges-Henri Levesque.
The premier social scientist of Quebec, revered by some and reviled by others,
Levesque had given Laval University a major reputation. His term was for five
years. The members of the Canada Council, all appointed by order-in-council,
numbered 19, of whom six were appointed for two years, six for three years,
and seven for four years. Included were some well-known academic figures—
Francis Leddy, N.A.M. MacKenzie and W.A. Mackintosh; well-off business-
men—Samuel Bronfman and E.P. Taylor; cultural figures—Vida Peene and
Sir Ernest MacMillan; and public figures—Leonard Brockington and Georges
Vanier. Four of the members were French-Canadian and four were women,
while one only—Bronfman—was of neither British nor French descent; and
there was at least one representative from each province. In other words, the
membership was balanced in the Canadian tradition. Claxton in fact declared
that "Work on getting the Canada Council set up was worse than forming a
cabinet; this is really the damnedest place for people to disagree whenever
anyone suggests the name of someone for anything."
20
 All the members were
acceptable to the Liberal government that appointed them. That had to be
expected. What was more important was that in the first group of members,
and especially in the subsequent ones, some were not particularly competent
to judge questions concerning the arts or learning. They hardly could be, being
appointed more for political than for scholarly or artistic reasons. As one
author noted acidly, there were suggestions at one point that a member want-
ed to reduce the grant to the Stratford Shakespearean Festival "on grounds of
the immorality of its actors." And a scholar of note reported to the Social
Sciences Research Council of Canada that "the list of members of the Council
contains [in 1963-4] not a single name of a social scientist, distinguished or
94 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
undistinguished." Even Claude Bissell, the Chairman in succession to Claxton,
wrote to Trueman to say how impressed he was by the Council's permanent
staff: "this, I assure you, is no malarkey. Thank goodness we have this rock to
fall back upon, since I can't honestly say that the Council collectively is as wise
and informed as it is handsome and amiable."
21
At least the Council's money was in good hands. An investment commit-
tee, chaired by Graham Towers, the first Governor of the Bank of Canada,
and with James Muir, the chairman and president of the Royal Bank, and J.G.
Hungerford, the president of the National Trust Company, handled the
Council's $100 million. The Treasurer of the Council was Douglas Fullerton, a
civil servant who had worked in the Finance Department and latterly with the
Royal Commission on Canada's Economic Prospects. Under the terms of the
Act, the University Capital Grants Fund of $50 million had to be invested in
bonds of or guaranteed by the government. That limited flexibility, but by care-
ful stewardship, Fullerton was able to report in 1963 that the fund had pro-
duced a return of 5.83 percent, substantially more than the four percent aver-
age return of Canada bonds over the same period. The Endowment Fund of
$50 million was somewhat freer, but Fullerton noted that the "framework" of
investment policy could not be very different from that established in the
Canadian and British Insurance Companies Act. In other words, the invest-
ment committee had limited freedom to manoeuvre and operated under
"restraints that would prevent any possible accusation that the Council was
being profligate in its investment policies."
No such charges were ever raised. Fullerton and the committee initially
put the Fund's money into short-term Canada bonds and treasury bills, and
then gradually replaced the short-term paper with holdings in provincial,
municipal and corporate bonds, National Housing Act mortgages, and com-
mon stocks. Over time, Fullerton noted, changes were made in the portfolio
"basically because we follow the investment philosophy that the Fund should
be managed actively, that is, that bonds should not be bought and put away
but rather that the changing spreads in the market between different types of
securities should be exploited." This was important, for the Council's opera-
tions were wholly financed on the income paid by the Fund's investments.
That income, Fullerton said, had increased from $2,369,000 in the first year
to an estimated $3 million in the 1962-3 fiscal year, a return of six percent.
With transaction profits and unrealized profits, the return would be 7.8 per-
cent. Fullerton added that the Fund's bonds had returned 7.5 percent and its
stocks approximately nine percent. Given the interest rates of the period, such
returns were very good.
 22
Thus the Canada Council's operations had a secure base from which to
proceed, and the officers set about creating the basic programs. The key man
was Trueman, hard-working, amiable, an experienced academic bureaucrat
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 9 5
and one who knew his way around Ottawa. His judgment was good, a matter
that was to be tested at each Council meeting—in the early years every
request for money carried Trueman's assessment, his yea or nay. Should a
playwright be given support for the writing and staging of a play about
Champlain? Competent Quebec assessors were dubious and so was Trueman.
The plan was unrealistic and there were doubts about the author's compe-
tence. Should a request for money for a university student conference on
world affairs be granted? No, the money was mainly for travel. Could a soci-
ety's book be subsidized to the tune of $10,000 so the cost to purchasers
could be kept down? No, the manuscript was ragged; but the Council could
help by buying 300 copies for $1,800.
23
 Trueman's good sense helped set
the basic patterns for the Council's grants.
Trueman was also able to draw on the experience of major American
foundations. Indeed, at the first meeting of the Council on 30 April and 1 May
1957, Dean Rusk of the Rockefeller Foundation and later Secretary of State
under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and representatives of the Ford and
Carnegie foundations spoke. The advice was sound. "There would never be
enough money available to deal with [all thej legitimate proposals," Rusk said,
"and the Council would probably find it necessary to decide between compet-
ing projects." The Rockefeller Foundation accepted one project for every
seven to ten it declined to support. It was particularly important, Rusk added,
that no reasons be given for decisions and that the Council recognize that its
choices were bound to be arbitrary. All the foundation representatives present
could agree on that, and all warned that "no immediate results of philanthrop-
ic activities could be expected for, perhaps, five or ten years." Rusk noted, as
well, that organizations would say that they were certain to collapse unless
they were assisted, but "this imposed no claim upon a Foundation and that a
Foundation should not regard such misfortunes as operating principles."
Examples of that sort of emotional blackmail soon were destined to appear.
Rusk also said that of 50 grants, if ten turned out well, 20 indifferent, and 20
unsatisfactory, "this would be a pretty fair average."
24
However good this advice, the foundations were not a Canadian organiza-
tion funded by government. The peculiar status of the Council forced it to
apply slightly different standards. Excellence was the goal, but regionalism was
a fact of Canadian life. This became clear in the first few months of the
Council's operations as complaints arose over the way the grants were being
parcelled out. N.A.M. MacKenzie, President of the University of British
Columbia and a Council member, wrote to Trueman to protest that "a con-
centration of interest on Toronto and Central Canada" was certain to discredit
and destroy the Council. He liked Toronto, MacKenzie said,
but it is already wealthy sometimes because of Markets in the rest of Canada
96 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
and it is reasonably well off culturally compared with say New Brunswick. The
fact that Toronto has been given the bulk of our grants to date—while not a
cent goes west of Winnipeg is well designed to develop instant bitterness and
criticism. I know the problems—but the rest of Canada will not calmly accept
the further enrichment of Toronto while they get nothing. The "Quality" argu-
ment of Toronto's productions are all very well—but say what they will about
tours, etc., the fact remains that they provide enjoyment primarily for the
people of Toronto. 25
The meeting a few days before MacKenzie's letter had seen a request for
support from the Vancouver Festival Society delayed and an application from
UBC for assistance in arranging a seminar in Tokyo referred to a committee
for consideration. However, UBC had received $700,000 from the University
Capital Grants Fund. None the less, there could be no doubt that MacKenzie
was correct—the Council had to spread its largesse across the country, but it
could not be bound to ensure that each province received strict 'rep. by pop.'
The dilemma was as clear as it was unresolvable. Claude Bissell later said: "We
believe that our resources should go to the support of full-time professional
artists and organizations that are likely to achieve some degree of national
prominence and to efforts to create an audience for first-class performances."
Such a policy caused political problems for the Council.
26
 While there was no
resolution possible, neither was there malice.
MacKenzie's complaints were political, and the Council was subject to
other political pressures as well, not least the questions of appointments and
salaries. Claxton had recognized this when he wondered if he should volunteer
his resignation in 1957, but Diefenbaker had not hinted that he wanted it.
None the less, like every prime minister, Diefenbaker was political in his
actions, and when Claxton died, there was substantial concern at the Council
over his successor. There was much delight, therefore, when Diefenbaker
selected Claude Bissell, the President of the University of Toronto, to finish
Claxton's term, an appointment that Council officers greeted with satisfaction,
Trueman wrote to Bissell, "and for your private ear...with a profound sense of
relief."
27
 Bissell immediately endeared himself to Trueman and Bussiere by
asking them if their salaries were sufficient, by getting a motion for an increase
put through the Council, and by going to the responsible minister, in this case
the Prime Minister, for approval. Bussiere's increase was routinely approved,
but Trueman's was limited to $1,000. After some time the reason was discov-
ered: "Mr. Diefenbaker said, Trueman's a Grit and his son Peter's a Grit, and
writes columns in the Montreal Star criticizing me and my government. Why
should I raise Trueman's salary?"'
2
** The sins of the son were visited upon the
father, and Trueman's salary was not adjusted until the government changed
in 1963.
Apparently, Diefenbaker also contemplated replacing Norman MacKenzie
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 9 7
when his term expired in 1960. The UBC president was well known as a
friend of Lester Pearson, the Opposition leader, and his Liberal connections
had seemed open during the previous government's tenure. When word got
out of the Prime Minister's intention, however, Leon Ladner, a key
Conservative in British Columbia, objected. MacKenzie's replacement three
years before he was due to retire as UBC President "would have serious politi-
cal repercussions in the province and elsewhere," Ladner wrote, adding that
MacKenzie did not get on well with Premier W.A.C. Bennett, a plus, but did
with all the Conservative ministers from BC in Ottawa. The representations
had the desired effect.
29
The Council's supporters, however, could not mobilize enough clout to
persuade Diefenbaker to increase the Council's endowment. Faced with a
growing need for more scholarships and for more support for the arts, in
November 1960 the Council sent the Prime Minister a request for more
money. "The income of the Endowment Fund for the current fiscal year is
estimated at approximately $2,900,000," the brief stated. "The Council sees
the need, therefore, of raising its income as rapidly as possible to
$3,400,000, and respectfully urges the Government of Canada to take the
necessary steps..."
30
 Unfortunately, to boost the income by $500,000
required an increase in the endowment of up $10 million, and the Clerk of the
Privy Council, R.B. Bryce, told Diefenbaker that it was hard to get public sup-
port for such an increase when the need was for expenditures to produce
immediate employment.
31
 The Prime Minister returned a dusty answer when
he saw the Council's representatives on 6 December,* and Bissell's subsequent
suggestion that the endowment might be increased by $2 million a year was
equally unsuccessful.
32
 But it is worth noting that Diefenbaker generally treat-
ed the Council well, despite the coolness of some Opposition members
in 1956-7 when the agency was created. Evidently, culture was beginning to
be looked on with some favour, a sign that elite attitudes in Canada were
changing.
The Canada Council also made an appeal to the Pearson government on
3 March 1964 for additional money. The request now was for $10 million to
be added to the Endowment Fund in each of the next three years.
33
 The
Liberals responded positively on 19 March 1965, but not quite in the way the
Council had wanted: "the government has decided that the Council's income
should be increased," Prime Minister Pearson told the House. "We believe
that the best long-term method of achieving this result would be to increase
* Bissell later recalled that: "When we appeared before Diefenbaker to present out
brief for money, he suggested that the Council might take over sports and thus get
more money and win wider recognition. Trueman and I refused to take this sugges-
tion seriously, but Bronfman...whispered hoarsely to me, Tell him we'll do it.'"
Letter to author, 26 March 1984.
98 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
the endowment fund, because it fully protects the independence of the
Council. We feel however that it would be unwise to take this course under
present circumstances." The reasons were that a major study of university
financing, under Professor Vincent Bladen, was under way, and suggestions
had been heard that the humanities and social sciences should be taken away
from the Council and put in the care of a new agency. In the circumstances,
and pending a resolution of these two problems, the government chose to
make a donation of $10 million, intended to be spent over an unspecified
period of time, instead of an addition to the endowment.
34
 The Council's offi-
cers were overjoyed at the new money, and Trueman wrote to Bussiere to
report that Diefenbaker himself "is said to have expressed the view that this
item would find general agreement among the members. This unforced sweet
accord must establish something of a record for John G."
35
The suggestion of dividing the Council was troubling, however. The idea
had first been raised in Parliament by the Secretary of State, Maurice
Lamontagne, on 3 November 1964, and the Council's executive committee
was called together immediately to consider a response. Its conclusion, "after
having studied with the utmost objectivity the proposal," was unanimously
against any split. Such a change so soon after the Council's creation could be
seen as a repudiation of the Massey Commission report of 1951. It would
destroy the interrelationships between the arts and the humanities and social
sciences. It would mean the creation of new bureaucracies when the Council
was able to do the job well. And the real problem was not one of organization-
al alteration, but one of money. Then with substantial style, the Council seized
on the opportunity to ask for $15 million in additional income over the next
three years.
36
 For the moment at least, the spectre of division was banished; it
would return some years later and, as Trueman wrote in his memoirs, "to loss
of the independence which supposedly the social scientists crave, and to a
political determination of the nature and extent of research in the social sci-
ences and humanities."
37
 If the government was to put up the money, as it
began to do on a regular basis after 1967, clearly it could be expected to
attempt to impose its priorities on the Canada Council (without much success)
and on the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
If the Canada Council had priorities when it began its work in 1957, one
of the most important was to determine what could be done to improve the
level of the country's cultural life. No one could have claimed that culture, diffi-
cult to define as it was, flourished in Canada. The arts were underfunded and
parochial in outlook, yet they aped the metropolises and lacked audience sup-
port. Theatre companies in the major cities generally languished, and only the
Stratford Shakespearean Festival seemed able to produce first-rate drama on a
regular basis. Outside of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, there were usual-
ly only amateur performances and occasional tours by road companies from
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 99
the United States or Britain. Orchestras existed in quantity, but the quality was
poor, and the good performers had to go elsewhere for their training and to
practise their craft. Outside the National Film Board, the film industry was vir-
tually non-existent, and while there was a large number of painters producing
work of quality, their reputations at home greatly exceeded their recognition
abroad.
This was the bleak situation when the Canada Council appeared, bringing
with it the promise of money and attention. In the first year, the Council
awarded $749,000 to encourage dance, music, theatre, the visual arts and
writing; the next year, the total almost doubled; and in 1966-7 the Council
spent $4,297,000 in support of the arts.
38
 The effect throughout the decade
was almost miraculous—theatre companies blossomed across the country,
orchestras improved mightily, and artists left their garrets at last. The change
was not entirely attributable to the Canada Council, of course. The country
had grown in population and maturity; people were travelling more and broad-
ening their horizons; the country was better off and had more time to devote
to leisure. Still, it was the Canada Council that put up a large part of the
money required to get the arts under way, it was the Council that set the
example for other levels of government and private benefactors, and it was the
Council that, more than anything else, deserves credit for starting Canada on
the road to artistic maturity.
But the road was never easy, and there were obstructions along the way.
Each of the arts had its own special problems, but many of the difficulties were
common to them all, and there is something to be learned by examining the
Council's efforts to assist ballet. This is only one example among many. Over
the Council's first ten years, support for dance rose from $130,000 in 1957-
8 to $571,000 in 1966-7. Substantial sums indeed, but in percentage terms
the support declined over the decade from 17.4 to 13.3 percent of all Council
money devoted to the arts.
39
 That decline was in part a measure of the devel-
opment of other sectors such as theatre and the visual arts, both of which
greatly increased their claims on the Council in these years. In some ways,
however, the decline was probably a reflection of the problems with ballet: no
area of the arts had more intractable financial and artistic problems and no
area posed more serious political problems.
The difficulties became apparent at the first meeting of the members of
the Council on 30 April and 1 May 1957. The minutes detail the opening cer-
emonies, the passing of by-laws, the arrangements for a secretary and a cor-
porate seal. But then the minutes begin to recount discussion on the "financial
difficulties of the National Ballet Guild of Canada." The National Ballet was in
the red and nearing bankruptcy and it needed immediate help if it was to sur-
vive. To its credit, and perhaps because the Council had just heard the repre-
sentatives of American foundations urge the new body not to be panicked by
100 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
the pending collapse of artistic organizations, the members decided that they
"could not come to the aid of the Ballet Guild at this time or [at least not] to
the extent suggested...." The Chairman and Director were instructed to inform
the Guild that no grant could be made before an adequate study was complet-
ed.40
But the National Ballet resurfaced at the first meeting of the Council's
Executive Committee on 18 June. Since its beginnings in 1951-2, the Guild
had accumulated a deficit of $112,000. If it could not get a commitment from
the Council of $50,000 a year in grants it would go into liquidation in a mat-
ter of days. Again, the members refused to be stampeded, agreeing only to
put the National's case to the whole Council.
41
 By 19 August, the next
Council meeting, some of the basic planning for arts grants had been complet-
ed, and this time the members agreed to give the Guild $50,000 in 1957 and
the promise of a further $50,000 the next year, providing that the company
tackled its deficit, had a major fund-raising campaign, and arranged and con-
tracted a national tour. That was a satisfactory resolution, demonstrating the
Council's ability to insist on conditions being met before giving a grant. But as
the Council at the same meeting gave the Royal Winnipeg Ballet $20,000 and
indicated its willingness to consider an application from "the Montreal Ballet"
[Les Grands Ballets Canadiens], then just beginning its first professional sea-
son, it was evident that the dimensions of the ballet problem were only begin-
ning to come into focus.
42
What was the problem with ballet in Canada? The Massey Commission
had surveyed its growth from three companies in 1939 to more than twenty
in 1951, and it had carefully detailed the festivals and films that had helped
popularize the dance in Canada. The Report had added wisely that "in the bal-
let, as in surgery, there can be no amateur status," and pointed out that strong
public support, rigorous training, and skilled instruction were the keys to devel-
opment of a great company.
43
 None existed in 1951 and none existed in
February 1958 when the Council's director, Dr. Trueman, travelled to New
York to get advice. His report quoted the dance critic of the New York
Times, John Martin, as saying that the National was "not yet a really good
company on the international competitive scale." That view was generally
agreed to by the editor of Dance News, Anatole Chujoy, who did say that the
National "had reached a very good standard indeed." The Royal Winnipeg
was another question entirely, and the editor said he saw "almost no hope"
for it, suffering as it was from the loss of key personnel who had helped found
the company in 1949 and from divided counsels.
44
 "While they were better at
the outset than the National Ballet," Trueman was told, "they have long since
lost this position."
4
^ None of Trueman's contacts mentioned the new
Montreal company. This omission was corrected in the autumn of 1958
when, after awarding new grants to the National and Winnipeg ballets, the
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 101
Council commissioned Kenneth Le Mesurier Carter, a leading Toronto char-
tered accountant, to undertake a survey of the financial conditions and prob-
lems of the three major companies. Carter reported on 28 January 1959 in
the fullest exploration of the financial state of any of the arts ever made in
Canada to that time. The total expenditures of the three companies in 1957-
8, he said, were $728,508 as against earned revenues of $463,227, leaving
an operating loss of more than a quarter of a million dollars. This had been
met by $130,000 in Canada Council grants, by grants from municipalities,
fund-raising efforts, and membership dues. The Royal Winnipeg had an accu-
mulated deficit of $1,847 and the National Ballet of $109,986.
Carter also reported that the three companies employed 76 dancers, that
they had given 110 performances in Canada and 99 abroad, before audiences
totalling 283,657. If those figures were small in comparison to the costs,
Carter explained the discrepancy away by noting the high costs of touring, the
need for an orchestra, settings, and costumes, and generally the skyrocketing
production costs. The National, for example, toured with a 22- or 23-member
orchestra which cost it $124,798 as compared to the $80,680 paid the
dancers. The minimum union rate for a musician was $155 a week; for the
unorganized dancers, the basic wage was $77.50 a week including allowances
on tour in Canada.
4
**
Carter had also been asked to give an answer to the key question: should
Canada try to support three companies on a national scale? He responded by
observing that the National Ballet had become "an international company,
and, to a certain extent, a Canadian travelling showpiece." It was the only
company staffed to perform full-length grand ballet, and while it had to rely
more and more on grants and donations, it was none the less recovering a
higher percentage of its costs from box office receipts each year. "As a long-
term investment for Canada," Carter said, "this company should be supported
until it is self-supporting on tour." The two other companies were less impor-
tant in Carter's Toronto-centric approach: they should be encouraged to tour
their regions, they could live on modest budgets, and before any increase was
made in their grants, "their achievements and plans should be reviewed."
47
The Carter report lent substantial support to the National Ballet's claim to
be the national company, a claim that was acknowledged by a grant of
$80,000 made at the May 1959 Council meeting. But by August, the
National was back for more, asking now for a minimum of $125,000 a year.
This new request caused some consternation, prompting Trueman to say in
his assessment of the application that "from the figures before us" it appeared
that Canada could support only one ballet company with the prospect of
development to international standards. However, he added, a decision to sup-
port the National alone "would in effect place the future of professional ballet
in the hands of its artistic director and might make original contributions to the
102 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
art of ballet from elsewhere in the country extremely difficult." Perhaps that
comment was behind the tart note in the Council minutes that "Concern was
expressed by some members at the continued pressure which this organization
brought to bear on the Council with each application." None the less, the
National got an additional $20,000, even though the minutes complained that
the Toronto company had received almost ten percent of the total arts budget
for 1959-60.48
Thus the Canada Council was faced with a perennial dilemma. Was it best
to sink all the available money into one company with a chance to become a
world-class ballet (if, indeed, the National had that prospect)? Or was it better
to recognize the political and regional nature of the country, to satisfy different
clientele and interests in Quebec, Ontario, and the West, and to subsidize each
of the three companies on a more or less equal basis—and thus probably
ensure that none would reach truly professional standards?
4
^ The answer
given in August 1959 was equivocal, an understandable response. As the
president of the National Ballet Guild was Edwin A. Goodman, the Toronto
lawyer and key Progressive Conservative organizer, however, that equivoca-
tion was perhaps more courageous than it might have seemed at first. But
there was no doubt that the Council was troubled by the importunate demands
for funding from Toronto. W.A. Mackintosh told Brooke Claxton, in a hal
jocular fashion, that everyone at the meeting was "sobered and depressed by
the insoluble problems of the ballet. I am tempted to suggest propaganda to
convince people that this is a decadent form of art and a sinister deviation
from our Canadian way of life." Claxton was similarly vexed, replying that he
strongly opposed giving anything more to the National "except on the basis of
some specific new plan of financing which showed it breaking even with not
more than $50,000 a year from us."
50
But no new financial scheme emerged, and matters went on as before. In
May 1960, the Council's officers recommended an allocation of $145,000 for
ballet, with the National to get $85,000, Winnipeg $35,000, and Les Grands
Ballets $30,000, in all about two-thirds of the sums requested by the compa-
nies. "Your officers," the Council members were informed, "have previously
warned...that the problems entailed by the maintenance of three ballet compa-
nies... would become rapidly aggravated. It would now appear that some radi-
cal decision must be taken since we cannot support the companies at the level
they require; nor do we see in the circumstances how we can abandon any of
these companies since each has a unique quality."
51
The next year, Trueman tried a different tack in his efforts to make the
Council grasp the nettle. In a memorandum to the members, he reported that
Council officers had been concerned to note that the National Ballet's recent
Ottawa performances showed "what appeared to their admittedly non-profes-
sional eyes...some considerable deterioration in the standards of perfor-
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 105
mance.... The Company appeared to lack discipline and that indefinable 'elan
vital' which makes dancers of quality." Similar opinions had been expressed by
the Montreal critics and by an expert consulted by Council. Trueman's sugges-
tion now was that the Council consider inviting a distinguished foreign expert
to come to Canada to offer a considered opinion.
52
The state of the National was also of concern to Claude Bissell, the
Council's chairman. In a letter to Peter Dwyer, the Council's Arts Supervisor,
Bissell argued that it was "not simply a question of whether or not we come to
the rescue of a given ballet company; it is a question of whether we are pre-
pared to support a national ballet." That was the question, but given the criti-
cism of the National, was that company the only one to rely on? Bissell was
worried by this, and he wrote that
I know that I sound as if I were trying to defend the mediocre. But, in the
blinding glare of international artistic standards, aren't we doing this for all of
the activities we support? We have, it seems to me, two enemies to guard
against—those who would ridicule any artistic activity—and, in particular, the
ballet—[and those who believe that culture] is not really part of the stalwart
Canadian character. I think there is a very real danger of these two forces
coalescing to kill the National Ballet.
5
^
BisselTs strong letter may not have been conveyed directly to the Council
at its meeting on 23-4 May, but its message almost certainly was. Even so,
the National's position was precarious. Once again the company was on the
verge of bankruptcy, its deficit now $180,000; once again, the Council was
asked to make an emergency grant of $75,000 to reduce the deficit and to
pledge a future grant in the spring of 1962 comparable to the support given
in previous years. But after lengthy discussions and after an ad hoc committee
had considered the situation, the Council agreed not to become involved in
paying off accumulated liabilities, "particularly in view of grants made by the
Council since 1958, amounting to $385,000." Instead, an offer of a grant of
$100,000 for 1961-2 operating expenses was made. In addition, the Royal
Winnipeg Ballet was awarded $40,000 and the Montreal company $30,000.
The total was $170,000, and the Council firmly pledged "that at no time in
the future would the Council make grants in excess of $150,000 per annum
for ballet in Canada." It was also decided to bring in an expert to assess the
whole scene.
54
In August 1961, Peter Dwyer approached Lincoln Kirstein, the founder
and general director of the New York City Ballet, about coming to Canada.
Kirstein, quite familiar with the Canadian situation, suggested a small commis-
sion of experts. As eventually constituted, the commission consisted of
Kirstein himself, Richard Buckle, ballet critic of the Sunday Times of London
and Guy Glover of the National Film Board.
55
104 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Kirstein's report offered a sweeping look at the three companies. The first
point that concerned him was the companies' choices of name. It was unfortu-
nate that the Winnipeg ballet had a royal charter, which "somehow calls forth
expectations of true merit corresponding to regal quality. "56 The National
Ballet, despite its name, was artistically "the least representative" and Les
Grands Ballets Canadiens was "not very great or big." Those were only th
opening shots. "While purely national criteria may be currently sufficient,"
Kirstein said, "the Canadian people as a whole are not blind to absolute lev-
els.... Lacking taste, talent, and esthetic efficiency, much is forgiven on the
basis of dollars and cents know-how; but what is known how to do?
Persistence or existence are no ends in themselves." To Kirstein, Les Grands
Ballets Canadiens was "miles ahead of the other two companies" with taste in
stage decoration, music, and lighting, good local support, a strong director,
and the least provincial of attitudes. The Winnipeg company was neatly
trained and had a not undistinguished musical basis. But the visual taste of the
Royal Winnipeg was haphazard and the artistic direction weak in authority and
experience. "The atmosphere," he said, "is hopeful but not one crammed wit
potential." The National drew Kirstein's sharpest comments: the company
"has aims to represent a nation but is the least native in style or repertory"
with its overall tone that of "a dowdy step-sister of the Royal Ballet. It is the
largest Canadian company but mere numbers have neither contributed to ele-
gance or flair.... Its execution is undistinguished; its visual and musical taste
alarming.... The artistic direction suffers as much from complacency as from
ignorance...."
Buckle's comments on the National Ballet were not dissimilar. He found it
a company that performed works that appealed to the unsophisticated, that
lacked discipline, and that was striving to be a copy of the Royal Ballet. The
National had to continue, Buckle said, but some means had to be found to
improve its standards of design, which he found atrocious, to give it a more
creative artistic policy, to improve the company's schooling, and to force it to
present first-rate modem works. Unlike Kirstein, however, Buckle found the
Montreal company worthy but in precarious health; to him, the Winnipeg bal
let was "perhaps the most satisfactory single company in Canada and the gen-
eral standard of dancing is probably higher than in the other two." Direction
he found good and devoted, the musical standard was high, and only design
seemed to be lacking.
Neither man held out much hope for what Peter Dwyer had characterized
privately as "Ballet Canada," a truly national company that would combine the
best talents of the three extant companies. The country was too big, the loca
loyalties too strong for that even if such a solution was a favoured bureaucratic
one.
57
 That assessment the Council had to accept, and the 1961-2 Annual
Report, drafted by Dwyer, made the point that Kirstein-Buckle surveys had
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 105
been made "only to ensure as best as possible that our audiences can in the
future enjoy in increasing measure the true beauty of the dance." To make this
point clearer still, Dwyer, a man of wide culture, quoted from Mallarme's
L'Apres-midi d'un faune: "Ces nymphes, je les veux perpetuer."
58
At the Council's spring 1962 meeting, the officials proposed that grants
to ballet for the year might total $165,000
59
—what had happened to the air-
tight ceiling accepted the previous year is unclear—but once the Council had a
chance to digest the surveys, the mood stiffened, a subcommittee concluding
frostily that "the Council should not make any drastic change that would put
the National Ballet immediately into bankruptcy." Instead the National would
receive $75,000 while Winnipeg received $45,000 and Montreal $40,000.
The two smaller companies got their large increases in response to the
experts' praise: the National's cuts sprang similarly from the assessors' criti-
cism.
60
The next year, the waves caused by Kirstein and Buckle had passed. The
three companies were back again for their annual dollop—and the Council
officers recommended dividing $160,000 between them on a 50-25-25 basis
with the National getting the largest share. Perhaps this was a reflection of the
"general consensus among critics that there has been a slight, but noticeable
improvement in this company."
61
 Trueman added to this judgment the com-
ment that the problems of the three companies "reflect in an acute form prob-
lems which are becoming general to the majority of arts organizations in
Canada. A growth is taking place very fast which makes demands upon our
resources which we are quite unable to fulfill. We do not see any
remedy...except an amalgamation of the three companies and...this solution is
[notj at present a feasible one."
62
 The Council also saw data on the compa-
nies' finances. Costs were $957,887, up almost a quarter of a million dollars
compared to five years before; earned income had increased to $513,030, up
only $50,000. But donations had risen to 47 percent of costs, and total rev-
enues for the companies were $1,000 above costs—the National, in fact, had
revenues 104 percent of costs.
6
**
One point that worried the Council's officers was the low earning capacity
of and the small number of private donations that Les Grands Ballets received.
"This is no doubt partly caused by social considerations which make French
Canada slow to accept classical ballet," Trueman said, and to the pattern of
corporate and private giving in Quebec. Perhaps, but the Massey Commission
earlier had commented that the Anglo-Canadian attitude to ballet had long
been shaped by the maxim, 'no sober man ever dances,' and a 1982 history
of the Canada Council by two francophones observed that English Canadians
had discovered with surprise "que le ballet n'est pas un art exclusivement
reserve aux pays slaves et latins."
64
 There were perceptual differences at work
in Canada in culture as well as in politics.
106 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
The problems of the ballet companies seemed by 1963 to be largely over.
The Royal Winnipeg Ballet visited the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in
Massachusetts in 1964 at the invitation of the great Ted Shawn and won
glowing reviews in the New York papers. "That's where we became famous,"
the Winnipeg's artistic director said. The National had a good season in 1962-
3, and by 1967, equipped with a new version of Swan Lake, it was drawing
plaudits everywhere—and large audiences.
6
^
Thus by the end of the Council's first ten years, there had been substantial
gains. This is best illustrated by the account offered in the Annual Report for
1966-7 by a Council official, undoubtedly Dwyer, of his travels in March
1967. He had seen a performance of Twelfth Night in Ottawa by the
Stratford company; in Toronto there was the National's highly original Swan
Lake; two days later he was in Vancouver to hear the Vancouver Opera's
Lucia di Lammermoor. The next night, at the Vancouver Playhouse, he saw
Anything Goes, and a day later Britten's War Requiem performed by the
Vancouver Symphony Orchestra. Then it was back to Ottawa for Le Theatre
du Nouveau Monde's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and while there he saw in
the press that three Canadian singers had the leads in La Boheme at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Perhaps that was an unusual concatena-
tion of events; the certainty is that nothing like it could have occurred in 1957
when the Council was starting. The same Annual Report noted that over the
first decade, earned revenues of Canadian companies in the arts had risen
from $2.6 million to $7.5 million; that attendance had increased from 1.5 mil-
lion to 3.5 million; and that budgets had gone from $3.6 million to $14.5 mil-
lion. Culture had begun to matter, and the Canada Council's existence had
helped push the provinces and municipalities into the act as well. The arts in
Canada were entering a new phase,
66
 and the Canada Council had laid the
groundwork for the explosion of quality that was to follow.
So too was university education. Half the money given to the Canada
Council on its creation was to be used to assist universities with capital costs.
This $50 million, intended to be expended within ten years and not to be
renewed, was a gesture by a government that recognized the increasing public
demand for higher education, the financial weakness of the provinces, and the
unwillingness or inability of corporate or private donors to meet the regular
shortfalls in income that most institutions suffered.
Certainly the demand for places in universities had increased. In the
1920s about three percent of those in the appropriate age group went to uni-
versity; by 1959 the proportion had reached one in ten of all between 18 and
21 years of age or some 102,000 full-time students. Projections in 1959 by
the National Conference of Canadian Universities and Colleges were that by
1970 there would be 241,000 students, a flood that would completely swamp
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 107
existing facilities. The universities estimated that $180 million in new construc-
tion was necessary.
67
There were precedents for federal assistance. There had been grants for
technical and agricultural instruction since the era of the Great War, and the
great influx of veterans into the universities after 1945 (doubling the university
population from 40,000 in 1944-5 to 83,200 in 1948) had been financed
with more than $140 million from the Department of Veterans Affairs. In
1952, as we have seen, the government gave an annual per capita grant of
50 cents for university education and that grant was doubled in the same
speech in which St. Laurent announced the Council's establishment. By the
end of the 1950s, therefore, federal aid to the universities of Canada had
reached $38 million a year, a fourfold increase over a decade.
68
Now the Canada Council was also in the field. The University Capital
Grants Fund was to help provide the money for expansion, and the Council's
Act provided that the $50 million was to be divided among the provinces on
the basis of population as determined in the last census. Thus Alberta was to
receive $3,499,000, Ontario $16,838,000, Nova Scotia $2,165,000 and
Prince Edward Island $309,000.
69
 The interest and profits earned on the bal-
ance of the fund owing to each province each year was to be allocated in a
similar fashion.
70
 On the advice of the National Conference of Canadian
Universities and Colleges, the Council also decided to distribute the money
within each province so that the allotment to any institution would bear the
same proportion to the provincial allotment as the registration of that universi-
ty to the total student enrolment in that province.
71
 In other words, each uni-
versity could calculate its entitlement with some precision. The final qualifying
phrase in the UCGF regulations was that the Council could provide no more
than 50 percent of the cost of any project, the rest having to be found from
the provincial government, private sources, or the university's revenues.
The UCGF was expected to last ten years, and although the Council, in a
sense, was only a trustee and administrator for the money, there were none
the less difficulties. Were the arts, humanities, and social sciences fostered if
the UCGF was to build student residences? The Auditor General had some
doubts, but a legal opinion cleared the way: "provided the proposed residence
to be established and operated is more than a mere rooming or boarding
house, so that its existence and operation may fairly be said to be in further-
ance of the Council's objects..."
72
 That was sufficient for the Council—and by
31 March 1960, grants amounting to 34 percent of the almost $22 million
awarded to that time were for residence construction.
73
Another problem was that the rigid formulae in place tended to favour the
larger and well-established universities at the expense of the newer and strug-
gling. At a Council meeting in October 1957, General Georges Vanier sup-
ported complaints raised by colleges affiliated with the University of Manitoba
108 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
and the University of Sudbury, arguing that the "unlimited expansion of the
large universities was not necessarily a good thing...and that there was a very
real danger that the large institutions might benefit at the expense and to the
detriment of the smaller ones." Vanier feared that the Sudbury university,
located in an area far removed from other institutions and with only a small
percentage of area students going on to higher education, might falter. Such
smaller schools, he said, were "a safeguard against the danger of a regimenta-
tion of thought in a few centres." N.A.M. MacKenzie, the president of the
University of British Columbia, countered this by saying that if the larger uni-
versities were denied their full share, "thousands of the best young people
would be denied access to the humanities and the fine arts. The larger institu-
tions might become more and more interested in scientific activities if they
were not encouraged to promote programs in arts, letters, and humanities."
Inevitably the big battalions won.
74
Yet another difficulty was caused by Quebec's insistence that universities
in the province refuse to accept UCGF money. Such grants, the province
maintained, violated the province's rights in the field of education. But after
the Liberals under Jean Lesage came to power, the past was swept away, and
at the two 3-4 May 1961 meetings of the Council, McGill University applied
for grants totalling $1.75 million. This provoked Marcel Faribault, the presi-
dent of the Trust General and a Council member since 1959, to make an
extraordinary statement. He had accepted a position on the Canada Council
in the expectation that some special agreement could be made between the
federal and provincial governments to resolve Quebec concerns. That had not
occurred, and he had to conclude that the UCGF "was clearly and unequivo-
cally unconstitutional.... Now to most people of common law experience I
would say that the matter of unconstitutionality is something which is merely
inappropriate. To a man bred to civil law," he went on, "it is something illegal,
and therefore much more than inappropriate, something morally wrong and
practically sinful." Such difficulties, he was convinced, would be resolved over
time and Canada's constitution was altering through evolution. None the less,
the Quebec government was being "pennywise and pound-foolish" in letting
its universities take the Council's money "because it endangers the recovery of
its taxation powers which it needs so acutely." Faribault's remarks were
praised on the Council—and then disregarded. McGill got its money, and soon
every university in Quebec got its share as well. As a Canada Council
Bulletin—subsequently withdrawn from circulation because of these com-
ments—put it, "it was largely to avoid the dilemma posed by the BNA Act that
the Canada Council was established in 1957 as a nongovernmental
agency."
75
 Faribault and others could not see the distinction.
These concerns aside, the UCGF was a successful device, one that helped
the universities in preparing for the 1960s. The projections that had been
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 109
made in the 1950s turned out to be drastically understated—instead of
241,000 students in 1970 there were actually to be 309,469 full-time stu-
dents and 142,206 part-time students
76
—and had the UCGF not been in
place, those numbers could not have been housed.
77
 Had there not been
Canada Council scholarships and fellowships the students would have had no
Canadians to teach them.
Before the Canada Council's creation, aid to scholarship had not been in
the Canadian tradition. In 1938, there were 12 scholarships or fellowships in
the social sciences for the whole country, 14 in the humanities, and 96 in the
natural sciences.
78
 Twenty years later there were 3,600 awards available—of
which 1,700 were in public health and hospital service and awarded by the
Department of National Health and Welfare; the remainder covered all the dis-
ciplines, and the best estimate was that approximately one-sixth of those were
in the humanities and social sciences.
79
 For a country with its university enrol-
ment nearing 100,000, for one contemplating a doubling or tripling of that
enrolment over the decade ahead, and for one anxious to participate fully in
the burgeoning technological revolution, those figures were simply pathetic.
The Canada Council's task was to help redress the balance.
The nature of the problem was pointed out at the first meeting of the
council at the end of April 1957. Brooke Claxton said that while there was a
shortage of space in which to accommodate students, there was an even
greater need for professors to teach them. "It might well be that in the three
fields of the arts, humanities and social sciences, the Council might give a high
priority in programs of fellowships, scholarships and sabbatical leaves, subsi-
dies for travel and publications, and the like, particularly at the pre-doctoral
and post-doctoral levels..." There was agreement that this must be a high pri-
ority and that the Council should not deal with loans or university entrance
scholarships.
80
The basic guidelines, largely developed by Trueman, were laid out at the
next Council meeting in August. There were to be ten types of scholarships:
pre-master's degree (worth an average of $1,200); predoctor's degree
($2,000); senior fellowships ($4,000); junior arts fellowships ($2,000); sec-
ondary school teachers grants ($2,000); arts teachers grants ($2,000); short-
term grants ($300-700); non-resident fellowships ($5,000); grants for journal-
ists and broadcasters ($3,000); and a category designed for senior scholars
and artists whose requests did not fit the other categories. Adjudication, sur-
prisingly but sensibly, was farmed out to the Canada Foundation, the
Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Social Sciences Research
Council. The Canada Foundation had been formed during the war to help air-
men training under the British Commonwealth Air Training Ran leam some-
thing of Canada; after the war it had turned its interest to fostering the arts.
The two research councils were academic bodies, granting agencies, and well
110 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
qualified to assess the merit of professorial applications for assistance. The
Canada Council got a bargain—the estimated cost of processing applications
was $10 in the humanities and social sciences and $5 in the arts; the
appraisal of manuscripts for grants in aid of publication was estimated to cost
$150; and the Canada Council agreed to pay $5,000 to each of the three
bodies for this work and to increase that if the work load warranted. It also
reserved to itself the right to refuse recommendations made to it and to seek
additional advice if it so desired.
81
 Those were good beginnings and by
December 1957 the Council was ready to print its forms—and even to make a
few preliminary awards out of applications already on hand.
By late March 1958, the results of the first competitions for pre-MA and
pre-doctoral grants were complete. The pre-MA program had not attracted
very satisfactory candidates, only 274 applications being received for 100
awards. That was not the case with the pre-doctoral competition, where 333
applicants sought 60 awards and where the competition was fierce. As a
result, with typical flexibility, the Council reduced the number of MA awards to
70 and increased the senior awards to 89. At the same time, the Council
increased the funds available for short-term research grants from $40,000 to
$75,000.
82
 The total value of scholarships and grants awarded was
$640,000 and awards in the next few months raised the total to $955,400
for the first Council year. The next year $1,215,000 in awards were made,
38 percent in the humanities, 37 percent in social sciences and 25 percent in
the arts.
8
3
After the first few competitions, the Council had its procedures in hand.
The appraisal of applications, still contracted out, worked well,
84
 but there
were new questions to be decided. There were more applicants in the humani-
ties and social sciences than in the arts, for example, but arts organizations
drew heavily on Council funds. Did that mean that funds should be diverted so
that more scholarships could be given in the humanities and to social scien-
tists? Or was there already more outside support for those areas than for
artists for whom the Council was the only granting agency? In the circum-
stances, Trueman in January 1960 recommended dropping the awards for
journalists and filmmakers: "The applicants are few, and not outstanding, and
almost all who apply under Broadcasting and Film-making are from the CBC
and the NFB." Similarly, the Director recommended the elimination of non-
resident grants in the arts: "The state of arts education in this country is not
yet sufficiently advanced to justify granting scholarships to people from other
countries..."
85
 Most important, Trueman urged that the pre-MA scholarships
be dropped and that the money saved be devoted to the pre-doctoral competi-
tions: "There are 7,000 [professors] now, but well over 16,000 will be needed
in 1970-1, if the present ratio of teachers to students is to be maintained."
8
^
That last recommendation would not be agreed to until the end of 1964.
87
 In
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 11
the meantime, there was another problem raised by the Canada Council's
vice-chairman, Father Georges-Henri Levesque. Widely acclaimed as the
"Pere de la Renaissance Quebecoise" (the subtitle of the one biography of
Levesque),
88
 Levesque was a good social scientist and academic organizer,
widely respected in the country and on the Council. He expressed concern
that French Canadians were not getting their fair share of scholarships. This
was causing criticism in the province and was personally embarrassing to him.
"On the one hand," he wrote to Brooke Claxton on 1 April 1960, "I have
been trying for many years to strongly support the federal institutions and this
has led our parochial nationalists and politicians to consider me as a centraliz-
er, a traitor, etc. On the other hand, if they are given by the Canada Council
the slightest opportunity to attack its policy, everything I have done until now
to promote federal spirit and friendly understanding between our two ethnic
groups would become, I fear, rather useless."
89
Levesque then sent a memorandum to all the Council members setting out
his concerns and pointing out that the Canada Council as "a bicultural and
bilingual institution, which must in all fairness promote the interests and serve
the needs of the two main cultural groups of our country" should provide
roughly one-third of its assistance to French Canada. To achieve this,
Levesque asked that the Humanities Research Council and the Social Sciences
Research Council be urged to set up linguistically-based panels to deal with
applications. To bolster his complaints, Levesque attached some statistics
showing that at the February Council meeting only eight of 44 grants in the
humanities went to French Canadians and only 33 of 124 in the social sci-
ences. "Strangely enough," he added of the humanities results, "throughout
the whole of Canada one keeps hearing that it is in that particular field that
French Canadians seem to excel."
90
Levesque's memorandum drew a quick rejoinder from N.A.M. MacKenzie:
the Levesque formula would lead to Balkanization. What should be done
instead, the UBC President argued, was to bring the Council's programs more
forcefully to the attention of Quebec universities and to advise selection com-
mittees
to keep in mind the necessity of special consideration being given to appli-
cants from the outlying areas of Canada and, in particular, to those whose
language is French. This can perhaps best be done by insisting that the com-
petent individuals, whose mother language is French, are included in the per-
sonnel of these committees.
91
The result of Levesque's initiative was the establishment of a Special
Committee on Scholarships, comprising Levesque, Mackenzie and W.A.
Mackintosh, and the collection of data by the Council's officers. The data were
inconclusive. In the first year of competition, French Canadians won 39.2 per-
1 12 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
cent of pre-doctoral awards, substantially more than might have been antici-
pated, given that only 28.7 percent of the applicants were French-speaking;
in the third year, 24.8 percent of awards went to francophones although only
17.5 percent of the applicants were French Canadians. In all, the Council offi-
cers noted, French speaking candidates had won 26 percent of the scholar-
ships and fellowships in all categories over the first three years of the Canada
Council's existence. The data also showed that when awards were categorized
by region, Ontario did better than it should have in proportionate terms, the
Maritimes got its just desserts, that the West did not, and that Quebec ordinari-
ly did well.
The statistics seem to have allowed the debate to peter out. But the
Council's officers began to pay visits to Quebec universities to hear comments
and complaints, some of which were devoted to attacks on the anglophone
bias of adjudication panels.
92
 The Levesque problem was an important one,
one that cut to the heart ot the Council's operations. If grants could be award-
ed to French Canadians on a pro rata basis, then could demand similar treat-
ment and so would every ballet company in Podunk with aspirations to rival
the Royal Winnipeg. A point of principle was at stake, and Levesque was
wrong in his position. In a speech in 1963, Trueman said proudly that the
Council "makes no attempt to distribute the income of the Endowment Fund
in accordance with provincial or regional population." The money was award-
ed in competition—it had to be that way.
93
But would there be enough money for the Council to do its job? In a sub-
mission to Prime Minister Diefenbaker in November 1960 asking for an
increase in the Endowment Fund, the Council argued that its applications had
increased dramatically while the number of awards had increased scarcely at
all. In the pre-doctoral competition, for example, applications were up by a
third over three years but the Council could give grants only to one in four;
the adjudicators said that half the applicants merited a fellowship. This was
important, the Council brief argued, because new faculty had to be found at
an annual rate "rising from 1,000 in 1960 to 2,000 in 1970," and half those
faculty had to be in humanities and social sciences. To give the scholarship
program sufficient money, the Council maintained that it needed additional
income of $255,000 each year.
94
 The government did not come through.
Nevertheless, the Council began to shift its priorities. The beginning of the
1960s saw an explosion in university demand—and the construction of York,
Trent, Brock, Waterloo, Simon Fraser, Calgary, the Universite de Quebec sys-
tem, Lethbridge, Regina and others. How could these institutions be staffed?
The Council's budget for pre-doctoral awards in 1962-3 was $295,000
95
 but
actual expenditures were $373,700; the budget for 1963-4 was $400,000;
for 1964-5 $450,000; for 1965-6 $1,083,500; and for 1967-8
$6,575,000.
96
 In substantial part the increases after 1964 were made possi-
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 115
ble by the Pearson government's decision to give the Council $10 million in
1964, a decision consciously made because of the perceived necessity to staff
the universities. 97
The problem was serious. A report in 1964 by Eugene Bussiere, the
Associate Director, on the state of graduate studies made depressing reading.
Canadian students went abroad to study because Canadian universities lacked
the facilities needed; in the United States in particular, Canadian graduate stu-
dents were often taught by expatriate Canadians who had earlier emigrated
south.
98
 A survey made by the Council in 1966 found that of 431 pre-doctor-
al awards made in that year only 127 students expected to secure their
degrees in Canada. Of the remainder, 165 expected their degree to come
from an American university, 69 from Britain, 54 from France, and 16 from
other countries. Of those working in Canada, 55 expected to take the doctor-
ate at Toronto, 13 at Laval, 14 at UBC, 10 at McGill, and nine at Montreal."
Did those who went abroad to study return to Canada to teach? That was
a question that the Council addressed in a major survey of award holders over
the first seven years of the pre-doctoral program. There had been 809 suc-
cessful applicants from 1958-9 to 1964-5, and of those located 588 or 87
percent replied. 241 had completed their degrees, 318 expected to do so
within one to five years, and only 29 reported that they had abandoned their
studies for reasons ranging from marriage to "Ph.D. nausea." The median age
at graduation was 32. Of the group with the Ph.D. complete, 221 were teach-
ing in a university, as were 50.6 percent of those whose degrees were still
unfinished. Almost two-thirds of those who had abandoned the degree were
also employed in teaching. In all, 87 percent of the respondents were universi-
ty professors, and 26.7 percent of the respondents had Canadian degrees or
expected them soon, 41.3 percent had or expected United States degrees,
and 32 percent had or expected European degrees. Of the group that had
studied in the United States, 77 percent had returned to employment in
Canada; of those who studied in Europe 90 percent returned; the combined
repatriation rate was 80 percent, and for francophones it was 92.5 percent.
Others who were working abroad hoped to return as well, and the data sug-
gested that the country had got good value from the Council's awards.
100
The data notwithstanding, the Council as early as 1963 had begun to cut
back the number of award holders who were allowed to go abroad. By trim-
ming travel grants the Council hoped to reduce the number to 50 percent
abroad, and by asking applicants to give reasons for study outside Canada, it
hoped to encourage more to study at home. The intent was partly to save
money on travel and thus to increase the number of awards; equally, however,
the Council wanted to force-feed Canadian graduate schools.
101
The Canada Council's research grants programs were also force-feeding
the development of scholarship. For the first time in Canada, money was
114 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
readily available to fund travel to the sources, for example, for historians, and
to assist with typing, research assistants, computer time, and the like. In the
first four years of the Council, $356,500 in short-term grants was made avail-
able, and by the 1964-5 year, $123,100 had been awarded to 90 individual
projects, along with $13,800 for group projects.
102
Perhaps it was good sense that prevented the Council from attempting to
measure the success—or failure—of these projects. The Council could mea-
sure success in pre-doctoral competitions simply by counting the number who
persisted and ultimately received their degrees; but it was difficult to measure
success—or even the completion—of academics' research projects (an area for
which the Canada Council assumed full responsibility, taking over from the
Humanities Research Council and the Social Sciences Research Council, in
1959).
103
 One example that revealed the difficulties was an application
received in 1958 from the distinguished historian, W.L. Morton, of the
University of Manitoba. Morton wanted the Council's support for a multi-vol-
ume history of Canada, "The Canadian University Series: A History of
Canada," that was to involve 16 of the country's ablest scholars. Indicating
that he and Donald Creighton would be the editors, Morton sought $68,000
for travel and research costs, clerical expenses, and honoraria for the authors.
His estimate was that it would take seven or eight years for the 16 volumes to
be completed, and the books were to be published by McClelland and Stewart
of Toronto. The request was recommended for partial support by Trueman
(who frugally deleted the honoraria), but the Council effectively refused it, indi-
cating instead only the willingness to support individual authors who sought
assistance.
104
Four years later, some research and writing having been done, the Social
Sciences Research Council and the Humanities Research Council jointly
approached the Canada Council on behalf of the Morton project, this time
seeking $7,600 a year for five years.
105
 The series was still expected to be
completed by 1967. Over time, the number of volumes grew to 20, the name
was changed to the Canadian Centenary Series, and the original authors
dropped off the list with a frequency that suggested plague had struck the
nation's history departments. A series that was to take seven or eight years in
1958, that was projected to last five years more in 1962, by 1984 still had
gaps in its ranks.
 10
*> The only lesson was that academic research can be
painfully slow—with or without research support.
Perhaps it all was the way Dean Rusk of the Rockefeller Foundation had
put it at the first meeting of the Canada Council in 1957: of 50 grants made,
20 would fail, 20 would produce indifferent success, and only ten would turn
out well. To hard-line economists and bottom-line specialists, such a success
rate probably is too low. But in culture and scholarship, in the world of the
Canada Council in its first decade of existence, a 20 percent success ratio was
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 11 5
probably sufficient. And there can be no doubt that the Council succeeded in
its mandate. The growth of the arts, the increase in scholarship, the survival
and development of companies such as the National Ballet were proof of that.
This chapter is taken from pages 441-474 of Canadian Historical Review 65(4). Copyright © 1984 University of Toronto Press
Incorporated. Reprinted by permission of University of Toronto Press Incorporated.
ENDNOTES
1. Pickersgill remarks, Canada Council 25th Anniversary Dinner, 14 June 1982,
mimeo, as amended in letter to author 25 March 1984. See also Pickersgill's
account in My Years with Louis St. Laurent (Toronto 1975), pp. 318-19. The
story of J.A. Corry, My Life and Work: A Happy Partnership (Kingston
1981), 62 refers not to the Canada Council but to the beginning of university
grants. J.W. Pickersgill, letter to author, 25 March 1984.
2. Lamontagne remarks, Canada Council 25th Anniversary Dinner, pp. 28-9.
Howe was an administrator of the Dunn estate and a friend of the Killams, mak-
ing his agreement even more important.
3. Report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts,
Letters and Science (Ottawa 1951), pp. 370ff. See also Claude Bissell's paper,
The Massey Commission and Canadian Culture,' presented at Carleton
University in 1983.
4. Vincent Massey, What's Past Is Prologue (Toronto 1963), 453.
5. Massey College, Vincent Massey Diary, 4 Jan. 1955.
6. Ibid., 6 Jan. 1956. Queen's University, Grant Dexter Papers, memo, 4 Jan.
1956, indicates that Finance Minister Harris also opposed the Council idea.
7. Massey Diary, 22 Sept. 1956, 15 Oct. 1956.
8. Halfway up Parnassus (Toronto 1974) 46.
9. Canada Council Records, Ottawa, Pre-Council Material file 'Cultural Progress in
Canada.' 13 Nov. 1956.
10. Bissell, Halfway up Parnassus, 47; Carl Berger, The Writings of Canadian
History (Toronto 1976), 179.
11. Like most of the draft bill, part of St. Laurent's speech in the House was pre-
pared in the Privy Council Office largely by Peter Dwyer, who eventually joined
the Council. See Privy Council Office. PCO Records.
12. Glenbow Archives, Solon Law Papers, f. 131, Low to I. Watts, 23 April 1957.
13. Queen's University, T.A. Crerar Papers, vol. 99, Crerar to A.K. Cameron, 8
Feb. 1957.
14. Public Archives of Canada, Brooke Claxton Papers, vol. 72, Canada Council
file, note n.d. Claxton learned a lesson here. As he wrote a friend in 1959,
"Culture is a bad word...I have made speech after speech about The Canada
116 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Council without using it once..." Ibid., vol. 76. Claxton to R.M. Fowler, 7 Aug.,
1959.
15. See Frank Milligan, 'The Ambiguities of the Canada Council,' in David Helwig
ed., Love and Money: The Politics of Culture (Toronto 1980).
16. A.W. Trueman, A Second View of Things (Toronto 1982), 137.
17. Canada Council Records, Claxton file, memos, passim.
18. PCO Records, file C-34-2, Bryce to Hill et al., 16 Apr. 1957.
19. Massey Diary, 16 June 1957.
20. Claxton Papers, vol. 77, Claxton to Walter Gordon, 20 Mar. 1957.
21. Hugo McPherson, 'Gilding the Muses: The Canada Council,' in A. Rotstein, ed.,
The Prospect of Change (Toronto 1965), 332: Frank Milligan, 'The Canada
Council as a Public Body,' Canadian Public Administration, XXII (summer
1979), 285; Canada Council Records, Trueman file 1957-61, Bissell to
Trueman, 12 Sept. 1961.
22. PCO Records, file C-3-1, Fullerton to Chairman, Canada Council, 21 Jan.
1963; Canada Council Records, Minutes, 30 April, 1 May 1957.
23. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 5-6 May 1958, 18-19 July 1958; Agenda
book, 6-7 Oct. 1959; Minutes, 2-3 Feb. 1959. Trueman remained Director
until 1965, when he was replaced by Jean Boucher. Bussiere left at the same
time and was succeeded by Peter Dwyer.
24. Ibid., Minutes, 30 Apr., 1 May 1957; Claxton Papers, vol. 72, Trueman
memo, 'Notes on Conversations wilh People in New York,' Feb. 1958.
25. Canada Council Records, MacKenzie file, MacKenzie to Trueman, 10 Oct.
1957.
26. Bissell cited in McPherson, 'Gilding the Muses,' 331; Milligan, 'The
Ambiguities,' 69-70.
27. Canada Council Records, Bissell file, Trueman to Bissell, 26 July 1960. In early
1962, Diefenbaker named Colonel D.B. Weldon, a London businessman, as
Chairman; in 1964 Montreal lawyer Jean Martineau succeeded to the post. As
Bissell suggested, Diefenbaker may have assumed that all University of Toronto
presidents were Tories. Letter to author, 26 Mar. 1984.
28. Trueman, A Second View of Things, 152.
29. University of British Columbia Archives, Leon Ladner Papers, Ladner to
Diefenbaker, 11 Apr. 1960 and Ladner to H.C. Green, 11 Apr. 1960.
30. Canada Council Records, Desbarats interview file, 'Submission concerning need
of increase...' 7 Nov. 1960.
31. PCO Records, file C-3-1. Bryce to Prime Minister, 5 Dec. 1960.
32. Ibid., Bissell to Diefenbaker, 8 Dec. 1960. Peter Dwyer later told the
Associated Councils of Arts 1969 Seminar at Ste. Adele that the endowment
principle contained within it the 'seeds of its own destruction. If it stimulates
demand effectively, it must soon become inadequate; and any substantial
increase in revenues from interest will require the addition of very large capital
increments which may prove to be politically impossible.' Copy in Canada
Council Records.
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 11 7
33. Canada Council Annual Report 1963-4, Iff.
34. Cited in ibid., 1964-5, 1-2.
35. Canada Council Records, Director's file 1962-5, 19 Mar. 1965.
36. Ibid., unfiled memo to Secretary of State, Dec. 1964. McPherson, 'Gilding the
Muses,' 335-7, called for division on the grounds that arts responsibilities of the
Council were starving scholarship and that after division the Council could sup-
port the arts more generously.
37. Trueman, A Second View of Things, 157. In 1967-8, the government gave
the Council $17 million, raising its level of support that year to $21.5 million.
Regular grants changed the relationship with government dramatically, not least
with the Treasury Board. See Milligan, 'Public Body,' passim. Dwyer quoted a
Treasury Board official as saying, 'Whenever I hear the word culture...! reach for
my purse.' Canada Council Records, Dwyer address to Arts Seminar, Ste.
Adele, Jan. 1965.
38. 'Canada Council Support to the Arts 1957-8 to 1981-2,' 31 Aug. 1982. Data
provided by the Canada Council. If 1981 equals $1.00, the purchasing power
of a dollar in 1959, for example, was $3.23 and in 1967 $2.74.
39. Ibid.
40. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 30 April-1 May 1957.
41. Ibid., Minutes, Executive Committee, 18 June 1957.
42. Ibid., Minutes, 19-20 Aug. 1957. At its meeting on 7-8 Oct. 1957, the Grands
Ballets was given $10,000. Ibid., Minutes. And on 2-3 Feb. 1958, the Council
declared itself satisfied that the National had met the conditions demanded and
authorized the second $50,000 grant. Ibid., Minutes.
43. Report, 202.
44. See, e.g., the careful account in Ken Johnstone, 'Ballet,' in M. Ross, ed., The
Arts in Canada (Toronto 1958), 54-6; also Max Wyman, The Royal Winnipeg
Ballet (Toronto 1978), 101-2.
45. Claxton Papers, vol. 72, 'Notes on Conversations with People in New York,'
Feb. 1958.
46. By 1968-9, 40 percent of the country's dancers earned less than $4,000 and
none more than $15,000. Laurent Mailhot and Bendit Melancon, Le Conseil
des Arts du Canada (Montreal 1982), 221-2.
47. The Canada Council Annual Report to March 31, 1959, 32-3, noted that
ballet, opera, and symphony had to be subsidized in all countries; in the UK, in
fact, the Arts Council devoted half its budget to the support of 4 major compa-
nies. Carter's report is in Canada Council Records. Carter Ballet Survey 1959
file.
48. Ibid., Minutes, 19-20 May 1959; 17-19 Aug. 1959.
49. In a 1963 speech, Dwyer said frankly that regional and linguistic concerns virtu-
ally obliged the Council to support 3 companies, even though this stretched
Council resources. Address to University of Michigan, Detroit, March 1963,
copy in Canada Council Records.
118 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
50. Claxton Papers, vol. 81, Mackintosh to Claxton, 28 Aug. 1959 and reply, 14
Sept. 1959.
51. Ibid., memo, 30 May 1960, attached to Minutes, 30-1 May 1960.
52. Ibid., 'Standards of the National Ballet,
1
 20 Feb. 1961, attached to Minutes,
20-1 Feb. 1961. The 1961 tour was 'the most disastrous single season in the
ballet's history.' Herbert Whittaker, Canada's National Ballet (Toronto 1967),
95.
53. Canada Council Records Ballet Survey 1961 file, Bissell to Dwyer. 16 May
1961.
54. Ibid. Minutes, 23-4 May 1961. A memo, 'The National Ballet Guild of Canada,'
4 Sept. 1961, attached to Minutes 4-5 Sept. 1961, indicates the National's
acceptance.
55. Ibid., Minutes, 20-1 Nov. 1961; Ballet Survey file, Dwyer-Kirstein correspon-
dence, 14, 16 Aug., 1 Sept. 1961.
56. Wyman describes the ludicrous story of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's ignominious
attempt to live up to its name during a Royal visit in 1959. Wyman, The Royal
Winnipeg Ballet, 109-10.
57. Canada Council Records, Kirstein file, Report, n.d.; ibid., Ballet Survey file,
Buckle Report 1962; ibid., Dwyer to Bissell, 18 May 1961. Glover's report
has not been found. In the Council's Report 1963-4, 16, Dwyer wrote that the
Council had chosen to follow the policy of /aissez-danser.
58. Dwyer later said that the Council's goal was to build 'support services for the
arts,' such things as the National Ballet School and the National Theatre School.
'We think it important...to develop our own actors rather than to receive from
training elsewhere a pint-sized Gielgud dripping mannerisms, or a brand-new
Brando dripping methods.' Address to Associated Councils of the Arts 1969
Seminar, Ste. Adele, copy in Canada Council Records. On Dwyer's earlier
career in intelligence, see John Sawatsky, Men in the Shadows (Toronto
1980), 119ff.
;
 Robert Fulford, 'The Canada Council at Twenty-five,' Saturday
Night (March 1982), 36-7.
59. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 26 March 1962.
60. /bid., 14-15 May 1962.
61. /bid., memo attached to Minutes, 30 June 1963.
62. /bid., memo, 'Re Ballet,' 3 June 1963.
63. By 1967, the National's budget was over $1 million, with box office receipts
covering only 45 percent. Grants from the Council, the province, and Toronto
and more than $250,000 and donations covered most of the rest. Whittaker,
Canada's National Ballet, 94. See also Mailhot and Melancon, Le Conseil des
Arts du Canada, 219. Audiences by 1967 for the 3 companies were 620,000.
Ibid., 22.
64. /bid., 217; Report, 201.
65. Wyman, The Royal Winnipeg Ballet, 121.
66. Dwyer's address to the Canadian Conference of the Arts, 1967, copy in
Canada Council Records; ibid., address to Canadian Music Council, 1 April
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 119
1966; but cf. James Beveridge, 'Culture and Media in Canada,' American
Review of Canadian Studies, III (Spring 1973), 135ff. and Robert Fulford,
'General Perspectives on Canadian Culture,' ibid., 115ff., both of which make
the point that American influences were still dominant.
67. F.H. Leacy, ed., Historical Statistics of Canada (Ottawa 1983), w340-438;
Canada Council Records, Desbarats interview file, Canada Council Submission
to Prime Minster, 7 Nov. 1960.
68. Canada Council, Bulletin no. 6, Canada's Universities (Summer 1960). This
bulletin was canceled and not sent in this form.
69. Minutes of Senate Standing Committee on Rnance, 9 June 1960, p. 9.
70. Douglas Fullerton, The Dangerous Delusion (Toronto 1978), 38.
71. Senate Standing Committee on Finance, 15 April 1959, p. 9. Universities not
founded when the Canada Council was established were deemed ineligible. This
caused difficulties.
72. G.E. Beament to Claxton, 10 April 1958, attached to Canada Council Records,
Minutes, 5-6 May 1958.
73. Trueman, A Second View of Things, 155-6.
74. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 7-8 Oct. 1957. Douglas Fisher, MP, also
worried about this and raised questions in the Public Accounts Committee. See
Claxton Papers, vol. 72, Canada Council file, Fisher's memo to Mr.
MacNaughton, n.d.
75. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 23-4 May 1961; Bulletin no. 6; Fullerton,
The Dangerous Delusion, 37-8; list of Quebec grants in Canada Council
Annual Report 1961-2, 55.
76. Historical statistics, w340-438, w466-74, w519-32; s!41-7; university capital
expenditures rose from $38 million in 1957 to $259.3 million in 1967. Total
operating and capital costs rose form $100,265,000 in 1955 to
$1,616,190,000 in 1970. Provincial expenditures on universities increased
from $140 million in 1961-2 to $350 million 5 years later. Federal per capita
grants by 1966-7 were up to $5 on average, but by 1966, new tax powers
were given to the provinces and the federal grants ceased. Each province was
offered $15 per capita or 50 percent of post-secondary operating costs. See
R.T. Cole, 'The Universities and Governments under Canadian Federalism,'
Journal of Politics, XXXIV (1972), 529.
77. See, e.g., John McLeish, A Canadian for All Seasons (Toronto 1978), 223.
78. Canada Council Bulletin, no. 3 (Summer, 1959).
79. Canada Council Records, Address by Trueman to Montreal Canadian Public
Relations Society, 9 Jan. 1963. The Humanities Research Council of
Canada; Canadian Federation of Humanities 1943-83: A Short History
(Ottawa 1983), 6, indicates that research support and pre-doctoral and leave fel-
lowships were awarded from 1947 to 1959, See also S.D. Clark, 'The Support
of Social Science Research in Canada,' Canadian Journal of Economics and
Political Science, XXIV (May 1958), 141ff.
80. Canada Council Records. Minutes, 30 April-1 May 1957.
120 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
81. /bid., 28 March 1958; ibid., Scholarship Policy file 1958-9, memo, 27 March
1958.
82. Ibid. The Canada Council Annual Report to 31 March 1958, 11, gives slight-
ly different final figures.
83. Canada Council Annual Report to 31 March 1959, 12.
84. The outside agencies, however were destined to be chopped. In June 1963 the
Canada Council abruptly informed the Humanities Research Council and the
Social Sciences Research Council that the Canada Council now would do its
own adjudications. The academic councils were shaken by the swift brutality of
the move, but there was nothing they could do about it. See McLeish, A
Canadian for All Seasons, 183-5; Canada Council Records, Scholarship Policy
1962-3 file, memo, 'System of Adjudication,' n.d., and ibid., Trueman to J.R.
Kidd, 5 June 1963; J.H. Aitchison and G. Rothney to D.B. Weldon, 21 June
1963; Trueman to Rothney, 25 June 1963. The Canada Council soon set up
discipline panels and a final review panel to determine awards. See ibid.,
Scholarship Policy file 1964; Doc. 467, 31 March 1964.
85. Non-resident scholarships were also dropped as one Canadian diplomat put it,
because the 'local ministry of education...chose the dictator's nephew and that
sort of thing. Canada got a steady stream of "playboys and ne'er do wells..."
Ruth Lor Malloy, 'The Canada Council and Its International Aspects,' Exchange
(Fall 1970), 16.
86. Canada Council Records, Scholarship Policy 1959-61 file, The Scholarship
and Fellowship Programme: Report and Recommendations,' 29 Jan. 1960.
Historical Statistics, w375-85, indicate 7,760 full-time university teachers in
1960 and 24,733 in 1970. In 1960, 43 percent had doctorates; in 1970, 51.2
percent. Some in the arts believed the Council was giving too much aid to the
universities and scholarship and not enough to artists and writers. See Clara
Thomas and John Lennox, William Arthur Deacon: A Canadian Literary Life
(Toronto 1982), 230.
87. Canada Council News, II (Jan. 1965).
88. Robert Parise, Georges-Henri Levesque (Montreal 1976).
89. Canada Council Records, Levesque file, letter, 1 April 1960.
90. Memo in ibid., 23 March 1960. Trueman, A Second View of Things, 140-1,
said that Quebec members of the Council were strongly pressured by applicants
who regarded them almost as MPs with a duty to lobby.
91. Canada Council Records, Mackenzie file, memo, 21 April 1960.
92. /bid., Minutes, 21-2 Nov. 1960, Appendix 11.
93. It is worth noting that the Council, like all of Ottawa, essentially functioned only
in English in this period. Levesque's letters and memos were written in Fjiglish,
presumably so that they would be read and understood. Applications forms were
in both languages, of course. In addition, there was a sexist cast to the Council's
forms and regulations—spouses were invariably female, for example, and the
Council did not pay travel expenses for the husbands of winners as they were
deemed to hold jobs; wives of winners were given travel expenses. The Council
was no different from other agencies of this era.
CULTURE AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE FIRST TEN YEARS OF THE CANADA COUNCIL 12
94. Canada Council Records, Desbarats interview file, submission, 7 Nov. 1960.
95. Ibid., Minutes, 14-15 May 1962.
96. Ibid., 3-4 June 1963; 31 May-1 June 1965; 20-1 Feb. 1967. See also F.E.L.
Priestley, The Humanities in Canada (Toronto 1964), 46-7.
97. Canada Council Annual Report 1963-4, Iff.
98. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 10-11 Feb. 1964, 'General Observations on
the Development of Graduate Studies in Canada,' 10 Feb. 1964.
99. Ibid., Minutes, 4-5 April 1966, 'Pre-Doctoral Fellowships,' 11 Mar. 1966. By
1967, more than half of Canadian doctoral candidates abroad were supported
by the Council. Ibid., Ford Foundation file, J. Boucher to E.A. Ritchie, 20 Apr.
1967.
100. Ibid., Minutes, 20-1 Feb. 1967, 'Report on the 1965 Survey of Pre-Doctoral
Award Holders,' 20 Feb. 1967. Ph.D.'s awarded in Canada in 1955 were 266;
by 1970, there were 1,625. Historical Statistics, w504-12. MAs in the same
period increased from 1,459 to 9,638; BAs from 13,757 to 67,100. By 1968
controversy had begun over the numbers of non-Canadians teaching in
Canadian universities. Robin Mathews and James Steele of Carleton University
argued that between 1961 and 1908 the proportion of non-Canadians rose
from 25 to 51 percent, that 58 percent of new appointments between 1963
and 1965 went to non-Canadians, and that from 1965 to 1967 the figure rose
to 72 percent. Their data were attacked. See Mathews and Steele, The
Struggle for Canadian Universities (Toronto 1969), 85ff. The figures for
Ph.D. production in Canada suggest the difficulties involved in getting sufficient
university faculty without recourse to foreigners.
101. Canada Council News, 1, July 1964.
102. Canada Council Records, Desbarats interview file, statistical page; Canada
Council Annual Report 1964-5, 49.
103. See Corry, My Life and Work, 123ff., for the comments of a Council member
on research grant applications.
104. Canada Council Records, Minutes, 28 March 1958, 5-6 May 1958.
105. Ibid., 20-1 Aug. 1962.
106. Social Sciences Research Council, Annual Report 1970-71, 20, forecast the
completion of the series in 1974-5. The experience with the Centenary Series
stands in contrast to the general mood of the time. See H. Blair Neatby, 'The
Gospel of Research: The Transformation of English-Canadian Universities,'
Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 4th Series XX (1982), 275ff.
;
and Philip Cercone, 'The Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, 1940-83,'
Social Sciences in Canada, XI (Sept. 1983), 9.
This page intentionally left blank 
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN
ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS
CAROLE H. CARPENTER
The folklore studies in a nation reflect, to some extent at least, the cultural
concerns of that country. Folklorists have frequently been profoundly influ-
enced by nationalist sentiments and other socio-political circumstances.
Indeed, the scholarly development of folklore was intrinsically related to 19th
century nationalist movements in Europe, especially Finland and Germany. In
such movements, folklore was used as a means to arouse popular nationalist
sentiments, to uncover and express the true nature of the people—their folk
soul.
Such use of folk traditions is one form of what today is termed applied folk-
lore work. This approach of folklore has long been quite common in Canada;
in fact, Canadians have tended to pay most attention to folklore when they
have perceived a link between their concern and some social or political goal.
The particular relationship between folklore and nationalism is not at all for-
eign to Canada: French-Canadian identity, for instance, is firmly rooted in
widespread awareness, celebration and study of Canadian folk traditions.
The following article is an example—one of very few in the country—of
applied folkloristics: that is, an interpretation of aspects of the culture as a
whole through the analysis of Canadian folklore work. Specifically, Carole
Henderson Carpenter considers here the relationships between ethnicity—
attitudes towards the identification with and expression of ethnic heritage—
and Anglo-Canadian folklore-related activities, scholarly or otherwise. She
develops the argument that association of folklore with ethnicity has been a
key factor in preventing the majority group of Canadians from accepting folk-
lore and its study as significant. Consequently, Anglo Canadians are less cul-
turally aware than is desirable since they fail to recognize and celebrate their
own folk heritage.
It has been said by a certain prominent Canadian that "...a democracy is
judged by the way the majority treats the minority."
1
 An understanding o
Canada in many respects other than the merely political can be gained by
investigating the majority's treatment of the various minority elements within
the nation. Many of the central themes and concerns of Canadian culture are
clearly reflected in Anglo-Canadian treatment of minority-group folklore.
124 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Indeed, Anglo-Canadian folkloristics—the collection and study of folklore
2
—
has been profoundly influenced by the socio-cultural milieu.
This paper endeavours to identify the prevailing Anglo-Canadian attitudes
which have prompted and directed studies of minority-group folklore, and to
relate these attitudes to the socio-cultural milieu which shaped them. The most
powerful influence on majority-group concerns with minority-group traditions
has undoubtedly been associated with ethnicity. Meaning in common parlance
"apartness," ethnicity refers to that which delineates and characterizes sepa-
rate ethnic groups both from within and without. Folklore has been a primary
means for the majority group to distinguish different groups in Canada; in
fact, the majority group has typically associated folklore with ethnic groups—
first the Native Peoples and later the non-Anglo immigrant groups. Further,
Anglo Canadians have focused attention on these different groups in part
because of and through oral traditions. In the following discussion, then, eth-
nicity will be shown to have been of particular importance in Anglo-Canadian
folkloristics.
There has been a decided trend among Anglo Canadians interested in folk
traditions to look beyond their own folk groups for material to study.
3
 In fact,
it is only since Memorial University of Newfoundland has been training
Newfoundlanders and others in Folklore Studies (1962) that many academical-
ly-trained Anglo-Canadian folklorists have done research on their own tradi-
tions.
Anglo Canadians are by no means unique in this regard, for the same
trend has existed until only very recently among most British folklore scholars.
The various reasons for this common tendency among Anglo-Saxons to focus
attention away from and, most often, to ignore the very existence of their own
traditions are particularly illuminating in the context of this discussion.
Essentially, the reasons are derived from a perception common among
Anglo-Saxons of themselves and their culture as the most highly advanced, the
most developed of all creatures and cultures ever extant. In particular, 19th
century evolutionary thought, especially social Darwinism, combined with the
rampant imperialism of the British Empire, gave rise to a persisting concep-
tion of British culture as superior to all others. Despite its strongly conservative
orientation, British culture became, as a result of the Industrial Revolution,
closely allied with progress and consequently with a liberal mentality.
4
 The
British consequently became increasingly alienated from their folk roots which
were premised upon a conservative status quo-oriented mentality and which,
therefore, came to be associated in the minds of the British middle and upper
classes with the old-fashioned, the inferior and the obsolete.
Their transplantation to Canada did little to change the attitudes of most
Britishers. Except for members of some delimited regional, and usually ethnic,
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 125
sub-cultures such as Newfoundlanders or Nova Scotian Scots, most Anglo
Canadians simply fail to identify folklore with themselves, and tend to consider
folk materials to be the quaint, charming and decorative but ultimately unim-
portant possessions of the strange, foreign or 'backward' people in their
midst.
Anglo Canadians have been able to harbour such ideas because of their
dominant majority-group position throughout most of the country. The majori-
ty of Anglo Canadians have not consciously felt culturally, economically, politi-
cally or socially oppressed or inferior. They have not, therefore, been motivat-
ed to seek means to express themselves in the nation through their unique tra-
ditions as have some peoples, both in Canada and abroad, as a result of posi-
tions of inferiority. Regional Anglo-Canadian sub-groups, ethnic minority
groups (particularly the French and more recently others) and the Native
Peoples have been prompted to attempt such cultural articulation through
which they have achieved various degrees of general recognition in the larger
society.
The basic British propensity to ignore their own folklore has been com-
pounded in Canada by several important aspects of the Canadian socio-politi-
cal and historical situation. Since this country was, for many years, a colony of
Great Britain, and increasingly since the 1940s has been an economic colony
of the United States, Canadians have commonly looked beyond their borders
for their cultural identity. They have, therefore, neglected to a certain degree
the minority cultural groups within their midst. Only recently with the upsurge
of nationalist sentiment has the attention of Canadians been directed inward in
a search for identity.
Even more influential than the colonial mentality in forming majority-
group attitudes to minority groups has been the garrison mentality instilled by
the pattern of settlement of the country and fostered by the subsequent socio-
political circumstances in Canada.^ As a result of their early settlement, pri-
marily in isolated pockets surrounded by wilderness and/or aliens, Anglo
Canadians developed a defensive stance towards the land and its other occu-
pants. Therefore, small areas of civilization—'garrisons'—were in effect sepa-
rated off and jealously guarded, primarily out of fear.
6
Even today, Anglo Canadians retain such garrisons despite extensive set-
tlement, cosmopolitan centres and the retreat of the true wilderness. The
majority group remains challenged by the wilderness it has never fully con-
quered and, to some degree, feels threatened by it. Once actually the wilder-
ness, this untamed entity has now become the society-at-large. In large part,
this threat to the majority group—amounting to a sense of weakness, indeed
almost inferiority in relation to the land—stems from the fact that the majority
populace does not know either itself or the land it inhabits.
7
 Those people
who seem to know who they are, or at least who they once were, and who
126 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
have distinct cultural traditions through which they can express their unique
identities, then also pose a threat to the majority group. The compensatory
reaction of these feelings of inferiority amongst the majority are manifested in
displays of paternalism—i.e., feelings of superiority—towards the threatening
objects: the minority cultural groups and their traditions.
In essence, majority-group treatment of minority groups and their tradi-
tions has been characterized by three approaches: exploitation, sentimentaliza-
tion and preservation. A brief general discussion of these approaches will be
followed by a specific analysis of their effect on studies of Native Peoples' tra-
ditions, then a similar analysis concerning non-Native minority-group folklore
studies.
The exploitative nature of Anglo-Canadian interest in minority-group folk-
lore is evident from the fact that the majority group, major organizations and
governments of Canada have only paid serious and concerted attention to
these traditions when such interest has been either financially or politically
expedient. Otherwise, throughout Canadian history, minority-group traditions
have most commonly been treated as ephemera and exotica.
The sentimentalization of minority-group folklore has been a more com-
plex process and one frequently related to the conception of Canadian culture
as a mosaic. From the earliest years of this century, concern for and display of
the traditions of minority cultural groups has taken many forms, but has con-
sistently been a common occurrence in Canada. This visibility of minority-
group folklore in the culture generally has promoted the mosaic concept.
It was an American tourist, Victoria Haywood, who first wrote about
Canada as a mosaic culture.
8
 She was fascinated by surviving traditions she
encountered during her vacation forays into Eastern Canada. Sentimental
romanticism pervades her writing and that of so many other people—her pre-
decessors, contemporaries and even some successors—who have been preoc-
cupied with viewing alien customs, artifacts and other folk traditions as
quaint.
9
 The full influence of the mosaic concept on Anglo-Canadian folkloris-
tics will be discussed subsequently.
Any number of people have been fascinated by the very 'foreignness' of
minority-group traditions and have been emotionally attracted to their study at
least partially by this alien quality. This is true of Margaret MacLeod's interest
in Metis songs, resulting in her book Songs of Old Manitoba (1959), and
Helen Creighton's work with German Canadians in Nova Scotia, published as
Folklore of Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia (1950). However, the consider-
able linguistic and cultural difficulties associated with concerted study of the
traditions by most Anglo Canadians have led to the limitation of such interest
to descriptive documentation, frequently inaccurate, editorialized or at least
incomplete.
Most commonly, Anglo Canadians have not considered linguistic and cul-
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 127
tural communication to be quite the problem with the Native Peoples that it
has been with non-Native minority cultural groups.
10
 This fact has had inter-
esting results. First, there are many more discussions of Native Peoples' tradi-
tions by Anglo Canadians than there are discussions of non-Native minority
group traditions. Second, despite or perhaps because of these numerous writ-
ings, there has been extensive and serious misunderstanding of many tradi-
tions, for example, the Indians' oratory rhetoric.
11
 Third, the amount of
Anglified materials concerning Native traditions available in the culture has
encouraged many Anglo Canadians to adopt bastardized Native materials as
their own, or as 'Canadian' traditions. An excellent example of this tendency
is the inclusion of Indian or pseudo-Indian legends, especially those referring
to place names, within the traditions common to many western Anglo
Canadians.
The Native Peoples and their cultural traditions have generally attracted a
great deal of attention from many Anglo Canadians. The nature of, motiva-
tions for and impact of this attention reflect particularly clearly the attitudes of
the majority towards minority groups and their unique cultural traditions.
From the early years of contact until well into the 19th century, the
Anglo-Saxons freely exploited the Natives and their cultures while simultane-
ously romanticizing these indigenous people. The prevailing attitudes towards
the Native Peoples tended to depend upon the proximity of the Anglo-Saxons
harbouring the attitudes to the Natives; that is, Europeans abroad could speak
and write of the "Noble Savage" while the British in North America had to
deal regularly with the "Pesky Redskin."
12
 The sentimentality inherent in the
former attitude pervaded the works of many travellers, settlers and writers con-
cerning the Native Peoples throughout the 19th century. This stance persisted
in many of the numerous adaptations of Indian traditional narratives prepared
mostly in this century and primarily for Anglo-Canadian consumption.
Naturally, there are some non-sentimental and valuable nineteenth-century
works dealing with Native traditions. Paul Kane's Wanderings of an artist
among the Indians of North America: from Canada to Vancouver's island
and Oregon through the Hudson's Bay Company's territory and back
again (1859; new ed. 1925) is one of the most important of such works.
Another is Sir John Franklin's Narrative of a journal to the shores of the
Polar Sea in the years 1819, 20, 21 and 22 (1823) concerning his expedi-
tions in search of the Northwest Passage. It is particularly noteworthy that the
authors of these, and most of the other 19th-century and earlier works of real
interest to the serious scholar of Native culture, were trained observers rather
than commentators. In their reports they—unlike most others—emphasized
the nature, milieux and apparent uses and functions of what they encountered
rather than their reactions to these traditions.
Virtually contemporaneous with their systemic and self-righteous eradica-
128 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
tion of Native ceremonial customs central to these indigenous cultures (e.g.,
the Potlatch and the Sun Dance were both made illegal), some Anglo
Canadians began to appreciate the value, indeed the desirability, of preserving
their cultures, or at least some of their artifacts. In the latter half of the 19th
century, many personal and institutional collections of Native artistic treasures
were amassed, particularly in the West and especially of the Pacific North
Coast materials. While it can legitimately be argued that such acquisition of
artifacts has ultimately been beneficial to the Native Peoples,
13
 this cultural
robbery undoubtedly weakened any residual tendencies towards cultural main-
tenance still surviving among the indigenous peoples, and speeded the demise
of the traditional cultures. Among those who participated in these "get-it-
before-it's-dead" preservation activities from mid-century onwards were the
Canadian Geological Survey teams which provided later scholars with much
information in their reports, and some extremely valuable photographs and
artifacts.
14
Beginning in the last third of the 19th century, some truly academic stud-
ies
15
 of Native Peoples' traditions were undertaken, although frequently not
by Anglo Canadians. Americans,
16
 usually associated with the Bureau of
American Ethnology, the Smithsonian Institute or other organizations, com-
monly directed these studies. Until the establishment of the National Museum
in Ottawa, they were also most influential in urging Canadians to undertake
them.
Canadians became very actively involved in studying Native Peoples' tradi-
tions when C. Marius Barbeau and Douglas Leechman joined the staff of the
National Museum in 1911-12. Some dedicated non-professionals as well as
scholars in Canada then made serious efforts to preserve remnants of the tra-
ditional indigenous cultures. At the same time, however, governments and the
larger society urged Anglo conformity—essentially meaning the rejection of
traditions—among the Native Peoples. Additionally, sentimentalization and
exploitation of the Native folklore by the majority culture persisted despite all
the scholarly efforts concerning this material.
Mounting guilt among the majority group when faced with the obviously
negative effects of their treatment of the Native Peoples has resulted in a liter-
ature of guilt and a generally self-deprecatory view of Anglo-Canadian involve-
ment with the Native Peoples' cultures. Approximately ten years ago this
Anglo-Canadian guilt was reinforced, indeed exploited, by the Native Peoples
themselves when they began to perceive the necessity for a cultural articula-
tion generated, directed and controlled by themselves. This movement—a
compensatory expression by suppressed, repressed and misunderstood peo-
ples
17
—represents a certain cultural threat to the majority culture. Previously,
the Native Peoples had played a minimal role themselves in the study of their
traditions or in the determination of the nature and extent of the exposure of
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 129
these traditions to the society at large. Now the Native Peoples are striving to
establish cultural sovereignty. They have been somewhat successful since
many Anglo Canadians have become hesitant to study or to publish materials
concerning Native folklore. As a result, many more of the recent publications
on Native traditions are by Native People themselves.
18
 Some of these works
contain as many, if not more, distortions than the non-Native publications,
and some are just as exploitative, because they capitalize upon the white
man's guilt. Partly because of such failings in the Native-produced materials on
their cultural heritage, but mainly because of prevailing attitudes among the
majority group, Native cultural traditions continue to be misused and falsely
represented in the larger society.
The majority group has felt quite free to adapt, adopt and otherwise use
the Native Peoples' traditions without ever fully understanding them or granti-
ng their bearers truly equal status within the society. Generally speaking,
Anglo Canadians have displayed greatest interest in Native Peoples' traditions
for commercial or cultural purposes. For example, Anglo Canadians readily
adopted Native transportation equipment and methods during the frontier
times, and have just as readily in modern times adapted Native art, for
instance, to their use for the tourist trade and for international display as
Canadian art.
This essentially pragmatic approach is, and long has been, typical of the
majority-group attitudes towards minority-group traditions and their bearers.
Generally, applied folklore activities—interest in and socio-cultural use of folk-
lore for practical, non-scholarly purposes—have been and continue to be a
prominent feature of Canadian folkloristics.
19
 Those majority-group activities
concerning minority-group traditions particularly tend towards an applied
approach. This tendency has become more apparent in recent years when the
majority group has come to consider the traditions of non-Native minority
groups as they have long seen the Native Peoples' traditions—useful to the
majority, especially for the identification and display of Canadian culture.
Examples of this pragmatic majority-group attitude towards minority-
group folk tradition can be found early in this century when there was consid-
erable concern for the vast numbers
20
 of non-Anglo, non-French immigrants
who had entered Canada towards the end of the 19th century and in the years
of this century preceding World War I. Socio-political events and related cul-
tural beliefs and movements have promoted and validated this utilitarian
approach. Illustrative of the concern demonstrated towards minority-group tra-
ditions are the activities of J. Murray Gibbon, for many years the publicity
director of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
A close friend of Marius Barbeau, the Dean of Canadian folklore, Gibbon
became interested in the so-called National School of music, popular in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. This school of thought, supported by such
1 50 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
notable musicians and musical scholars as Bartok, Dvorak, Smetana,
Tchaikovsky and Verdi, argued that a nation's music should be rooted in the
folk music of that nation's people, and that through mutual awareness and
understanding of their distinct musical traditions, the folk of a nation might
evolve a national music reflective of their true nature.
21
In keeping with these ideas, then, Gibbon endeavoured to cultivate inter-
group awareness and a mutual tradition through exposure to and exchange of
folk music among the people of Canada. Consequently, he organized a num-
ber of ethnic folksong, handicraft and dance festivals and concerts in the late
1920s. These performances were sponsored by the Railway,
22
 and held at the
company's famous hotels in various cities, including Quebec, Toronto,
Winnipeg, Regina, Calgary and Banff. The express purposes of such public
performances were the celebration of the cultural diversity of Canadians and
the promotion of union among them through the mutual appreciation of tradi-
tion.
Gibbon achieved some national recognition for his well-intentioned efforts
and for the resultant ethnic festivals which obviously appealed to a cultural
predilection of his time:
...he {Gibbon] is coming to be regarded more and more as a champion of for-
eign cultures in Canada; and in this connection would appear to be perform-
ing a unique patriotic service, not only in entertaining the "Old Canadians"
with the glamour, pageantry and melody of our "New Canadians" (as in the
recent Folklore and Handicrafts Festival in Winnipeg), but, by this very means,
making the "Old Canadians" more cosmopolitan and more tolerant—one
might even say "less boorish"—towards the newcomer from various centres
of Europe.
It is felt that anyone who can do this is deserving of a niche in the
Canadian Hall of Fame. In other words, it is felt that anyone who can help to
enrich our native culture by bringing in contact with it that of foreign lands, at
the same time showing up the picturesque, colourful and intriguing side of the
newcomer, is doing something for this country.
2
^
The tendency has persisted to concentrate on the "picturesque, colourful
and intriguing" side of minority cultures in Canada, to consider such interest
"a patriotic service," and to display the interest through public performances,
not uncommonly, though not exclusively, in a manner and by persons foreign
to the traditions involved. Demonstrations of ethnicity are commonplace in
Canada today, very often taking the form of festivals involving folk traditions,
and usually being directly or indirectly government supported.
24
 A distinction
can be made between folk festivals sponsored by one group, for instance, the
annual Icelandic festival in Gimli, Manitoba, and multi-ethnic events like
Toronto's Caravan. The former are usually more oriented towards the mainte-
nance and communal sharing of traditions than are the latter, and less orient-
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 151
ed towards demonstrations of traditions for non-members. A strong publicist
element is, however, incorporated in virtually all ethnic festivals.
Anglo-Canadian interest in minority-group folklore has obviously been
encouraged by the belief that if people can mutually exchange and participate
in each other's traditions they will understand one another better and will cre-
ate a community amongst themselves. Such thinking lies behind many of the
current activities of the Canadian Folk Music Society, one of the very few
organizations in Canada concerned with folk traditions. The formation of the
Canadian Folk Arts Council in the mid-60s was prompted largely by these
same ideas.
Perhaps more influential in directing majority-group attention to minority-
group traditions has been the general acceptance of the mosaic description of
Canadian culture. The governments and people of Canada have clearly shown
a willingness—indeed a need—to believe in and to foster the mosaic concept.
In the effort to demonstrate the existence of the mosaic, both governments
and the general populace most commonly point to the persistence and visibili-
ty of minority-group folk traditions or to the presence of minority-group mem-
bers in important positions in a society essentially determined and controlled
by the Anglo-Canadian majority. Minority-group traditions are, then, of pecu-
liar importance in modem Canada.
The motives for the popular acceptance of the mosaic and for the appar-
ent willingness of Canadians to recognize folklore as a significant contribution
by the minority cultures to Canada must be questioned. Essentially, the
motives are derived from the intense, but generally covert, pressures towards
Anglo-conformity in the country and from other cultural defensive reactions,
i.e., measures undertaken by a cultural group to maintain its existence in the
face of some threat. In Canada such measures have frequently been associated
with nationalism.
In order to avoid compromising the basic structure of the country of jeop-
ardizing its own superior position, the majority culture is quite willing to make
concessions to appease the minority groups. Such concessions include not
only displays but also studies of minority-group traditions. Multiculturalism—at
least as it exists and is celebrated in Canada—is far less threatening to the
majority culture, and therefore is considered preferable by most Anglo
Canadians to nationally operative bilingualism and biculturalism. Hence, the
mosaic is supported, as is scholarly activity that reinforces the concept.
In its search for a national identity, Canada has recognized the need to
have native and/or national traditions. Since the mosaic demands that
Canada's unity is in its multiplicity, minority-group traditions—or some selec-
tion of them that is acceptable in the society at large—thereby become
Canadian traditions which can be utilized in the articulation of a distinct
Canadian culture. Such articulation is demanded by one of the deepest needs
152 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
of the Canadian psyche, namely to be different from Americans. The celebra-
tion of the mosaic is a compensatory expression of the Canadian culture
believed by many Canadians to be distinct from and somewhat superior to the
threatening American counterpart. The persistence and demonstration of the
mosaic is seen by many Canadians to be central to their cultural survival.
Therefore, the collection and study of the traditions viewed as necessary to
maintain and demonstrate the mosaic are encouraged.
The Canadian populace, then, unconsciously accepts folklore as a very
important voice for the nation's culture. However, except for some scholars
(primarily of French Canada, Newfoundland, and various minority ethnic
groups), Canadians do not attach intrinsic importance to folklore. Anglo
Canadians have tended to view oral traditions as having only an instrumental
significance. As indicated earlier, such material has primarily been considered
important and worthy of attention when that attention seems to be of socio-
political value. Consequently, academic folklore studies are somewhat retarded
in the nation.
Ethnicity plays an important role in this situation. As previously men-
tioned, folklore is commonly associated by the larger society with ethnic
groups. In fact, folklore functions as a primary means of making insider/out-
sider identifications in Canada and of maintaining the boundaries between the
different minority groups. Majority-group Canadians have been generally more
concerned with such matters than with the paradigmatic development of
Folklore Studies. It must be noted that the majority of discussions of oral tradi-
tions in Canada have been oriented towards description (rather than analysis)
of the folklore and folklife of specific ethnic groups.
Through concerning themselves with the traditions of ethnic minorities,
Anglo Canadians have been able to maintain their deeply ingrained belief that
their country is one where people are freer than elsewhere to maintain their
distinctiveness and where differences are not only tolerated but also encour-
aged. As the cultural minorities become more vocal, increasingly protest the
prevailing representation of their tradition in the culture, and display their own
tradition as they choose, the widespread Anglo-Canadian beliefs concerning
cultural freedoms are challenged and the Anglo Canadians' treasured concep-
tion of themselves as tolerant and beneficent is threatened. As a result of this
threat, majority-group Canadians increasingly exhibit a tendency to respond
favourably to ethnicity while minority-group Canadians, in the effort to attain
full cultural status and recognition, increasingly display it.
Since the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism was estab-
lished, and especially since the federal government adopted its cultural policy
of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework,
25
 minority groups and their
traditions have been receiving considerably increased attention from govern-
ments, their departments and agencies, as well as from individual scholars. In
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 1 5 5
part, this increased attention is a direct result of the availability of funds for
multicultural research which is, in turn, a product of the society's—especially
the majority group's—concern for ethnicity.
That availability and the application of the funds is, therefore, clearly asso-
ciated with the current political and cultural expedience of such research. In
effect, majority-group Canadians are now treating non-Native minority groups
and their traditions in a manner akin to their longstanding treatment of the
Native People and their traditions. In other words, the majority is more ready
to use and/or abuse the minority traditions in order to maintain their position
in the nation, to amuse or entertain themselves and to portray Canadian cul-
ture abroad.
This situation does not bode particularly well for the future of minority-
group folklore research in Canada. When ethnicity and its display are no
longer in fashion, and when the majority culture creases to find socio-political
applications for attending to minority-group traditions, then the current bur-
geoning of ethnic cultural studies will be no more, for the available funds will
diminish as they are deployed elsewhere. Without the present governmental
and cultural support, the only possibility of maintaining the currently develop-
ing academic tradition of minority-group folklore research rests with the
minority-group members themselves. Ethnic folklore studies will evolve into an
internationally recognized field of scholarship, supported by the groups con-
cerned in the studies (as is already the case for the French-Canadian and
Newfoundland work), only if the number of such studies continues to increase
and its calibre to improve.
As more minority-group members undertake research on their own folk-
lore, fewer outsiders are studying minority-group traditions, with the result that
the materials are being viewed increasingly from the point of view of the insid-
er. Increasingly then, the research exudes an awareness and understanding of
meaningful cultural artifacts rather than the sense of exotica and ephemera
which pervaded it when largely untrained Anglo Canadians dominated the
activities concerning these traditions. This change is particularly noticeable in
the recent publications concerning the Native Peoples' traditions.
Majority-group Canadians still do not consciously consider minority-group
traditions to be particularly significant and worthy of serious concern. What is
seen most in the general culture of such traditions are those that are decora-
tive, interesting and easily accessible to the outsider, such as culinary customs,
place names, folk dance, song and costume. Such traditions are useful and
saleable to the general public, as discussed previously. However, Anglo
Canadians have generally not come to realize the true importance of this folk-
lore to the minority-group members themselves any more than they have rec-
ognized the existence of their own traditions. Even majority-group folklore
scholars are guilty of treating Canadian ethnic folklore in a somewhat superfi-
1 54 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
cial manner, for they have failed to provide full data concerning the traditions,
to do scholarly analysis, or to develop theoretical paradigms related to the
materials. There has been no appreciable change in the popular attitudes over
time despite the cultural support for ethnicity and the fact that in recent years
more Canadians have received more training in folklore, resulting in more
seriousness in their attitudes towards traditional materials.
26
Considering the premise argued in this paper that ethnicity in Canada
may commonly be interpreted as compensatory cultural articulation of sup-
pressed or repressed people, it is conceivable, given the current socio-political
circumstances, that Anglo Canadians may yet display intense ethnicity uis-a-uis
their own traditions. Minority-group members may well increasingly exclude
majority-group members from the collection, study and presentation of ethnic
traditions, as the Native Peoples already have done to a certain extent. Since
the majority group is tending more towards treating non-Native minority
groups and their traditions in a fashion typical of the majority's longstanding
treatment of the Native Peoples and their traditions, it is to be expected that
the future reaction of other minority-group members might well be similar to
that of some Native people today. Faced with such reactions from minority-
group members, Anglo Canadians—particularly those interested in folklore—
may be forced to consider their own traditions. The uncertainties associated
with the sense of loss resulting from the denial of access to minority-group tra-
ditions could possibly activate the latent sense of cultural inferiority among the
majority and intensify the present search for identity. Anglo Canadians might
then become more actively engaged in the study and preservation of their own
traditional materials, and thereby help to eradicate a serious lack in Canadian
folkloristics.
Under the present circumstances, any analysis of minority-group traditions
in Canada are necessarily limited by the lack of extensive collections and stud-
ies of the majority tradition, making significant comparative studies and discus-
sions of inter-influences virtually impossible. For, in their desire to recognize,
popularize and preserve minority-group traditions, many Anglo-Canadian folk-
lorists have failed to study their own group's traditions, leaving this folklore
largely unknown and undervalued throughout the nation.
Just as the maintenance and display of traditions are related to the posi-
tion of any minority group of Canadian society and culture, so, too, is the
study of such traditions by members or outsiders related to socio-political fac-
tors. Anglo Canadians have been supreme in Canada. They have commonly
displayed attitudes typical of the dominant group towards the dominated and
their cultures. Paternalism, odious sentimentalization, considerable exploitation
and haphazard preservation have characterized both scholarly and popular
ethnic folkloristic endeavours undertaken by the majority group. Some good
work has been done, nonetheless, such as Mary Weekes' collection of anec-
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 1 5 5
dotes, reminiscences and material items from Saskatchewan Indians,
2
? Hugh
Dempsey's work with the Blackfoot Indians around Calgary
28
 and Mark
Mealing's research on the Doukhobors in British Columbia.
29
Much remains undone, however, and the necessary research might never
be undertaken or completed since most Canadians are unaware of the nature,
value and purposes of Folklore Studies. Further, the populace seems unwilling
to recognize the significant difference between the mosaic as it currently exists
and a truly multicultural country. As a result, Anglo-Canadian supremacy and
cultural domination, along with the popular misconceptions and general igno-
rance of folklore and its study, are likely to persist, generally undermining a full
appreciation of the role of ethnic groups and their folk traditions in Canadian
culture.
This chapter is taken from pages 7-18 of Canadian Ethnic Studies, Special Issue 1: Ethnic Folklore in Canada XX(2). Copyright
© 1975 Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes ethniques au Canada. Reprinted by permission of Canadian Ethnic Studies/Etudes eth-
niques au Canada.
ENDNOTES
1. Pierre E. Trudeau, as quoted by Hartwell Bowsfield in Louis RieJ: The Rebel
and The Hero (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1971).
2. Unlike "history" or "English," the term folklore does not generally apply to the
discipline of study as weO as the materials studied. While "folkloristics" is not a
totally acceptable term, it is widely used along with "Folklore Studies" to distin-
guish the materials, i.e., folklore, from the study, i.e., folkloristics.
3. This tendency was discussed in my paper "Folklore Scholarship and the
Sociopolitical Milieu in Canada," Journal of the Folklore Institute, 10 (1973),
pp. 98-108.
4. George Grant notes this change in cultural orientation in his work Lament for a
Nation (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1971).
5. This pattern was such as to encourage the formation of decidedly regional cul-
tures, frequently ethnically oriented. See my paper "Folklore Scholarship" for
further discussion.
6. As discussed by Northrop Frye with reference to Canadian literature in
"Conclusion" to Carl F. Klinck (ed.), Literary History of Canada (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1965), this mentality is one which cordons off
areas of civilization surrounded by wilderness and focuses inwards on those
areas. Many scholars maintain that such a garrison mentality is deeply ingrained
in the Canadian psyche.
7. Many Canadian scholars have argued that Canadians are faced with a severe
identity problem in that not only do they not know who they are but also they
do not know where they are in the sense of not knowing this land. Margaret
Atwood deals with this problem in her thematic study of Canadian literature,
Survival (Toronto: Anansi, 1972).
156 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
8. Victoria Haywood, Romantic Canada (Toronto: Macmillan, 1922).
9. As indicated rather clearly by the title of a collection of Eastern-Canadian narra-
tives by Eliza B. Chase, In Quest of the Quaint (Ferris, 1902).
10. This has resulted from feelings of superiority, leading to a common failure to
recognize the Native Peoples' traditional lifestyle as a viable way of life, and to
pressure from the general populace for the Native Peoples to assimilate.
11. See Norah Story (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Canadian History and
Literature (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1967), p. 377, for commentary
on this misunderstanding.
12. I am indebted to my former colleague Dennis Martel for pointing out this
dichotomy of attitudes. The same sort of mixture of attitudes exists today rela-
tive to non-Native, non-French, non-British minorities. Removal from such
groups tends to idealism, while proximity often results in antagonism.
13. It has preserved their material cultural heritage which might otherwise have
decayed and vanished. In recent years, some Native Peoples have been attempt-
ing (with some success) to repatriate some of their art treasures.
14. For discussion of the activities of this organization, see Morris Zaslow, Reading
the Rocks: The Story of the Geological Survey of Canada, 1842-1972
(Toronto: Macmillan of Canada in Association with the Department of Energy,
Mines and Resources and Information Canada, 1975).
15. For example, Franz Boas' work among the Eskimo and the Pacific North Coast
Indians.
16. Examples include Leonard Bloomfield, Paul Radin and Frank Speck.
17. An example of cultural defensive mechanisms is discussed by Anthony F. C.
Wallace in Culture and Personality, 2nd ed. (New York: Random House,
1961), Chapter 5, "The Psychology of Cultural Change," pp. 165-206.
18. For example, George Clutesi, Son of Raven Son of Deer (Sidney, B.C.: Gray's
Publishing, 1967); Indian Children of British Columbia, Tales from the
Longhouse (Sidney, B.C.: Gray's Publishing, 1973); and Kenneth Harris,
Visitors Who Neuer Left (Vancouver: University of B.C. Press, 1975).
19. For an extensive discussion of this characteristic of Canadian folklore activities,
see my book Many Voices: A Study of Canadian Folklore Activities and
Their Role in Canadian Culture (Ottawa: National Museum, CCFCS Mercury
Series 26, 1979), Chapter 1, "The Pattern of Folklore Activities in Canada,"
pp. 21-87.
20. Between 1900 and 1914, nearly three million immigrants came to Canada,
many of whom were of non-Anglo, non-French heritage.
21. For further discussion of these ideas and their influence on Canadian folkloris-
tics, see my book Many Voices, Chapter 4, "International Relations and
National Distinctions," pp. 157-204.
22. It is noteworthy that this company should sponsor such events designed to unite
Canada. The railway was originally built to accomplish the same purpose, and
has, ever since, symbolized the union of the western provinces with the rest of
Canada.
THE ETHNICITY FACTOR IN ANGLO-CANADIAN FOLKLORISTICS 1 5 7
23. "Developing Canada's Immigrant Culture," Edmonton Journal, 15 December
1928.
24. A particularly noteworthy example of such events is "Caravan," a very popular
and successful multicultural festival held annually in Toronto since 1969, and
proudly cited as indicative of the city's cosmopolitan, tolerant nature.
25. Announced on October 8, 1971.
26. Most academically trained folklorists have taken their degrees in the United
States or abroad since there are only two Folklore degree programs in Canada,
at Universite Laval and at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Attitudes of
such academic folklorists are decidedly more serious than those of most ama-
teurs or self-trained scholars.
27. Resulting in, among other things, one work used in Saskatchewan schools,
Great Chiefs and Mighty Hunters of the Western Plains (Regina: School Aids
and Text Book Publishing Co., n.d.).
28. His published work includes the important volume Crowfoot, Chief of the
Blackfoot (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1972).
29. Undertaken first for his doctoral dissertation "Our People's Way: A Study in
Doukhobor Hymnody and Folklife" (University of Pennsylvania, 1972).
This page intentionally left blank 
NARRATIVES IN
CANADIAN Music HISTORY
BEVERLEY DIAMOND
PREFACE
This paper was originally prepared for publication in a Festschrift to hon-
our Professor John Beckwith. Beckwith's teaching and research of Canadian
music history have played a major role among the forces which led me to
write the present article. I speak here not just of the priority which he gives to
Canadian subjects, although his enthusiasm in this regard is compelling, but
also of his insistence that we look carefully at social realities, both for the
shape of our value systems and for the direction of our action as human
beings. How could musicians regard hymns as unimportant—he has been
known to ask—when millions of people find them deeply moving? By looking
to social realities for 'culture' he acknowledges, as I read it, that the anthropo-
logical definitions, rather than the more narrowly-framed ones of the average
concert-goer constitute an appropriate intellectual basis for the study of
Canadian or any other music cultures.
His interests are not dispassionate ivory tower pursuits but they intersect
with decisive action. A good case in point is his often-quoted article, "About
Canadian music: The P.R. failure" (Musicanada, 1969),
1
 where he articulated
the problems of the avant-garde compositional community of his peers in a
way which contributed to the considerable improvement of their situation in
the ensuing 20 years. In his identification of the critical problems of 'PR' for
new music, he articulated the hegemonic situation of the arts in relation to
other national priorities, and of Canadian culture in relation to American or
European—in short he anticipated the critical discourse and "reflexive" schol-
arship which have had a striking impact in the humanities and social sciences
in the last two decades.
While my work has departed in radically different directions from that of
Beckwith, these lessons which I learned from him were profoundly important
ones. This paper is informed, not by his subjects or issues, but by the spirit in
140 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
which he engages in research. For both his inspiration and direction, I am
deeply grateful.
HlSTORIOGRAPHIC ISSUES AND BOUNDARIES
My aim is to deconstruct the values and assumptions of the "narrative"
which was created about Canadian music during that post-1960 period in
which Beckwith played such an important role. In my view, the problems he
articulated in 1969, in particular the need to create, for international con-
sumption, an image of a group of Canadian composers who were at the fore-
front of compositional developments, helped to shape the way our music his-
tory was written around that time and subsequently. The intent of my decon-
struction is not to evaluate the Tightness or wrongness of that narrative, but
rather to give us the option to choose whether the narrative of the next 30
years ought to be the same one. I recognize that my scrutiny of the structures
which led a particular author to say one thing at a certain time and place is
fascinating but also disturbing. As Leo Treitler has written in Music and the
Historical Imagination,
We do not like to acknowledge that, as historians, we are within history. We
do not like to think that our choice of problems or our ways of identifying and
evaluating evidence serve any particular ideologies or that they reflect the
ways in which our worlds are structured, or that they would respond to
change in the circumstances around us (1989: 4).
"Narrative," in this context, does not imply that scholarly writing is 'ficti-
tious' but rather acknowledges what has become widely accepted in post-mod-
ernist textual criticism: that scholarly writing, like creative writing, is reflective
of its historical and cultural situation. On one hand, this approach recognizes
the "literariness" of any written text since, as James Clifford has observed,
"[Ijiterary processes—metaphor, figuration, narrative—affect the ways cultural
phenomena are registered, from the first jotted 'observations,' to the complet-
ed book, to the ways these configurations 'make sense' in determined acts of
reading" (1986: 4). On the other hand, the approach considers the "political"
or power-related dynamics involved in the relations of production of texts by
examining their "systematic and exclusive" (Clifford 1986: 6) aspects.
This approach to historiography, then, is influenced by the work of a
number of critical theorists. Some of those works are social scientific studies
which point to fundamental intra-cultural or cross-cultural "themes" which are
played out in scholarly texts (e.g., Boon 1983, Clifford 1988 or Bruner
1986). Others explore the impact of colonial power relations or indeed, con-
cepts of "nation" in relation to our constructions of self and 'other' (Spivak
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 141
1990, Waterman 1990, Grenier and Guilbault 1990). Still others (Trigger,
1986) challenge the traditional Western disciplinary boundaries—between his-
tory and anthropology for example. In part, I am attempting to do a small-
scale exercise in what Michel Foucault (see Rabinow 1984: 76-100) calls a
"genealogy" of ideas and interpretive strategies, in this case ideas and inter-
pretive strategies about Canadian music history of the past 30 years.
My genealogy begins with a textual analysis of three well-known English
language monographs which survey a fairly broad spectrum of Canadian
music, which often serve as texts—hence first introductions to our music cul-
ture for many students—and which reach a public market outside of the uni-
versity context. The monographs are Kallmann's A History of Music in
Canada, 1534-1914 (1960, 2nd edition 1987), Ford's Canada's Music: An
Historical Survey (1982), and McGee's The Music of Canada (1985). They
are, clearly, important documents in the imaging of who we are and in the
definition of a sort of canon of knowledge about our music culture. I will look
at the representation of this image and the structure of this canon. In footnot-
ed references, the themes which reveal themselves in the textbook analysis are
compared to other writing, mostly scholarly in intent and style, on smaller
aspects of the subject of Canadian music. I also make a comparison with text-
books on American (i.e., United States) music in order to explore how the nar-
ratives have been constructed differently within each nation. It is obvious that
neither of these comparative exercises approaches comprehensiveness but
rather they serve to contextualize the analysis of the three Canadian text-
books.
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music TEXTBOOKS
The three aforementioned textbooks on Canadian music are not entirely
comparable in scope; Kallmann ends his history at 1914 while Ford and
McGee cover the 20th century; McGee includes sub-sections on popular
musics and a chapter on Native musics while Ford and Kallmann focus on the
"classical" tradition with some mention of folk and Native musics. There are
some overt differences between these three and other types of surveys of
Canadian musics. Jazz studies such as those by John Gilmore (1988) or Mark
Miller (1982, 1987) for example, and rock or other popular music studies
(e.g., Yorke 1971, Melhuish 1983 or Fetherling 1991) contrast notably
through their focus on individual biography and their more limited chronologi-
cal or geographical scope.
2
 Earlier anthologies (e.g., Walter 1969 or
MacMillan 1955) contrast by their report-like presentation of certain domains
of contemporaneous activity, and other later monographs (e.g., Proctor
1980) by an emphasis on specific domains (e.g., composition). Several newer
142 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
collections of writing (e.g., the Canadian Music Centre's Celebration (n.d.) or
Beckwith and Hall's Musical Canada (1988), are more diverse but they do not
intend a comprehensive representation of any sort. Hence, Kallmann, Ford,
and McGee are perhaps comparable in a way which other publications are not
through their commitment to greater chronological and subject comprehen-
siveness. Notwithstanding the differences in scope and in research material on
which to draw, a close reading is engaging because it permits us to examine
the historiographic continuities and discontinuities established by three writers
over a 25-year period.
NARRATIVES OF INTENT
The obvious starting point for my re/searching of these texts was the
examination of what the authors made explicit about their objectives. In this
respect, Kallmann and Ford offer us quite a lot while McGee makes few
explicit statements about his perspective. Both Kallmann and Ford emphasize
their sociological orientation. Kallmann describes the aim of his book as "the
description of music at various stages of Canadian history and of the meaning
it held in the life of the Canadian people" and stresses the "continuity and
cohesion of musical effort" the "musical pastimes and aspirations of the
many" (p. 3). He introduces at least two pervasive metaphors: "the planting of
seeds rather than the harvesting of the fruits" and the "ever-present themes of
transplantation, assimilation and search for identity" (p. 5). Ford defines his
sociological approach as one which subjects "other aspects of music—music
production, performance, education, and economics—to a socio-musical cos-
mology which can be constructed from historical data" (p. 2). He contrasts this
with a musico-historical approach which he sees as one which traces the "styl-
istic development of Canadian composition." Ford quotes Kallmann re the
planting of seeds and states that it is not his intention to show what is
Canadian but to understand "why the Canadian musical community developed
as it did" (p. 7). In this regard, he sees a tension between a "natural evolution-
ary regionalism" and the "aspirations of a national consciousness" (p. 7)—the
latter more positive in his view than the former. McGee describes his intent to
write "a general narrative that can be understood by the layman, while at the
same time including some technical details for those who are interested in that
kind of information" (p. xi). Implicit in this is the clear pedagogical intent of his
book.
These statements were hardly intended as political flags. But believing that
language is never neutral, I find several aspects of these stated objectives wor-
thy of reflection. What is the pre-text of Kallmann's commendable commit-
ment to a "social" history at a time when such a perspective was not popular
in historical musicological writing?
3
 Further, why would Ford actually strength-
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 145
en his commitment to this perspective a decade later? What are the implica-
tions of the organic imagery (planting, seeding, harvesting)? How does the
tension that Ford feels between "regionalism" and "national significance" play
itself out? Is it significant that Kallmann states his objectives in terms of his
subjects, that Ford seems more ready to make his own ideology overt, and
that McGee chooses to be almost self-effacing in his statement of intent in
terms of his prospective audience? Realizing that there may be simple answers
to these questions (e.g., a publisher wanted it that way), I offer no further com-
ment at this point but rather look at the content of the books.
NARRATIVES OF PROPORTION
Although a quantitative analysis of how much space is relegated to certain
subjects might seem less significant than qualitative explorations, the propor-
tioning of space within Canadian music textbooks indicates a number of priori-
ties and deeply ingrained notions. First, with regard to the allocation of space
for different chronological periods and with regard to the boundaries of those
periods, few shifts have occurred since Kallmann's book was first published. I
we may use the chapter boundaries as some sort of chronological markers, it
is interesting that the dividing points are consistent from Ford to McGee and
only marginally different in Kallmann. Have we, then, arrived at a comfortable
periodization of our cultural history? Furthermore, the dates used to demarcate
"eras" are ones chosen for convenience (the end of a century) or with refer-
ence to major political events (confederation and world wars) unlike European
classical music history which has generally attempted to demarcate historical
eras according to major changes in musical style or in relation to other cre-
ative domains (e.g., art, literature.)
The proportion of space (see Figure 1) devoted to historical periods is
consistent with the organic metaphor alluded to in two of the three introduc-
tions. The coverage of each successive period 'grows' to fill more pages than
the last; while the Kallmann graph appears to contradict this in the last col-
umn note that the last two columns combined are the equivalent of column
four on the Ford and McGee graphs.
144 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Figure 1: Number of Pages per Chronological Period
KALLMAXX
FORD
MCGEE
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 145
McGee seems to have tried to give equal space to each "period" although
the 20th-century periods are of course shorter than the earlier ones. But even
here, the inclusion of musical examples produces the "growth" phenomenon.
It might seem obvious and natural to see our music history as a slow expan-
sion culminating in the 20th century. There are fewer materials for the earlier
periods and a huge wealth of activity and creativity to discuss at present. But
the same argument applied to European or Latin American music history does
not seem to hold. Is it obvious and natural that so many musicologists study
Medieval and Renaissance European music but few Canadian musicologists
(Amtmann is an exception) have found it compelling to expand the data for
the 17th and 18th centuries in survey-type works?
4
 Perhaps separate mono-
graphs on these periods are now in order. But then, my suggestion presumes
a different narrative—that proportional balance is somehow a truer story—and
that merits considerable debate.
In addition to the proportioning of pages for different time periods, I tabu-
lated the space devoted to specific places. Have we regarded cities as the cul-
tural hubs of the nation? If so, does this constitute an adequate representation
of the musical culture of our country? Or, if we regard small cities as pale
reflections of larger ones, are we extending the injustices of a colonial per-
spective to our own traditions? I should acknowledge here that my own bias,
stemming no doubt from the fact that I have lived approximately equal parts of
my life in small, medium and large communities, is that I find the quality of
cultural life to be different in places of different size, different environment and
different social constitution but that qualitative difference has never been
directly proportional to the size of the community. Hence, I think we do colo-
nize ourselves if we regard small cities as pale reflections of larger ones. To
what extent is the qualitative variety of different places represented in our
music history textbooks?
The next series of graphs (Figure 2) may at least provide a point of entry
for answers to these questions about regional representation.
146 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Figure 2: Regional Representation
Kallmann
[Note difference in the scale of the two graphs.]
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 147
Figure 2: Regional Representation (cont.)
McGee
[Note difference in the scale of the two graphs.]
Ford
[Note difference in the scale of t
48 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
First, both Kallmann and Ford clearly state that they regard major cities as
representative. Kallmann (p. 6) says "the example of a few cities or careers
usually serves to illustrate the essential features in many others" and he pro-
ceeds to use major cities as sub-headings in most chapters. Ford states his
opinion with less neutrality, equating the development of cities directly with
increasing cultural sophistication and "progress toward a national conscious-
ness" (p. 104). I note statements such as the following: "Naturally the most
sophisticated towns in Canada would attract most of the talent, those towns
being Halifax, Quebec, Montreal and Toronto" (p. 34). In attempting to graph
the coverage of urban musical life in these three books I expanded Ford's list
from four to nine: Halifax, Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary,
Edmonton and Vancouver. The graphs demonstrate the obvious in many
cases. That Halifax and Quebec were proportionately dominant in early peri-
ods and superseded by Toronto and Montreal in later ones is no surprise
although the extent of the gap by 1918 is, perhaps, greater than the popula-
tion growth would lead one to anticipate. In spite of their consistent descrip-
tion of the rapid growth in Western Canada in the 19th century, the scant
coverage of Western cities in not only the 19th century but also the 20th is
striking when laid out in this graphic format. Perhaps we need a history of
Canadian music authored by a Westerner to rectify the balance.
5
 Certain
anomalies are positive advantages to us. Ford's more extensive attention to
Halifax in the 19th century, logical since he taught at Dalhousie during at least
part of the preparation period for this book, is welcome. McGee similarly pro-
vides some new data about Niagara. Nevertheless, the amount of ink accorded
to different cities is, in my view, politically loaded.
If one accepts that major centres reflect the most important cultural devel-
opments, surely the demographic profile of the Canadian population should,
at least, be considered within specific historical frameworks. The largest cities
of today are not the same as those of the mid-19th century, of course. The
Canadian Encyclopedia lists the nine largest cities in 1851 as Montreal,
Quebec City, Saint John, Toronto, Halifax, Hamilton, Kingston, Ottawa and
London. Guelph, St. Catharines, Brantford, and Belleville are described as "a
second tier" (article on "City," I: 346) with populations close to 10,000. While
Saint John is accorded considerable space in Kallmann, and more recent
research published in other venues has redressed the balance to some extent,
we should consider the extent to which we bias our music history narrative by
relying on contemporary, rather than historically specific, demographics.
6
If, on the other hand, cultures are qualitatively different, not only in differ-
ent locales but different sizes of locale, we might ask what of the smaller cen-
tres? Perhaps reflecting his aforementioned objective of describing the "musi-
cal pastimes and aspirations of the many," Kallmann presents a rich array of
data (necessarily in passim most of the time) about smaller centres. Sixty-nine
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 149
places other than the big nine are cited. The tendency in both later books
reduces this number drastically (of the 22 smaller places mentioned in Ford,
five are in Nova Scotia). I counted 19 in McGee of which about half are not
listed in the index (See Figure 3).
Figure 3: Representation of Small Communities
The regional biases of the three texts have implications regarding the cov-
erage of different ethnic groups, of course, since, until the post-1945 period,
the east had a larger proportion of English/Scortish/Irish and French than the
Western regions which were populated by a variety of Eastern and Northern
European peoples. In addition, prior to the restrictive immigration law of
1923, sizeable communities of Chinese and other Asian and mid-Eastern
groups were established. Ethnic diversity is not emphasized as a theme in any
of the textbooks. Kallmann makes several references to cultural demography
(e.g., p. 29) and includes biographical sketches of a paragraph or more about
five German musicians (Glackemeyer, Brauneis Sr. and Jr., S.W. Sabatier, and
T. Molt and A. Zoellner) and two Belgians (F. Jehin Prune and Jules Hone). In
later chapters, Vogt and von Kunits, are profiled. He also describes German
traditions such as the Sangerfest and Singuerein organizations. While the
same individuals appear prominently in the succeeding books, the culturally
specific traditions are not profiled. McGee does write about multiculturalism in
his chapter on "Recent Developments" although his slant on retention (stress-
ing religious minorities such as the Doukhobors, Mennonites and Hutterites)
and integration (a section in which Ukrainians, Asians and Caribbeans are
briefly discussed) is idiosyncratic. A small, perhaps insignificant, change in the
1 50 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
manner of presenting biographical information was made by McGee.
Although, in parentheses, he carefully notes the birthplace of musicians for
whom he writes biographical information, the first sentence of most biogra-
phies describes their training in the institutions of European concert music.
Hence, cultural 'roots' are reduced and parenthesized, so that the 'real' biogra-
phy can start with initiation into the institutional realm. Coupled with the sepa-
ration of information on multiculturalism, this subtle manner of writing biogra-
phy (done no doubt for reasons of efficiency) implies that the concert music
tradition is outside of issues of ethnicity or specific cultural background. Hence
a notion of mainstream and periphery is perhaps more overt in McGee's text
than in those of his predecessor. For the most part, however, the ethnic her-
itage of musicians who contributed to the development of Canadian concert
life is not a significant part of the story. The profile of those musicians who
are given biographical consideration is a balance of French and English (and to
some extent German in Kallmann's account). Other groups are paid little
attention.
7
 None of the histories explore the manner in which specific musical
genres and styles were used to articulate the critical intersections of class, gen-
der, and ethnicity within Canadian society.
8
The plotting of subject matter through the same sort of statistical structural
analysis was a more difficult matter. A rough distinction was made between
comments which comprised most of a page (over half) and those which were
passing references (under half). The distinctions among subject categories are
not always clear. A single sentence might contain biographical information,
style description and historical data. Hence, the exact statistics produced by
my close reading for subject matter are probably not verifiable or replicable by
either me or anyone else. Notwithstanding these difficulties, the next series of
graphs are probably accurate reflections of tendencies (see Figure 4).
Figure 4: Subject Representation: Composition
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 1 5 1
Subject Representation: Musical Organizations
Subject Representation: Musical Education
Subject Representation: Performance Ethnography
1 52 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Kallmann's narrative of growth is reflected consistently on all graphs. He
attends with amazing consistency to how we learn music, to performance
events and to pieces. In each case, the late 19th and early 20th century is
quantitatively larger, defining a rapid cultural blossoming. The two later histo-
ries, however, do not present the same story. Rapid blossoming is clearly indi-
cated by the composition graph but for a much later period than in Kallmann.
Other aspects of our socio-musical life, however, are not represented in the
same way. Performance ethnography or issues of education have gradually
been factored out in the chapters concerning the 20th century. Hence, the
privileging of composition as the aspect of musical life most worthy of study is
strong in Ford and McGee. A consequence of this is the emphasis on a rela-
tively small number of individuals and their work.
NARRATIVES OF ORGANIZATION
How much is written about specific eras, regions, social groups, or sub-
jects provides some superficial indications of underlying values and assump-
tions but, as we have noted in several instances, there are other explanations
such as the availability of data. How we organize what we talk about, on the
other hand, almost invariably reflects "prior texts" or indeed attempts to avoid
prior texts. The aforementioned periodization in all three books, which uses
century changes or major political events, may be a way of structuring that
seeks not to impose values. On the other hand, Kallmann's chapter titles
overtly present an evolutionist perspective: e.g., "The Dark Age" or "The
Dawn of Urban Musical Life." Ford retains hints of this only in his first chap-
ter, "The Planting of Seeds," while McGee uses chapter headings with no
overt value connotations.
A different "narrative" is represented by the switches in "ethnic" emphasis
from one time period to another. The move from French to British society
with the advent of the 18th century would bear comparison with French-lan-
guage histories. The placement of Native music cultures in the first chapters)
but not in later ones is a further, perhaps more striking example of a culture
represented as if frozen in time. McGee attempted to avoid this very problem
by writing a separate chapter on Native culture at the end of his survey and by
including reference to contemporary events. Unfortunately, for me, this chap-
ter still seems to be outside of history by its very placement. Cultural histori-
ans, to date, are perhaps still reluctant to view Native and European cultures in
interaction in any century. Further, the move from generic groups of people
(missionaries, the aristocracy, the "people") in the 17th century to individuals
and the institutions of the dominant society is striking in all three.
9
The gradual imposition of the contemporary subdivisions for music activity
(composition, performance, music education, and, predictably, the increased
emphasis on composition) seem to be structural markers for 20th-century
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 1 5 5
musical life. In fact the change of the narrative at 1914 in the two later books
is striking. Does the very fact that Kallmann ended his survey at World War I
actually facilitate this change of narrative?
A further way of looking at the structure of these books is to examine how
the essentially linear format of page-after-page collapses multiple dimensions
of our experience. What I mean by this is that the very structure of any book
forces every author to line up a number of themes or narratives which are not
otherwise logically aligned. If a book moves chronologically as these do, and if
there is an overt or subtle progression of images from the planting of seeds to
the harvesting of fruits, the images of growth and fruition are automatically
aligned with the historical sequence. Every author has to struggle with this and
live with the distortion which may be inherent in the progression from begin-
ning to end of a book. The following chart (Figure 5) attempts to represent the
collapsing of time, space, and value in the three books. These charts are
unabashedly reductionist but, at the same time, indicative of underlying value
systems.
The reader is invited to assume, for the moment, that none of these align-
ments is inherently logical or necessarily true. That is, a development from
rural to urban need not equate with a trend from communal to individual
musicmaking or with a change from regional to international styles. The insti-
tutionalization of music making, largely hailed as a positive thing in these
books, is not necessarily a mark of increasing sophistication. Many of the con-
tinua alignments are, of course, politically loaded, e.g., the subtle equation of a
move toward Toronto and Montreal with a move toward greater sophistica-
tion, individuality or professionalism.
These charts allow us to examine what we miss in our scholarly recogni-
tion of contemporary musical life, by buying into certain narrative lines. For
example, musicologists have perhaps not paid sufficient attention to amateur
music making or the interface between amateur and professional. By empha-
sizing the individual, especially the individual composers—but only of serious
music—in 20th-century textbooks, have we failed to pay attention to the rest
of the socio-cultural network, perhaps thereby losing touch with the values
which performers and listeners bring to their experience of Canadian music
and simultaneously reinforcing stereotypic notions that "serious" contempo-
rary Canadian music is inaccessible? Furthermore, have we so isolated the dif-
ferent kinds of music making in our society that we may not have a grasp of
what is happening in complex urban contexts where jazzers play salsa, youth
rap to pre-recorded musics of varying types, or multi-nationals tap the Third
World to satisfy our voracious musical appetites for new sounds?
I 54 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Figure 5: Collapsing Time-Space-Value
1534 1800 1918 1984
 East (+West) ...Ontario/Quebec
primitive sophisticated
 rural urban
 communal institutional individual (composers)
amateur professional
amateur amateur societies professional
(professional conductors)
aperiodic performance series
miscellaneous choral dominant instruments
dominant
(orchestras)
portable instruments pianos, organs electr. media
§ rural urban
5 local, regional international
composer utilitarian composer -performs/teaches university
composer
-organizer
inheritance evolution
happenstance planning
amateur professional
 colonial culture Canadian
 identity
 rural urban
music consumer music
producer
music making composition
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 1 5 5
A second potential stimulus from these charts is the possibility, after
Derrida, of writing history with different narratives. What if some of the con-
tinua were reversed? If, for example, we moved from individuals to communal
music making as we simultaneously described musics in the 17th through the
20th centuries, we might then begin with a story of individual Ojibwe and
Iroquoian and Kwakiutl singers, who taught the newcomers as much as they
could about survival skills as they shared cultural traditions. At the other end of
the historical spectrum we might have a story about cultures in contact or
about the influence of popular music technology in all our lives in cities of the
1990s. Such historical writing need be no less 'true' than what we already
have. On the other hand, there are undoubtedly some ways of collapsing time,
space, and value which are 'truer' than others—especially for a particular
point in time. The narrative structures of the past undoubtedly revealed some
deeper truth for the time in which they were written. But which narratives
reflect something essential about our current vision of past, present, and
future?
NARRATIVES OF METAPHOR
My quantitative analyses above and, particularly, the value-laden continua
represented in Figure 5, beg for an assessment of more "qualitative" aspects
of the discourse of Canadian music history. Writing style is one such aspect. If,
as I suggest, we have privileged the urban, the institutional, and the composi-
tional product, and if, furthermore, we have equated aspects of these with val-
ues such as sophistication, is this privileging evident in language as well as
structure? Furthermore, what aesthetic values are associated with this particu-
lar construction of "sophistication"? Have we written about musical style using
language which is consistent with the social values implicit in the structuring of
the text books?
It is more difficult to find definitive answers to these questions than to the
previous ones. In part, this relates to the polysemic quality of language and the
multi-layered nuances with which it can be interpreted by any reader. In part,
it relates to the tendency of recent musicologists to avoid value-laden aesthetic
descriptors in their writing about musical style. In part, it simply reflects the
impracticability of examining the aesthetic nuance of each textual phrase.
Hence, the following comments are necessarily more impressionistic than
those in the preceding sections.
In an attempt to delimit the task, I decided to make a comparative exami-
nation of descriptive phrases used by the three authors in relation to specific
genres (and pieces where possible) of music from different time periods. I
selected voyageur songs, Calixa Lavallee's The Widow and Somers' Louis
Riel as points of comparison. Endemic to introductory music history textbooks
is the challenge of presenting the "norms" of a composer's style or of a specif-
1 56 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ic genre without violating the uniqueness of specific works. In most cases,
however, authors rarely have the luxury of words to describe why specific
works may "work" artistically and aesthetically but rather they must encapsu-
late a few features in a compromisingly efficient manner. The need to select
detail in this compromise, however, is often revealing of the underlying value
systems which we may fail to articulate to our students. Such is the case with
the excerpts from the three textbooks in Figure 6.
All three make use of 19th-century descriptions in their unabashedly
romanticized presentation of voyageur songs. These contemporaneous quota-
tions can serve as a fourth point in the historiographic spectrum, a point
where the focus on beautiful, vigorous and engaging melody is particularly
striking, and a point where the class connotations of specific musical genres
were already clearly delineated.
While some contemporaneous quotes are used for Lavallee, the authors
create their own musical assessments here and, in doing so, reveal a critical
aesthetic dilemma about this particular repertoire. Lavallee's melodic facility is
now something of a problem, praised in some contexts but serving as a reason
for dismissal in others. The features which are consistently looked to as marks
of sophistication are chromatic harmony, counterpoint and large-scale "organ-
ic" form. While these parameters might seem obvious and natural measures of
compositional craft, it seems to be no accident that they are the same aspects
which are the most easily controlled within the framework of institutional train-
ing. The social implications of the emergent aesthetic are clarified by refer-
ences to the salon or drawing room, clearly associated with the trivial. Stylistic
elements, then, again serve as class markers.
Discourse About Three Genres/Pieces of Canadian Music
VOYAGEUR SONGS
19th-century sources
"...easy, extemporaneous songs,
somewhat smutty but never intolerant.
Many of their canoe songs are exquisite;
more particularly the air they give them."
[John MacTaggart,1829; cited K: 32-33]
"diversity of taste and skill"
[Anna Jameson, 1839; cited K:33]
"They kept time to those songs as they
rowed; and die splashing of the oars in the
water, combined with the wildness of their
cadences, gave a romantic character to our
Music histories
"uniquely romantic
setting" [K: 32]
"not always equal to
drawing-room
standards" [K:341
"glorious period of
voyageur songs..."
[K:35]
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 157
darksome voyage.... Their music might not have
been esteemed fine, by those whose skill in
concrods and chromatics, forbids them to
be gratified but on scientific principles....
singularly plaintive and pleasing."
[John Glasgow, 1823: cited K:33]
"wild, romantic song.... [The men] sang
with all the force of three hundred
manly voices, one of their lively airs,
which, rising and falling faintly in
the distance as it was borne, first
lightly on the breeze, and then more
steadily as they approached, swelled
out in the rich tones of many a
mellow voice, and burst into a long
enthusiastic shout of joy!
Alas! the forests no longer echo to
such sounds." [R.M. Ballantyne, 1848;
cited in K: 36 and F: 25]
"The song is of great use: they keep time
with their paddles to its measured cadence."
[Hugh Gray, 1809; cited M: 7]
"They sang their gay French songs,
the other canoe joining in the chorus.
This peculiar singing has often been described;
it is very animated on the water
and in the open air, but
not very harmonious." [Jameson, 1839;
cited M: 7, same passage as K: 32]
LAVALLEE —THE WIDOW
19th- early 20th-century sources
"not merely...an adroit deviser of
pretty melodies and sensuous harmonies,
but (as) a genuinely creative artist,
a pure musical genius."
[A.S. Vogt, 1913; cited in K: 143]
"I would rather devote my time to
compositions which, if less profitable,
are more artistic."
[C. Lavallee, cited 1891; cited in K: 241]
"a picture of adventure
and romance" [F: 25]
"Tales of the
Voyageurs conjure
up romantic visions
of the rugged
frontier life"
[M:6]
Music histories
"[his importance] lies in
attitude rather than
achievement." [K: 141]
"an inexhaustible gift for
melody—facile and trivial
at times, but always
spontaneous and musical. This
music is not overburdened with
complexity or originality, but
it has great vitality and is
15 8 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
popular in appeal without being
vulgar." [K: 239]
[Arias in The Widow] "pulse
and sparkle"
"It is a pity that the
surviving works represent
only the lighter aspect
of Lavallee's style for his
skill in combining 3 songs
contrapuntalty in the cantata
for the Marquis of Lome
would seem to indicate
that the symphonies and
chamber works probably
contained passages of greater
contrapuntal and harmonic
interest than The Widow
or the 'Bridal Rose'
Overture." [K: 239-401
"melodically inventive
mind. In particular, the
marches and dance
music for the piano show a
rhythmical clarity and
vitality with a harmonic
language clearly derivative of
the French salon composers
of the mid-nineteenth
century." [F: 64]
"That Lavallee's music was more
than a cut above the average
salon music written at the
time can be seen in his
"Mouvement a la Pavane"....
many were composed for amateur
keyboard players throughout the
century- But Lavallee's work must
have given more than a few of
them a bit of a start. The phrases
are heavily chromatic, and
although it is a simple, short
dance, the harmonies move
through several keys, making
surprising chromatic turns."
[M: 77]
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY I 59
[Re The Widow]: "The solos and
duos are rather demanding, but the
choruses have simple rhythms
with easily sung intervals that
could be performed by amateurs.
Typically, the plot is one of silly
amorous intrigue, intentionally
lighthearted.... [In "Single I
will never be"] Lavallee has written
an attractive and melodically
creative song, with interesting and
unexpected harmonic changes."
[M: 77]
SOMER'S—LOUIS RIEL
"In his opera Louis Riel (1967),
Somers incorporated semi-improvisatory sections,
electronic music, tonal (folk song) and
atonal material, and an array of new vocal
techniques which evolved from his use of
Indian material ("Kuyas", from the
beginning of Act ID). Perhaps the most
important development from his work on the
opera, vocal techniques such as glissandi,
whispering, timbral inflections, etc.
occupied Somers compositional thinking
right into the 1970's."
[F: 232]
"In setting the text, Somers employed a wide
range of techniques and styles. He used actual
native song, and created his own folk and popular
songs modeled on those of the period. There is
dissonant atonal writing in dramatically
intense scenes and diatonic writing in the
relaxed and lighthearted scenes..."
[McGee: 135]
"When the orchestra is playing alone, the music
is emotionally evocative, sometimes emphasizing
conflict through strongly dissonant and
dashing passages, or suggesting the
simplemindedness of government officials through
simple melody set to diatonic harmonies."
[McGee: 136]
The aesthetic which seems to emerge here is confirmed in the descrip-
tions of Somers' Louis Riel where "simple, diatonic" harmony is now dramati-
cally associated with the simple-minded characters or situations. A new mark
160 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
of sophistication here is the command of various modes of sound production
(ranging from early 20th-century innovations in vocal style such as
Sprechtstimme to electronic sounds in battle scenes) and disparate styles. I
this a departure from the aesthetic of organicism, evident in the Lavallee
descriptions?
While it would be dangerous to over-interpret fragmentary descriptions of
selected moments in expressive culture, the consistencies of the descriptions
of musical style and the way in which they reinforce the alignments in Figure 5
are, in my view, significant. If the poles are "simple, rural, unsophisticated" on
one hand and "complex, urban, sophisticated" on the other, the musical styles
paralleling these poles might be configured as follows:
Simple, Rural, Unsophisticated vs. Complex,
Urban, Sophisticated
monophony vs. counterpoint
diatonic melody vs. chromatic harmony
short or sectional works vs. large-scale, organic forms
If these poles are not accepted as adequate representations, however, the
challenge is to find alternatives to the musical style code. On one hand, the
stylistic features associated with each pole could be reconsidered. We might,
for example, try associating the following with "sophisticated":
Sophisticated
- rhythmic vigour and energy
- ingenuity of melodic ideas
- phrase balance but variety
- command of a range of disparate styles
In this case, a number of voyageur songs would be celebrated because of
their sophistication with regard to the first three style features. Lavallee would
be commended for his command of both parlour and concert repertoires, not
condemned for his "light" works. Somers would fare none the worse. None of
these style aspects is arbritrary; as musicians, we leam to value such aspects
but as historians we select which ones to reify and thereby, knowingly or inad-
vertently, construct a value-laden narrative.
NARRATIVES IN UNITED STATES Music TEXTBOOKS
In order to assess some of the reasons for the creation of the narratives
defined in the sections above, I undertook an analogous, though less detailed
study of comparable textbooks on the music of the United States: Charles
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 161
Hamm's Music in the New World (1983) and Daniel Kingman's American
Music: A Panorama (1979, revised 1989). The close association of our two
populations, the intertwining of their immigration histories and the much
mythologized ease with which we pass across our long undefended border
might lead one to expect the Canadian and American music histories would be
framed similarly.
There are, indeed, some similarities. Native music cultures are consistently
treated without historical specificity and are isolated from the rest of the story.
Folk musics are similarly ahistoricized, though the separation of information is
less severe. Both Canadian and American music histories exclude most immi-
grant musics from the story, an exclusion justified (with regret) by Charles
Hamm as follows:
...I have dealt with music which has changed in style and form after being
brought to the New World, music which has eventually taken on a different
character in America, music which has been subjected to acculturation, or, if
you will, 'contaminated' music.
I have not dealt with music which did not change in significant ways in the
New World, music which remained identified with the national and ethnic
groups who brought it to America, music which did not interact with other
forms of music. (1983: 656)
Underlying this comment are several fascinating assumptions. For one
thing, the 'text' of music, for Hamm is clearly the "style and form" of the
sounds, not the performance, the event, the social framing or any of the other
constructs used widely within ethnomusicological study (among others).
Further, the notion of cultural interaction is thus tied to the very core of what
is authentically "American." This, in itself, merits careful scrutiny in relation to
the Canadian parallel—the virtual exclusion of histories other than those of the
English and French in Canada.
While the exclusions of the majority of immigrant traditions is evident in
the textbooks of both nations, this last issue, the attitude toward "interaction"
and "acculturation" as markers of "authenticity" differ. This is not the only dif-
ference.
In fact, the differences between the Canadian and American narratives of
music history may be even more striking than the similarities. In the texts by
Kingman and Hamm, the historical proportioning and organizational frames
for the subject matter are distinctive. (Kingman's own content analysis is print-
ed on the inside cover of his book. Duplicated below is a parallel chart to show
the chronological range and order of the 20 chapters in Hamm's Music in the
New World—see Figure 6.) Neither book adopts a chronological framework;
both organize the content of American music into "streams" of variable dura-
tion. The "stream" metaphor is an important one for American music since
the merging of bodies of water is homologous with the "melting pot" ideology
162 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
alluded to above. It is further significant that Native American culture is regard-
ed as outside of any other stream.
Neither author attempts a periodization of American music; in fact, the
stream concept probably deliberately avoids it. Nonetheless, two events
emerge as dividing points within the narrative: the first is the Civil War (e.g.,
the ending point for Chapters 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 11 in Hamm) and the second,
the beginning of commercial recording circa 1920 (the ending point for 12
and 14 as well as the beginning point for 17, 18 and 19 in Hamm). The for-
mer, like the chapter frames of the Canadian textbooks, is framed by a socio-
political event, but the latter, unlike the Canadian monographs, uses a techno-
logical/cultural boundary.
Figure 6: Hamm's Music in the New World (1983) Contents
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 165
Figure 7: Hamm's Music in the New World (1983)
The Proportion of Space Devoted to Specific Historical Periods
The Proportion of Space Devoted to Specific Musical "Streams'
1. European "Classical" -chapters4.8.12.15.18.19
2. Sacred - chapters 2.6.10
3. Anglo folk - chapter 13
4. Afro-American - chapter 5
5. Pre-jazz and jazz - chapters 14. 17
6. Pop - chapters 7. 9. 11*. 13. 16. 20
7. Native - chapter 1
* Marching and Dancing - could justifiably have a separate category-.
164 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Furthermore, proportionally less attention is paid to pre-18th-century
music in the American music books. This proportioning suggests to me that
American music history is more integrated with the political history of the
nation, a story which begins with the American Revolution, while that of
Canada is closer to a history of people who have lived in the area now known
as Canada.
Our propensity to use a more rigid chronological frame (which, I implied
above, almost amounts to a periodization) may be a matter of convenience in
a history which remains fragmentary, but it does suggest a closer alliance with
European music history, the periodization of which is used as a frame for text-
books and curricula alike in both countries. The American textbooks pay
homage to history, chronology and 'development' more consistently in the
chapters about the European classical traditions. See, for example, such his-
torically-referenced chapter titles in Hamm as "The Dawning of Classical
Music in America (1825-65)" or "The Rise of Classical Composition in
America: the Years after the Civil War."
A second fundamental difference in the two national music history narra-
tives is the relative attention paid to popular
10
 music. In Hamm, it proportion-
ately outweighs every other subject traced on Figure 7, though the European-
based classical tradition is a close second. The importance of the vernacular,
and of popular culture, has been celebrated in the United States but virtually
masked in academic studies in Canada.
11
 Nevertheless, the distinct separation
of musics into highbrow and lowbrow is perpetuated by both historiographic
strategies. Hence, the highbrow/lowbrow distinction which emerged in the
19th century (though the date of its emergence continues to be debated)
12
 is
securely entrenched in present-day historical writing.
A third difference lies in the treatment of locale and region. As described
above, Kallmann used urban centres as sub-headings in 19th- and 20th-centu-
ry chapters while Ford and McGee intensified the trend of concentrating atten-
tion on musical life in a limited number of urban centres. While cities do
emerge in the sub-headings of certain streams of American music history
(Billings of Boston, Chicago blues etc.), they are not consistently indexed in
either Hamm or Kingman. Regions, on the other hand, are given more promi-
nent though generalized identities (the South, New England etc.). While we
clearly have comparable regional "identities" in Canada (the Maritimes, the
West, French Canada), cities rather than regions emerge more frequently as
the identity boundaries in our music history. Thus the urban/rural divide is
written with more severity in Canada and the denigration of the latter is more
consistent.
The fundamental nature of these differences in the national narratives of
American and Canadian scholars may be instructive on several counts. In my
experience, Canadian music is most often either segregated into a separate
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 165
course (or a separate section within a course) in our university curricula or paid
slight attention in the context of courses on "North America." Both approach-
es are problematic, in my view. The differences in narrative noted above may
indeed explain, in part, why it has been difficult to teach the interaction of our
music histories. The differences may also stimulate some creative thought
about alternative models which might be more effective framing formats.
CONCLUSIONS:
TOWARD FUTURE BOOKS ON CANADIAN Music?
Clearly I have extended a number of invitations to reflect on certain mat-
ters in the course of this paper. Do many of the old narratives still reflect fun-
damental attitudes which have meaning for us? Do we still feel the need to
describe history as a process of growth or, having perhaps seen the 'fruition'
of composers with international status, independent and autonomous styles of
composition, a certain number of world-class performers, do we now want to
look at our history with a different lens? Do we still hold to the discrete cate-
gories of the past: whether composers and performers or popular and formal
or Native, English, French and Ukrainian? Or is there a new richness to be
derived from careful scholarship which attends to the interaction among these
categories? Are we aware of the vestiges of colonialism which may manifest
themselves in city-centred histories among other things? How do the exigen-
cies of "science" shape how we write about Canada's music culture? Can we
leam from a comparison with the American narrative, if only to open our
minds to the ways in which national interests have played themselves out in
scholarship, if only to learn that there are alternatives?
I have no conclusions.
As a final note, however, I should mention one word which has been con-
spicuously absent from the previous discussion: power. What are the hege-
monic dynamics of all of the aforementioned narratives? Who gets advan-
taged? Who gets legitimized? And conversely, who gets disadvantaged or
ignored? These are hard and often uncomfortable questions but, in my opin-
ion, we should address them if the next 25 years of historical writing are to
produce anything with the vigour and insight of the work of the generation of
Kallmann and Beckwith.
66 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ENDNOTES
1. See also his update, "A 'Failure' re-visited: New Canadian music in recent stud-
ies and reference works," in Hello Out There!, CanMus Documents 2 (1988)
pp. 114-123.
2. This is not to say that these authors do not offer substantial comment on "cul-
tural constructions" which are discussed in the course of this paper. Miller's
introductions (especially in Boogie, Pete and the Senator, 1987), for example,
contain fascinating comments about regional styles while Fetherling (1990) iden-
tifies the "nationalism" of several internationally prominent songwriters.
It should also not imply that biographical accounts are absent in the concert
music domain. From the early CBC sketches (e.g., the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation's Thirty-four biographies of Canadian composers, 1964),
through Beckwith and MacMillan's Contemporary Canadian Composers
(1975), the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (2nd edition, 1992), and the
growing number of recent biographical monographs (e.g., Sheila Eastman and
Timothy McGee's Barbara Pent/and, 1983; Brian Chemey's Harry Somers,
1975; Louise Bail Milot's Jean Papineau-Couture, 1986; Marie-Therese
Lefebvre's Serge Garant et la revolution musical au Quebec (Montreal: L.
Courteau, 1988), individual composers have been documented and celebrated.
Furthermore, academic studies of diverse aspects of Canadian popular musics
do, of course exist although often in disciplines other than music: history, folk-
lore, cultural studies, communications. The publication venues (see, e.g., the
Canadian Historical Review, the Journal of Canadian Studies, or Canadian
Issues) are, consequently, also separated and hence often missed by music stu-
dents.
3. In a letter to the author (14 October, 1989) responding to an earlier version of
this paper, Kallmann outlined a number of the influences on his own scholarly
development which led him to write with an emphasis on an expansive range of
socio-cultural data. He cites his father's humanistic education, his mother's
social worker background, the very pace of social change during his 1920s
childhood, his propensity for mapmaking and his belief in the "Golden Age"
theory as general influences. "Educational" influences include what he describes
as "conventional music writing" (he cites the Jahns, the Bekkers, the Nohls and
P.H. Lang), the experience of the war years and their emphasis on the explana-
tion of the causes of evil through ideology, Marxist theory "reinforced by
Friedrich Blume," Arnold Walter, W. Dwight Allen, Edwin H. Carr, Erich
Doflein and Joseph Kerman.
4. My chosen emphasis on "surveys" here distorts the picture somewhat since
many Canadian musicologists have presented the results of their historical
research in scholarly articles. Even here, however, the relatively undeveloped
state of the research is perhaps reflected in the large number of articles which
focus on the documentation of sources or which serve to make sources accessi-
ble in modem editions. While a complete survey of this literature is beyond the
scope of this paper, I might mention Le Catalogue collectif des archives musi-
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 167
cales au Quebec, in les Cahiers de I'ARMuQ, 9, 1988, as well as work by
Claude Beaudry ("Catalogue des imprimes musicaux d'avant 1800 conserves a
la bibliotheque de 1'Universite Laval," Beckwith and Hall, 1988, pp. 29-49),
Eric Schwandt ("The motet in New France: some 17th- and 18th-century manu-
scripts" in Fontes Artis Musicae 28/3 (1984): pp. 194-219), Bisabeth Gallat-
Morin and Antoine Bouchard (Temoins de la vie musicale en Nouvelle-
France, Quebec: Archives Nationale du Quebec, 1981), and Juliette Bourassa-
Trepanier and Lucien Poirier's Repertoire des donnees musicales de la presse
quebecoise (Quebec: Les Presses de 1'Universite Laval, 1991). In addition, the
work of the Canadian Music Heritage Society whose fully annotated facsimile
editions of early music are invaluable resources must be mentioned. While the
musical life of these periods has not been ignored (see, e.g., Timorthy J.
McGee, "Music in Halifax, 1749-1799," Dalhousie Review 49 (1969): pp.
377-81 and Frederick A. Hall, "Musical Life in Eighteenth-Century Halifax,"
Canadian University Music Review 4 (1983): pp. 278-307), the historical pic-
ture is, at best, fragmentary.
5. Again, the periodical and monograph literature changes the picture somewhat.
Among the rare monographs on the music culture of a specific region is Dale
Mclntosh's History of Music in British Columbia, 1850-1950 (Victoria: Sono
Nis Press, 1989), and Gordana Lazarevich's The Musical World of Frances
James and Murray Adaskin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988) pre-
sents a rich array of socio-cultural and historical information. Articles on musical
life in Western Canada include Wesley Berg's "Music in Edmonton, 1880-
1905," in Canadian University Music Review 7 (1986): pp. 141-170, Russell
E. Chester's "Music in Winnipeg 1900-1907," in Canada Music Book 8
(1974): pp. 109-116.
6. City-centred music research has been conducted in a few of these and other
places. See, for example, F.A. Hall's "Hamilton, 1846-1946: A century of
music," (C.A.U.S.M. Journal IV (1/2 [1974]): pp. 98-114) or his "Musical life
in Windsor, 1875-1901," in Canada Music Book 6 (1973): pp. 111-24; Elaine
Keillor's "Musical Activity in Canada's New Capital City in the 1870s" in
Beckwith and Hall, op. cit., pp. 115-133. 1988.
7. The growth in ethnomusicological research and publication as evidenced in
Robert Witmer (ed.), Ethnomusico/ogy in Canada (Toronto: Institute for
Canadian Music, 1990) is some indication that a wide number of music scholars
currently research many other musical traditions.
8. Recent studies in folklore, ethnomusicology and feminist musicology have begun
to research these intersections. An early analysis of this sort was Carole H.
Carpenter's "The Ethnicity Factor in Anglo-Canadian Folkloristics," Canadian
Ethnic Studies 7/2 (1975): pp. 7-18. Neil Rosenberg's "Ethnicity and Class:
Black Country Musicians in the Maritimes," Journal of Canadian Studies 23/1
and 2 (1988): pp. 138-156, is one of the few examples of particularized
research which factors in several hegemonic dimensions.
9. In this regard, we may be behind other historians. Carl Berger (1986: 298), for
example, cites a tendency of post-1960 Canadian history to represent "compet-
ing claims that history had to be re-interpreted in terms of class, gender, and
ethnicity as basic units of analysis." And Bruce Trigger (1986: 4-5), has chal-
lenged scholars to break down the wall between history which, in Canada, usual-
168 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ly treats of the English and French, and anthropology which has traditionally
had more to say about Native cultures on the one hand and newer immigrant
cultures on the other. Both historians imply that the historical record looks dif-
ferent depending on the perspective of the narrator. Conversely, the historical
record does not adequately represent the strength of "minority" cultures without
an analysis of the power relationships among various groups.
Nevertheless, more critical looks at the power structures implicit in the arts
institutions of specific historical periods have begun to appear. See, for exam-
ple, John Beckwith and Dorith Cooper's He//o Out There! Canada's new
music in the world, 1950-85 (Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music, 1988),
Maria Tippett's Making Culture: English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts
Before the Massey Commission (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990)
or J.L. Granatstein's "Culture and Scholarship: The first 10 years of the Canada
Council" in this volume (reprinted from Canadian Historical Review). Future
research will, perhaps, expand the boundaries to incorporate not just the Euro-
centric institutions, but vernacular traditions as well.
10. "Popular" is used here to represent a broad range of musics intended for wide-
spread consumption, not just those which have been commodified for commer-
cial gain. While Hitchcock prefers the term "vernacular," "popular" is advanta-
geous in that it recognizes that not all "vernacular" musics are intended for wide-
spread popular consumption; many, in fact, are highly esoteric. Hamm uses
popular in the broad sense that I use it here. Kingman generally avoids it wher-
ever possible, preferring more specific generic terms where possible.
11. A noteworthy statement about this division of the "classical" and "vernacular"
traditions appears in George Proctor's Canadian Music of the Twentieth
Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980). He excludes "popular,
jazz, folk, and rock music" because "they have their own promotional and criti-
cal avenues and are constantly before the public in some form or other" (p. ix).
Furthermore, he defines the first aim of his book as follows:
...to help bring about such an understanding between the composer
and his [sic] audience and to bridge the sizeable gap which at present
exists between the producer and the consumer of Canadian music,
(p-ix)
In this honest statement about his political motivation, he implies that the histo-
rian's job is to educate, to introduce what is not known. Although unfortunately
not all musicologists present their social agendas so clearly, I suspect that
Proctor's motives were shared by the many scholars who have undertaken
research on little known repertoires. Recently, however, there has been a resur-
gence of interest in the interpretation of what we don't yet understand about
widely known forms of music as well as little known ones.
12. The point in the 19th century at which a dear highbrow/lowbrow distinction
emerged in the public consciousness continues to be debated. See, for example,
John Spitzer's review of Lawrence H. Levine's Highbrow/Lowbrow: The
Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Harvard University Press,
1988) in American Music 8/2: 233-6, 1990, for citations of several different
opinions about this subject. The historical debate may be masking a more criti-
cal point: namely, the identification of the perspective reflected in the labelling
of the distinction. In other words, is the highbrow/lowbrow distinction made
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 169
only by those who regard themselves as part of the "highbrow" community? Is
there a parallel labelling system operative among those who situate themselves
differently (e.g., "arrogant/real"). In other words, the analysis of a class distinc-
tion must take care to lay open the perspective within the asymmetrical power
structure which is reflected by the label.
REFERENCES
Amtmann, Willy. 1975. Music in Canada, 1600-1800. Quebec: Habitex.
Bail Milot, Louise. 1986. Jean Papineau-Couture: La vie, la carriere et I'oeuure.
Quebec: Hurtubise HMH.
Beaudry, Claude. 1988. See Beckwith and Hall.
Beckwith, John. 1969. "About Canadian music: the P.R. failure." Musicanada. 21:
pp. 4-7 and 10-13.
Beckwith, John and Dorith Cooper (eds.). 1988. Hello Out There! Canada's New
Music in the World 1950-1985. CanMus Documents 2. Toronto: Institute
for Canadian Music.
Beckwith, John and Frederick A. Hall (eds.). 1988. Musical Canada: Words and
Music Honouring Helmut Kallmann. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Berg, Wesley. 1986. "Music in Edmonton, 1880-1905." Canadian University Music
Review. 7: pp. 141-170.
Berger, Carl. 1986. The Writing of Canadian History: Aspects of English-Canadian
Historical Writing Since 1900, 2nd edition. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
Boon, James. 1983. Other Tribes, Other Scribes: Symbolic Anthropology in the
Comparative Study of Cultures, Histories, Religions, and Texts. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Bruner, Edward M. 1986. "Ethnography as Narrative," in Turner, Victor W. and
Edward M. Bruner (eds.), The Anthropology of Experience. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 1964. Thirty-four Biographies of Canadian
Composers. Edited by V.I. Rajewsky. Toronto: CBC.
Carpenter, Carole H. 1975. "The Ethnicity Factor in Anglo-Canadian Folkloristics."
Canadian Ethnic Studies. 7/2: pp. 7-18.
Chemey, Brian. 1975. Harry Somers. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Chester, Russell E. 1974. "Music in Winnipeg 1900-1907." Canada Music Book. 8:
pp. 109-116.
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Clifford, James and George Marcus (eds.). 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and
Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1 70 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Eastman, Sheila and T. J. McGee. 1983. Barbara Pent/and. Canadian Composers. 3.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Fetherling, Douglas. 1991. Some Day Soon: Essays on Canadian Songwriters.
Kingston: Quarry Press.
Ford, Clifford. 1982. Canada's Music: An Historical Survey. Agincourt: GLC
Publishers.
Gallat-Morin, Elisabeth and Antoine Bouchard. 1981. Temoins de la vie musicale en
Nouvelle-France. Quebec: Archives Nationale du Quebec.
Gilmore, John. 1988. Swinging in Paradise: the Story of Jazz in Montreal.
Montreal: Vehicule Press.
Granatstein, J.L. 1984. "Culture and Scholarship: The First 10 Years of the Canada
Council." Canadian Historical Review. 65/4: pp. 441-74.
Grenier, Line and J. Guilbault. 1990. "'Authority' Revisited: The 'Other' in
Anthropology and Popular Music Studies." Ethnomusico/ogy. 34/4: pp.
381-99.
Hall, Frederick A. 1974. "Hamilton, 1846-1946: A Century of Music." C.AU.S.M.
Journal. IV (1/2): pp. 98-114.
. 1983. "Musical Life in Eighteenth-century Halifax." Canadian University
Music Review. 4: pp. 278-307.
. 1973. "Musical Life in Windsor, 1875-1901." Canada Music Book. 6: pp.
111-124.
Hamm, Charles. 1983. Music in the New World. New York: Norton.
Hutcheon, Linda. 1988. The Politics of Representation in Canadian Art and
Literature. Toronto: York University. Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies,
Working Paper Series, 88-F01.
Kallmann, Helmut. 1960, revised 1987. A History of Music in Canada, 1534-1914.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
et al (eds.). 1992. Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd edition. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Keillor, Elaine. See Beckwith and Hall, op. cit.
Kellogg, Patricia. See Beckwith and Hall, op. cit.
Kingman, Daniel. 1989. American Music: A Panorama, revised edition. New York:
Schirmer.
Lazarevich, Gordana. 1988. The Musical World of Frances James and Murray
Adaskin. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Lefebvre, Marie-Therese. 1988. Serge Garant et la revolution musicale au Quebec.
Montreal: L. Courteau.
McGee, Timothy J. 1985. The Music of Canada. New York: Norton.
. 1969. "Music in Halifax, 1749-1799." Dalhousie Review. 49: pp. 377-81.
Mclntosh, Dale. 1989. History of Music in British Columbia, 1850-1950. Victoria:
Sono Nis Press.
MacMillan, Ernest (ed.). 1955. Music in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
MacMillan, Keith and J. Beckwith (eds.). 1975. Contemporary Canadian Composers.
Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Melhuish, Martin. 1983. Heart of Gold: 30 Years of Canadian Pop Music. Toronto:
NARRATIVES IN CANADIAN Music HISTORY 1 7 1
CBC Enterprises.
Miller, Mark. 1987. Boogie, Pete and the Senator. Canadian Musicians in Jazz: the
Eighties. Toronto: Nightwood Editions.
Miller, Mark. 1982. Jazz in Canada: Fourteen Lives. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
Napier, Ronald. See Beckwith and Hall, op. cit.
Proctor, George. 1980. Canadian Music of the Twentieth Century. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Rabinow, Paul (ed.). 1984. The FoucauJt Reader. New York: Pantheon.
Rosenberg, Neil. 1988. "Ethnicity and Class: Black Country Musicians in the
Maritimes." Journal of Canadian Studies. 23/1 and 2: pp. 138-156.
Schwandt, Eric. 1984. "The Motet in New France: Some 17th- and 18th-Century
Manuscripts." Fontes Artis Musicae. 28/3: pp. 194-219.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic. Interviews, Strategies,
Dialogues. Edited by Sarah Harasym. New York: Routledge.
Tippett, Maria. 1990. Making Culture. English-Canadian Institutions and the Arts
Before the Massey Commission. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Treitler, Leo. 1989. Music and the Historical Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.
Trigger, Bruce. 1985. Natives and Newcomers. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-
Queen's University Press.
Van Maanen, John. 1988. Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Walter, Arnold (ed.). 1969. Aspects of Music in Canada. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Waterman, Christopher. 1990. '"Our Tradition is a Very Modem Tradition': Popular
Music and the Construction of Pan-Yoruba Identity." Ethnomusico/ogy.
34/4: pp. 367-379.
Witmer, Robert (ed.). 1990. Ethnomusico/ogy in Canada. Toronto: Institute for
Canadian Music.
Yorke, Ritchie. 1971. Axes, Chops, and Hot Licks: The Canadian Rock Music
Scene. Edmonton: Hurtig.
This page intentionally left blank 
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME :
THE CASE OF Music FORMATS '
JODY BERIAND
RADIO AS A 'SECONDARY MEDIUM'
In the broadcasting industry, radio is commonly referred to as a 'sec-
ondary medium'. The phrase conveys the pragmatic view that no one cares
whether you listen to radio so long as you do not turn it off. Since it was dis-
placed by television, radio has been expected to accommodate itself techno-
logically and discursively to every situation. Are you brushing your teeth, turn-
ing a comer, buying or selling jeans or entering inventory into the computer?
So much the better. Your broadcaster respects the fact that these important
activities must come first. Radio is humble and friendly, it follows you every-
where. In any event, television makes more money.
This denigration of radio's potential in the guise of demographic pragma-
tism arouses my suspicions and my sympathy. Canadian history has long been
shaped by a perceived affinity between the politics of radio and the possibili-
ties of culture. They are bound up together by debates about the media and
the nation-state, which originated with radio in the 1920s, and continue,
unabated, to the present; by influential critical analysis of the role of techno-
logically and spatially mediated communication in the building of empires; and
by continuous political and legislative crises, mainly focused on the broadcast
media, concerning the possibility of lasting cultural difference in North
American culture. In addition, and perhaps in response to all this, there is a
popular myth that Canadian radio is the best in the world. I subscribe to it
myself on most days.
But as the airwaves fall victim to the politics of privatisation, radio is
becoming progressively more 'popular'. Programming is defined by more and
more sophisticated processes of audience research; it is increasingly framed by
cross-media corporate strategies designed to cut costs, and across ever-
expanding space; and it is increasingly built around music formats. This 'popu-
lar' radio hopes that more people will listen, but not really. Format radio
174 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
depends on distraction for its existence. Its primary goal is to accompany us
through breakfast, travel and work without stimulating either too much atten-
tion or any thought of turning it off. In this respect it is mutually interdepen-
dent on the daily life of which it provides the soundtrack; more specifically, it
is designed to harmonize all the contradictions of domestic and working life
that radio could illuminate and transform.
The radio text is heard across all the institutional, social, solitary and
mobile corners of urban and rural experience. It leaves no one untouched.
During an average week, 94 percent of Canadians listen to radio at least once,
and on average around 19 hours; 95 percent of this listening takes place as a
secondary activity (Statistics Canada 1990: 1). This is fewer hours than we
devote to television, but the more time we spend in cars (a salient issue, given
recent cuts to rail service and public transport), the more time radio may be
able to claim from us. (But will it? As new cars come equipped with increasing-
ly sophisticated stereo cassette and portable CD players, and as teens opt for
tapes over radio, is this radio making itself obsolete? This is more than a tech-
nological issue, as the following discussion suggests.) Almost 90 percent of
radio listening time in Canada is now claimed by commercial radio. This
cumulative success of commercial radio would have been inconceivable with-
out music; music is indispensable for its schedule, its income and its listeners.
The assumption that more or less continuous music is the ideal program
content for radio rests on the equally convenient assumption that radio listen-
ers are mainly not listening very closely and that this is the 'natural' condition
for radio communication. Thus the flow of music/commercials/talk offered by
format radio has become inseparable from the mental image of wallpaper
which shadows the concept of 'secondary medium'. This concept distinguishes
radio from television on the basis of its mobility, ubiquitousness, and habitual
presence in work and other social contexts. The phrase 'secondary medium'
forces us to remember that radio programmers, industry analysts and govern-
ment researchers know very well where we are and what we are doing while
we are listening to which station. It usefully reminds us that radio's role as car-
rier of recorded music is not determined solely by radio's (nonvisual) techno-
logical capacities, but is equally a product of the radio apparatus as a social,
institutional, and economic entity that depends on the music industry for its
own reproduction. At the same time, it should remind us—appropriately, per-
haps, since this role is now declining—that the critical emphasis on radio as a
promotional vehicle for records has tended to simplify our understanding of its
complex nature.
The close identification of music and radio arose in the 1950s, when, in
response to TV's dethroning of radio in the living room, records came to form
the principal raw material of radio programming. Since TV took over not only
radio's domestic space but also many of its entertainment conventions, the
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 1 7 5
industry had to devise new programming and commercial functions (as well as
more mobile technologies) for radio. The record/DJ format arose partly
because it was cheaper (no scriptwriters, union fees, sound effects, etc.) and
partly because it attracted a new market of listeners—teens—who could be
delivered to advertisers through radio rather than television. Music now pro-
vides well over 50 percent of all radio airtime. Even the partial usurpation of
music marketing by videos has not challenged radio's reliance on recorded
music, whatever the genre. In effect, radio has become a dependent medium,
constrained by television on one side and the music industry on the other; its
'secondary' status is rooted historically and institutionally in that position.
The proportion of music in the radio schedule is much higher on FM,
whose share of listeners has increased steadily since the mid-1970s. FM now
claims over 40 percent of listening time in Canada, around 60 percent among
young listeners (BBM 1986; Mietkiewicz 1986). FM carries more music
because of its superior transmitting technology and because its music formats
help to construct and define the groups most attractive to radio's advertisers:
younger adults in urban areas. Recently FM stations led the market in a num-
ber of Canadian cities. FM's success has corresponded with an increase in the
number of available frequencies, an increase in the proportion of listening
time devoted to music, the growth of corporate integration in the radio indus-
try, the re-emergence of program syndication, the introduction of satellite pro-
gram distribution and a decline in the airtime quota of Canadian music, which
is gradually being shifted to the domain of marginal campus/community sta-
tions and the increasingly impoverished Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC). The rise of FM is thus part of a larger change in which, as a result of
technical, economic, and administrative development, music has become the
primary instrument of commercial radio's de-localisation.
Yet radio continues to represent itself as the local medium, placing this
theme at the centre of its commercial and regulative strategies, its daily sched-
ule, and its programming rhetoric. Rather than taking this rhetoric at its word,
the following explores the 'work' of the music/radio text as part of a produc-
tive apparatus reconstructing both space and time.
FORMAT
Radio is a medium which constructs and presents its own identity through
its production. Radio has no reality, write Hennion and Meadel (1986), except
to produce the reality that it records; it is nothing but intermediary, and its
reconstruction of the music catalogue is its way of constructing its own identi-
ty, or discursive context, and its audience. If radio exists "only to make others
present, an invisible machine for making the world visible to itself" (ibid.: 286),
1 76 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
the community which speaks and is spoken through that medium is also con-
stituted by it, and is formed by its structures, selections and strategies. It is for
this reason that radio comprises an ideal instrument for collective self-con-
struction, for the enactment of a community's oral and musical history. Brecht
(1990) argued that this role would be realized only when radio became a
means of communication, rather than one of distribution. Contemporary radio
functions as the latter, but it represents itself as the former. This rhetorical
achievement is accomplished through music.
In North America, commercial radio is dominated by format stations in
which the organization of music programming mediates and differentiates sta-
tion and listener identities. Formats were introduced because they could deliver
relatively cheap program/listener revenues to radio after the arrival of televi-
sion. Their commercial consolidation was dependent on the development of
transistor technologies, which allowed greater mobility and fragmentation
among listeners, and of market research, which allowed broadcasters to be
more specific about the listeners they were selling to advertisers. Today, the
term 'format' has two related meanings; it describes "the type of programming
done by a station, such as Top-40 or all-news. It also refers to the routine, or
the list of specific ingredients, found in a program hour. This includes specific
phrases to be spoken, program content, and the order and manner of place-
ment" (Johnson and Jones 1978: 112). Formatting ensures that a station is
clearly distinguishable from other stations (unlike TV, which distinguishes pro-
grams and times) through a clear musical identity constructed in harmony with
the precise demographics and researched common tastes of the targeted audi-
ence. Formats have tended to become more specialized, largely because
research methods have grown more sophisticated; listeners' loyalties are an
effect, as much as cause, of this specialization process.
Format music programming styles thus appear to spring from, and to
articulate, a neutral marriage of musics (country and western, Top 40, etc.)
and demographics, and to correspond opportunistically to already established
listener tastes, whose profiles are discovered through the neutral science of
market research. For broadcasters and regulators, the division of a given
broadcasting area according to demographic typologies reflects a division in
the needs and listening expectations of "targeted" listeners, who have already
been defined (and researched) as members of demographically discrete groups,
who are conceived as firmly established in their musical tastes and listening
habits, and who should therefore, according to this line of thought, be served
by an appropriately diversified and rationalized radio spectrum.
Every format follows a complex set of rules for programming, including
the style and range of music selections, size and origin of playlist, quotas for
musical repetition, relative numbers of current and past hits and their usual
sequence, conventional relationships between music and speech and so forth.
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 1 77
A major change in any one of these is inconceivable without a subsequent
change in all of them and in the relationships amongst them. For instance, a
switch from Middle of the Road (MOR) to contemporary hit radio (CHR) would
demand (besides a new music director) a new on-air style, different news, a
smaller playlist with higher weekly rotation and faster turnover of hits, and
above all, a successful transition to new sources of advertising revenue for the
less affluent but presumably larger market. Urban markets support an increas-
ing number of pop-music format stations which compete for listeners and
advertisers on the basis of finely researched distinctions notwithstanding some
considerable crossover of music selections. An increased number of stations in
a particular city does not at all guarantee a wider range of diversity of music
selections.
In Canada, FM formats are closely regulated. Broadcasters seeking a
licence or renewal must commit themselves to a general format and prove
both the viability and need for the chosen format in that particular city. Their
"Promise of Performance" must detail the type and range of popular music to
be programmed, as well as the intended percentage of Canadian content,
maximum repeat quotas for hits, proportions of hits to other musical selec-
tions (regulation prohibits more than 50 percent, though as with most restric-
tions there are exemptions for Canadian selections), total commercial time,
amount of "foreground" programming and so on. This regulation is intended
to maintain musical diversity in FM programming, given an increasingly com-
petitive market and the well-documented tendency for broadcasters to dupli-
cate successful formats as long as they can draw sufficient advertising revenue
(Glasser 1984). Through format regulation, commercial radio is supposed to
be balanced between viable market conditions on the one hand, and non-mar-
ket cultural objectives like musical diversity and Canadian content on the
other. Such scrupulous management of the market offers a bureaucratically
dense trace of the government's ostensible defence of 'public interest', which
used to be represented by the public system.
Given format radio's tendency towards duplication, and the pressures on
programmers to prefer mainstream and crossover hits whatever the format,
the rationale for FM regulation is more evident than its success. Actual musical
diversity is doing less well than the radio market, which, while more or less
stable in terms of total revenues, is heavily unbalanced (like the programming
itself) between centre and margins, with major stations drawing huge revenues
and many others continuing without reported profits for years at a time. New
stations are still being licensed, though this does little to increase the range of
music programming available; it merely intensifies the competition for adver-
tising revenue and refines radio's production of audiences as more specialized
commodities. In sum, the post-TV proliferation of stations and the refinement
of research-based formats has contributed more to the expansion and rational-
1 78 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ization of commercial revenues gained by the radio market as a whole than to
the substantive diversity of tastes that is claimed to warrant such proliferation,
and which, in any case, tends to be created as much (or as little) as indulged by
radio practices.
The organization of audiences by music format does rationalize the radio
market, but this is not the same as diversifying or enriching radio program-
ming. This would entail diversifying musical production itself, and diversifying
the exposure of musics to specific audiences, the opposite to what has actually
occurred in the evolution of music formats. Diversifying the production of
music is achieved by diversifying the site of its production; that is, by making
music recording and broadcasting more widely accessible to a range of musical
practices and styles. These objectives are not the intention or the effect of
contemporary radio music formats, whether or not they are addressed to lis-
tening markets who buy records.
THE MARKET
In recent years radio production has been transformed by music television
and other changes in the production and circulation of records; by more
sophisticated methods of audience-testing and market research; by satellite
and computer technology, and subsequent program services; by concentration
of ownership structures; by the re-emergence of networks; and other factors.
In other words, the process of mediation between station and listener is itself
the subject of economic and technical modernisation, which has a direct influ-
ence on the radio 'text' itself. As this process is rationalized, so too is the text.
What is important about the music, in that context, may be not so much what
it says, but what it displaces; not so much whom it draws together, but how,
and on what terms, and, of course, what it leaves out.
In 1989, the most successful formats were Adult Contemporary/Gold;
MOR; and, well behind these, Country; Album-oriented rock, and
Contemporary Hit Radio. The consolidation of Adult Contemporary, on AM,
and of Album-oriented rock, on FM, as leading formats (following a gender
distinction; women listen more to AM, men to FM), the slight decline of MOR
on both AM and FM bands; and the relatively low standing of country and
dance music formats on FM, in combination, confirm the relative strength of
formats featuring current singles, though this tendency, mainly a response to
the influence of videos, is less marked than in the mid 1980s because of the
resurgence of 'Gold' formats.
The rise of video as a marketing tool reduced the supply of new record-
ings, while video's emphasis on singles tended to marginalize the rest of the
album in terms of radio airplay. In conjunction with the relative aging of the
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 1 79
population (and the consequent relative decline of record consumption), this
has changed the role of radio in the distribution of records, especially
Canadian content records, which has further added to a decline in their supply
(Hahn 1985: 17). After music television went on the air, the number of
records in circulation declined; by 1985, releases by new artists were down 45
percent internationally from five years before (Bergeron et al. 1986: 42). In
Canada, the multinationals release current recordings selectively, following
their commercial success in Britain or the U.S.; this leads to further reduction
of the number of records in circulation. While the number of records being
released has decreased internationally, the proportion of national and interna-
tional hits has risen in relation to local releases; this trend is exacerbated in
Canada, where the music industry earns about 14 percent of its revenues from
Canadian record and tape sales.
There are several issues worth considering in relation to these develop-
ments. First, the size of the radio market as a whole has remained stable; peo-
ple are not tuning in to FM from television or magazines, but from AM sta-
tions, which have been subject to a strict 30 percent Canadian content quota
since 1971. FM stations tend to be (depending on format) subject to lower
Canadian-content quotas, and are frequently criticized for unloading Canadian
content into off-peak listening hours. The relative decline of AM radio means
less airtime for Canadian music, which spells trouble for the already marginal
Canadian recording industry (Bergeron et al. 1986: 127). Competition from
U.S. stations also contributes to lower Canadian content quotas, and probably
reduced sales, in our border cities. Second, and in relation to this, formats that
succeed in major markets affect listening patterns more widely. In addition to
the dissemination of playlists from Billboard, or from major urban markets to
smaller stations, and the rise of syndicated programs distributed by satellite,
people tune into stations in large metropolitan centres even when they do not
live there themselves (BBM 1986; Report: 24). The bigger the urban market,
the more its stations function as magnets to listeners in surrounding areas,
developing listening patterns from the centre outwards that are disproportion-
ate in terms of the spatial distribution of the population. Because of this "spill"
effect, residents of smaller towns tend not to listen to their own stations.
This is not because urban stations play more regional music, or even a
wider range of music selections. Because a large city is more fragmented, or,
to put it another way, because urban stations are competing for a larger rev-
enue base and draw on more precise audience research, radio programming is
more specialized. CHR, AC and AOR formats are more popular in big cities,
where listeners (or perhaps their employers and shop-owners) seem to prefer
more contemporary formats with a higher turnover and a smaller range, i.e.,
tighter and faster playlists (CRTC 1987: sec. 8.3.3). Urban format specializa-
tion is also tied to a greater emphasis on nationally distributed records, which
180 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
have international promotion in television, magazines, and other contexts.
Stations in smaller towns are more open to, and more reliant on, locally
or regionally produced recordings (Hahn 1985: 23-4). But they are being cul-
turally and economically marginalised by the urban specialization process and
its attraction to small-town listeners. The growth of FM may be encouraging
this process, because the revenue for FM stations increases commensurately
with the expansion of audience reach, unlike AM stations, which experience a
declining rate of increase as audience size increases (Babe 1985: 95-100).
The marginalization of local music production (and other program sources) is
also being intensified by the erosion of the public broadcasting system, which,
ironically, is invariably accompanied by rhetorical flourishes about the greater
local sensitivity of commercial broadcasting. As everyone knows, private
broadcasters produce far less local programming. The only tangible proof of
commercial radio's local allegiance lies in the high proportion of advertising
revenue drawn from local businesses, the direct reversal of television revenue,
which is three-quarters nationally based (Report 1986: 396). The proportion
of radio revenue derived from local advertisers has risen substantially, from 60
percent in 1969 to over 73 percent in 1984 (Babe 1985: 27).
The effect of all this is that urban stations are attracting a higher propor-
tion of listeners, while programming a decreasing number of music selections.
This means that more and more listeners are listening to fewer and fewer
songs. This reflects, and helps to legitimate, the general trend towards spatial
and economic centralization characterizing radio in Canada and music produc-
tion internationally.
SPACE AND TIME
If the hit parade had emerged by the time Harold Innis wrote Empire and
Communications (1950), perhaps he would have offered some specific
hypotheses about its spatial-temporal impact. In his work, media-produced
relations between time and space have direct consequence for the growth of
geopolitical formations and monopolies. Time-binding communications ensure
continuity across time, and preserve memory, identity and hierarchy; space-
binding media, such as telegraphs, roads and electronic media, permit more
rapid dissemination of information across space, but erode local memory and
the self-determination of peripheral groups. Commercial radio seems to follow
this latter pattern through its hyperactive re-structuring of the spatial sound-
scape, its impact on changing patterns of consumer communities, and its role
in the creation of international distribution systems, in much the same way
that, in his prognosis, the rise of print created the material-political founda-
tions for the present era.
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 18
In fact format radio, and the current changes in music radio, occupy an
interesting but paradoxical position in this picture. Radio was developed to
transmit across space, to overcome physical borders, and to make transitory
messages broadly available; in this respect, it is a space-binding medium,
ensuring the rapid, broad distribution of changing texts without restriction to
an originary space or a cultural elite. On the other hand, it is aural, vernacular,
immediate, transitory; its composite stream of music and speech, including
local (if usually one-way) communication, has the capacity to nourish local
identity and oral history, and to render these dynamic through contact with
other spaces and cultures. This capacity for mediating the local with the new
defines its styles of talk and construction of station identity. But format radio is
thoroughly industrialized both in its temporal language, and in its relations of
production, which are increasingly technologically rationalized, and less and
less local in origin or scale. This paradox allows format-based music radio to
be omnisciently 'local' without arising from or contributing to local cultures.
Radio, like other media, is constituted (and constitutes us) spatially as
much as by genre, signification or mode of address. This thought is already
half accomplished by the common emphasis on radio's resilient portability
since the invention of transistors. Doesn't the birth of the hit parade form a
homologous whole with cars, highways and scenic pull-offs, drive-in movies,
blue jeans and Coke? But the point can be taken further. In the radiophonic
production of sound texts and local, if not locally autonomous audiences, it is
possible to identify more precisely how "spatial form and spatial strategy can
be an active element of accumulation," as Doreen Massey (1984) argues in
more general terms.
A number of elements in the production process spring to mind. Most
broadly, radio provides an international distribution system for records. Music
recording has become a globally integrated process within centralized econom-
ic structure which shapes the conditions and locations of manufacture and dis-
tribution. The demand for currency in sound values produces an incentive for
technological innovation that ensures, among other things, a process of con-
tinuous rationalization in studio production facilities and strategies. Recording,
touring, the music press, can all be mapped out in relation to a construct of
centres and peripheries; you could argue that this map is materialized semioti-
cally every time a musician displays her commercial success by moving to
more sophisticated recording facilities, which almost invariably follows the
move to a major label.
But here we are concerned with radio, which on the surface, at least, is a
more dynamically local medium. Shifts in recording and listening technology
and music marketing have reinforced commercial radio's dependency on the
organizational rationalization of music programming, even where record pro-
motion is not part of the station's demographic mandate. Responding to a
182 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
competitive, media-saturated and increasingly de-regulated environment, radio
programmers are more inclined to turn to computer programs for music selec-
tion to cut programming costs, than to flex the boundaries of musical taste.
Across Canada, over 100 stations now relay rock or country music programs
by satellite from St. Catharines, Ontario (south of Toronto), produced by
Canadian Radio Networks. CRN claims four minutes an hour for national
advertising sales, and formats six and a half minutes into each program hour
for local spots (Careless 1990). Otherwise the programs are live, DJ-hosted
programming, delivered cheaply, all night long, from what is often the other
side of the country. "In essence," writes a radio columnist for Broadcaster,
"it's a local station gone national. This illusion exists because CRN jocks stead-
fastly refuse to identify their location. As well, the service offers toll-free 1-800
request lines, so listeners can call in and talk to a jock, wherever they may be"
(ibid.). The only drawback, for this columnist? Unemployment for hundreds of
DJs. Two more CRN networks—CHR and oldies—are in the works.
Such mechanisms rationalize radio production across vast distances, in
effect restricting local communication to advertisers. They also facilitate the
economic security and spatial diffusion of monopolies, in this case in the
recording and electronic industries, which are more interested in opening up
markets for new cultural hardware and its accompanying software than in the
recording and marketing of a wide range of musics, or the potential contribu-
tion of such musics to patterns of urban communication. If ensuing radio prac-
tices assure listeners of their right to a certain powerful habitual pleasure, they
also suppress equally fundamental rights: Lefebvre (1976: 35) speaks of the
right to the town (how often do you hear DJs, aural icons of local culture,
encouraging debates or actions on urban development, racism, pollution, day-
care, land rights, public transport?) and the right to be different ("the right
not to be classified forcibly into categories which have been determined by the
necessarily homogenizing powers") which, he argues, are endangered by the
economic and political management of urban space.
As we have seen, radio produces difference through format competition,
but only that which is demographically and administratively profitable. More
clearly evident is radio's management of urban space, perhaps its chief accom-
plishment, in its promotion of local business, its management of traffic, time,
and temperament in relation to rhythms of the working week.
RADIO SPACE AND TEMPORAL NARRATIVES
Like the radio schedule itself, with its strict markers of the hour, its subtly
clocked rotation of current and past hits, its advance promotion of a new
release, the music playlist functions as a kind of metalanguage of time.
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 185
The playlist offers a grammar of temporality which draws in the listener and
produces her (economically, as a commodity; experientially, as a listener) as a
member of a stylistic community defined, more and more, in inexorably tem-
poral terms, rather than in relation to geographic or more explicitly substan-
tive identification; that is, in terms of the preferred speed and rate of musical
consumption (c/., Straw 1988). The music playlist continuously (but variously)
demarcates the present from the immediate or distant past. With its new hits,
its repetitions and recyclings, its rising and falling stars, the playlist reinforces
the space-bias of commercial radio by making diverse communities as listeners
more and more the same, by spreading processes, values and decisions out-
wards from a technical and administrative centre, and by defining value in
terms of rapid temporal change, competency in terms of knowledge of that
change. The playlist is a central functional element within the radiophonic nar-
rative, which, paradoxically, constantly posits the local as its subject.
Radio's textual interaction of music and speech can be analyzed as a type
of narrative, one which simultaneously addresses and represents the specific
targeted community. This makes the DJ or host a kind of narrator, and sug-
gests that the combined elements of old and new songs, advertisements, news
and weather on the hour, and so on, can be analyzed as structural functions
within the narrative, which is constructed through their specific combination.
Where traditional tales are analyzed as a structural combination of narrative
elements condensed across time, we might consider contemporary radio nar-
ratives as the condensation of structural relations in and across space, in an
interdependent relation of reverse proportionality to time. Space is collapsed
because access to it is (at least imaginatively) expanded; time is speeded up
and broken into contemporaneous moments within the still tangible discipline
of the working week. The construction of radio audiences is not, then, simply
an abstract (if quantifiable) assemblage of listeners with similar tastes, but also
a ritualised transformation of people's relationships to (and in) space and time.
Radio creates a new sense of time, not directly parallel to previous kinds, an
overt disciplining of the hours of the day which also permits a non-spatial
movement in and out of its compulsions with the simultaneous
suspension/intensification of marked time through music, and the return/casu-
al proliferation of social time through talk.
Radio is often described as surrogate or "portable friend" (Dominick
1979: 99). Early psychological and market research established the truism that
radio's functions are "to 'involve' the listener in the great and small events of
the day; the provision of commonly shared experiences that can facilitate
interpersonal experiences and also that can cement the solidarity of various
subcultures...within a mass audience" (Mendelsohn 1979: 96). This compan-
ionable set of functions is attributed to radio's technical mobility, its mix of
music and talk and the ways this 'represents' the collective choices and desires
184 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
of its listeners, and its mode of address, which establishes a simulated intimacy
that is specific to the medium. Radio announcers are instructed to address
their audience in the singular, never as a mass, and to establish a mood of
friendly companionship for their listeners, often assumed to be women.
Popular radio offers a sense of accessibility to and interaction within its
own community, distinguishing itself from television through highly conven-
tional and elaborated strategies of representation. Such conventions work to
establish and draw attention to the radio station as a live and local content.
They include signposting ("Later we'll be talking to...Coming up: the new
release from...you can hear it right here on..."), styles of interviewing, sponta-
neous patter, informal commentary on music selections and music-related gos-
sip, station identifications (Montreal's CHOM-FM, member of the nationwide
CHUM chain which also owns MuchMusic Television, calls itself "the spirit of
Montreal"), and so forth, all of which contribute to a sense of localness, imme-
diacy, and accessibility.
Radio's localness is emphasized in all textbooks and industry commen-
taries on on-air practice. Successful DJs account for their popularity by claim-
ing special contact with the local scene. "Radio is very much a local medium,"
advise Johnson and Jones (1978: 118), authors of a leading American text-
book on modem radio station practices. In the same paragraph, they note that
"in fact, no local station really originates all of its programming material.
Phonograph records are nationally distributed, as is the news from wire ser-
vices. Most ideas are borrowed, not originated." Stephen Barnard (1989: 92)
observes that "radio stations throughout the world use records as a major
source of program material for reasons of tradition, convenience, and eco-
nomics," and notes the current trend among record companies to downplay
local talents and to encourage trends at the local level. Thus broadcasters
become what Babe (1985: 24) calls "localizers" of international content.
If radio is local, then, most of what we hear—other than the weather fore-
cast—is not. Nor is the sum of technological relations upon which contempo-
rary radio depends. Some stations produce their own commercials, but the
soundtrack is as often as not imported (in the case of CHOM, from California
in a boxed CD set). We think of radio as a low-tech medium, but it is not an
autonomous one. Its dependencies follow the same patterns of more advanced
technologies wherein the cycle of technical innovation/democratization does
not democratize access to production, but only to (some) information, which
thereby can be more centrally disseminated. To put it with complete cynicism
(meaning only partial truth), radio's atmosphere of local involvement is
designed to attract the highest possible proportion of listening hours for sale
to local advertisers, and thus to maintain and promote the particular local 'feel'
that can attract both listeners and advertisers. Local relevance becomes the
shorthand for radio's competition with television, its dependency on advertis-
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 18 5
ing revenue from local sources, and its promotion of music sales at the local
level.
In this context the DJ serves to personalize and thus to locate the station
as more than an abstract mediation of records, advertisers and listeners. DJ's
are increasingly disempowered in terms of programming, and make fewer and
fewer decisions about music and other content. But it falls to the DJ's voice to
provide an index of radio as a live and local medium, to provide immediate
evidence of the efficacy of its listeners' desires. It is through that voice that the
community hears itself constituted, through that voice that radio assumes
authorship of the community, woven into itself through its jokes, its advertise-
ments, its gossip, all represented, recurringly and powerfully, as the map of
local life.
CONCLUSION
In Canada, as elsewhere, privatisation, networking, and intensified compe-
tition in the broadcasting sphere contribute to what Carey (1975: 33) calls
"pervasive centralization": a general shift of the location of authority to "more
distant, diffuse and abstract centres," thus eroding the "effective capacity of
proximate relations." Commercial radio is constrained by an increasingly
monopolized (and televisualised) distribution system for recorded music, and its
programming is shaped by increasingly centralized hierarchical technical
processes which it helps to valorize and reproduce. It posits listeners' desire as
the engine of that set of social and technical relations. Through its mediation,
it makes that posited account true.
Radio has unique capacities to map our symbolic and social environment.
These capacities are considerably constrained by the national and international
nature of music distribution and by radio's impetus towards technological ratio-
nalization. Radio mediates between local listeners and musical selections, but
its forms of mediation, defined by the music format, can be heard as a natural-
izing of technological change and the ongoing, sometimes violent displace-
ment of its listeners. Its narrative depends on (though it also helps to diffuse)
people's feelings about community, about territory, work and weekends, roads
and traffic, memory and play, and what might be happening across town. Its
special resource is the psychic investment of listeners in local space, whether
they are isolated within it or driving across it; the displacement of this space in
the radio airwaves has direct semiotic and structural implications in the shifting
strategies of empire.
This chapter is taken from Tony Bennet et al. (eds.), Rock and Popular Music: Policies, Politics, and Institutions. Copyright O
1992 Routtedge. Reprinted by permission of Routtedge.
186 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ENDNOTE
1. An earlier version of this paper was published in Popular Music 9(2), 1990.
REFERENCES
Attali, Jacques. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
Babe, Robert. 1985. A Study of Radio: Economic/Financial Profile of Private
Sector Radio Broadcasting in Canada. Prepared for the Task Force on
Broadcasting Policy, Department of Communications, Ottawa.
Barnard, Stephen. 1989. On the Radio: Music Radio in Britain. Milton Keynes:
Open University Press.
Barnes, Ken. 1988. "Top 40: A Fragment of the Imagination," in Simon Frith (ed.),
Facing the Music. New York: Pantheon.
Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image-Music-Text. Stephen Heath (ed.), and trans. Glasgow:
Fontana/William Collins and Co.
BBM (Bureau of Broadcast Measurement). 1986. A Review of Trends in Canadian
Radio Listening 1976-1985. Ottawa.
Bergeron, Denis, Brian Chater and John Roberts. 1986. Music and the Electronic
Media in Canada. Study for the Task Force on Broadcasting Policy, Ottawa.
Berland, Jody. 1988. "Locating Listening: Popular Music, Technological Space,
Canadian Mediation." Cultural Studies. 2,3: pp. 343-58.
. 1991. "Towards a Creative Anachronism: Radio, the state, and sound gov-
ernment." Public. 4/5, Sound, pp. 9-21.
Brecht, Bertoh. 1990. "Radio as an Apparatus of Communication," in Frith, Simon
and Andrew Goodwin (eds.), On Record. New York: Pantheon.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 1989. Radio Format Report. Colleen Cronin.
Toronto: CBC Research Office.
CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission). 1987.
Listening Trends 1976-1986. Mary Giordano, Broadcasting Directorate,
Radio Policy Planning and Analysis Branch, Ottawa.
Careless, James. 1990. "Canadian Radio Networks: A Service For Budget-Conscious
Broadcasters." Broadcaster. November, pp. 6-7.
Carey, James. 1975. "Canadian Communication Theory: Extensions and
Interpretations of Harold Innis," in Robinson, G.J. and D.F. Theall (eds.),
Studies in Canadian Communications, Montreal: McGill Program in
Communications.
. 1989. Communication as Culture. Unwin and Hyman.
Crane, Jonathon. 1986. "Mainstream Music and the Masses." Journal of
Communication Inquiry. 10/3: pp. 66-70.
RADIO SPACE AND INDUSTRIAL TIME: THE CASE OF Music FORMATS 187
Crisell, Andrew. 1986. Understanding Radio. London: Methuen.
Dominick, Joseph R. 1979. "The Portable Friend: Peer Group Membership and Radio
Usage," in Gumpert, Gary and Robert Cathcart (eds.), Intermedia:
Interpersonal Communication in a Media World. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Fomatale, P. and J. Mills. 1980. Radio in the Television Age. Woodstock: Overlook.
Glasser, Theodor. 1986. "Competition and Diversity Among Radio Formats: Legal
and Structural Issues." Journal of Broadcasting. 28: pp. 122-42.
Hahn, Richard. 1985. A Study of the Supply of English Language Sound
Recordings to Canadian Private Radio Stations. Study for the Task Force
on Broadcasting Policy, Ottawa.
Hennion, Antoine and Cecile Meadel. 1986. "Programming Music: Radio as
Mediator." Media, Culture and Society. Vol. 8, No. 3: pp. 281-303.
Innis, Harold. 1950. Empire and Communications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, J.S. and K. Jones. 1978. Modern Radio Station Practices. Belmont:
Wadsworth.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1976. The Survival of Capitalism: Reproductions of the Relations
of Production. London: Allison and Busby.
Liska, Peter. 1988. "Digital Broadcast Radio." Broadcaster. July.
Massey, Doreen. 1984. Spatial Divisions of Labour: Social Structures and the
Geography of Production. London: Macmillan.
Mendelsohn, Harold. 1979. "Listening to Radio," in Gumpert, Gary and Robert
Cathcart, op. cit.
Mietkiewicz, Henry. 1985. "Radio a Gamble for all Except High Rollers." Toronto
Star. 18 February.
Report of the Task Force on Broadcasting Policy, 1986. Ottawa: Minister of Supply
and Services.
Rothenbuhler, Eric. 1987. "Commercial Radio and Popular Music: Processes of
Selection and Factors of Influence," in Lull, James (ed.), Popular Music and
Communication. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Statistics Canada. 1990. "Who Listens to Radio?" Focus on Culture. 2/4: pp. 1-3.
Straw, Will. 1988. "Music Video in its Contexts: Popular Music and Post-modernism in
the 1980s." Popular Music. 7/3: pp. 247-66.
Toronto Star. 1988. "Spinning too much Top 40 lands CKFM in hot water." 14
April, bl.
Toushek, Gary and M. Unger. 1988. "Helping Radio Programmers: A Computer
System to Handle the Routine But Vital Tasks." Broadcaster. September.
This page intentionally left blank 
SECTION III
IDENTITIES:
MUSIC AND THE
DEFINING OF NATION
Nationalism has become a hot topic and a challenging social reality in the
1990s. The stable structures of political states which many of us took for
granted are crumbling in many parts of the world but particularly in Eastern
Europe in the wake of the 1989 transformations following the collapse of
Communism. In Canada, the failure of successive attempts at constitutional
accord—at Meech Lake, Charlottetown, and in the referendum following the
Charlottetown Accord—have made this topic immediate, though fortunately
not violent as in many other parts of the world.
The articles in this section remind us that questions of nationalism have
resurfaced at many times within Canadian cultural history. If one prefers a
chronological survey of the subjects considered here, the articles might be read
as follows: Poirier, Schafer, Wright, Lehr, Robbins and Guilbault. We have
chosen, however, to place the two most recent articles first because their theo-
retical sophistication frames the consideration of this subject in important
ways.
James Robbins reminds us that our sense of national identity has always
been relational, contrasting and often opposing the United States while
parochially ignoring the power and control exerted by that nation. He draws
comparisons with Latin America, similarly in the shadow of the U.S. but posi-
tioned differently in other regards. Paraphrasing Anthony Seeger's title, Why
Suya Sing (1987), and re-casting it in "Canajan" (pronounced Ka-nay-jun,
eh?) dialect, he looks at the fundamental roles that music plays in Canadian
society.
Writing from a Quebecois perspective but with a purview informed by
international and transnational research, Line Grenier and Jocelyne Guilbault
explore the implications of the label "nation" as applied to nation states or
190 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
specific ethnocultural groups. They explain that confusion has existed between
one or the other reference. The result: artificial boundaries drawn between
groups which distinguish themselves from 'Others', boundaries which mark
things as authentic or inauthentic.
Composer R. Murray Schafer reveals one side of an ambivalent attitude
toward Canadian musical nationalism in the next article. His strong pro-
Canadian-culture stance contrasts with the position he articulated at an earlier
point in his career and he reflects with honesty about the passage from one
viewpoint to another. Other articles in the anthology On Canadian Music
(1984), from which this piece is excerpted, demonstrate the passage. Unlike
most of the articles in our anthology, this one is the product of reflection
rather than data-gathering. Schafer's attitude bears comparison with that of
the musicians quoted by Lucien Poirier in the next article.
The following article, on the other hand, provides students with a good
introduction to primary source materials and to problems of interpreting them.
Quebec musicologist Lucien Poirier researches the nationalistic fervour of
early 20th-century musicians and theorists and presents their debates of 1918
to 1930 about a distinctive Canadian musical style, a concern which still rever-
berates in both concert music and writing about music in the late 20th centu-
ry. This is the oldest layer of Canadian nationalism represented in this anthol-
ogy; the period is contemporaneous with that studied by Tippett in Section II.
The remaining articles take us out of the realm of concert music and into
the world of country and popular music. John Lehr focuses first on the dis-
course of broadcasters, a discourse which builds stereotypes of North
American regions; he then explores the subtler imagery of song texts in
Canadian country music. Wright concentrates on the career paths of well-
known Canadian songwriters, some still active in the Canadian milieu, some
expatriates. He focuses on the period following Canada's centennial, a period
when national sentiment ran high and when the Vietnam War protests
became a focus for defining Canadian distinctiveness in relation to the U.S.
The parameters of nationalism identified in these two articles on popular
musics bear comparison with those identified by Poirier for concert music in
the period some decades earlier.
Particularly in the context of classroom discussion, this group of articles
can be read comparatively in order to address questions such as the following:
1. What aspects of music and music-making are explored as sites of
nationalist expression? The content of song texts? The choice of
repertoire? The activities surrounding performance? The composition-
al style?
2. What are the images and metaphors which these authors use to dis-
cuss musical nationalism? Are these images and metaphors
IDENTITIES: MUSIC AND THE DEFINING OF NATION 1 9 1
"segregationalist" (that is, do they construct an image of Canada
which is separate and distinct) or "relational" (that is, do they see our
ways of creating and using music as connected with other national or
transnational traditions)?
The exploration of such questions will, we believe, enable readers to
engage more responsibly in the current debates surrounding cultural national-
ism within Canada.
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
There are, within recent decades, so many bodies of writing relevant to
the study of nationalism, including Canadian nationalism, that it is hard to
know where to direct the engaged reader. In fact, a keyword search of our
university's library catalogue revealed 84 new titles in 1992 and 1993 alone.
Among the classics in this large literature, we recommend Benedict
Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread
of Nationalism (1983) as a good starting point, particularly since it has gener-
ated a recent Canadian spin-off: Jeremy Webber's Reimagining Canada:
Language, Culture, Community, and the Canadian Constitution (1993).
Other theoretical work is referenced in the Introduction to this anthology.
Much of the Canadian literature on nationalism has focused, not surpris-
ingly, on Quebec. Richard Handler's Nationalism and the Politics of Culture
in Quebec (1987) has become a standard social scientific reference. Readers
could turn, equally, to the literary world where, for example, novelist and cul-
tural pundit Mordecai Richler voiced an engagingly controversial personal view
of Canadian nationalism in Oh Canada, Oh Quebec! (1992).
Sociological studies of Canadian demography, studies such as Peter Li's
Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada (1990) or Jean Elliott's earlier Two
Nations, Many Cultures (1979), may provide useful background information.
Historiographic studies such as Carl Berger's The Writing of Canadian
History (2nd ed., 1986), or John Schulz' Writing About Canada (1990), will
help to alert the reader to the biases and differing motives of so-called objec-
tive scholarship.
192 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
REFERENCES
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Berger, Carl. 1986. The Writing of Canadian History, revised edition. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
Elliot, Jean. 1979. Two Nations. Many Cultures. Scarborough: Prentice-Hall.
Handler, Richard. 1988. Nationalism and the Politics of Culture in Quebec.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Li, Peter. 1990. Race and Ethnic Relations in Canada. Toronto: Oxford University
Press.
Richler, Mordecai. 1992. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec! New York: Knopf.
Schafer, R. Murray. 1984. On Canadian Music. Bancroft: Arcana.
Schulz, John. 1990. Writing About Canada. Scarborough: Prentice-Hall.
Seeger, Anthony. 1987. Why Suya Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian
People. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Webber, Jeremy. 1993. Reimagining Canada: Language, Culture, Community, and
the Canadian Constitution. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's
University Press.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN
WHEN THEY SING, EH?:
ETHNOMUSICOLOCY IN THE
AMERICAN STATE OF CANADA
JAMES ROBBINS
A number of people, commenting on the title of this paper, have asked
me, "Is it about free trade?"
1
 No. I mean "American state" literally—a state in
the Americas. The confusion is symptomatic of our preoccupation with the
U.S. as the touchstone for formulating questions about Canadian society; it
might be more productive, and at any rate it is past due, to consider in what
ways we are like or unlike other American states, other nations of the New
World.
We often think of Latin America as characterized by musical cultures hav-
ing distinctive and readily identifiable characteristics—displaying, in Seeger's
words, "overall integration of the various traditions and idioms among them-
selves and in the culture" (Seeger 1977: 215). They have national identity; we
have borrowed culture. But a reading of Carpentier or Cortazar, not to men-
tion intellectual histories such as Vitier's study of Cuba (1970), calls into ques-
tion the security of our assumptions about the difference between Canadian
and Latin American self-images and national identities.
2
Latin American society shares with Canada what Sidney Mintz describes
as "American-ness." We are "people whose ways of being share the common
quality of a foreign past" (Mintz 1970: 2) and, we may add, the heritage of an
exceptionally long period of direct colonial rule by Europeans or the descen-
dents of Europeans. And most importantly, we share with Latin America and
the Caribbean a relatively subordinate role to that country which has pre-
empted the Hemispheric name America. We are Americans who are not
Americans.
Like the American states south of the U.S., we appeal to the overwhelm-
ing presence of former colonial powers or the current big neighbour as
sources for legitimizing criteria of identity (either by imitation or rejection). In
194 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
this way, our self knowledge is at best distorted, at worst falsified, by inappro-
priate concepts.
Consider outside comments on Canada's jazz scene shortly after World
WarII:
A lot of the fans of the States' most potent cultural export are looking for a
Canadian jazz. I don't think they're ever going to find any, any more than
they're likely to discover or uncover a genuinely Canadian literature or paint-
ing. Nor is there any reason they should...this is one big continent, which may
one day be one country...(Ulanov 1948: 26)
As they travel from one city to another, covering thousands of miles...the
band will be closely followed by a special train, which will pick up food parcels
presented to Britain by grateful Canadians who have enjoyed the Binney
music. (Referring to a tour by the English Don Binney Band; Anon 1948: 1;
my italics)
Oscar [Petersonl's crowning achievement was the signing of his contract with
RCA Victor. This is the first time [sic] that a Canadian musican, performing in
the jazz idiom, has been considered worthy enough to have his musical ideas
put on wax. (Buller 1947: 56)
These are not statements merely about Canada by U.S. or British com-
mentators; they are part of the means by which U.S. or British metropolitan
identity is established—by setting up contrasts with the colonial or provincial—
just as establishing Central European musical primacy required invocation of
criteria by which England was a "land without music" (see Banfield 1981).
Doing so, they leave us, in Mordecai Richler's words, "yearning for an inheri-
tance, any inheritance, weightier than the construction of a transcontinental
railway, a reputation for honest trading, good skiing conditions" (Richler
1981: 162).
The limits to parallels between Canada and other American states are
instructive. First, the specific colonial histories are different, of course, ethni-
cally and economically. In some cases—particularly in the Caribbean—the
mixture of peoples from all over the globe has been a fact for about a century;
in Canada this process is in its inception, thanks to restrictive immigration
laws and policies concerning labour recruitment (see Porter 1965: 60-73).
Second, while Canada is economically dependent on the U.S. it is in fact a
post-colonial economic power as far as most of Latin America is concerned
(see Development Education Centre/Latin American Working Group 1977).
This contradictory status undermines not only hemispheric but also national
solidarity. James Frost's study of the Bank of Nova Scotia demonstrates how
Canadian investment in the Caribbean has been at the cost of regional inter-
ests in Canada (Frost 1984). Within Latin American countries, criollo elites
occupy a similarly contradictory location. The recognition of these contradic-
tions is crucial in evaluating the notion of 'national culture,' which is generally
WHAT CAN WE LEARN WHEN THEY SING, EH? 1_9*
used by a national ruling class dependent on the U.S. to "sanctify their posi-
tion as an 'interior bourgeosie'" (Mattelart 1979, quoted in Wallis and Malm
1984: 218).
This problem with 'national culture' becomes evident when the question is
posed: Whose nation? What do the Suya have to do with Jobim or Shelton
Brooks with Healey Willan, or Desi Amaz with Leo Brouer?
One answer is, "why should they have anything to do with one another?"
As well as ideologies concerning goals of national culture as identifiable style
or manner, we have ideologies of national culture as multiculturalism. Kenneth
Peacock suggests that "this peculiar Canadian ethos of bilingualism and multi-
culturalism" has been central to Canadian ethnomusicology (Peacock 1972:
329); central it may be, but peculiar it is not. Cuban musicians and writers on
music stress diversity and multi-ethnic heritage as the major factor in the rich-
ness of their musical culture (see, e.g., Linares 1970: 7; Acosta 1983: 9-10).
Canada's bilingual 'ethos
1
 begins to seem more normal than otherwise, in the
light of language policy and/or practice in such places as Peru (where
Quechua is an official language [Kloss and McConnell 1978: 4501); Paraguay
(where Guarani has official status as a 'national' language [ibid.: 440, 447])
and throughout the Caribbean
3
 where a multitude of Creoles and dialects coex-
ist with 'standard' languages. In short, statements about an ethos peculiar to
Canada have to go beyond the Johnsonian fact of sanctioning bilingualism
and multiculturalism (like the bear dancing, "the amazing thing is that it is
done at all") and examine how Canadian plurality might differ from other
American pluralities.
But there is another sort of pluralism—John Porter called it the "vertical
mosaic" (Porter 1965)—which allows us to recognize that hermetically cultural
nationalism is not an ethos necessarily shared by all or most members of a
nation. A likely hypothesis is that questions of 'national identity' and 'multicul-
turalism' mean different and at times opposing things to different social
groups, and some of the different meanings concern the pricetags and
paystubs of 'national culture' (see Pena 1985:9).
If, for purposes of analysis, we do what is generally done in 'vernacular'
sociology and separate the "vertical mosaic" into two sections, we are left with
a diptych of high and low: elite and mass. It might be tempting to place minor-
ity ethnic groups into the latter category in Canada's vertical mosaic, and gen-
eral patterns of employment correlated with ethnic origin support such a cate-
gorization (see Porter 1965). But it is essential to recognize that often ethnic
groups are themselves strongly divided by similar cleavages—as, for example,
the Toronto Armenian community, which maintains two sets of similar institu-
tions catering to musical needs of two sets of Armenians (Sarkissian 1987).
There is no all-purpose dividing line of high and low, but there are numerous
situations where pairs of things, such as musical types, are used to express
WHAT CAN WE LEARN WHEN THEY SING, EH?
196 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
such a division.
Jazz since the 1940s and country music in Canada, taken as one such
representative pair, highlight different sets of responses to problems of identity
and pluralism.
In Canadian jazz, one response is the entrenchment of the precept that
there is a historically validated mainstream producing, to quote one informant,
"timeless" as opposed to "fashionable" jazz. The idea of the mainstream is
perpetuated by constant distinctions made between jazz and non-jazz, between
the real and the peripheral, in media which feature jazz (e.g., and perhaps
especially, in public radio), and in jazz education (at York University).
Analogous distinctions are important to musicians who see their own time
divided between jazz and non-jazz, even when their audiences don't recognize
the same distinction: one musician spoke of "slipping in" a little jazz at a non-
jazz gig "just to baffle people"; another described his most lucrative gig as "not
really jazz," although the band is billed and widely popular as a jazz band (see
Miller 1987: 17). In 1940, the Toronto local of the American Federation of
Musicians went so far as to send Duke Ellington a telegram chastising him for
featuring the music of Chicago song-pluggers on a radio broadcast (Ellington
1973: 136): certain distinctions must be maintained.
Another response (perhaps best seen as a denial of backwater Johnny-
come-latelyism) is fascination with the conceptually advanced, the intellectually
high-tech. The most obvious example is the espousal of third-stream jazz
through the 50s and 60s; as well, Toronto bebop musicians felt that they were
more experimental with 'free-form' and harmonic innovations than their New
York counterparts (Robbins 1983: passim).
A third response is folklorism. We see in Toronto a "Jazz and Blues
Centre"; we do not see, as far as I know, a "Jazz and Funk Centre." In
Canadian jazz, folklorism does not refer to an indigenous folk culture but
mainly to that of the U.S.
These responses have their counterparts in Canadian country music.
4
There is conformity to a mainstream—not as a mechanism of historical validi-
ty, but as a means of catering to audience taste. The mainstream is not a his-
torical precept, but a continually changing embodiment of playlists and record
sales.
A priority on technological development appears pure and simple: the
P.A. and lighting are to be of as recent design as possible, given the con-
straints of budget; and exceptional fetish value is placed on certain makes of
instruments.
Finally, corresponding to folklorism is syncretism—and, as with folklorism
in jazz, primarily without indigenous attachment. Rock-and-roll is the most
important 'other' source of style and repertoire. But unlike Canadian jazz,
country music is mixed sporadically with local traditions (see Witmer 1982:
WHAT CAN WE LEARN WHEN THEY SING. EH? 197
passim; Klymasz 1972; note also in particular the diffusion of Maritime style
and repertoire, e.g., "old-time" fiddle style, "Nova Scotia Farewell").
It wouldn't be hard to continue this game by projecting these sets of
responses—mainstream historicism, avant-gardism and folklorism on the one
hand, mainstream conformity, technological development and syncretism on
the other—to other other high/low pairs (e.g., "serious music" vs. "pop
music"; university music vs. college music; new wave vs. heavy metal). But
Latin American examples force a re-evaluation of the picture.
In Peru, one response to problems of identity and pluralism was the indi-
genismo movement from the 1910s to the 40s, described in the work of Tom
Turino (1984). While on the face of it the movement seems folkloristic—the
appropriation by urban intellectuals of traditional regional style symbols for
political, nationalist ends—it nevertheless contributed to the subsequent revival
of charango playing and other indigenous musical traditions among a migrant
mestizo population. Conversely, the materials of indigenismo could not
remain uncorrupted by the very values the movement attempted to overturn,
manifested by the race- and class-based heirarchization of Peruvian genres and
playing styles. This hierarchization is embodied by order and dynamics of pro-
gramming in contemporary folkloristic concert performance, a tradition start-
ed by indigenistos.
Siboneista, the nativist movement in Cuba a century earlier, was compara-
tively an abortive effort, socially circumscribed and, in view of the absence of a
surviving group of native people, romantic. But it was rapidly supplanted by
Afro-cubanismo, which became a major force in musica culta—cultivated
music—and, in the hands of composers such as Roldan and Garcia Caturla in
the 1920s and 30s, a force with strong links to political nationalism (see
Robbins 1988: 1-2). However, these composers realized that they were not
effecting a fusion of African and European elements in a uniquely Cuban way;
rather, they were imitating a fusion widely acknowledged (through the work of
Fernando Ortiz) to have a long history in lower-class music. The revolutionary
government was quick to recognize the ideological implications of "Afro-
cubanismo." It is now strongly promoted as "lo genuine popular"' (see, e.g.,
Acosta 1983: 18, 132-135; Burton 1979: 20). Some of the consequences of
this policy are as follows. The pantheon of Cuban composers includes those
who were responsible for the 'invention' or propagation of Afro-cuban formal
or generic types in popular music, such as cha-cha-cha (Jorrin) and danzon
(Failde). Cabarets such as the Tropicana feature both Afro-cuban 'pop' and
'traditional' music and dancing; the latter performed by groups whose mem-
bership includes researchers in music and dance ethnology. These groups feel
commercial pressure to be authentic.
Peruvian indigenismo and the Cuban genuine popular cannot be linked
to one side of any social division. They both permeate various social strata and
198 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
determine the social environment in which widely differing groups of musi-
cians work.
They effectively overlap the analytical distinction I made earlier of high
and low responses to problems of identity and pluralism, and they test the
hypothesis that the meaning, in practical terms, of identity and pluralism is not
consistent. One man's ideology is another's gig.
This provides another answer to those "what do x and y have to do with
each other" questions. In good dialectical fashion, they have a lot to do with
each other because they are part of the same totality (cf., Lukacs 1971: xlvi-
xHrn, 8-10, 12-13): here, national totatities—the national histories of interac-
tion among different groups of musicians and audiences. By examining the
nature of this interaction—association, hegemony, direct coercion and so
on—and its channels, we can begin to pose problems and formulate questions
relevant to Canada.
Revolutionary Cuba offers an extreme example of the workings of nation-
al cultural policy in affecting lives of musicians, in that the system of employ-
ment and education of musicians is determined by a centralized process of
decision making, in which, it should be noted, musicologists are directly
involved. But analogous centralized dispersal of ideas via institutional structures
is present in Canada, where legislation or subsidy is involved (broadcasting,
education, cultural or community organizations with tax-exempt or subsidized
status). It is a mistake to imagine that the ramifications of this dispersal are
confined to a certain sector whose status—as artists or preservers of her-
itage—renders them potential customers at the public trough.
Rather than view public-sector involvement in music as a question of insid-
ers and outsiders, it is more worthwhile to recognize a spectrum of attitudes
and participation. Haslebacher has commented on the need for studying the
impact of "multicultural policies" on "performance practices in immigrant
communities" (Haslebacher 1988: u.p.), and I expect most researchers on
music of Canadian ethnic minorities would agree the impact is not uniform.
Jazz musicians exhibit contradictory attitudes towards the extent to which their
efforts are supported by public institutions: in my study of the development of
bebop in Toronto, one musician cited the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
as the staunchest supporter of Canadian jazz, while another "wouldn't go to
them for anything," exhibiting considerable, if benign, resentment towards
CBC music policies (Robbins 1983: 7-8).
Among country musicians, the subsidization of music is almost always
considered unfair; not suprisingly, since so little of it goes directly to them.
This unfairness provides the rationale for a strong sense of cultural specificity:
orchestral musicians are described as incompetent because they "can't play a
D turnaround" and therefore couldn't survive in an unsubsidized environment.
No distinction is made between cultural legislation by the federal government
WHAT CAN WE LEARN WHEN THEY SING. EH? 199
and the policies of autonomous organizations such as the Toronto Musicians'
Association (the Toronto local of the American Federation of Musicians); and
the channeling of tax dollars into institutions which exclude country music is
considered equivalent to the channelling of union dues into programs such as
Trust Fund gigs which generally exclude country music. As well as rationalizing
cultural specificity, this resentment fuels an ethos of 'free enterprise' where
successful Canadian recordings are denigrated as being "legislated hits" whose
success is predicated on Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications
Commission "Canadian content" rulings. Thus, the reliance of Canadian coun-
try music on U.S. models, lamented as being in conformance to the letter but
not the spirit of the CRTC (Lehr 1985: 17), is in fact promoted by Canadian
cultural policy which is perceived as unfair to mainstream, ordinary, working
musicians.
The national totality is coloured by a specific relationship between cultural
policy and industry, and so between ideas about music and music making
itself. What links the Canadian totality with those of Latin American nations is
that this relationship in each case rests on general industrial policies reflecting
post-colonial concerns of developing indigenous production, and on cultural
policies where models for a 'mainstream' culture are largely foreign. A further
point of similarity is high incidence of relatively small musical communities
where the high and the low compete for the same services and within a small
infrastructure of music production. There is therefore a widespread practical
awareness of public policy.
Should we be interested in national particularity, the pressing question
becomes: how do the relations of cultural policy and industry, specific to any
given nation, affect or enact channels of communication between musicians
and audiences of different social spheres? What this question demands is
greater attention to 'mainstream phenomena', to the history of the ordinary—
to practical counterparts of ideological discussions of national identity and
national culture, to practical consequences of cultural policy. We may then
begin to see how style might be a national thing—not as a matter of an 'inte-
grated' musical culture, and not because a particular sound is uniquely associ-
ated with a particular nation, but because musicians choose among sounds
under constraints which are uniquely associated with a particular nation. An
understanding of 'national culture' as something beyond ideology will come
only when we lay to rest myths that we are a peculiar 51st state and consider
the reality that we are—an American state.
This chapter is taken from Robert Wttmer (ed.), Ethnomusicology in Canada. Copyright C 1990 Institute for Canadian Music.
Reprinted by permission of the Institute for Canadan Music.
200 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ENDNOTES
1. I am indebted to Stephen Blum for suggesting that the First Conference on
Ethnomusicology in Canada would be an appropriate forum in which to bring
together some of my research in Latin American and Canadian music. He is in
no way responsible for the ways I may have misinterpreted his suggestion. Title
with apologies to Anthony Seeger.
2. So might a reading of Etkin (1988), which came to my attention after this paper
was originally delivered. C/., also Beckwith 1988: 115-16.
3. Diglossic Creoles include French (standardized via Haitian pop music; see Kloss
and McConnell 1978: 354) and Papiamentu (second official language in the
Dutch Antillean islands of Curacao, Aruba and Bonaire [ibid.: 422]); note also
the "polyglot" society of Trinidad (Lewis 1969: 213).
4. Unless otherwise cited, information on Canadian country music is drawn from
the author's experience as a freelance country musician with a number of differ-
ent bands based in Winnipeg and Toronto, performing throughout Ontario and
the Western provinces from 1978-82.
REFERENCES
Anonymous. 1948. "British Band to Tour Canada on Great 'Help Britain' Drive."
Melody Maker. 24/749: p. 1.
Acosta, Leonardo. 1983. Del tambor al sintetizador. Havana: Editorial Letras
Cubanas.
Banfield, Stephen. 1981. "The Artist and Society," in Temperley, Nicholas (ed.),
Music in Britain: The Romantic Age 1800-1914. London: Athlone.
Beckwith, John. 1988. "A 'Failure' Revisited: New Canadian Music in Recent Studies
and Reference Works," in Beckwith, John and Dorith R. Cooper (eds.), Hello
Out There! Canada's New Music in the World, 1950-85. Toronto: Institute
for Canadian Music (CanMus Documents, 2).
Buller, Jim. 1947. "Oscar Peterson." Metronome. 63/1 (January): p. 56.
Burton, Julianne. 1979. "Popular Culture; Perpetual Quest: Manuel Octavio Gomez
Interviewed." Jump/Cut: A Review of Contemporary Cinema. 20 (May): pp.
17-20.
Development Education Centre/Latin American Working Group. 1977. "Corporate
Power, the Canadian State, and Imperialism," in Heron, Craig et al. (eds.),
Imperialism, Nationalism, and Canada: Essays from the Marxist Institute
of Toronto. Toronto: New Hogtown Press.
WHAT CAN WE LEARN WHEN THEY SING, EH? 201
Ellington, Duke. 1973. Music is My Mistress. New York: Doubleday.
Etkin, Mario. 1988 "Two Cultural 'Marginalises': Argentina and Canada," in
Beckwith, John and Dorith R. Cooper, op cit.
Frost, James D. 1984. "The 'Nationalization' of the Bank of Nova Scotia, 1880-
1910," in Tom Traves (ed.), Essays in Canadian Business History. Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart.
Haslebacher, Pauline. 1988. "'All of We is One': The Integration of Calypso Song and
Dance, Pan and Mas' in the Context of Carnival in Canada." Abstract of
unpublished paper read at the First Conference on Ethnomusicology in
Canada, Toronto, May 13-15.
Kloss, Heinz and Grant D. McConnell. 1978. The Written Languages of the World:
A Survey of the Degree and Modes of Use. Volume 1: The Americas.
Quebec: Les presses de 1'universite Laval.
Klymasz, Robert B. 1972. '"Sounds You Never Heard Before': Ukrainian Country
Music in Western Canada." Ethnomusicology. 16: pp. 374-380.
Lehr, John C. 1985. "As Canadian as Possible...Under the Circumstances: Regional
Myths, Images of Place and National Identity in Canadian Country Music."
border/lines. 2 (Spring): pp. 16-19.
Lewis, Gordon K. 1969. The Growth of the Modern West Indies. New York: Modem
Reader.
Linares, Maria Teresa. 1970. Introduccion a Cuba: La musica popular. Havana:
Institute del Libro.
Lukacs, Georg. 1971. 1923. History and Class Consciousness. Translated by
Rodney Livingstone. London: Merlin.
Matterlart, Armand. 1979. Multi-National Corporations and the Control of Culture:
The Ideological Apparatuses of Imperialism. Translated by M. Ghana.
Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press.
Miller, Mark. 1987. Boogie, Pete and the Senator: Canadian Musicians in Jazz: The
Eighties. Toronto: Nightwood.
Mintz, Sidney W. 1970. "Forward," in Whitten, Norman E. and John F. Szwed (eds.),
Afro-American Anthropology: Contemporary Perspectives. New York:
Free Press.
Peacock, Kenneth. 1972. "Establishing Perimeters for Ethnomusicological Field
Research in Canada: On-going Projects and Future Possibilities at the
Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies." Ethnomusico/ogy. 16: pp. 329-
334.
Pena, Manuel. 1985. The Texas-Mexican Con/unto: History of a Working-class
Music. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Porter, John. 1965. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in
Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Richler, Mordecai. 1981. Joshua Then and Now. Toronto: Seal.
Robbins, James. 1983. "Scene But Not Heard: Early Bebop in Toronto." Unpublished
paper. York University.
202 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
. 1988. "Ideas of Change in Cuban Popular Music." Paper presented at the
Latin American Studies Association XIV International Congress, New
Orleans, March 17-19.
Sarkissian, Margaret. 1987. "Armenian Musical Culture in Toronto: Political and
Social Divisions in an Immigrant Community." M.M. Thesis. University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Seeger, Charles. 1977. "Music and Society: Some New-World Evidence of Their
Relationship," in his Studies in Musicology 1935-1975. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Turino, Thomas. 1984. "The Urban-Mestizo Charango Tradition in Southern Peru: A
Statement of Shifting Identity." Ethnomusicology. 28: pp. 253-270.
Ulanov, Barry. 1948. "A Trip to Toronto." Metronome. (March): pp. 20, 26.
Vitier, Medardo. 1970. Las ideas y la fihsofia en Cuba. Havana: Institute del Libro.
Wallis, Roger and Krister Malm. 1984. Big Sounds from Small Peoples: The Music
Industry in Small Countries. London: Constable.
Witmer, Robert. 1982. The Musical Life of the Blood Indians. Ottawa: National
Museums of Canada. (Canadian Ethnology Service Mercury Series Paper No.
86).
'AUTHORITY' REVISITED:
THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY
AND POPULAR Music STUDIES'
LINE GRENIER AND JOCELYNE GUILBAULT
This paper was conceived in reaction to the following assertion:
The act of representing the exotic other [in anthropology! is an act of con-
struction involving multiple filters, layers of distance and translation.... As in
anthropology, ethnomusicological monographs and articles present idealized
versions of musical cultures captured as if within a camera frame. (Turino
1989)
Initially, we focused on the seemingly taken-for-granted ideas underlying
these assertions, namely, that anthropological concerns can be transferred to
other disciplines and be dealt with in the same fashion. But is it in fact possible
to import into other fields of study anthropology's latest preoccupations con-
cerning ethnography and ethnographic authority and if so, should scholars
then address these issues exactly as anthropologists do, regardless of their
respective objects of study?
Our aim is to highlight some of the issues raised by the latest findings in
anthropology, the alternatives being developed, and their relevance for schol-
ars working on different objects of study. Following a critical examination of
the anthropological 'diagnosis' of the current state of ethnography, we focus
on and discuss the implications of one of the central issues it raises, namely,
that of the 'Other'. We then turn our attention to popular music studies to
examine the particular ways in which this issue is being addressed. This discus-
sion leads to the conclusion that recent anthropological arguments should not
be transferred mechanically, but must be considered with great care and
thought, since they not only shed a new light on the already existing debates,
but also widen their scope.
204 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONCERNS
Issues of ethnographic writing are clearly central to the current debate.
Yet the series of historical pressures that have forced anthropologists to reflect
on their practices of (re)presentation have also led them to review the tradi-
tional ways of defining the so-called exotic cultures as the Other. Although the
Other at one time was easily observable within certain presumably homoge-
neous enclaves, it is now more difficult to locate:
The more recent scattering of encapsulated peoples across the globe—
Algerians in France, Koreans in Kuwait, Pakistanis in London, Cubans in
Miami—has only extended the process by reducing the spacing of variant
turns of mind, as has, of course, jet-plane tourism as well. (Geertz 1988: 132)
Following Geertz's argument, it is evident that the "audience" has also
been confused with the "object" of study. As he remarks:
This inter-confusion of object and audience...leaves contemporary anthropol-
ogists in some uncertainty as to rhetorical aim. Who is now to be persuaded?
Africanists or Africans? Americanists or American Indians? Japanologists or
Japanese? And of what: Factual accuracy? Theoretical sweep? Imaginative
grasp? Moral depth? (Ibid.: 133)
The ethnography of the Other is further complicated by the penetration of
the world economy, mass communication, and problems of identity and cultur-
al authenticity. As Marcus and Fischer explain, this is related to the "wide-
spread perception that the world is rapidly homogenizing through the diffusion
of technology, communication, and population movement" (1986: 38).
As a result, anthropologists, in the process of developing a more realistic
view of their capacities and roles, have revised their historical position of
power in the field by reexamining the notions of 'Us' and 'Them' and by
ensuring a greater interaction of both parties in the fieldwork itself. Moreover,
they have been challenged to combine micro and macro analyses within the
same research, that is, "to capture more accurately the historic context of its
[ethnography's! subjects, and to register the constitutive workings of imperson-
al international political and economic systems on the local level where field-
work usually takes place" (ibid.: 39). As a corollary, they now face the prob-
lem of representing textually these two analytical dimensions as interrelated.
THE OTHER: FROM LOCATION TO DEFINITION
Anthropologists seem to agree that their object of study is getting increas-
ingly difficult to locate, especially because of recent demographic and socioe-
'AUTHORITY' REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR Music STUDIES 205
conomic changes. The intensification of migration movements as well as the
development of jet-plane tourism and mass communication might indeed be
"reducing the spacing of variant turns of mind," as Geertz suggests.
Nevertheless, that this inevitably makes the Other more difficult to locate is an
assumption that needs to be questioned. Why should today's intensified pres-
ence of Algerians in France, for instance, be more problematic than that of
the French in Algeria during the Algerian Independence War, or that of occi-
dentals in Korea during the Korean War? Was the location of Others easier
when Algerians and Koreans stayed within the boundaries of their "homeland"
or their "own country"? And then why should they be defined as Others more
readily than the French, the Spanish, or the English, for example? Could it be
that locating the object of study is more difficult not because of the new social
and demographic conditions as such, but because the premises upon which
the search was based are no longer adequate or even relevant? If this were the
case, the key problem would not be locating Others but rather defining
Them', and hence, 'Us'.
THE TWOFOLD MEANINGS OF 'NATION'
It could reasonably be argued that, within the Western tradition of main-
stream social sciences, anthropology included, the definition of the Other has
evolved mainly from the idea of nation. Until recently, nation was considered
as one of the most significant and original forms of social groupings—a status,
however, that is now also granted to social class, subculture, gender, age, and
ethnicity. As a concept, it has nevertheless remained and ambiguous term,
having been assigned at least two distinct but often confused meanings: people
and state.
In 12th-century Europe, nation originally meant people. The term was
used to designate a human group whose members, as a result of complex his-
torical processes, had attributes in common such as language, customs and
beliefs (Todorov 1989). This so-called cultural acceptance rested on a presum-
ably shared sense of belonging and on the concrete forms of human relation-
ships that stem from it (Person 1976). By the end of the 18th century, howev-
er, the cultural meaning had been almost totally usurped by the emerging
political economy view developed in Western societies of Northern Europe.
Geographical and political criteria became the determining factors, leading to
another accepted definition of nation as state. In this context, the term has
since denoted either the space controlled by a state or, by extension, a human
group whose members have succeeded in identifying with a state, having
gained access to political power and autonomy within a territory they control
and over which they rule (Bauer 1978).
206 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
For well over a century, both meanings have been used, "nation" referring
sometimes to a political, sometimes to a cultural entity, and in yet other cir-
cumstances, to both at once. The political meaning, however, seems to have
assumed precedence in many different milieux (Person 1976). For instance, in
the ongoing debates that have taken in Quebec since the 1960s, the "national
question" has been predominantly addressed in reference to a nation-(as-)state.
Indeed, most Canadians do not recognize Quebec as a nation even though
they widely acknowledge the existence of a "Quebecois people" as a group
with common characteristics. Accordingly, Quebec is not considered a nation
because it is only one of the ten provinces forming the Canadian federation
and does not have full political autonomy and control over its territory.
2
This is a typical example of how the political meaning of nation has come
to subjugate the cultural one, but also one that demonstrates that nation-as-
people and nation-as-state coincide only partially. As Todorov rightly explains,
it is true that in certain political, historical, and economic contexts, "because
there exists a national cultural consciousness...the idea of political autonomy
can arise; reciprocally, the State may enable a culture to assert itself and to
develop" (Todorov 1989: 202; authors' translation). Even if logically speaking,
the two entities are neither dependent nor complementary, in practice they
have become almost equivalent terms-* in that the forms of human relation-
ships considered inherent to any communal life have been confused with one
historical form of sociopolitical grouping, namely, that of the modem capitalist
state.
The concept of nation then has undeniably played a key role in the
anthropological definition of the Other as an object of study. Knowing the typ-
ical emphasis on culture in anthropology, it could be argued that the underly-
ing concept of nation was that of nation-as-people. Since scientific discourses
do not exist in a vacuum, however, but play an active role in the production of
the "regime of truth"
4
 in which broader sociopolitical debates take place, the
dominant acceptance of nation-as-state might nevertheless have had some
influence upon anthropology.
NOISkWESTERN PEOPLES AS OTHERS: IMPLICATIONS
In the recent debates over ethnography, various components of anthro-
pology's "classical legacy" apart from the traditional practices of textual repre-
sentation have been put under scrutiny. Among these, the almost exclusive
focus on non-Western collectivities as objects of study has been almost unani-
mously questioned. The felt "need to anthropologize the West," to use one of
Rabinow's expressions (1986: 241), has already led to the construction of
new objects of study as well as to the undertaking "at home" of research on
'AUTHORITY REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR MUSIC STUDI
new "domestic topics" (Marcus and Fischer 1986: 112). Is this change at the
empirical level indicative of a more profound epistemological reorientation?
Does it lead to a critical examination of the theoretical and methodological
foundations of the classical approach, and hence, the typical ways of defining
the Other in "national" terms? There are indications, as will be shown below,
that such a broader reorientation is, in fact, in progress.
To a large extent, studies of non-Western peoples traditionally focused on
"sociocultural units, spatially and temporally isolated" (ibid.: 86). They usually
dealt with collectives considered from the viewpoint of the shared attributes of
their members. Others thus tended to be defined according to the cultural
meaning of nation (-as-people): groups founded on communal rather than
associative relationship, where the orientation or social action is based on the
intersubjective feelings of the parties rather than on mutual agreement (M.
Weber 1971; Juteau 1979).
It should be noted that, by the same process, Others were often equated
with peoples living elsewhere, an ethnocentric way of thinking that is clearly
not exclusive to the Western world. In light of Western history, however, this
equation took on a particular meaning since it was developed to a great
degree within a colonial (and neo-colonial) framework (Asad 1973; Leiris
1950). While the enduring inequalities of power that resulted from colonial
ventures have undoubtedly constrained ethnographic practices in many ways,
"undermining the West's ability to represent the Other," as Clifford argues
(1986: 10), they have most likely also informed, one way or another, the the-
oretical construction of non-Westerners as Others (Bennett 1988). As colo-
nized peoples, they have been historically deprived of the status of nation-as-
state. Indeed, not only did European colonial powers control their respective
territories and govern the destiny of their own people, they also claimed con-
trol over the territories and populations of 'foreign' countries. As self-appoint-
ed nations-states, they denied Others that presumably exclusive Western 'privi-
lege'.
In this context, considering the legacy of the colonial era, the discourses of
classical anthropology were thus, consciously or not, delivered from the "still-
privileged vantage point" (Marcus and Fischer 1986: 33) of the members of
dominant Western states which aimed to account for dominated non-Western
peoples. Following the critique of colonialism as a system of power, its ideo-
logical and cognitive dimensions as a system of knowledge are now being
carefully examined. More specifically, the reappraisal of the exclusive focus on
non-Western Others as objects of study in anthropology should bring forward
new theoretical criteria for defining Others. For instance, as Eco submits
(1988: 14), an "alternative anthropology" would not only be reciprocal,
involving Western studies of non-Western phenomena and vice-versa, but also,
and perhaps more importantly, reconsider the universality of the principles
208 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
underlying scientific logic "as the reflection of a developmental mode charac-
teristic of European societies" (Le Pichon 1988: 17; authors' translation).
As indicated above, the political meaning of nation is closely related to the
advent and expansion of the Western capitalist state, whose political and eco-
nomic boundaries came to be considered equivalent since its beginnings.
Having appointed themselves responsible for the institution and keeping of the
social order, states had rendered legitimate the single sets of rules that pre-
vailed within the territory over which they ruled, thereby establishing, by the
same token, their jurisdiction over their respective economic markets.
Historically speaking, the growth of the nation-as-state can be seen as the
result of the merger of the leading political and economic interests of the
European (and later, the United States') metropolis (Polanyi 1957), a develop-
ment made largely at the expense of poorer local populations but also of 'for-
eign' peoples. In the colonial context, conquered lands and subjugated non-
Western peoples served Western powers' ends as means for widening their
'local' economic markets, for access to additional natural resources as well as
to various rare and exotic products that were highly praised by European buy-
ers (Bemier 1979). In short, colonies became foreign branches of Western
states' local markets, ensuring both a political and economic hegemony over
non-Western dominated and exploited peoples.
5
 As will be shown below, the
historical merger of economics and politics that accompanies the idea of
nation-as-state and that reaches a peak under colonialism needs to be taken
into account to grasp fully anthropology's traditional approach to Others. It
puts into context the widespread reliance on criteria of political economy in
defining non-Western peoples and cultures—a tendency that might well be
indicative of the ways in which the view of nation-as-state might have subtly
influenced the works and findings of generations of researchers.
Analyses have shown how theoretical assertions and notions were based
on these criteria. Clastres (1976), for example, has demonstrated the tendency
to characterize non-Western collectivities in essentially negative ways, that is,
as societies-without-state but also as nonliterate, classless, ideology-free soci-
eties—attributes that have long stood as the preferred means for depicting
non-Western, so-called "primitive" peoples (Levi-Strauss 1962). Moreover, as
sociologist and ethnologist Marcel Rioux argues, a similar "infiltration" by the
categories of monopolistic capitalist societies can be observed in some of the
most influential and pervasive anthropological theories on culture. He claims
that by defining cultural phenomena as mere reflections of an encompassing
technical and instrumental rationality, many neo-evolutionist frameworks (such
as Leslie White's), far from escaping the typically capitalist tendency to "auton-
omize economy," have actually granted it the status of universal rule. This,
Rioux asserts, clearly illustrates that the "advent of economy in the capitalist
mode of production and that of political economy in knowledge go hand in
'AUTHORITY REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPU
hand" (1978: 75; authors' translation).
Political criteria might also have influenced the empirical construction of
Others as objects of study. Few scholars have studied entire nations, but many
have chosen smaller groups, especially tribes, as units of analysis. For exam-
ple, rather than undertaking anthropological research on the Melanesian
nation as a whole, one would rather study the 'Are'are people.
6
 In so doing,
and while still analyzing local rather than 'national' phenomena, researchers
might, involuntarily and unconsciously, apply on a small scale the political and
economic criteria used to deal with nations on a broader scale. A tribe could
usually have been identified as a people occupying a certain territory, who
could be distinguished from the overall national population in reference to
their particular (often marginalized and traditional) mode of political and eco-
nomic organization. In comparison, there seem to be fewer studies of linguisti-
cally identifiable groups—instead of tribes—who might well have been spread
over a wider territory, and whose economic practices and political systems
might not be at all homogeneous. Refusing to a large extent to subscribe to
the generalizing view based on political economy, opposing its homogenizing
tendency by focusing on small-scale realities instead, mainstream anthropology
might nevertheless have contributed to the reproduction of the dominant view
in that it might have used a preordained set of criteria in studying non-Western
peoples on a local level.
The pivotal role that nation has played in the definition of objects of
research in anthropology is now being reevaluated in light of some of the epis-
temological, theoretical, and methodological implications outlined above. For
instance, instead of assuming that nation (-as-people or -as-state) is paramount
in defining identity, scholars are inclined to examine the various ways by
which, under certain economic, social, and political conditions, individuals and
groups "built" it. This by no means considers nation as unimportant, but
rather no longer regards it as the key definitional parameter a priori (Fischer
1986). As long as the object of study was considered static and peoples as
predetermined—that is, fixed—realities the ethnographer could readily
observe, describe, or even interpret (Clifford 1986: 18-19; Turino 1989), the
impression was that they were perceived as undifferentiated groups. Since
other forms of social differentiation (such as gender, social class, and age)
were largely played down, the coherence of these social groups tended to be
thought of as the index of the consensus that presumably prevailed within
their boundaries (Cohen 1985).
In recent years, significant epistemological reorientations have indeed
been initiated. While the former views discussed above are definitively losing
ground to newly developed frameworks, Otherness is still at stake. It is, how-
ever, no longer a synonym for exoticism, nor the exclusive property of foreign
individuals or groups (Rabinow 1986: 241). It has become obvious that there
210 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
are significant "sites of difference," such as gender, age, physical or mental
handicap, that cross so-called national boundaries. Others, be they groups or
individuals, now tend to be assigned the status of subjects instead of objects.
7
Cultures are now treated either as symbolic and material wholes in the process
of becoming and changing (Sahlins 1976), or as complex "webs of signifi-
cance" (Cohen 1985), and are thus regarded as dynamic and interactive. The
assumption of consensus has almost totally vanished as idiosyncrasies (individ-
ualities) and subgroup realities have gained a new importance (Bennett 1986).
Consequently, identities are viewed as constructed from conflict, divergence,
and opposition, at least as much as (if not more than) from order and similarity
(Rosaldo 1980). Paradoxically, homogeneity might still remain as a haunting
figure, perhaps the last survivor of the traditional approach to Others.
Deprived of its reference to some national entity, it is now often conceived as
an inescapable result of "something" happening in the "world-out-there" out-
side the social sciences, that is, as an outcome of the new world political econ-
omy. To a large extent, it is indeed imputed to the development of mass com-
munications and is associated with the "global village" that is presumably
emerging. But as was suggested previously, political economy has been
embedded in classical anthropological frameworks for years. What has hap-
pened recently to make researchers suspicious, increasingly uniting in criticiz-
ing the globalizing effects of this not-so-new form of social organization? Is it,
as Rioux suggested more than ten years ago, that "we are so much immersed
in world political economy that even to fight it and to try to overcome it we
borrow from its very vocabulary" (Rioux 1978: 99) and analytical categories?
Why should homogeneity necessarily be the basic characteristic of this new
"world culture"? The world political economy is not a force imposed from
"above" upon totally deprived individuals and groups. Rather, it is a complex
set of institutions, social relationships, and economic practices that are socially
and historically mediated and that are the object of multiple differentiated actu-
alizations by individuals and groups within their respective environment
(Martin-Barbero 1988). Otherwise, one might assume that a Western phe-
nomenon such as Bruce Springsteen carries the same meanings for a 16-year-
old teenager in Canada as for one in Kenya, for instance; or that Kassav's per-
formance of zouk music has the same role and function in France as in the
French Antilles. Hence, the concept of "world political economy" should not
be confused with the reality of local forms or phenomena that are related to
both the prevailing international politics and economics as well as to regional-
ly-inspired issues.
It is certainly important to recall that, even in the most tightly organized
post-industrialized countries, social realities do not answer exclusively to instru-
mental rationality, that is, they are not only the predictable results of some
carefully planned activity, nor the presumably rationally chosen "means"
'AUTHORITY REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES 2 1
designed to attain, as efficiently as possible, a pursued and calculated end.
Symbolic or communicational activities (Habermas 1975) also need to be con-
sidered in order to distinguish real human beings from the universal Homo
Economicus depicted by such a pragmatic view (Sahlins 1976). Thus, even
the most systematic efforts to impose world political economy patterns are
bound to produce counter-effects and contradictory results. For instance, in
the 1970s, the so-called international music industry had become more and
more powerful, distributing and marketing its products in newly conquered
non-Western markets. While this contributed to the development of a transna-
tional music, it also led to the emergence of national and regional styles of
pop and rock music sung in local dialects or languages rather than in English.
Moreover, as Wallis and Malm argue, music is "so close to the heart of men
[sic]," that any process of homogenization "would continually be 'disturbed' by
the activities of an underground cultural guerilla" (1984: 324).
This brief critical analysis hardly exhausts the current anthropological
debates over ethnography. Nevertheless, having focused on the key issue of
the Other and discussed the premises on which it is based, it becomes clear
that anthropological concerns cannot be transferred mechanically to any other
area of study. These concerns need to be recontextualized, even in those areas
in which culture occupies the centre of researchers' preoccupations, such as
popular music.
THE CASE OF POPUUR Music
Since it does not constitute an academic discipline as such, the field of
popular music studies cannot be discussed as though it were something paral-
lel to anthropology. Nevertheless, combined with its obvious links to culture,
its shared concern with the world political economy, as well as its unavoidable
involvement with the problem of the Other (to which we shall soon return), it
is an ideal area of study in which to investigate further the significance of the
issues discussed so far.
Researchers have first been faced with the problem of 'constructing' their
object of study. Several essays
8
 have tried to come to grips with the object by
asking questions such as what is popular music, what does 'popular' mean in
this context, and how is popular music related to groups and communities?
The theoretical debates on the meaning of popular have been either quantita-
tive, referring to sales and radio airplay time, for example; qualitative, focusing
on the privileged relationships established by people through music; compara-
tive, analyzing so-called classical, jazz, or traditional music; and political, exam-
ining the powerful musical institutions and commercial enterprises involved in
naming or labeling music.
212 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
The media are by and large considered key elements in defining either the
conditions of production and distribution to the public or the commodity forms
of music. Researchers have focused particularly on the complex networks of
production, distribution, consumption, and marketing, thus highlighting the
relationship between the media and the music industries. Studies on the con-
trol and management of the musical production and reception processes have
been concerned with the development and politics of the record industry, the
impact of commercial recordings, and the musicians' status in the corporate
industry. In this respect, two main arguments prevail: on the one hand, the
"big" industries are said to control, determine, and plan the whole process in
an almost Machiavellian way—often dubbed "the Big Plot" argument (Tagg
1985); on the other hand, even though the "big" industries are recognized as
fully involved in the music-making process, they are seen as only one of the
important partners in the decision-making process and not as the sole decid-
ing agent.
In the midst of the broader controversy about the presumably negative
impact of the mass media on culture, the debates over the status of popular
music as a media product monopolized the attention of researchers. One of
the striking and most fruitful outcomes of these debates is that popular music
has since been rightly perceived in terms of the industrialization process in
which it is embedded. One other outcome of the impact-oriented approach,
however, has been the tendency to address popular music as the raw material
of this complex process of industrialized production {Frith 1987). Indeed, pop-
ular music is still largely considered as an object fully formed from the very
beginning and that is merely 'processed,' like soap, through a chain of techno-
logical or economic devices.
9
By focusing originally on North American and European mass-mediated
popular music, scholars have taken into account phenomena such as interna-
tional marketing and distribution, transnational production networks and cor-
porate industries. From the outset then, they have raised questions about what
is commonly known as the world political economy. With the intensified glob-
alization of markets as well as the markedly increased presence of the mass
media, researchers have been forced to pay careful attention to the issues of
cultural identity, which have gained importance in view of the fear of global
homogenization (for example, see Cuthbert 1985; Wallis and Malm 1984;
and Frith 1981). In this spirit, they have also dealt with phenomena such as
cooptation (Garofalo 1987; Perez 1987), resistance (Manuel 1987; Vila
1989), and fusion music (Cowley 1985).
Considering that, until recently, most studies on popular music were con-
ducted by Westerners in Western societies of the northern hemisphere, it is
interesting to note that they were mainly concerned with the musics of particu-
lar groups, such as youth (Brake 1980), social classes (Marker 1980; Marothy
'AUTHORITY REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES 2 1 5
1974; Chappie and Garofalo 1977; W. Weber 1975), Blacks (Roberts 1972;
Russel 1970; Toop 1984), subcultures (Clarke 1976; Hebdige 1979), and
women (Bradby 1985; Frith and McRobbie 1978; McRobbie and Garber
1976). Even if unintentional, could such a convergence be purely coincidental?
Was not the music of these peoples implicitly held as the very symbol of popu-
lar music? Could these discourses be seen as writings for and about Others? If
so, this convergence is symptomatic of the particular mode of addressing the
Other within that field. Whereas, as shown above, the Other in the traditional
anthropological approach has centered on the 'non-Western', it has seemingly
been equivalent in popular music with the 'here' (as opposed to 'elsewhere'),
the 'minority,' and the 'oppressed'. Since attention has focused on these
groups, can one conclude that their music is the most culturally or socially sig-
nificant, more authentic than that of male, middle-aged, white, English-speak-
ing, middle-class groups? If so, the implication is that Otherness lies outside
music, for example in age, class, race or gender. Would this assumption not
unduly involve the reproduction of a reflection framework
1
** whereby music is
seen as the mere mirror image of presumably more important cultural, social,
or economic realities? Popular music studies now face the challenge of
accounting for the specific character of music as it actually constructs, and not
only reflects, "sites of difference" (Barrett 1987; Grenier 1989).
EMERGING QUESTIONS
The examination of the premises underlying the issue of the Other in
recent anthropological debates followed by the analysis of the ways in which
this same issue has been addressed in popular music studies has shown not
only how central the question is, but also how it is articulated differently in the
two areas of research. But the interest of such an approach goes beyond these
findings. This investigation points out how some of the dimensions of the issue
of the Other emphasized in the anthropological debate have been overlooked
in popular music studies and, furthermore, how a discussion of its implications
in the anthropological field throws new light on some of the questions already
addressed in this distinct area of study.
11
Among the many new orientations that have been formulated as a result
of the critical examination of the Other with regard to anthropological con-
cerns, three stand out: the definition of the Other within an object-subject rela-
tionship; the development of mixed analyses which could combine micro and
macro dimensions in reference, especially, to the workings of the world politi-
cal economy at the local level; and the relational character of the Other viewed
in terms of the often silenced 'Us' it implies. These could be regarded as so
many premises from which new directions for popular music research could
214 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
be derived, while still taking into consideration the specific attributes of the
objects as well as the area of study.
One result of the anthropological debate is the new focus on the definition
of the Other, not as a self-enclosed or independent object of study, but, rather,
as an object that can be defined only in its relation to the researcher. It is by
and through this relation that anthropological discourses aim today to con-
struct their representations in ethnographic writings. In popular music studies,
the Other is rarely addressed explicitly in the context of a relation that involved
the researcher as subject—a tendency that might also account for overlooking
the process of representation of the Other in the discourses of popular music
studies. If this relation were taken into account, the emerging question would
aim to elucidate how, in popular music studies, the researchers' discourses
contribute to constructing the Other and how, by the same token, they posi-
tion their own discourses uis-d-uis those of critics, musicians, or music industry
people, for example. This could in turn lead to present popular music accord-
ing to multiple viewpoints.
As previously discussed, the traditional anthropological definition of the
Other used to be embedded in a nation-oriented framework; the aim of new
approaches is to consider the Other in the context of the world political econ-
omy, and to try to integrate a macro analysis with the customary micro analy-
sis, thus bridging the international and local dimensions of the phenomena
under study. In popular music studies, concerns with the world political econo-
my were present from the very beginning, connected as they are to the indus-
trialized character of these mass-mediated musics. Macro analysis has been
largely predominant in the area of research, and it is only recently that more
attention is being paid to local practices. By combining macro and micro
dimensions, researchers may well arrive at new insights on how certain dimen-
sions of a musical phenomenon can actually contribute to its very construction
on the international level, and how its meanings and practices differ in each
context. In this sense then, the local and international meanings and practices
related to a musical phenomenon would be seen as feeding one another.
Finally, the current anthropological redefinition of the Other in relational
terms plainly contrasts with its traditional definition in popular music studies.
As has been shown above, music has traditionally symbolized the Other or cre-
atively articulated "sites of difference" such as class, age or ethnicity. Drawing
on the newly developed relational approach, the very definition of popular
music could be challenged. Instead of considering it by and for itself, that is,
according to its own inward characteristics, popular music could be looked at
in the broader context of the musical field (Middleton 1989), that is, within the
spectrum of (past and present) musics. The particular attributes of popular
music would thus emerge from its ongoing interactions with various musics at
distinct historical and social moments.
'AUTHORITY REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES 2 1 5
By and large, in the act of writing about and accounting for Others,
whether cultures, peoples or musics, anthropologists as well as students of
popular music are becoming involved in an increasingly self-conscious venture.
More and more, scholars are acknowledging that they do indeed construct and
produce Others in different ways, within specific contexts, and for no less spe-
cific purposes, and in the process, they are also constructing themselves.
This chapter is taken from pages 381-399 of Ethnomusico/ogy 34(3). Copyright © 1990 Society for Ethnomusicology.
Reprinted by permission of the Society for Ethnomusicology.
ENDNOTES
1. Line Grenier would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada for its financial support.
2. According to sociologist Lise Noel, such a view is present even in official politi-
cal documents such as the Canadian Constitutional Act. She claims that when
Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau in 1982 used the expression "Us, the
Canadian people" in the preamble of the constitutional project, he "aimed at
denying Quebeckers the status of nation" (Noel 1989: 17; authors' translation).
3. As Clastres rightly claims, a new axiom has developed in the West according to
which "any real society unfurls under the protective umbrella of the State"
(Clastres 1976: 164-65; authors' translation).
4. According to Foucault, "Truth is to be understood as a system of ordered proce-
dures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation and operation of
statements. Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which
produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which it induces and which
extend it. A 'regime' of truth...." (1980: 133). In other words, the "regime of
truth" refers to all that contributes to the definition of what socially stands as
true, including not only the discourses (as well as their epistemological founda-
tions) through which 'truth' is produced as knowledge, but also the various social
practices and institutions through which 'truth' is passed on and enacted as
power.
5. As anthropologist Bernard Bemier argued, racist discourses and theories func-
tioned as the main ideological legitimation of such a process, as "an ideology of
racial superiority has also served, after the final conquest of the territory, to
transform whole populations into slavish or half-slavish labour" (1979: 29;
authors' translation).
6. This example is based on an existing ethnomusicological study by de Coppet
and Zemp (1978). Please note, however, that the following remarks do not, in
any way, refer to this particular research.
7. For a discussion of the interaction between researcher and "informants" as sub-
jects, see Rabinow (1986: 254-56).
8. See, for example, Cutler (1985); Fabbri (1982); Hamm (1982); Middleton
216 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
(1989); Shepherd (1985); and Tagg (1982).
9. As Frith argues, popular music should be addressed as the result of the industri-
alized production process rather than as its starting point (1987).
10. The reflection framework is the thesis according to which cultural phenomena
are said to reflect other phenomena that are typically perceived as noncuhural,
such as social structures or class struggles. In this context, music is implicitly
viewed as bringing forth nothing of its own. This framework has formed part of
several schools of thought: for example, in Marxist theory of ideology, infra-
structure (which commonly refers to politics and economics) is conceived as the
embodiment of superstructure (equated with culture or ideology); see Marker
1980. In structural-functionalist theory, cultural phenomena such as music are
seen as the mere reflection of their social functions; see Silberman 1968.
11. It should be noted that the reverse is also true, that is, that popular music studies
also brings new insights to anthropological research. But developing further
goes beyond our scope here.
REFERENCES
Asad, Talal (ed.). 1973. Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. New York:
Humanities Press.
Barrett, Michele. 1987. "The Concept of 'Difference.'" Feminist Review. 26: pp. 29-
45.
Bauer, Otto. 1978. "Remarques sur la question des nationalites." Pluriei 5: pp. 41-
58.
Bennett, Tony. 1986. "Introduction: Popular Culture and the Turn to Gramsci,'" in T.
Bennett, C. Mercer, and J. Woollacott (eds.), Popular Culture and Social
Relations. Milton Keynes: Open University Press .
. 1988. "The Exhibitionary Complex." New Formations. 4: pp. 73-102.
Bemier, Bernard. 1979. "Classes sociales et ideologic raciste dans les colonies de peu-
plement," in D. Juteau (ed.), Frontieres ethniques en devenir. Societe
Canadienne d'£tudes Ethniques 7. Ottawa: Presses de 1'Universite d'Ottawa.
Bradby, B. 1985. "Do-talk and Don't Talk: The Division of the Subject in Girl-group
Music." Paper presented at the Third International Conference of IASPM
(International Association for the Study of Popular Music).
Brake, Mike. 1980. The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subcultures.
London: Routiedge and Kegan Paul.
Chappie, Steve, and Reebee Garofalo. 1977. Rock'n'Roll Is Here to Pay. The
History and Politics of the Music Industry. Chicago: Nelson-Hall.
'AUTHORITY
7
 REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR MUSIC STUDIES 2 1 7
Clarke, J. 1976. "The Skinheads and the Magical Recovery of Working Class
Community," in S. Hall et al. (eds.), Resistance through Rituals: Youth
Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson.
Clastres, Pierre. 1976. La societe centre l'£tat. Paris: Minuit.
Clifford, James. 1986. "Introduction: Partial Truths," in J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus
(eds.), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press..
. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century Ethnography,
Literature, and Art. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Cohen, Anthony P. 1985. The Symbolic Construction of Community. New York:
Ellis Horwood Limited.
Cowley, John. 1985. "Cultural 'Fusions': Aspects of British West Indian Music in the
U.S.A. and Britain 1918-51." Popular Music. 5/1: pp. 81-96.
Cuthbert, Marlene. 1985. "Cultural Autonomy and Popular Music: A Survey of
Jamaican Youth." Communication Research. 12/3: pp. 381-92.
Cutler, Chris. 1985. File under Popular: Theoretical and Critical Writings on
Music. London: November Books.
de Coppet, Daniel and Hugo Zemp. 1978. 'Are'are: Un peuple melanesien et sa
musique. Paris: Seuil.
Eco, Umberto. 1988. "Preface." Transcultura. Connaissance et Reciprocite. Actes
du Colloque organise par 1'Institut International pour une Connaissance
Reciproque des Civilisations. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, Ciaco.
Fabbri, Franco. 1982. "What kind of Music?" Popular Music. 2: pp. 131-43.
Ron, Umberto. 1985. "Popular Music: Theory, Practice, Value." Popular Music
Perspectives. 2: pp. 13-23.
Fischer, Michael M.J. 1986. "Ethnicity and the Post-Modem Arts of Memory," in
Clifford, James and G.E. Marcus (eds.), op. cit.
Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings.
New York: Pantheon Books.
Frith, Simon. 1981. "Music Magic That Can Set You Free: The Ideology of Folk and
the Myth of the Rock Community." Popular Music. 3: pp. 159-68.
. 1987. "The Industrialization of Popular Music," in Lull, James (ed.), Popular
Music and Communication. London: Sage.
and Angela McRobbie. 1978. "Rock and Sexuality." Screen Education. 29:
pp. 3-19.
Garofalo, Reebee. 1987. "How Autonomous is Relative: Popular Music, the Social
Formation and Cultural Struggle." Popular Music. 7: pp. 72-92.
Geertz, Clifford. 1988. Works and Liues. The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
Grenier, Line. 1989. "From 'Diversity' to 'Difference': The Case Study of Socio-
Cultural Studies on Music." Neiw Formations. 9: pp. 125-42.
Habermas, Jiirgen. 1975. Theorie et Pratique. Paris: Payot.
218 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Hall, S., J. Clarke, T. Jefferson and B. Roberts (eds.). 1976. Resistance Through
Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson.
Hamm, Charles. 1982. "Some Thoughts on the Measurement of Popularity in Music."
Popular Music Perspectives. 2: pp. 3-15.
Marker, Dave. 1980. One for the Money: Politics and Popular Song. London.
Hebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.
Juteau, Danielle (ed.). 1979. Frontieres ethniques en devenir. Societe Canadienne
d'Etudes Ethniques 7. Ottawa: Presses de 1'Universite d'Ottawa.
Leiris, Michel. 1950. "L'ethnographe devant le colonialisme." Les Temps Modernes.
58. Reprinted in Brisees (1966). Paris: Mercure de France.
Le Pichon, Alain. 1988. "Introduction" in Transcultura. Connaissance et
Reciprocity. Actes du Colloque organise par I'lnstitut International pour une
Connaissance Reciproque des Civilisations. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
Louvain. Ciaco.
Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1962. La pensee sauvage. Paris: Plon, Agora.
McRobbie, A. and J. Garber. 1976. "Girls and Subcultures: An Exploration," in S. Hall
et al. (eds.), op. cit.
Manuel, Peter. 1987. "Marxism, Nationalism and Popular Music in Revolutionary
Cuba." Popular Music. 6/2: pp. 161-78.
Marcus, George E., and Michael M.J. Fischer. 1986. Anthropology as Cultural
Critique. An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago and
London: University of Chicago Press.
Marothy, J. 1974. Music and the Bourgeois, Music and the Proletarian. Budapest:
Akademia Kiado.
Martin-Barbero, Jesus. 1988. "Communication from Culture: The Crisis of the
National and the Emergence of the Popular." Media, Culture and Society.
10: pp. 447-65.
Middleton, Richard. 1989. Studying Popular Music. Milton Keynes: Open University
Press.
Noel, Lise. 1989. L'intolerance. Une problematique generate. Montreal: Boreal.
Perez, Brittmarie Janson. 1987. "Political Facets of Salsa." Popular Music. 6/2: pp.
149-59.
Person, Yves. 1976. "Contre 1'Etat-Nation." Pluriel-Debats. 8: pp. 49-65.
Polanyi, Karl. 1957. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic
Origins of Our Times. New York: Rinehart and Co.
Rabinow, Paul. 1986. "Representations Are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-
Modernity in Anthropology," in Clifford, J. and G.E. Marcus (eds.), op. cit.
Rioux, Marcel. 1978. Essai de sociologie critique. Montreal: Hurtubise HMH.
Roberts, John Storm. 1972. Black Music of Two Worlds. New York: Praeger.
Rosaldo, Michelle Z. 1980. "The Use and Abuse of Anthropology: Reflections on
Feminism and Cross-Cultural Understanding." Signs. 5/3: pp. 389-417.
Russell, Tony. 1970. Blacks, Whites and Blues. London: Studio Vista Limited.
'AUTHORITY* REVISITED: THE 'OTHER' IN ANTHROPOLOGY AND POPULAR Music STUDIES 219
Sahlins, Marshall. 1976. Au coeur des societes. Raison utilitaire et raison culturelle.
Paris: Gallimard, N.R.F.
Shepherd, John. 1985. "Definition as Mystification: A Consideration of Labels as a
Hindrance to Understanding Significance in Music." Popular Music
Perspectives. 2: pp. 84-98.
Silberman, Alphons. 1968. Les principes de la sociologie de la musique. Paris: Droz.
Tagg, Philip. 1982. "Analyzing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice."
Popular Music. 2: pp. 37-67.
. 1985. "La musicologie et al semantique de la musique populaire."
Analytica. Studies in the Description and Analysis of Music in Honour of
Ingmar Bengtsson. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Music 47.
Todorov, Tzvetan. 1989. Nous et les autres. La reflexion frangaise sur la diversite
humaine. Paris: Seuil.
Toop, David. 1984. The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop. London:
Pluto Press.
Turino, Thomas. 1989. "The Representation of Musical Practice and the Practice of
Representation." Abstract presented at the Society for Ethnomusicology 34th
Annual Meeting, Cambridge, MA, November 9-12.
Vila, Pablo. 1989. "Argentina's 'Rock Nacional': The Struggle for Meaning." Latin
American Music Review. 10/1: pp. 1-28.
Wallis, Roger, and Krister Malm. 1984. Big Sounds from Small Peoples. New York:
Pendragon Press.
Weber, Max. 1971. Economie et politique. Paris: Plon.
Weber, William G. 1975. Music and the Middle Class. New York: Holmes and Meier.
This page intentionally left blank 
CANADIAN CULTURE:
COLONIAL CULTURE
R. MURRAY SCHAFER
"Canadian Culture: Colonial Culture:" was given as the Stauffer Lecture at
Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo, 4 November 1983. Canadian music was
going through a difficult period at this time and I decided to speak out about
it. I have left the notes in the form in which they were delivered in order that
the quickened pulse of my convictions that grey and snowy night can be fully
sensed. With this article we have come a long way from the Short History of
Music in Canada which opened this collection.* This is not merely a change
of tone but a growing conviction that what we are doing is no longer an
attenuation of European art music but is becoming something very different,
which demands a new social and ethnic orientation.
I am going to speak the words of this lecture loudly. I want people to hear
them. They are not very far away, these people. They are cultured, or want to
be; but this does not mean they are very intelligent or inquisitive, and in fact
their indifference to the cultural topic I have elected to discuss tonight is really
quite astounding. I can hear them snickering already; but I also hear their teeth
chattering as I prepare to cut into their favourite prejudice. The job of the
artist is to tell the truth. It is one of the few honest professions left. Once it has
been formulated the truth is quite simple (it always is), but it is never easy to
formulate. To raise a dimly perceived intuition to the level of consciousness
and action needs sharp-chiselled words. This is how I must focus my thinking
if I am going to pierce the minds and senses of the people I want to reach.
Our subject is Canadian culture. Both the adjective and the noun are emo-
tional, and so they should be. They can't be objectified; they are under our fin-
gernails, under our skin, fed by the heart. And yet they are not, like our blood,
a part of us, but are artificial concepts which someone else prepared for us to
inhabit. I am a Canadian by accident; but I did not receive my birthright like a
* 'This collection' refers to R. Murray Schafer's (1984), On Canadian Music, Bancroft:
Arcana, which is a collection of essays. His lead essay in the volume is titled "A Short
History of Canadian Music."
222 CANADIAN Music.- ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
telephone number; I inherited with it a complex nucleus of habits and sensa-
tions that trigger mixed emotions. I love my country, but I despise it also.
I love its natural beauty, but I weep for the destruction of it. I recognize the
moulds that have shaped it but I agonize to reshape them. And I know that
this is possible, even though I often wonder just what effect my efforts are
having.
Culture is the prima materia for shaping societies. It is a strong weapon,
a terrible weapon sometimes, but it is always at hand. The moment you pick
up a fork you have it. It can be used to civilize and to barbarize. It is quite
amoral. It can be used to strengthen pride and self-confidence or it can be
used to weaken these qualities. What I have to say here is as much concerned
with how culture can weaken as with how it can strengthen: hence the second
part of the title. A colonial regime strengthens itself by pushing out from cen-
tre to margin. It takes raw materials from the extremities and ejects finished
products from the centre. It would be wrong to think that this is a balanced
exchange, for as the economic historian Harold Innis showed, the central pro-
ducer always attempts to maintain control over his suppliers by paying cheaply
for raw goods, and in an exchange medium that will guarantee dependence.
The same is true for culture. A colonial regime can never adjust sights to rec-
ognize valuable cultural assets in the margins of the empire. Ether the margin
is a wasteland, or it is full of impediments that must be exterminated—as the
Indians were exterminated in North America by the European colonialists. To
the extent that culture in Canada is still colonial, we are concerned with the
position of victim. To the extent that the victim is still alive, things can change.
When I mentioned to an American that I was now more interested in the
development of Canadian culture than I was in his, and that I intended to write
something about it, he said: "What are you, a god-damned fascist?"—which
shows how the cultural invader can be as paranoid about this subject as the
threatened. The only way I can justify nationalism is to see it as a way of regu-
lating what goes in and what goes out. I would like to see a balance in this
exchange, nothing more. But it is a sign of how in control foreign interests are
in Canada—I mean mentally in control—that every time we call for an
accounting they accuse us of tribalism pointing towards another holocaust.
What I am concerned to express is an attitude that leads to maturity, not
immaturity. I will put my contention quite simply: unless you let your culture
mature, you will never mature; you will always remain someone else's clone.
By failing to resist the inflow of foreign influences in Canada we have prevent-
ed this growth, which is natural and necessary for any human community.
Maturity works from the inside out and cannot be plastered in like glitter on a
ceiling. Yet this is precisely what the custodians of culture all across Canada
are attempting to do. This activity is carried on in the highest places. I intend
to name names and give examples as far as my personal fact-finding energies
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 225
have permitted.
A note: this personal investigation is partly the odyssey of my own think-
ing on this subject over the years. If I speak of music it is because this is the
field I know best. But what I shall say applies mutatis mutandis to the other
arts too; and I know that there are many artists in other fields who feel the
same way as I do.
About 20 years ago I was asked in an interview: "Is there or ought there
to be a distinctively Canadian music?" I responded: "There isn't and there
oughtn't." I was reminded of this recently by another interviewer who detected
that I'd changed my mind. There is no inconsistency here, merely the lapse of
20 years. Let me tell you how I felt then so that you can understand the pre-
cise inclination of my thoughts today.
Thirty years ago we young composers were very conscious of the desire
to move out internationally. It was the great era of the United Nations, the
unity of the world, and the harmony of all peoples. We were also more than
vaguely aware of the dummy culture which then burdened this country, with a
British organist in every cuckoo-nest. We wanted to seek our own level in an
expanded world order. It was more a question of 'getting away from here'
than of going to any place in particular. We left home, and the years of
Wanderlust commenced. Most of us went to Europe, a few to the States. The
international esprit that was then in the air seemed most detectable in those
places, specifically in New York, Paris or London, which is where most of us
ended up. We found our mentors in those places; they taught us how to create
in an acceptably international idiom. We took heart in the fact that artists in
Madrid and Buenos Aires and Stockholm and Tokyo were also working in rec-
ognizable languages. We believed that soon the whole world would turn this
way. McLuhan's global village concept later gave a boost to these expecta-
tions.
It was a pardonable sin. It took us half a lifetime to leam that what we had
perceived as internationalism was really a new parochialism, spawned and
carefully guarded by a few large centres in which the cultural industries were
most highly developed. It would have been nearly impossible to rise to the top
in these centres without certain advantages which we innocently lacked. What
was wanted was copies, not originals. Our duty (which was implicitly laid in
our heads by our teachers) was to extend the international style to the periph-
eries, centre to margin, that is, from New York to Toronto, Paris to Montreal,
London to Vancouver. This is a role we willingly played without thinking of it
in those terms any more than patrons at the National Arts Centre or listeners
to the CBC think about it today. Nor probably have many of my colleagues of
those years begun to think about it yet. They returned to satisfying jobs in uni-
versities or in other ways barricaded themselves from certain realities.
I began to think of this seriously for the first time when I moved to the
224 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
country in 1975. That is when I wrote Music in the Cold, a little allegory
about authentic and counterfeit Canadian culture, which I sent to numerous
friends as a Christmas present in 1977. The best response I received was
from a Swede, who translated and published it in Scandinavia, where there
seemed to be a greater understanding of what I was talking about. Canadians
seemed indifferent to it; only about a hundred copies of it have been sold
since.
The basic argument of Music in the Cold is that culture is shaped by cli-
mate and geography, that as the product of a northern territory Canadian art
has a wildness and vigour not evident in the hot-house effusions of more civi-
lized centres. I tried to show that the essential difference between Canadian
and European landscapes is that ours are not peoplescapes and that the view-
point (i.e., the painter's position) of a Canadian landscape suggests hardship
(cold, rough terrain, black flies, etc.). I tried to show how the real culture of the
North is tough in this way, and that to appreciate it takes special techniques
which are unknown to the aesthetes and hearties of hotter tropicalities.
I wanted Canadian music to develop in ways that recognized what some
of our best writers and painters have known for some time. I did not want this
to be its exclusive feature but rather to emerge as a trait against which other
identities could be measured. Eventually the speculations of Music in the Cold
took form in Music for Wilderness Lake and ultimately in The Princess of
the Stars, which are the two most authentically Canadian pieces I've written.
Typically, each of them has only been performed once, though I know that
they touched a sensitive spot in many people, particularly those who wit-
nessed the dawn performance of The Princess of the Stars on Heart Lake in
1981. With musicians positioned around the water and spectacularly cos-
tumed actors and dancers in canoes in the centre, an autumn ritual was enact-
ed in which real birds intersected with singers and dancers imitating them, the
sun-god appeared at the precise moment of sunrise, and the legendary sub-
stance of the plot sought in every way to unite the fate of characters in the
drama with environmental changes in and around the water on a late
September morning. This was not a piece which could be performed in New
York or Paris or Vienna and that is precisely why I wrote it that way. To wit-
ness it one would have to make a pilgrimage to a Canadian lake—which
reverses the rule that art can only be transformed from the centre. The rela-
tionship with Indian mythology was neither consciously sought nor avoided.
Both the music and the text were my own; but the setting and to some extent
the context related this quite new work atavistically to something from the col-
lective tribal history of all humans.
Now that I've given you some idea of the passage of my thinking over the
years, let me return to the question of Canadian music. Is there a distinctively
Canadian music? The question dissolves into its own answer when we begin to
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 225
see products that could best be described that way. Time is always turning
interrogatives into affirmatives with the accumulation of data. We do not ask
whether there is a distinctively German or French or Japanese music; we
acknowledge these matters as demonstrated. Yet when we go deeper into the
subject, we see that distinctively German music is nothing but a miscellany of
many pieces in many different styles by many different composers. Yet the
impression of coherence is confirmed because we keep hearing these pieces
over and over. A recent survey of the 15 top orchestras in Canada showed
that Beethoven was performed by every orchestra and that Mozart's music
accounted for nearly ten percent of the total programming of all orchestras
combined.
1
 If the Canadian musical style is not evident it is because it is not
allowed to countervail. I shall demonstrate the extent of its neglect in a
moment; on the basis of these facts it would seem strange that anyone, anno
1983, could have any opinion on Canadian music whatever. When a piece of
mine is performed it is fairly certain that the conductor is doing it for the first
time, the orchestra has never played it before, the audience has never heard it,
and the program annotator knows nothing about it. From this adumbration of
an event the critic is supposed to extract some vital truth for the national
newspapers.
We are rather in the position of the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian com-
posers of the 19th century, who also had to fight to establish their identity. If
you regard Dvorak—just to pick a figure—from the point of view of the 19th
century German musical hegemony, he comes off as an inferior Brahms; but if
you put that question aside and ask what he accomplished that Brahms didn't
accomplish, he becomes a Czech hero. Now you could listen to Canadian
music this way. You might detect English or Scandinavian influences in the
music of Harry Somers or claim that Serge Garant orchestrates like Boulez;
but if you consider how their music differs from these models, you perceive
something quite new. That newness is Canadian—it can't be anything else;
and if we had any musicologists in this country who weren't trained in
Princeton or Oxford, they would now be busy pointing this out.
I am reminded of a story Istvan Anhalt told me about how he first became
aware of the Canadian style in music. When he arrived from Hungary he
wanted to see the country, so he took a train from Halifax to Montreal. All
day he travelled through the woods of New Brunswick, seeing nothing but
trees. Here and there he passed a grubby clearing with perhaps a sawmill or a
gas station and a few squat houses, then more trees. When he first heard the
music of John Beckwith his mind connected back to that experience. Here
were bars of repetitious ostinati followed by a sudden wild modulation, then
the relentless repetitions again. The music and the forest were companies;
they intensified one another.
A very civilized Japanese lady came to visit me in Bancroft. When I took
226 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
her back to the bus station, it was crowded with local men, dressed traditional-
ly: red hunting cap, open tan-coloured boots, tied halfway up, with jeans so
low on the hips that the crotch was somewhere around the knees. "They're a
bit rough," I said. "Yes," she replied, "I like."
Perhaps only the foreigners can appreciate the Canadian artifact or ani-
mal without prejudice, though it requires a particular mental attitude to do this.
Such curiosity is seldom mustered by the post-colonial set whose models are
always in another country.
To get back to Istvan Anhalt: when he wrote La Tourangelle, a scenic
cantata based on the life of the immigrant nun Marie de 1'Incamation, partly in
his new home in Kingston, which looks out on a giant and ancient stone
church, his own work became beautifully Canadian in the expression of a sub-
ject which probably only an immigrant could handle.
I am mentioning these things as inevitabilities. The list of authentic
Canadian works is growing. But will you hear them in the National Arts
Centre or on the CBC? Not for 50 years unless a lightning bolt hits the heads
of the programmers for these institutions. So what fills their programs at the
moment? We shift into the analytical mode to find out.
First of all, CBC radio. By way of preface let me mention that all
Canadian performers and composers of serious music who have been in the
business for ten or 30 years know that little by little CBC has reduced their
employment possibilities. Gone are the house orchestras, gone are the com-
missions for composers, gone for the most part are the recitals for solo per-
formers. In the survey I am about to present, which covers the first month of a
new season, the CBC did not initiate a single musical program; the few that
are live were picked up as remote broadcasts of events under other sponsor-
ship.
What I did was to take the CBC Radio Guide for September 1983 and
list all the names of musicians for the programs on the stereo network (the
main music network) by nationality. There are 630 foreign composers and
performers listed compared with 82 Canadians. If we were to include those
programs which do not list their contents ("Stereo Morning," "Off the
Record," etc.) the Canadian presence shrinks to near invisibility. For instance,
a week-long survey of all the music played during the 20 hours "Stereo
Morning" is on the air showed these results:
Canadian composers 0
Canadian performers 4
Foreign composers and performers 140
2
A week long survey of "Off the Record" produced these results:
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 227
Canadian composers 0
Canadian performers 0
Foreign composers and performers 114
3
These are the results for 30 hours of actual broadcasting, from which it
must be clear that Canadian musicians are being slapped off the air in those
meandering programs of recorded music, while announcers lick the boots and
polish the halos of their foreign favourites. A sampling of remarks:
"Nifty Neville, one of the busiest men in the world"
after playing six recordings of Pommy ace Neville Marriner.
"The towering, basic essential classics"
in reference to the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto.
"Let's return to that marvellous Swedish baritone"
reference to Haken Hagegard.
"We have some delightful English Baroque today."
Returning to the printed listings we should now see where the foreigners
come from. We discover that the largest block of composers by far is
German/Austrian (94) followed by French (46), Italian (25), British (25), and
Russian (21). There are 13 Canadian composers in the listings. Almost all of
these can be credited to one program, "Two New Hours," but since this pro-
gram is especially designed to present unfamiliar music by young and
unknown composers, the Canadian group is not particularly representative. Of
the more established figures, only the name of Harry Somers appears. No
Weinzweig, Freedman, Beckwith, Garant, Anhalt, Tremblay, Prevost,
Papineau-Couture, Pentland, Willan, Champagne or MacMillan for the month
of September.
Among the performers, the largest single contingent is British (111), fol-
lowed by American (79), German/Austrian (53), and French (23).
Totalling composers and performers we get:
German/Austrian 147
British 136
American 99
Canadian 82
Swiss/French 69
Italian 32
228 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Russian 30
Czechoslovakia!! 20
Polish 20
Scandinavian 20
Hungarian 13
Others 33
There is a cliche going around that music is international. Of course it
isn't, but, like all culture products, it is the expression of a particular people at
a particular time. As such it may or may not be intelligible to other peoples at
other times. If the CBC was really trying to educate us internationally we
would be hearing music from Rajasthan or Iraq or Manchuria or the Tuamotu
Archipelago. We don't, so we assume that detente is not their business. What
is it? To endorse colonial loyalty by demonstrating that this smart music, which
socially upward-bound Canadians should leam to appreciate, did not originate
here, but comes to us from the eight or ten great lands of our forefathers (i.e.,
some of them). As a recent policy paper on the arts put it: "We yearn for our
Mozarts, our Shakespeares and our Picassos. Nation-building is a matter of
establishing links; and to the extent that the Great Artist is lacking, Canadians
face the problem of a missing link."
4
 In other words, if God had intended
Canada to have music, Mozart would have been bom in Regina. The fact that
he was born in Salzburg is supposed to be incidental. As a matter of fact,
Mozart wore a perfumed wig and lace panties, and his music sounds like it. I
am not raising issue with this any more than I do with Beethoven, whose
music often reminds me of Vienna sausage; I am merely pointing out that any
part exudes a variety of regional smells which are unavoidably packaged along
with the product; and that when your "Stereo Morning" host opens up his
program with another piece by Mozart a little unvented miasma from Austria
reaches our nostrils.
As John Weinzweig said, "Mozart is a pop composer." This makes him a
perfect candidate for any station specializing in classical Mooze, which is what
CBC stereo has become, as a survey of the repertoire could easily demon-
strate. Not only do we have here a concentration of music from six or eight
favoured countries, but we also have a shrunken repertoire in which the same
peewee classics (viz. Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances) are played a dozen
times a week in the manner of all pop stations. Pieces are broken apart and
thrown together by announcers and producers who have little care for integri-
ty, form, or gracefulness in program building. This is all in keeping with
'abbreviation radio', a characteristic of most contemporary broadcasting. I
don't want to get into the question of what radio could accomplish if it became
in itself an art form (I've dealt with this in my article "Radical Radio"),
5
 but I
will say a few words about how it could assist in centring Canadian musical oil-
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 229
ture without drastic changes or additional expenses.
There is quite a lot of Canadian music in existence by now. We even have
dead composers. Heaven knows we have enough of undisputed innocuous-
ness. There is also a good deal of interesting material from the 19th and early
20th centuries which no one knows about. Years ago for Ten Centuries
Concerts we revived a quite satisfactory 18th-century opera, Colas et
Colinette, by Joseph Quesnel, the equal of a good many European products
of its type. John Beckwith has extended this work in the reconstructions he
had made of old pieces for the festival at Sharon. There is a prejudice that
Canadian music consists exclusively of unpleasant noises made by misfits like
Schafer, which needs readjustment. The annals of Canadian music history are
strewn with works which should be heard again, if only in order to make a
final evaluation of them. I am speaking now of works by Leo Smith, W.O.
Forsyth, Guillaume Couture, Rodophe Mathieu, Herbert L. Clarke, Claude
Champagne and Sir Ernest MacMillan. (When I look at the 25 British com-
posers—as compared with 13 Canadian—in the CBC stereo listings for
September and see the names of Arnold Bax, E.J. Morean, Roger Quilter,
Eric Coates, and Arthur Benjamin, inter alia, I do not consider that group in
any way superior to the Canadian gentlemen I have mentioned.)
The CBC has never attempted to record any of this material. A long-
standing policy of recording some contemporary music seems to have been
abandoned in favour of recording major Canadian orchestras in exclusively
European repertoire. What I am trying to indicate is that the spectrum of
Canadian material is exceedingly broad and makes numerous appeals, some
of which may not be inconsistent with present offerings. Of course I would like
to see a policy that goes well beyond this, but since the CBC may not be able
to appreciate my wilder enthusiasms, I will for the moment not press them for-
ward. In any country but Canada, this kind of material would have been
recorded long ago and presented frequently enough to have worked its way
into the marrow of national consciousness. It is unbelievable that a public
broadcasting service that plays such a large role in the recording industry
should be able to avoid it. When it is instituted there will be two important
residual effects: 1) the DJs will be forced to purr as thrillingly about 'us' as they
do about 'them', and 2) the performing rights money for these works will stay
in Canada.
Every time a copyright work by a foreign composer is played in Canada,
money is collected and shipped to the country in which the work originated.
Can you imagine, on the basis of the figures I have represented, how much
performing rights money is being sent out of Canada—for instance to
Britain—as a result of the policies of our public broadcasting system? Haven't
we a right to demand that more of it should remain here to assist those who
are building our own culture, and especially to demand it of a public corpora-
250 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
tion which has avowedly the same intention?^
The discouragement of Canadian music on Canadian radio has been
intentional and systematic. The aspirations of Canadian composers and per-
formers have been blocked by a colonial administration that is blind and gut-
less, and which, like all things colonial, will have a temporary evanescence
before it is overturned, perchance violently. I have given you some facts and
thoughts on one aspect of the CBC service. You can think about what is hap-
pening on the other services. If you do, or rather when you do, you may feel
like standing up and making some demands of your own.
I pass on now to the National Arts Centre. In response to my request for
some statistics on programming, the archivist sent me some documents. "A
Climate for Creativity" is an infuriating piece of writing. First of all, it is equiv-
ocating. Creativity is one of those words with which people who fear it most
like to inoculate their prose to improve their intrepidity. I've noticed this in arts
education, in arts council policy statements, even in the Applebert report,
where we are told: "The reader will discover, first of all, that we have placed
great emphasis on artistic creativity," period. End of thought.
7
The difference between my prose and theirs is that I don't have to lie to
keep my job. I don't have to pretend I'm a trapeze artist keeping everything
balanced with my tricky feet, if I'm really the circus fatman full of shit. "A
Climate for Creativity" is jammed with quotes from Arthur Koestler, William
Wordsworth, John Ruskin, Leo Tolstoy, S0ren Kierkegaard and a batch of
others, interlaced with National Arts Centre aims and achievements, almost as
if these gentlemen were in the front row applauding the Ottawa accomplish-
ment. In one paragraph the arts are even linked with national defence: "A pol-
icy of national defence which excludes the arts is vain; as the arts are included,
the defence becomes impregnable."
8
National defence of the arts is, of course, what I am talking about. But a
little later we are reminded not to get our expectations up if we think that
"national" means "national" any more than "creativity" means "creativity."
Under "Canadian Content" we are told that the centre must present "an
appropriate level of material concerned with the articulation of the Canadian
experience, which eschews chauvinism and, by attention to matters of rele-
vance to all mankind, transcends the limitations of sterile nationalism."
9
 This
high-frequencied language, when unscrambled, would seem to mean: 'Don't
expect that just because we are a National Arts Centre we are going to lay a
national trip on you in the way the other federally funded museums do.' I
don't want to bore you with the prose of this or other documents which the
archivist sent me, in which I sometimes find my own name: "full measure of
Surdin and Somers, Schafer and Strate" is the alliterative phraseology of the
publicist who writes these proclamations. Let us just look at the facts.
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 251
The National Arts Centre has always stressed how responsible the orches-
tra has been in striking a balance between (as their phrase has it) "matters of
relevance to all mankind" and "sterile nationalism." From 1967 to 1982 they
had a Canadian conductor and music director. Regarding the personnel of the
orchestra, the Director General of the Centre has been at some pains to point
out that the orchestra is really quite Canadian, with 24 native Canadians and
23 "others," four of whom have become naturalized. Let us push aside the
question of how Canadian, say, Eaton's would be with a 60 percent Canadian
labour force and move on.
With regard to the programming, we note that from 1970 to 1980, 20
new works by Canadians were commissioned. About a dozen Canadian works
were presented per year during that decade, though by 1979-80 this has
slipped to seven. In the 1981-2 season, five Canadian works were given. In
1982-3 it is down to three, less than five percent of the total programming.
This prompted a reviewer in Music Magazine to note: "It is somewhat ironic
that this orchestra, existing in the nation's capital, fully subsidized by the feder-
al government, and presumably a purveyor of Canadian culture, should have
the lowest percentage of Canadian content of any of the orchestras studied
here."
1
^ In 1982, over only a whimper of opposition from the musical com-
munity (the Canadian League of Composers was the only organization I know
of to protest), a foreign conductor was appointed. In case you don't know his
name, I will mention it: Franco Mannino—not exactly world-renowned, but
evidently better than anything in the Canadian stable. What happens? The
commissioning of new Canadian works ceases altogether. And the number of
Canadian works on the regular season drops to two. "Bravo Franco!" are the
headlining words on the musical brochure for this year's season. A few
decades ago that might have had an odd ring in a democracy, but as every-
body knows, the scourge of fascism is over.
We are entering dangerous territory. On the program for November 9/10
I see my own composition, In Memoriam Alberto Guerrero, a five-minute
student composition which in the profession is sometimes known as a piece
de garage, so that late patrons can avoid it. Maybe I should accept this small
blessing and shut up?
I've used the orchestral programming as a guide in giving you these fig-
ures because the National Arts Centre has always pointed to it as the chief
example of how they are living up to the "articulation of the Canadian experi-
ence" in music. If one were to add to this the recitals given under the auspices
of NAC, the appearance of foreign performers and ensembles, and the opera,
which have formed such an effusive and expensive part of their summer sea-
son over the past years, the Canadian content shrinks to invisibility. They
haven't performed a Canadian opera since 1967, when they did Gabriel
Charpentier's Orphee. As regards the recitalists, the recently appointed music
252 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
administrator said to me: "They don't want to do it." I countered: "Have you
asked them? Surely an employer has some say in the product to be manufac-
tured."
In vain. The mythologem that foreign music is so good and ours is so exe-
crable is indelibly tattooed on the skulls of these people. I could go on to show
how the patterning of all large organizations is similarly colonial without in any
way impeding their abilities to grasp by far the largest share of public money
made available for the arts—how, for instance, the Canadian Opera Company
(which I indiscreetly point out is directed and managed by Americans) has not
produced an original Canadian opera since they did Harry Somers' Riel in
1967; how in 1984 the COC will be given $1,250,000 to produce an opera
by an Englishman while Comus Music Theatre was given $60,000 to produce
a Canadian work of infinitely greater complexity; how the Toronto
International Festival turned down both Ra and Apoca/ypszs and God-knows
how many other Canadian offerings to bring the Met to Canada; how the
Stratford Festival spends its millions on plummy British plays and squirts its
music budget into Gilbert and Sullivan—yes, I could go on for quite a while
about all this, but you know the tune as well as I do.
The dimensions of the monster which has been set up to devour us are of
great magnitude. He appears very benign; he is on a decorated leash held by
fistfuls of government administrators and doting heiresses; he speaks all the
mittel-European languages; he knows how to purr when petted and he has
beautiful, well-kept fingers. But if you're a Canadian artist, he's out to strangle
you, and his mistresses will kick your carcass into the gutter as they parade
him joyously across the country to the applause of punch-drunk audiences for
whom he has become the Redeemer of Boredom and a narcosis for their lazy
lives.
I've described the problem and I've given enough facts to release it from
the charge of personal idiosyncrasy. I've limited my analysis to the field of
music, because I know it best, but I also know it is not unique to this field.
What we are really concerned with is a mental attitude which I have called
colonial because that seems to be the most appropriate way to describe the
insecurity which downgrades the local and elevates the alien without seriously
evaluating either. This is a Canadian habit and, while it may be weakening in
some areas, in the aristocratic field of classical music it is hardening into a
canker. If we can't lose this habit our culture will remain sick and, despite all
establishment smugness, will look sick next to the presentations of indepen-
dent people anywhere, whether black, white, yellow or red. How do we
achieve independence from the scourge of colonialism? Radical changes of
thinking are necessary, and these are what must now be discussed.
Task number one: forget where you came from; only then will you find
out where you are. Ask an Englishman where he came from and he'll say
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 255
"England"; ask a Frenchman and he'll say "France"; ask a Canadian and he'll
say "Buffalo," or "My mother came from Poland," or "My grandfather sold
rugs in Armenia." I told you that in Music in the Cold I tried to describe the
Canadian experience from the point of view of one who was in harmony with
the climate and the land. That is when I finally forgot where I came from and
found out where I was. It was a good feeling: a feeling of strength and confi-
dence. When you finally realize you come from Canada (with no strings
attached) you find yourself brother and sister of the Indians and the Inuit. All
your life you had denied the possibility on ethnic grounds—it's what our teach-
ers taught us; now you discover that it is right and inevitable. And you realize
that the Canadian history books will soon have to be rewritten, that whitey's
discovery of America is a lie, that the "two founding nations" were marauders
who destroyed a culture from which we may still leam valuable lessons: for
instance, ecological stability, a respect for nature, and a no-growth economy.
When you begin to see the value of these things you can free yourself from
the monstrosity of the "more" society—more people, more wealth, more
products, more culture. I was once told by Arthur Erikson that when the white
men arrived in BC and tried to teach the Indians the domino technique of
felling trees, they could never leam the lesson. They considered it wasteful.
They couldn't understand why you would knock over more trees than you
needed. What does this have to do with culture, you ask? It has everything to
do with it. It says, before you open your house to visitors, look around and
check the contents.
Of course it is obvious that such a reorganization of history and education
would not serve the ruling establishment, which has elected to teach us read-
ing so that we can read sign boards, writing so that we can sign cheques,
arithmetic so that we can compute our income tax, and music so that we can
support the symphony. I would go so far as to say that if a sensory education
similar to that of the native peoples of the world anywhere were instituted,
there would be so many defections from the present course as to make the
current workings of society unmanageable. For that reason I don't expect it to
happen, though in my own work as a teacher I will continue to fight to make
it happen if only to provide an antidote to the poisons of the existing system.
As an example, let me mention that when I was teaching a composition
course at the University of Western Ontario a couple of years ago I asked stu-
dents to bring in reports on Indian music. That was impossible; there wasn't
any Indian music in the library, or Indians either, and no one at the university
could teach this subject. "Well then," I said, "go and walk in the forest until
you begin to hear the drumming." They became angry. One student said he
wasn't an Indian, that his mother came from Poland and his grandfather had
been an Armenian carpet dealer. Another said he was going to graduate
school at Michigan or Harvard and demanded I teach him appropriately for
254 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
this pursuit.
The same story when the woman who helped gather facts for this paper
phoned the National Arts Centre and asked whether they had ever considered
presenting a festival of native music and dance. "Urn...urn...urn...," mumbles
her contact, "not really. We had a proposal once but the board turned it
down."
You must know that I am not merely speaking here of the rehabilitation of
native culture. But if you are going to define Canadian culture, that is where
you must start. Then the revolution will follow from a plenum, rather than a
wasteland—the colonial contention. But if we don't do this, everything will
always be out of alignment.
I mentioned at the beginning that a colonial regime was one with a strong
centre and weak margins, or rather that this is the centralist perspective on it.
Therefore if we are going to rid ourselves of colonial attitudes, our second task
must be to abandon the centre-margin view of culture. And this should apply
nationally as well as internationally. Culture in New York is no more signifi-
cant than that in Toronto, any more than that in Toronto surpasses in interest
that in Kitchener or Bancroft. It is a matter of appropriateness. What makes
central culture apparently more interesting is the way it is fanned about by the
culture industries. This is the Maya of our age, the illusion, and we must leam
to see through it. The warnings Schumacher gave in Small is Beautiful apply
to culture as well as to economics. It is a question of what you are trying to do
that decides the scale of the operation. If you are building something new you
start modestly. It may grow, but growth is not the only criterion by which its
effectiveness should be measured. As Schumacher points out, many things
that have grown most rapidly (for instance, cities) are responsible for much of
the wretchedness of the modem world. It is no limitation then to start small or
to remain small.
When my country choir improvised a music drama on the book of Jonah,
I learned that original things can be produced in small places as well as capi-
tals. When 40 performers presented this work to a packed church in
Maynooth, with an area population of about two hundred, I realized that the
per capita involvement with its cultural endeavour was exceeding the national
average—or let us say, to be safe, that it was exceeding that of Stratford,
which frequently this year was playing to 29 percent houses. I had the same
experience last summer when I attended the Sound Symposium in St. John's,
where local folk music blended with daring experiments in new music and
attracted larger and more enthusiastic audiences than I have seen at many
ISCM Festivals. In one event we composed a Harbour Symphony for ten
ships' whistles, which was given every day at noon for a week to the entire
population of St. John's.
What we need is a balance between the larger and more cosmopolitan
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 255
efforts and the smaller happenings in out-of-the-way places. But what do we
get? The Canadian Opera Company produces bigger and more lavish produc-
tions and then, to justify its right to the swag, consolidates its holdings by
sending its (second-string) troupes jigging across the country. When they get
there what do they find? That the gymnasia and church basements are inade-
quate for their urbanly ambitious offerings, and the pressure is on to build ade-
quate theatres and culture centres where they were never required before. A
recent full-page ad in the Globe and Mail (cost: $7955 for one day) ran this
headline: HELP CONCERNED CANADIANS TURN A TRAGEDY INTO A
SMILE IN YELLOWKNIFE. It went on:
There is no Arts and Culture Centre in the Northwest
Territories. No place to sing, dance or put on a play. And
that's a tragedy.
Some concerned Canadians have united to help turn
tragedy into a smile, by building an Arts and Culture Centre
in Yellowknife. Governments, corporations, foundations
and private citizens have given generously.
And now we're asking you to help some fellow
Canadians enjoy the cultural opportunities we all take for
granted.
Please give to the Northern Arts and Cultural Centre Fund.
All donations are tax deductible.
11
I've emphasized the appropriate words to give you the thrust of the copy-
writer's hype. Does Yellowknife sound like a centre or a doodle in the margin?
Certainly the faces in this ad don't look Eskimo to me. Isn't this Arts Centre
really being designed for big city megatheriums, so that the National Ballet and
the Calgary Symphony and the Edmonton Opera Association and even totter-
ing old Stratford can debouch northwards?
When the Ontario Deputy Minister of Culture says that more money
should go to the Big Five (Stratford, COC, National Ballet, TSO and Shaw
Festival) because "those big groups have fought their way up there and have a
great growth potential," he is expounding centre-margin culture-philosophy.
He proposes to get the extra money to help them grow by taking it away from
smaller organizations and freelance artists.
12
 I want you to know that I am less
concerned with the monetary issue than I am with brain pollution. These
groups are almost exclusively concerned with the presentation of foreign cul-
ture. We know about the effect they are having on audiences. What about per-
formers? When whole fleets of actors are taught to put marbles in their
mouths or gaggles of singers are taught to gargle in Italian or flocks of young
ladies (of both sexes) are instructed in the twitterboned gymnastics of Louis
256 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
XIV, and when these activities are made the model of advanced artistic devel-
opment, the destruction of talent is all but unsalvageable. I know. I have hired
and cast such talent in my productions. Three quarters of our rehearsal time is
spent teaching them to unlearn what they have spent years acquiring.
Moreover, as major employers of talent, large organizations have a decisive
advantage over smaller in offering long-term contracts and higher salaries.
Often I have thought it would be a good idea if all government funding for
the arts was removed entirely. Then we would see who the survivors were. Of
course the English directors and German conductors and American managers
would flee the country pretty quickly, since their allegiance is to "Art," not to
Canada. And the great culture palaces would be abandoned. No more sym-
phony; no more opera; no more Stratford; no more Shaw. What a pity. But
the rest of us would stay on and you would finally recognize who we are.
I have dealt here with the subject of serious music because it concerns me
most; my life depends on it. The situation is particularly serious because the
whole system is exogenous and has been imported for the amusement of the
social elite. Perhaps if I'd taken theatre or dance or film I would have had to
retouch my arguments; but my friends in these professions assure me they are
confronted with the same opposition.
It is time to sum up. I could follow academic practice and conclude that
everything has now been said but since no one paid attention I'll say it all over
again. But this would be doing you a disservice, because I think you have
heard quite clearly what I have been saying and recognized truths in it despite
whatever might have irritated you in the delivery.
And so my second last line is to you who have listened. I feel the pulse in
your fingers and on your throats and I know that at last you are ready to come
with us into the future, ready to listen to our songs and poems and look at our
pictures and read our stories, because they are about you, and through them
you will know yourselves, and behind them are the trees and the lakes and the
snows of Canada, and behind them are the Indians, your ancestors, and
behind them are the animals, and behind them is the myth, and without a
myth the nation dies.
At the opening concert in Thomson Hall, sandwiched between the
inevitable major compositions by an Englishman and a Frenchman, were two
short Canadian works. I was told to keep mine to eight minutes. One piece on
the program got bravos. "They're cheering Canada," my wife said, and she
was right.
My final line is to my fellow artists. Continue to weave your magic spells,
on street comers, in the little theatres and houses of creation, on the empty
roads and in the quiet of the night. They are getting sick of the old diet. The
country belongs to us now. Tell them so.
This chapter is taken from pages 75-94 of R. Murray Shafer's, On Canadian Music. Copyright © 1984 Arcana Editions.
Reprinted by permission of Arcana Editions.
CANADIAN CULTURE: COLONIAL CULTURE 257
ENDNOTES
1. Robert Makrow, "Examining the Puzzle of Orchestral Programming," Music
Magazine, January/February 1983.
2. 12-16 September, 6:00-10:00 a.m.
3. 3-7 October, 1:00-3:00 p.m.
4. A Climate for Creativity, National Arts Centre, 1981, p. 30.
5. The Canadian Forum, December 1982-January 1983, pp. 10-13, 32.
6. Reading through this lecture John Beckwith noted: "Apropos of the Soviet-
Russian segments of your statistics: you may recall a great fuss was made a few
years ago at the signing of the bilateral royalty-payment agreement between the
USSR and Canada. Cartwheels were danced, several tankards of vodka were
drained in celebration. But guess in which direction all (I mean all) the pay-
ments have been going so far? Try suggesting to the CBC that they stop play-
ing Soviet composers' music in favour of Canadians' and asking the Soviet radio
counterparts to do the same."
7. Report of the Federal Cultural Policy Review Committee, Department of
Communications, Government of Canada, Ottawa, 1982, p. 3.
8. /bid.,xi.
9. Ibid., 22.
10. Robert Makrow, op. cit., p. 36.
11. Globe and Mail, 27 August 1983, Fanfare, p. 8.
12. Globe and Mail, 10 September 1983, Entertainment, p. 7.
This page intentionally left blank 
A CANADIAN Music STYLE:
ILLUSION AND REALITY
LUCIEN POIRIER
(TRANSLATED BY M. BENJAMIN WATERHOUSE
AND BEVERLEY DIAMOND)
It is probably true to say that when Canadian musicographers, following in
the footsteps of historians and literary critics, decided to inquire into the state
of music in their country and more specifically into the existence of a
Canadian musical style, they were venturing onto somewhat shaky ground.
The music critics who, in the 1930s and 1940s, took up the challenge do
not seem to have had sufficient information at their disposal to provide a satis-
factory discussion of the problem.
Whereas by 1930 experts in the history of Canadian literature could
already rely on a body of writing produced over the preceding three-quarters
of a century, and on several monumental works,
1
 in their search to define the
originality of Canadian literature, the small group of musics historians in
Canada found themselves in a radically different situation.
Disposed of only a handful of manuscripts and a very small number of
printed scores, certain musicographers such as Leo-Pol Morin (1930) and
Jean-Robert Talbot (1942: 304-309; especially 304) were careful to limit their
field of study and concentrate on contemporary music. However, this did not
prevent Leo-Pol Morin and the majority of historiographers who followed him
from totally discrediting pre-WWI music, as can be seen from the two follow-
ing examples:
Out of the whole lot [the well-known manuscripts in cardboard boxes and
other printed pages], let us say up to the war of 1914, I...J there is nothing
that could be considered with admiration, still less with envy, by informed and
impartial critics. (1930: 46)
Given this situation, to speak of [Canadian music] is almost impossible. It
will be no less difficult to try to define the character of something which, as
everyone agrees, has not yet officially come into existence in our country.
(1930: 43)
240 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Paradoxically, the resulting, and categorical, answer to the question was to
come from many sources, as if the aim had been to whip up the enthusiasm of
young composers by turning them away from the past, to soothe the fear of
demons rising up from the corpse of music which only negation can exorcise,
or to cut short a debate begun on shaky ground but which, in any case, was of
minimal interest. Among the spokespersons were: Rodolphe Mathieu (1932),
Canon Lionel Groulx (1941), the doctor Eugene Lapierre (1942), and com-
posers Jean Papineau-Couture (1942: 24-26) and Andre Asselin (1968:
28-30).
After 1950, they were joined by one music historian and several acade-
mics,
2
 all of whom adopted the above judgment on Canadian music on the
basis of the same methodology.
Coming from would-be musicologists, the lack of evidence produced to
support their position is simply astonishing; no progress had been made since
the 1930s. The very music under discussion had never received any serious
study: "We don't know all the works of Canadian composers," confessed Leo-
Pol Morin, "few of which have been printed [...] I believe [however! that we
have discovered the best and that we must not delude ourselves with false
hopes that we will, one day, exhume the long-dreamed of work that will estab-
lish our genius" (1930: 66-67). Moreover, no attempt is made to define what
is meant by style and by Canadian content. It is not even clear what the word
"Canadian" refers to in this context.
Although it is not our intention here to give an exhaustive definition of
these terms, a few remarks concerning the meaning often associated with two
of them will show the necessity of defining them in relation to each element of
the general context.
If the word style denotes a form of discourse, a means of expression, let
us remember, with R.J. Pascall,
3
 that in every discussion of music the term is
problematical since the discussions tend to bear more on relationships than on
meaning. Thus the word style can be used in the sense of the musical charac-
teristics unique to a composer, an epoch, a place, a society or a social role.
The meaning given to the word style depends on the conditions consid-
ered necessary for preparing "the precious [Canadian] alchemy" of which
Morin speaks. One would be perfectly entitled to ask which of the following
elements music must necessarily contain in order to be considered "Canadian"
in style :
• folklore and the inclusion of its spirit?
• national dance rhythms?
• sources of inspiration drawn from the spiritual life of the country?
• its own faults, since it has so many (naivety, boredom, informality and
unintellectual character)?
4
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 241
• the product of local teaching?
• the presence of a composer endowed with a strong personality, the
essential element for social action, together with disciples and follow-
ers?
• a reflection of knowledge, taste, and culture—that is, the image of the
country?
• the encouragement and recognition that the nation has granted a spe-
cific musical activity?
• the resistance to all outside influence, as attempted by Alexis
Contant?
• the capacity to assimilate and transform elements borrowed from
abroad in response to a real need rather than a trend?
• the maturity of musical language which assumes local colour not by
virtue of new elements but by virtue of an evolution in syntax, i.e., the
manner in which materials are combined?
Thus, the quest for the "Canadian musical ghost" (Morin) should have
involved, as it does today, a meticulous inspection of all the above points, and
others too, in order to establish the identity of the fleeting shadow which,
although not necessarily present in the music itself, nevertheless haunts the
waking hours of those who engage in its study.
The consequences of an attitude completely lacking in critical judgment
and based more on intuition than on a precise knowledge of the subject have
been widespread. Not only has music prior to 1925 seldom been the object of
university study; not only, up to 1980, had there been no progress in the pro-
duction of critical editions of music and writing on music; but the music itself
still awaits the fundamental respect due to any form of art worthy of interest
and of objective, detailed examination.
Some encouraging signs of a change of attitude, and some concrete
achievements, have recently appeared, such as an increasing number of uni-
versity theses and the publication of a prestigious anthology of Canadian
music before 1950 by the Canadian Musical Heritage Society (Ottawa).
5
These are indications that the time has come to give due consideration to the
vestiges of our musical past.
An important role—or dare I say duty—awaits the musicologist at this crit-
ical moment. To paraphrase the words of a music theorist of the 16th centu-
ry, each generation must reformulate certain questions and use any progess
made in the meantime in constructing its answers. This is the role of musicolo-
gists.
The question, then, is to discover whether the conditions governing the
study of Canadian music changed between the 1930s and 40s and 1980, and
whether they give rise to new ways of examining the whole question. We
242 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
believe and affirm that such is the case, on three different levels:
1. Since the 1960s, Canadians have participated actively in the revival of
early music. Although their attention has focused almost exclusively
on European music, this movement has contributed to the develop-
ment of a spirit of curiosity about the works of the past, and to a
broadening of the field of vision by granting as much importance to
the works of so-called minor composers as to the great masters. A
change of attitude has been the result, and one of the most important
aspects of this change has perhaps been that early music sources
arouse interest regardless of any judgment made in their respect by a
critic.
2. Musicians have been witness to research on aspects of Canadian cul-
tural life conducted by historians of all disciplines which has not only
been accompanied by various publications and reprints, but which has
also led to the establishment of cultural policies, to the foundation of
new university chairs and, on a deeper level, to the affirmation of a
wish to revive the arts and works of the past. Dissuaded from explor-
ing any avenues other than folklore, musicians have been the impo-
tent spectators of a widespread social phenomenon, with the result
that the present state of musical research in Canada can be summa-
rized as follows: it is approximately thirty years behind other disci-
plines in Canada and one hundred years behind the U.S.
3. The cautious attitude of Canadian musicians and musicologists will
not, however, have been completely in vain if one considers that dur-
ing these years of intellectual activity in other disciplines, the status of
both the musicologist and music historian were recognized and
defined, and attitudes changed profoundly. This being the case, the
application of methods borrowed from the scientific and literary disci-
plines has now become characteristic of research in music, tending to
supplant aesthetic considerations and their empirical rules, resulting in
a shift in the way in which music is observed. The objective of pre-
sent-day research seems to be linked less to morality than to stylistics
and to the comparison of the elements discovered with anything likely
to enrich our understanding or view of a given work. This method has
been only seldom used until recently, but we believe that its systematic
use is essential in the field of research into the Canadian music of past
centuries.
This paper began with a general examination of the situation and identifi-
cation of the reasons and circumstances which have impeded, until now, the
A CANADIAN Music STYLE.- ILLUSION AND REALITY 245
development of research-based knowledge regarding Canadian music and
Quebec music in particular, [...] in order to expose the basis for our research
and the methods and criteria we apply when defining and implementing each
research operation.
Recapping the original question of whether or not a Canadian style of
music existed in the pre-1925 period (the date coincides with the end of the
first quarter of the century, follows shortly on the end of WWI, and precedes
the appearance of the Papiers de musique by Leo-Pol Morin), we would like
to suggest, as a general research hypothesis, the following principle: whereas
it is certain that the geographic and cultural milieu and the political and reli-
gious situation, given their specificity, have contributed to the shaping of a his-
tory of politics, the church, the arts, literature and theatre that is distinctive in
that it reflects a unique Quebec reality, then, similarly, the music cultivated in
the same milieu is likely to possess a character distinct from European or
American music, a particular style which, for the period which interests us, has
yet to be defined. In short, our hypothesis is as follows: there are serious indi-
cations that Quebec music has a particular style: what is it?
The testing of this hypothesis requires detailed research, the major lines of
which we have defined as follows:
1. The first axis is the drawing up of a history of musical life in Quebec
from 1764 to 1925, based primarily on a systematic study of data
compiled from all periodicals appearing in Quebec between these
dates.
6
In parallel with this long-term teamwork and, as it were, appended to it, 8
Master's-level theses have been submitted and others are under way, in addi-
tion to work undertaken at the Universite de Montreal and elsewhere.
2. The second stage or axis of development of our research consists of
the collection and study of actual musical sources.
All of these projects are cumulative and respond to a common goal: the
hope that, before many years have passed, we will be able to write a detailed,
scientific history of the music and musical life of Quebec, as a basic contribu-
tion to a still larger project targeting Canadian music as a whole.
244 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
THE VIEWS OF SOME FRENCH^CANADIAN AUTHORS OF
THE FIRST HALF OF THE 20TH CENTURY ON THE
SUBJECT OF CANADIAN MUSICAL STYLE:
OVERVIEW AND ANALYSIS
PART ONE:
THE EXISTENCE OF A CANADIAN MUSICAL STYLE
"We wrangle from time to time over the existence of a
Canadian musical style."
(Leo-Pol Morin)
In the first half of the 20th century, Quebec produced a plethora of musi-
cians and theoreticians of the first rank. As evidence, it is enough to recall
names such as Guillaume Couture (1851-1915), Alexis Contant (1858-1918),
Achille Fortier (1864-1939), Arthur Letondal (1869-1956), Emiliano Renaud
(1875-1932), Alfred Laliberte (1882-1952), Albertine Morin-Labrecque
(1886-1957), Rodolphe Mathieu (1890-1962), Claude Champagne (1891-
1965), Leo-Pol Morin (1892-1941), Georges-Emile Tanguay (1893-1964),
Auguste Descarries (1896-1958), Eugene Lapierre (1899-1970) and Hector
Gratton (1900-1970) in Montreal; and the names of Ernest Gagnon (1834-
1915), Arthur Lavigne (1845-1925), Nazaire LeVasseur (1848-1927),
Joseph-Arthur Bemier (1877-1944), Henri Gagnon (1887-1961), Leo Roy
(1887-1974), Omer Letourneau (1891-1983), Jean-Robert Talbot (1893-
1954) and Conrad Bemier (1904-1988) in Quebec.
Most of these musicians produced musical or theoretical works, or some-
times both, which marked, in one sense or another, the history of Canadian
music. Many of these works have come under scrutiny, not only for their
intrinsic value, but also for what they can reveal about an individual and collec-
tive expression the boundaries of which have been sought by all manner of
means.
Musical criticism which, in the early 20thcentury, was coming to the fore,
played a crucial role in this respect. Although its history in Canada has yet to
be written, we can, nevertheless, notice a change in the themes and style of
the professional critics a little before the end of WWI, a change which may
have begun with the founding of Le Devoir in Montreal in 1910. We know
that this periodical, launched by Henri Bourassa with the objective of promot-
ing French-Canadian nationalism, gave music a prominent place in its initial
numbers. The personality of one of its leading critics, Paul G. Ouimet, might
seem tasteless today. However, a chronicle such as the one he devoted to
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 245
artistic movements in Canada in the summer of 1912 was something of a
breakthrough, since, beyond the news and the journalists' reports, the music
and the arts practised in Canada were given as much attention as the master-
pieces of the Old World.
Some five years later, on November 10, 1917, Ouimet's successor,
Frederic Pelletier (1870-1944) took a still more forward-looking step.
Following in the footsteps of Gustave Comte's engaging reviews in Le Passe-
Temps during the 1910s, he tackled a subject which sent a Shockwave
through the musical world: "nationalism in music." Although some of
Pelletier's comments may raise a few eyebrows today, they bear repeating
here:
Nationalism must not be solely a political doctrine. It must exist in art and lit-
erature. Our painters and sculpters are, by the very nature of their work,
nationalists: landscape artists, historiographers, portrait painters. In finding a
subject they are forced to draw upon nature and on the history of the country;
their portraits and statues cannot but reproduce the Canadian people.
Religious art, alone, escapes this rule because its subject matter transcends
time and country. The consequence of nationalism in the plastic arts is that
those who practise it are always sure of finding a place for their works.
In music it is another matter since composition cannot, for obvious rea-
sons, put the national soul on display. But nationalism can be practised in
other ways; that is, in the preference given to works by our own composers
whenever possible. (Pelletier 1917: 6)
Although inconsistent (nationalism in music was apparently the work of
performers, not composers), Pelletier's concept, which hinges on such consid-
erations as a comparison of the arts, music and literature, Canadian subjects
as an identity factor, and the idea of displaying the national soul, went on to
sustain an animated and long-winded debate. It lived on as a theme for discus-
sion in certain Canadian milieux up to the end of WWII.
The response to Pelletier's concept came from one of Quebec's most bril-
liant and formidable critics and musicians, Leo-Pol Morin. Winner of the Prix
d'Europe in 1912, this concert pianist was 26 years old when he founded,
with several friends, poets, writers, and artists, the Montreal art review Le
Nigog (1918). This monthly lasted only one year (twelve issues). However,
because of the importance which all the editors attached to the question of
nationalism and because of the scathing style they adopted as if to ward off an
attack for which they were ill-prepared, the review exerted a profound influ-
ence not only on the direction of the debate but probably also on musical
composition. Until proven otherwise, it would seem that in the face of the vir-
ulent criticism directed at them, those Canadian composers who dared express
their heritage took care to do so discreetly. Thence, perhaps, the custom that
Morin reproached them for, of "keeping their manuscripts in boxes like rare
246 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
gems," "sheltered from prying eyes" (1930: 66).
THE PERIOD OF THE MOST HEROIC INTRANSIGENCE
From its first edition, Le Nigog, under Morin's name, attacked head-on
the question of Canadian musical nationalism. His article, entitled "The Story
of Canadian musical art and the musicians of Montreal," posed the following
question: have the Canadian musicians with works to their name created an
essentially Canadian music, that is to say, a music "which conveys a distinct
character and expresses the race in a superior fashion?" (1918a: 13). The
response: "I insist and repeat that there is no Canadian musical art" (1918a:
14). Then, as if to sustain his thesis, the author set about illustrating, in several
subsequent issues, what he regarded as truly national music, as observed and
approved of by him in England, Spain, France, Germany, and Russia, in
short, everywhere but in Canada.
Unable to provide a convincing demonstration, the author, in his over-
bearing way, resorted to mockery and insolence. With regard to works by sev-
eral noteworthy composers he wrote:
These works do not represent Canadian art. Rather, if this is the expression
of the Canadian race, then it is insignificant, it is nothing to be proud of, it is
as lacking in originality and life as could be imagined. (1918a:14)
Specific examples followed: "In Montreal, there is European and other
music" (1918a: 15). Rodolphe Mathieu: a musician of the land? For that to be
true, "he would have to stick some kind of photographic text onto his music to
label his harmonies and determine their meaning" (1918b: 159-160). To write
"national music consciously would be tantamount to assigning moral, meta-
physical, social, religious or philosophical meaning to music, something that
only a great genius could achieve" (1918: 161),
7
 implying, of course, that
Mathieu was no such genius since his music escaped such characterization.
If one treats the green wood thus, to paraphrase the Evangelist [Luke
23:31], what will happen to the dry wood? The review of an organ recital in
which Ernest Langlois had had the audacity to perform some works by his fel-
low-countrymen offered Morin the occasion to conclude:
How remote it all is, how lacking in meaning! One could confuse all these
works, mix the titles and signatures, and no personality would be affected by
it, if I exclude Couture, Fortier, and M. Tanguay. This is no doubt what they
want to call Canadian music.... It is scarcely even the threat of a movement.
(1918b: 173)
We shall reserve for the second part of this article an examination of the
reasons why, according to Morin, it was not possible to believe in the exis-
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 247
tence of "Canadian music," and a description of the conditions proposed if
original music was to be composed in Canada. Here, we shall try to define,
briefly, the basis on which the critic's attitude and judgement rested. In this
regard, certain passages from an article dedicated to Rodolphe Mathieu are
particularly revealing (1918b: 159-162). Morin presents himself as a "support-
er of art that is universal and 'broadly human'," to use a phrase of Arthur
Letondal, Morin's former teacher and a critic of his ideas (Letondal 1918:
213-216) referring to music that was conceived, first of all, as the expression
of man and nature, in the broad sense of the term. Its language and expres-
sion bore "the essential characteristics of the human soul," for its domain was
"the entire world" (Morin 1918b: 162). Consequently, to practise any form of
nationalism was equal, in the eyes of the critic, to creating "musical regional-
ism." As for the "broadly human" aspect to which Letondal alluded, one finds
one of its articles of faith in a statement by Morin directed toward Canadian
music:
It is not impossible that an expression of life will emerge from Canada. But I
could never extend the expression of art to the collectivity, since it will always
remain, first and foremost, the expression of oneself, the gift of oneself.
(1918b: 162)
Reactions to such propositions are not known at present. Nevertheless,
we do know the moderate and carefully-phrased view articulated by Arthur
Letondal in the June number of Le Nigog (Letondal 1918: 216), one month
after Leo-Pol Morin's declaration cited above. This opinion leaves plenty of
room for compromise:
Granted that there is no Canadian music, no Canadian language in the rigor-
ous sense of the word.
It differs, however, from Morin on a key point:
But there are Canadian subjects. There is a Canadian soul, the emotion that
we draw upon in communion with the things we love because we know them
well.
And, surreptitiously, Letondal turned the argument back on Morin in the
form of a question: did he equally deny the existence of a Canadian musical
art which was "the expression of the Canadian race"?
8
 Did he equally deny
the presence of originality and of life, stigmatize imitation and, at the same
time, deny the possibility of research exploring the collective soul, i.e., the
Canadian soul, as its subject-matter? These are the inter-related ideas that, in
our opinion, are contained in the question put by Letondal:
248 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
If we do not succeed in being moved or interested by our customs, by our
national life, how can anything we produce be original? (1918: 216)
Previously, the author had taken the precaution to pose the premise,
probably conceded by Morin, that the human soul, in its intimacy, is the same
at all latitudes but that it wears "a particular physionomy among different peo-
ples" (1918: 215).9
THE PERIOD OF THE MOST GENEROUS OPTIMISM
Le Nigog represents an important source in the unfolding of the first
episode of the debate on the question of a musical nationalism in Canada. If
we leave this source, however, and turn to selected works from the 1930s, we
arrive at a new phase of history. Leo-Pol Morin, Rodolphe Mathieu and
Eugene Lapierre figure among the debaters.
The Papiers de musique of the first author, published in 1930, constitute
a sort of anthology of articles written for periodicals probably from 1926 on, a
short time after Morin returned from a prolonged stay in France (from early
1919 to the autumn of 1925). For his part, Rodolphe Matheiu who, since
1918, had been announcing the publication of a collection of aphorisms, pub-
lished his Par Ions... musique in 1932. The long-awaited aphorisms were con-
tained in a text divided into three main parts (I. Musical imagination and emo-
tion; n. Nationalism in music; HI. Technical questions), each subdivided into
chapters. Finally, the work of Lapierre, Pourquoi la musique?, published in
1933, resembled a sort of miscellany on general subjects such as the relation-
ships between music and linguistics, music and culture, music and philosophy,
and music and life in the first part, while the second tackled various questions
to do with nationalism in a superficial manner.
These three sources have several points in common concerning the issues
which interest us: the subject of Canadian musical nationalism (a little more
than half of the Morin volume, less than a third of Mathieu's and two-thirds of
Lapierre's), and their general tone. Far from being invective, as in the "period
of the most heroic intransigence" (1930: 59), the mode of expression is more
fitting for a debate now considered fundamental ("And national, music must be
that" [1930: 15]) and from which Canadian music can no longer be excluded
since several "substantial works permit the most generous optimism" (1930:
20).
10
Despite these changes, it quickly becomes evident to the reader of the
works cited above that the subject of Canadian musical nationalism was of
merely passing interest to their authors. The following sentence of Leo-Pol
Morin clearly reveals the lack of enthusiasm he felt in examining Canadian
music:
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 249
So much has been said about it [Canadian music] for so many years that we
now have to believe in its existence (...) I do not mean that it has become
almost pleasing, agreeable, adorned with the rare charm and seduction which,
up till now, were most conspicuously absent." (1930: 159)
In the same vein, Rodolphe Mathieu says that:
[It is] almost useless to try to express the character, the soul of a nation in
order to be a national artist since those things reveal themselves in the works
(...) It is not particularly by seeking to describe the customs of a country that
the art of a collectivity will be recognizable. On the contrary, by being able to
express all things with a special, as it were national, sensibility, the latter will
have even more opportunity to shine. (1932: 96)
Lapierre has very different views on the question. His opinions and the
style which conveys them more closely resemble a patriotic rallying cry than a
critical or aesthetic reflection. As illustration, these lines drawn from the first
chapter of the second part of Pourquoi la musique?:
We have [in Canada] everything that others seek. But we ask ourselves ques-
tions.—'Is there a Canadian nation?'—'Is there any Canadian literature?'—'Is
there even any Canadian history?' (...) All questions that we ask ourselves to
postpone the time when we will believe that we are a true nation, to post-
pone the time when we will accomplish the works and duties of nationhood!
Let me repeat it once again. We spend our time asking ourselves questions as
though depressed, formulating doubts as though ill, as though desperately
apathetic, deliberately exagerating the difficulty of taking action so as to avoid
any sacrifice... (1933: 95)
Thus, whether because of a critic's weariness from close acquaintance
with the sources or because of a composer's need for freedom in the exercise
of his art, we can guess part of the answer that the first two authors are going
to give to anyone wondering about the state of Canadian music. And, even
though his views are now more benevolent, Leo-Pol Morin, who claimed to
express "the opinion of everyone" (1930: 42), has not modified his position
since his declarations in 1918:
...if one considers the musical idiom in its most objective and characteristic
sense, there is no more a Canadian music than a Canadian language. (1930:
41)
This position is reinforced, two years later, by Rodolphe Mathieu.
Convinced that Canadian music can only be defined through a special, shared
technical principle which would give works "a family appearance so evident in
the earlier periods" (1932: 107), the author concludes:
250 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
This Canadian vocabulary of sound has yet to be created. (1932: 105)
One can even deduce from the following sentence that, once the principle
advocated by a few teachers
11
 had been established, it would be necessary to
wait, at the very least, one generation before seeing it taken up by the coun-
try's artists:
And when it [the special technical principle] has been used as a technique by a
large number of individuals it will be recognizable as and characteristic of a
new musical epoch in our country. (1932: 105)
We have seen the opinion of several important authors, and, through
them, the views of the majority, if not all, of their contemporaries (including
Eugene Lapierre) concerning the existence of Canadian music. As we have
said, this opinion remained fundamentally the same as that expressed in 1918
by Leo-Pol Morin, demonstrating the continuity in the views of this author and
in the influence that he exerted on the Montreal milieu until his death in 1941.
But whatever the degree of consensus demonstrated, one cannot fail to
notice an important methodological flaw in the Papiers de musique of Leo-
Pol Morin. In a conference paper presented to the ARMuQ in 1983
12
 I point-
ed out how easy it is to rebut the position taken by Morin, who denigrates the
value and specific nature of all Canadian music, of whatever period, while
freely admitting to not having a thorough knowledge of the works involved.
The Papiers de musique, for example, recognize certain scores of Guillaume
Couture from before 1914, but what do they have to say about works from
the same period by other composers in Quebec or the rest of Canada?
Nothing that we know of. And concerning the musical style of certain charac-
teristic forms of expression, such as dances, patriotic songs, descriptive pieces,
etc.? Again, nothing. It nevertheless took fifty years for this contradiction to be
revealed, and for reasons to be found for going back to find out what we could
from the works themselves in the hope of discovering a neglected or little-
known aspect of our ancestors' musical art. Each era has its own spirit and
methods. The era in which Morin lived seems to have had to put everything
through the prism of aesthetics to justify its judgments; our own era must
restrict itself to the actual music and not be afraid to resort to objective meth-
ods and techniques to present a new perspective on each question.
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 251
PART Two
TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF A CANADIAN MUSICAL STYLE
"National—music must be that."
Leo-Pol Morin
The majority of authors who studied the subject of Canadian music
between 1917 and 1942 queried the existence of a particular musical style to
which one could apply the label "national," as is amply demonstrated in the
first part of this paper. One might also add, if comments made by Jean
Papineau-Couture in 1942 can be taken to reflect the general opinion of com-
posers bom before 1920, that providing an answer to this question was still a
preoccupation a little before mid-century, even though the most lucid com-
posers had already detected a trend, in all forms of music, towards the disap-
pearance of national styles and the emergence of a single, universal style
(Papineau-Couture 1942: 25).
TOWARDS CANADIAN Music
Although they accepted that if "several musicians, among the most impor-
tant" imposed a tendency toward universalism, Canadian music would become
"universal like all other music" (Papineau-Couture 1942: 25), our authors
unanimously voiced the necessity of giving this art a national colour. It is true
that the motivation behind this point of view was not always clear: if we con-
sider, for example, the aforementioned text by Jean Papineau-Couture, it
would seem that one of our composers' preoccupations was to make a nation-
al music in a general but not in a regional sense. In other words, Canadian
music had to follow the current, giving composers the role of imitators rather
than defenders of an ideology. Is this the sign of a weakness some might con-
sider hereditary? The question is not quite so simple. What seemed like indeci-
sion could in fact have been far-sightedness : one must bear in mind that tradi-
tional Quebec nationalistic ideology defined Quebec as a society that was
Catholic, French, and rural, far removed from the reality of the 1940s
(Hamelin and Provencher 1981: 141). This ideology, which kept the national
ideal alive, also swamped all expressive forms which were associated with it. If
this is the case, was it not that the composers were searching for a more
appropriate, or at any rate, less artificial justification for musical creation?
Whatever the eventual response to this question, one idea stands out from
the writing of our critics and thinkers during the period under consideration:
"National, music must be that!" Let us look again at certain characteristic pas-
252 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
sages affirming this.
1. Leo-Pol Morin—one of the clearest and most articulate expressions of
the idea comes from Leo-Pol Morin:
The means by which a thought or a musical idea is expressed is, no doubt,
universal, understood in all the countries of the world in which the same sys-
tem of sounds is used, but the soul of the music, its meaning, its spirit, remain
national. National, music must be that. Despite current trends it still remains
national, maybe more so than the various forms of modem literature. (1930:
15)
Let there be no mistake about this expression: national music. Being
national in no way diminishes music's value. (1930: 15)
The distance covered by the Montreal critic between writing the above
article, entitled "Recovering our national feeling" and inserted in the Papiers
de musique of 1930, and penning his numerous attacks on the same idea in
the Le Nigog (1918), is tremendous. In 1918, the vocabulary of the defender
of universal music seemed insufficient to condemn with the necessary force
the evil presented in the name of "musical regionalism." For the unconditional
partisan of universal and pure music, "to confine music within moral, meta-
physical, social, religious, or philosophical meaning is using art outside its
domain
13
 and immobilizing it when it ought, above all, to have the most com-
plete freedom of all life" (1918b: 161-162). Morin himself commented on his
about-turn, as can be seen in the warning contained in the "Introduction" to
his Papiers de musique:
And if, in certain cases, the line of thought is not the same, this should not be
seen as a contradiction, but rather as a natural evolution, subject, moreover,
to honest discipline. (1930: 10)
Short of knowing, precisely, the circumstances which led Morin to such a
radical change of opinion in a decade, we can try to understand what these
enigmatic words signify: a natural evolution, "subject, moreover, to honest dis-
cipline." It seems that this phrase holds the key to the explanation we are
seeking; a lucid and critical mind like Morin's could not fail to observe the
inconsistency of his 1918 argument, which applauded national character in
French, German, Spanish, Hungarian, English, and American music and, at
the same time, opposed his compatriots' attempts to characterize Canadian
music. The contradiction resides more in the double standard he applied in
1918 to the music of various countries than in the difference between the
positions he defended in 1918 and 1930. What was corrected, between those
two dates, by way of "honest discipline," was a method whose main weakness
was an excess of youthful passion (Morin was 26 in 1918).
2. Eugene Lapierre—Whereas Leo-Pol Morin, in a text of 1930, stuck to
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 255
a position of general principle concerning the necessity of national, and of
Canadian national, music, and Papineau-Couture suggested that Canadian
composers could only define their national style if no more imperious musical
need arose, Eugene Lapierre, on more than one occasion, revealed himself to
be a vigorous proponent of national music in Canada. Basing his position on
the postulate that "it must be possible for each country to have its own dis-
tinct, different, original or ethnic musical style" (1942: 16), the author of Pere
des amours continues: "The importance of national music [in Canada] has
never moved us as it ought to" (1942: 8). Then he defines the role that he
attributes to himself in the diffusion of this idea:
For my part, I came to this belief very young, almost as a visionary (...) I
attached myself, applied myself with Breton obstinacy (...). Finally, in the third
stage of this evolution, I left study behind and, filled with zeal, attempted to
awaken intellectuals to the facts. (1942: 8)
At first glance, this militantism is astonishing. Had the author discovered
something that was hidden from the others? The portrait of the Canadian
musical past that he painted certianly did not seem to justify such optimism:
"There was not, there has never been," he wrote, "enough Canadian music
published to be analyzed and inventoried; or rather, so little that it has been
impossible to uncover general characteristics" (1942: 11).
Given these conditions, was the creation of a Canadian musical style, in
Lapierre's opinion, simply a future possiblity? Not exclusively, since certain
contemporary works could perhaps define the long-sought-after "formula" "for
our own style" (1942: 16), such as "le Ber" by Albertine Caron-Legris or "Le
Tinton de mon clocher d'argent" by none other than Lapierre himself, both
positive and innovative examples (1942: 30)! But, in the end, it seemed that
the material was insufficient, since the author labelled truly Canadian music a
"realisable dream" (1942: 17).
At this stage of our study, it is perhaps not inopportune to recall that
Lapierre's publication, to which we have made reference, was exactly contem-
poraneous with the aforementioned article by Jean Papineau-Couture: "What
will our Canadian music be?" The year was 1942. New trends were appearing
which, as we have said, explained the uncertainty of many young composers
in promoting national values. What, then, propelled the action, or rather the
"zeal," of a person as influential as Lapierre in this period?
The answer to this question, although it has to be deduced from Lapierre's
writings, is nonethelss unequivocal: the corpus of terms and ideas behind his
discourse is borrowed from the official ideology of the Quebec church.
Lapierre, echoing Father Groulx whom he cites repeatedly, makes reference
to "our collective soul, our valliant history, our spiritual traditions as a Latin
race" (1942: 6), to the "intellectuals" (1942: 8), propagators in Quebec of a
254 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
national ideal, to the "national heritage" (1942:14), to the concept of a
"Christian and Catholic people" (1942: 19), and to the related concept of a
"still vigourous religion (...)" which "provides us comfort" (1942: 24).
THE CAUSES OF NECESSITY
This connection is interesting since, at this point in our discussion, it
requires us to examine the causes which rendered necessary the establishment
of a musical style that was Canadian, or national, the two terms being synony-
mous in this respect as we shall see later. On this point, unanimity reigns
among the authors consulted so far: the question of national music was
brought up in an attempt to resolve a problem of identity. And insofar as the
question was of general and immediate interest, it was important that each
country define its originality in this area.
This explanation, despite its obviousness, remains incomplete, for the
notion of identity, especially in art, is a relative one; the criterion of distinction
that it implies supposes not only a "formula" of that which is fundamental to a
people, but also a specific object which dictates the most appropriate form for
presenting these traits. For the act of identifying is inseparable from the act of
comparing.
Thus, in asking to whom the question of defining Canadian music was
addressed, it seems that we are better able to understand the reasons that led
to the affirmation that it was necessary for our music to take on a national
colour.
If we again investigate the two authors who present the most articulate
thoughts on this subject, we discover a profound divergence in their view-
points on this aspect of the problem. We should say, however, that neither of
these authors addressed this question directly. It is, therefore, by recourse to
textual analysis that we can propose an interpretation.
Even after his "conversion" to the cause of Canadian music, Morin, for
example, did not say why Canadian music had to be national. However, the
fact that his general affirmation, "national, music must be that" has no condi-
tions, permits us to conclude that, in principle, it applies not just to Canadian
music but to music in general. As for the justification of the underlying princi
ple, it is contained in the following passage:
In becoming national, European music was not following a fashion but obey-
ing a need. It was not a question of setting up inflexible barriers with no possi-
bility of intercourse, but of learning national languages which still seem best
adapted to expressing specifically national ideas (....) (1930: 159)
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 255
If we extend this concept to the cause of the music of this country, may
we not conclude that the capacity to create a national music was to provide
Canada not simply with pride, but with the satisfaction of being able to
express ideas in its own language, and that this would lead to enrichment on
the national level and a contribution to the international community? It is clear
that this way of examining the issue brings us to the very frontiers of music,
even in the broadest sense.
Eugene Lapierre's concerns on this question are very different. First of all,
from the first lines of his text we are struck by his fervent tone:
The title of this second essay indicates already that my optimism has not
weakened. To the contrary, it has become emboldened. (1942: 5)
If we juxtapose these comments with the excerpts cited earlier, which indi-
cated the state of mind in which Lapierre had long been considering the issue,
the conclusions we have drawn receive further justification. But what kind of
involvement are we talking about? What is important here is less music as a
total art than as a manifestation of the people, as seen through the eyes of the
intellectuals, the preferred tone being dictated by the leading lights of tradition-
al Canadian nationalism. For although it was musical, the program to which
music adhered, defined by an ensemble of fixed coordinates, left the field of
pure music behind and entered the social realm. When art is modeled on
ideals of beauty established by those in authority as part of a community-wide
undertaking, its goals are redefined accordingly. Did not Palestrina, according
to legend, save polyphonic art and set the standards for three centuries of
Catholic religious music by providing a musical model to meet the views and
expectations of the Church?
THE URGENCY OF UNDERTAKING ACTION
The proverb "Necessity knows no law" is often used to justify the need for
action and the framing of an effective plan. What was the position taken by
our Canadian theoreticians in this respect?
Let us begin with the question of the need to undertake or pursue action
in the area of "musical nationalism." On this point, it is instructive to compare
American and Canadian authors from the first decades of the 20th century.
In the years following WWI, American music was promoted as a research
subject. The goal pursued by Copland, for example, around 1925 was to write
a work whose American character would be immediately recognizable (Chase
1955: 488). His objective was not expressed in abstract terms; on the con-
trary, the words chosen reflect the composer's haste to reach his aim: "I was
anxious (....)"
256 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
The same observation, perhaps, can be made about the conclusion of a
short article by Roy Harris, "The Grown [sic] of a Composer," published in the
Musical Quarterly of April 1934 (1934: 188-191). Having tried to define the
state of the soul of a young composer, his earliest experiences and their con-
sequences for the development of his career, the musician concluded:
If all these qualities and all this experience are given to a composer before he
gets too old, (...) he has a good chance of creating a music that will faithfully
reflect his race, his time, and himself. (1934: 191)
No such statements by Canadian authors exist, except for the short repri-
mand of Lapierre: "we have too often neglected certain duties pertaining to
our spirit" (1942: 8). On the contrary, the realization of a Canadian musical
style was viewed as a distant possibility by Morin:
We are perhaps still far away from a similar fertilization [of Canadian music by
a creator of stature] (....) (1930: 45)
The use of the future tense by Papineau-Couture in an article of 1942 is
equally revealing of his thought. And it is, without doubt, irony on his part to
predict the coming of "a Canadian school in a relatively short time," whereas
the manifestation of a Canadian style depends, according to him, on the
receptiveness of the public to new works, accelerating or retarding the process
(1942: 26). How can one explain this pessimistic attitude of the Canadians
towards a subject of such primary importance for musicians?
CONDITIONS FOR THE EXISTENCE
OF A CANADIAN STYLE
We believe that two main explanations are needed in this respect. The
first derives from the short comparison which we have just introduced. The
projected creation of a national music style was seen by American composers
as falling within their sphere, whereas Canadian composers considered that
the problem could only be dealt with once a set of prior conditions had been
fulfilled. In other words, American composers felt able to define their own
music while in Canada, definition was left to society. If the analytical conclu-
sions we anticipate turn out to be correct, it would be hard not to agree with
the statement of Jean-Robert Talbot:
Here [in music] as elsewhere, our national spirit, compared with the spirit
which accompanies our group sentiment, is a little like a handkerchief that
one is proud to wave on the end of a stick in a StJean-Baptiste procession,
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 257
instead of being a profound sentiment felt in our hearts, of which the effect
extends to our whole life. (1942: 304)
It must, certainly, be recognized that, with the exception of Papineau-
Couture, all those writing on the subject had assigned themselves the role of
informing and educating the public, which is how Morin defined musicography
(1930: 10 and 181). Others were involved in education (Talbot, Lapierre, A.J.
Duchesnay), and one should not exclude the possiblity that equating the
national question with the question of an educational system faced with
numerous obstacles was perhaps seen as a powerful means to further one
cause without harming the other. It is in this perspective that we will now
bring together the conditions posed as a priori for the appearance of a
Canadian musical style.
The degree of unity reached on certain elements described by Lapierre as
"influences [which] could change these fine possibilities into action" (1942: 6)
is striking. Rather than recapitulating, as in the first section of this paper, a list
of reasons explaining the absence of an authentic Canadian musical style, it
seems more appropriate to report a certain number of propositions taken
from the writings examined thus far. They are here presented succinctly, in an
order which could mirror their relative importance well.
Proposition 1
Music should, first of all, be invested with an official character, however
"useless" music is seen as being. For to continue to consider it simply as an art
of entertainment confines it to the rank of "life's amusements," renders the
teaching of it superfluous, and discourages composers (Morin 1930: 48-50).
Proposition 2
A system of teaching designed to encourage the development of future
composers should be inaugurated. The system should be designed so as to:
2.1 ensure the transmission of a science, the acquisition of a solid craft
(Morin 1930: 51; see also J.-Duchesnay 1947: 23). This technical
acquisition of knowledge has certain failings, however, including the
neglect of "the cultivation of aesthetic sensibility," in the words of
Amedee Tremblay who considered that most French-Canadians
lacked aesthetic sensibility;
14
2.2 "construct a real personality" by orienting the study of music "in a
way which develops the musical intelligence of students at the same
time and to the same extent as their sensibility and imagination"
(Talbot 1942: 305-306). To achieve this, the method should,
among other things, include the imitation of models in order to
258 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
lead "subjects to use all their creative faculties" (Talbot 1942: 306).
The subject of imitation, part of the framework of cultural develop-
ment and of every debate about individualism, returned insistently in
the writings of our critics. Arthur Letondal, for example, underlined
the necessity of "drawing on the masters of French thought for
clarity, sobriety, and tightness of expression" (1918: 214). Leo-Pol
Morin, basing his position on the principle that "it is not by simply
rejecting everything that is foreign that we will forge a national art"
(1918c: 378), concluded that to "take from abroad what we need is
natural and necessary," and that it would be weakness, consequent-
ly, "not to be able to think for oneself" (1930: 68). But it is
Rodolphe Mathieu who, in the course of describing the process of
assimilation resulting from the reliance on imitation, best presented
and defended this thesis. In order to be understood, his ideas merit
reporting in full:
...In order for this artistic desire to develop, the influence of artistic personali-
ties as models is first of all necessary—For, before one creates, one imitates,
before on imitates, one admires. It is the first condition of every impetus and
every aesthetic development.
A creative artist almost always begins by demonstrating a preference for
one author in particular; he submits to the charm, he falls in love, one could
say; it is this author who will be his model. Sometimes the influence of the lat-
ter continues throughout the first tentative period of work and sometimes
longer, if the enchantment is strong enough. (...) Nothing, however, stands in
the way of the model being advantageously surpassed, such as seems to be
the case for the composer of the rhapsodies. We feel the influence of such
models on all musicians. It would even be a good idea for each artist to select
a fitting model and use that model as a basis to develop according to his per-
sonal nature. For one influence is perhaps worth more than several, even
expressing unity of character which is customarily more apt for self-develop-
ment in a single direction. (1932: 94-95)
2.3 keep alive certain traditions containing traits of our culture, such as
song (Lapierre 1942: 13). Rodolphe Matheiu seems to have relied
on this proposition when he pleaded for institutions to be inspired
by local needs (Mathieu 1932: 135).
Proposition 3
An "atmosphere appropriate for creation," according to Morin (1918c:
378), should be created by the instigation of a series of measures and the
development of fundamental attitudes of which the most important are:
3.1 state intervention. Mathieu is the most ardent defender of this idea.
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 259
He develops it to the point of suggesting "the immediate national-
ization of musical production" (1932: 117), in the name of the prin-
ciple according to which "in art, the state must also replace the
court" (Mathieu 1932: 113). Obviously, a preliminary condition
must be realized: that the craft of Canadian composer be officially
recognized (Morin 1930: 43);
3.2 the growth of private philanthropy as in the U.S. (Lapierre 1942:
6), already proposed by several artists as early as 1912 (Franchere
1912: 1);
3.3 the development of a music publishing industry in Canada, given
the discouraging situation for composers, in order to counterbalance
the diffusion of material from abroad liable to choke the feeble local
production (Morin 1930: 66 and Lapierre 1942: 9-11). Note that,
as early as 1912, A. Letondal was already sounding the alarm:
We have some music composers. But Montreal is not yet a centre of publica-
tion. It is necessary either to publish abroad or to keep what one writes in
cardboard boxes (1912: 2);
3.4 a change in the public's attitude towards the works presented. 'For
the composer Papineau-Couture, public attitude was decisive:
The public can accelerate or hold back the flowering of a Canadian style by
the reception given to works which are presented to them (1942: 26).
Proposition 4
It was important that "a beehive spirit" develop in Canada, by means of
which several works in the same style would be produced by several individu-
als, as in the past (Mathieu 1932: 106-109). The formation of such a school
presupposed the emergence of a genius (Morin 1930: 44-45) or of several
masters endowed with a strong personality, they alone being able to build a
system which, in a more or less deliberate manner, would contain the "power-
ful original technical principle...able to serve as a common language" (Mathieu
1932: 86 and 98-99).
GENERAL EXAMINATION
OF THE PROPOSED CONDITIONS
Without reviewing in detail each of the four main propositions presented,
let us not forget, as prior conditions for the formation of a national musical
style, we are nevertheless able to describe certain general trends observed in
analyzing these comments made by music critics.
260 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
No one could deny that the sum total of these propositions form a far-
reaching and certainly pertinent agenda for believers in the concept that
"social evolution always determines the musical evolution of a people" (J.-
Duchesnay 1947: 26). But how do we explain that creation, which is first and
foremost an individual act, was seen to be handicapped by the absence of
favourable conditions?
The deep-level explanation could reside in a certain submissive spirit on
the part of our musicians and critics towards certain thinkers and theoreticians
invested with quasi-supreme authority in the last years of the 19th century.
The writings of this honoured group constituted a veritable reservoir of ideas
on which Canadians drew heavily during the fifty years which followed their
appearance.
Two sources have been identified as having a particularly strong influence
on the thinking of the Canadian authors who engaged in the debate on the
question of a national music. The Elements d'esthethique musicale
(Elements of musical aesthetics) (1884) by Antoine Francois Marmontel (1816-
1898) is the first. In these pages by the aesthetician and eminent French
piano professor, teacher of Canadians Dominique Ducharme, Calixa Lavallee,
Arthur Letondal, Romain-Octave Pelletier and Gustave Gagnon (later to teach
Leo-Pol Morin), we find two fundamental ideas, posed as conditions for the
existence of a musical style in Canada by our critics:
1. Only a genius is able to create a distinctive style that can later be imi-
tated by his disciples:
Style can be individual or be received through instruction, or derive from a
preferred master. Only privileged natures are permitted to have an absolutely
distinctive style, to create, to invent a mould in which to cast their thoughts.
(...) this precious gift, (...) is one of the attributes of genius. (Marmontel 1884:
108d)
15
2. Style depends on a set of conditions defined by society:
...beauty and its different modes of expression, the varieties of style which
derive from them, differ in their manifestations, in their productions, accord-
ing to the temperament of the human races; according to climatic zones,
according to the customs, beliefs, laws, social education, and international
relations between peoples; and we might add, according to their innate artis-
tic taste. (Marmontel 1884: 108c)
The first of these ideas, characteristic of a century which judged every-
thing according to criteria of grandeur and genius, was taken up with insis-
tence, as we have seen, by Morin and Mathieu. The second idea, on the other
hand, was developed principally by Eugene Lapierre (see for example 1933:
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 261
18) and Alice J. Duchesnay.
After Marmontel, another author who left an indelible mark on the think-
ing of our musicologists was, without dispute, Edmond de Nevers (1862-
1906). This Canadian, established in Paris from 1888, launched, in a volume
published in his adopted city under the title L'Avenir du peuple canadien-
frangais (The Future of the French-Canadian People) (1896),
16
 an ambitious
program of action for his compatriots with regard to national identity. The
success of the plan that he conceived is linked, at least where music is con-
cerned, to the inauguration of a complete system of education modelled on
the Paris Conservatoire.
17
It is by rasing the intellectual level through the quality of advanced education
that the goal of all our ambitions will be raised, (p. 216)
...Only if one wants to profit from this fortunate predisposition [a strong
taste for music] more than as amusement, more than as transitory pleasure
...is an appropriate culture, higher music education, necessary, (p. 227)
...But, why have we not a music conservatory in Montreal? (p. 228-229)
...A conservatory in the province of Quebec, besides developing and purify-
ing our musical taste, would serve to open up an honourable and easily lucra-
tive career to many young people. Artists trained at the conservatory would
find a huge field to exploit in all of English America, (p. 231)
...Artists and writers...who will spread throughout America, as a source of
high culture, who will carry at the same time to our brothers dispersed over
the great republic the pride of the French name. (p. 240)
The thesis of Edmond de Nevers, according to which the existence of a
Canadian musical style is linked to the creation of a system of specialized
teaching, is one of the ideas which most deeply marked the thinking of
Canadian authors grappling with the problem of constituting a national musi-
cal style. One easily perceives its echo in the writings of Letondal, Pelletier,
Morin, Mathieu, Talbot, and Lapierre, to name but a few.
18
 The success of
the thesis can be explained, in our opinion, by the lesson received from
Marmontel, for whom education matures the distinctive qualities of the various
nations and "allows one to say, when talking about their production, their
characteristic and brilliant works, their stylistic nuances (Greek style)..."
(Marmontel 1884: 108c).
Knowledge of the writings of these two influential thinkers, Marmontel
and De Nevers, helps illuminate the explanations sought for the requirements
defined by certain Canadian authors for the creation of a national music. It is,
however, impossible to explain why, as we stated at the beginning of this sec-
tion, the creation of a style was regarded as conditional on the a priori realiza-
tion of a complete set of factors. Could it be, simply, as Rodolphe Mathieu
indicated (1932: 117), that a naive belief in the role played by institutions hid
the absence of a real desire to produce?
262 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
OUTLINE OF A CANADIAN MUSICAL PROJECT
The summary and analysis in which we have been engaged since the
beginning of this paper would not be complete without some discussion of
what could, or ought to have been the Canadian music produced after, pre-
sumably, the necessary social evolution. Rodolphe Mathieu and Eugene
Lapierre have left some very interesting writing on this subject. As for Leo-Pol
Morin, his ideas on this are less systematic but nevertheless captivating.
1. Leo-Pol Morin
According to Leo-Pol Morin there were two different manners by which a
product could merit the title of national music: 1) by its personality, its spirit;
2) by its recourse to folklore. After comparing the work of Wagner and
Debussy, on one hand, and that of Hindemith, Poulenc and Auric, on the
other, he stated:
If it is not through the land or through authentic folklore, it is by its personali-
ty, by its spirit, by that which it expresses about the individual, about what is
particular and at the same time general about the individual, that this music is
German or French. (1930: 27)
In the journal that he wrote about the work of several Canadian musicians
in his Papiers de musique, and more clearly still in his volume Musique, it is
sometimes by means of the first and sometimes the second criterion that he
comes to recognize, though not without reticence, the music of his compatri-
ots.
What were the general traits of Canadian music? For a critic as severe as
Leo-Pol Morin, it was difficult to reply to this question other than in a positive
or idealized sense. For if such music has some merits, it also has faults:
Besides those [faults] which result from technique and inspiration, the music
remains ...quite naive, without form and often without colour. (1944: 165-66)
It had made some progress, however, and a little before his death, Morin
considered its demeanor to be "more lovable, less stiff, less rustic, freer and
bolder" (1944: 266).
This said, two groups of works attracted his attention.
The first group: "les Fleurs." Like flowers, certain Canadian works gave
off a perfume and commanded respect by their colour and character: the
music of Letondal is all elegance and clarity (1944: 260); that of Champagne
seduces by its discreet and persuasive emotion (1944: 169), by its art of deli-
cacy, elegance, subtlety and charm of which he had the secret (1944: 263);
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 265
the fine and discreet writing of Tanguay borders on lyricism, on the creation of
an atmosphere full of timidity and tenderness (1944: 263). These works, then,
share a certain family resemblance. The author could not deny it and further-
more, he perceived reasons for it:
Knowledge and finesse, elegance and spirit, good measure and culture are
rare things in Canada, but it seems that the young musicians have something
close to it. (1944: 266)
The second group was not given a special label. To the extent that the
character of some works that he includes in this group have features diametri-
cally opposed to the Apollonian grace of the preceding group, we might label
them with the unamiable epithet of "Fleurs du mal."
The things which works of this sort project include the fullness of warmth
and substance and generous lyricism of Mathieu (1944: 262); the pointed
rhythms and harmonies of Callihou (1944: 264); the mark of an imaginative
musician, a vibrant and caustic poet such as Blackburn (1944: 272).
One can see that unity is lacking in these works. But it is not necessary to
see, in this division, a reason for the non-existence of a Canadian style, but
rather the vital signs of an equilibrium produced by the play of contrary forces
in a society formed by different individuals. What is lacking at this exact point
of Morin's analysis is the comparison of these generalized traits with those of a
distillation of what Marmontel would have called "the native and characteristic
qualities which constitute the essence, even the nature of the nationality"
(1884: 108d). For it is only after such a comparison that any real possibility of
appreciating the works' authentic style and true national colour would exist.
Morin did not undertake this task and this is a factor which tends to weak-
en his authority in identifying a Canadian style. It is undoubtedly also for this
reason that he was content to describe a situation rather than set out, in the
form of a program, his guidelines for a Canadian musical style. On the other
hand, the suggestions that he made relating to folklore as a means of giving a
special cachet to Canadian works seem to be well founded.
According to Morin, Canadian and Eskimo folklore had, up to 1940, only
been the object of "timid and awkward borrowing" (1944: 259). However, it
is in folklore that "the surest national expression resides"; as proof, "the musi-
cal births and rebirths which have, to a large extent, a common origin, folk-
lore...." (1944: 336). That is why he invites musicians to avail themselves of it
as a means of "personalization" (1944: 337). But earlier, Morin presented the
following warning:
...the era of direct borrowing is past and it is now a question...of transposing
onto a general, universal level a disposition or a way of doing things typical of
the country which bears the accent of the country and is recognizable as its
264 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
native language. Melodies and rhythms are created in this manner which are
the accent of the country which give birth to them and which, consequently,
carry the traits of the race. (1944: 336-337)
Whether a composer relied on the spirit or the letter of folklore, the critic
insisted on the necessity of using it "with tact, with taste, with delicacy, in a
word with genius" (1944: 337).
2. Rodolphe Mathieu
Concerning the relationship between folklore and composition, Mathieu
had very different ideas from Leo-Pol Morin. Far from seeing it primarily as a
means of personalisation, the author of Saisons canadiennes considered it as
a factor of limitation, even alienation. Given the origin and venerable age of
folksongs, the composer was not afraid to say:
We sense and understand better the nature of this country.... We are no
longer entirely French. We have been transformed.... Why, then, revive a sen-
sibility which is no longer ours? (1932: 72)
Insisting on the need to leave a composer free to realize a true creation,
Mathieu showed that he was preoccupied, first and foremost, with research on
what he called "an original technical principle" which could be used as a com-
mon language. This principle which, according to Mathieu, had yet to be dis-
covered, would have to encompass melody, harmony, rhythm and instrumen-
tation (1932: 82-83 and 86). And it would have to reflect the "way of think-
ing," the "original turn of phrase common to each individual in the country"
(1932: 97).
One is left wondering what the concrete results of the research would be.
The composer's veiled reply is important:
For Canada, it is possible...to conceive of a music completely different [from
folklore], far more Canadian perhaps; an immense music with expansive
melodic lines, with buoyant rhythms, with rich and varied harmonies, with the
sonorities of the forest, giving a feeling of grandiose immensity, in quiet as in
powerful moments. There would be, lastly, a special technical principle in the
melody, harmony, rhythm and form; it would be an essentially musical cre-
ation, with a purely musical, and not literary, character. (1932: 104-105)
3. Eugene Lapierre
The last author to present original views on the ideal nature of a Canadian
style and production is Eugene Lapierre. His ideas are found on pages 17 to
25 of a conference text published in 1942 titled: "Un style canadien de
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 265
musique" (A Canadian musical style). The following excerpt summarizes the
essence of his argument:
In comparison with others, this music would be more willingly melodic,
although with rustic rhythms; it would emit a strange charm of suave melan-
choly and tender serenity. Preoccupied with impression rather than sensation,
it would use the depth of harmony of the ancient modes, cultivated in our
churches. Mystical and elegant at the same time, Canadian music would con-
stitute a sort of compromise, an aesthetic oscillation between the limpid music
of France...and that of Russia—with whom we share snow and vast expans-
es...(1942: 17-18).
Although they do not agree on every point (e.g., Mathieu's ideas about
folklore in comparison with those of Morin and Lapierre), these three "agen-
das" begin from a common fundamental idea: the necessity of creating a
Canadian musical style with its own characteristics. In this respect, the differ-
ent platforms seem to be complementary. That time has foiled the plans of
the promoters of this laudable project does not reduce their importance and
significance. Witnesses to a period that experienced what is commonly called
"a crisis of style"—and a chronic crisis as far as music was concerned; and
spiritual heirs to religious, literary and political guides who inculcated in these
intellectuals the idea of accomplishing a mission in the face of the world, espe-
cially in the artistic domain, French-Canadian musicians were more or less
predestined to moderate the debate which inspired our article. In conclusion, it
would seem only fair to state that although, as witnesses to their era, our
authors' attempt at defining a Canadian musical style was somewhat tentative,
as spiritual guides their vision has, in many ways, been realized.
This chapter is taken from pages 3:2-7 and 4:6-32 of Les Cahlers de 1'ARMuQ 3,4. Copyright © 1984 Les Cahiers de
1'ARMuQ. Reprinted by permission of Les Cahiers de 1'ARMuQ.
ENDNOTES
1. One thinks, for example, of James Huston's Repertoire national, the first edi-
tion of which was published in 1850.
2. Let us cite, among others: Marcelle Rousseau, "The Rise of Music in Canada,"
an unpublished Master's thesis, Columbia University, 1951, p. 130-131; Jacob
Da Wagner, "Healey Willan, His Life and Organ Literature," unpublished
Master's thesis, Union theological Seminary, 1957, p. 1-6; Robert A. Skelton,
"Weinzweig, Gould, Schafer: Three Canadian String Quartets," unpublished
Doctoral thesis, Indiana University, 1976, p. 3.
266 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
3. See his article on "Style" in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, ed. by Stanley Sadie, volume 18, pp. 316-321; in particular pp.
316-317.
4. For more on this subject, see Leo-Pol Morin 1930: 66-67.
5. Between 1983 and 1993, no fewer than 14 volumes centred around the prinic-
pal genres have been published; a further ten or so volumes will be forthcoming.
6. The first in a series of books resulting from the compilation and study of data
from the press was published in 1990 under the title Repertoire des donnes
musicales de la presse quebecoise 1764-1799.
I. The musician evidently alluded here to different musical concepts developed by
Wagner, Mahler, and Scriabin, among others.
8. These terms are the ones used by Morin in the article cited above (1918a).
9. This phrase, inspired by Marmontel's Elements d'esthetique musicale (Paris,
1884) was reiterated almost exactly by Morin in Musique (Montreal:
Beauchemin, 1944: 335): "Undoubtedly, the interpretation through which a
musical idea or thought is expressed is universal and understood the same way
in every country or culture. But the soul of this music, its meaning, its spirit,
remain national."
10. Similarly, Eugene Lapierre says (1933: 127): "we have a certain number of
musical works which are as good as lots of others."
II. On this subject, see up to p. 99 of Mathieu (1932).
12. See the "Actes du deuxieme Colloque de 1'ARMuQ" in the Cahiers de
I'ARMuQ 3 June 1984: 25.
13. As noted earlier, its domaine is defined as the whole world (1930: 169).
14. See the letter to Paul G. Ouimet, published in "La Mouvement artistique au
Canada," in Le Devoir HI/177 (27 July 1912): 1; see also Mathieu 1932: 131-
134).
15. The thesis was repeated exactly by Rodolphe Mathieu in Par/ons...Musique
(1932).
16. In a lively but precise manner, the author defines, on pp. 235-236, what should
be included in a conservatory curriculum.
17. A definitive study of the origins and influences of De Nevers' ideas has yet to be
written. However, he seems to have based some of his remarks on an article by
Napoleon Legendre, "L'Art et les artistes au Canada" (Art and Artists in
Canada), first published in the Revue de Montreal, and later in Le Canada
Musical 5/10 (01.02.1879: 148-150), as well as on the "Appreciation du
recent article de M. N. Legendre, suivie de quelques considerations sur la
musique" (Appreciation of Mr. N. Legendre's article, followed by a few remarks
concerning music), by Salomon Mazurette, a letter sent from Detroit
(15.03.1879) to the editor of Le Canada Musical and published in the April,
1879 issue (pp. 188-189).
18. It is also possible that the founding of the National Conservatory of Music and
Elocution in Montreal by Alphonse Lavallee-Smith in 1905, in the wake of the
fruitless attempts by Antoine Dessane and Calixa Lavallee, owed their success to
the influenced exerted by Nevers' book.
A CANADIAN Music STYLE: ILLUSION AND REALITY 267
REFERENCES
Asselin, Andre. 1968. Panorama de la musique canadienne. Paris: Editions de la
Diaspora francaise.
Chase, Gilbert. 1955. America's Music. New York: McGraw Hill.
Groulx, Lionel. 1941. Notre mission franqaise. Montreal.
Hamelin, Jean and Jean Provencher. 1981. Breve Histoire du Quebec. Montreal: Le
Boreal Express Ltee.
Harris, Roy. 1934. "The Grown of a Composer." Musical Quarterly. XX/2: pp. 188-
191.
Huston, James. 1850. Le Repertoire national, 4 volumes. Montreal: Lovell et Gibson.
J. Duchesnay, Alice. 1947. "La Musique au Canada." Culture. VIII: p. 23.
Lapierre, Eugene. 1933. Pourquoi la musique? Montreal: Editions Albert Levesque.
. 1942. Un style canadien de musique. Quebec: Editions Cap Diamant.
Letondal, Arthur. 1918. "L'Ame canadienne." Le Nigog. 1/5 (mai): pp. 213-216.
Marmontel, Antoine. 1884. Elements d'esthetique musicale. Paris: Heugel et Fils,
(new edition: 1944. Montreal: Beauchemin).
Mathieu, Rodolphe. 1932. Parlons ... musique. Montreal: Editions Albert Levesque.
"Le Mouvement artistique au Canada." 1912. <letters>, Le Devoir, HI/177 (27 juillet):
1; HI/18 (3 aoQt): pp. 1-2.
Morin, Leo-Pol. 1918a. "La Legende de Part musical canadien et les musiciens de
Montreal." Le Nigog. I/I (Janvier): p. 13.
. 1918b. "M. Rodolphe Mathieu et le terroir." Le Nigog. 1/5 (mai): pp. 159-
173.
. 1918c. "L'Art et le regionalisme." Le Nigog. 1/11 (novembre): p. 378.
. 1944. Musique. Montreal: Beauchemin.
. 1930. Papiers de musique. Montreal: Librairie d'action canadienne-fran-
taise.
Nevers, Edmond de. 1896. L'Avenir du peuple canadien-frangais. Paris: Henri
Jouve.
Papineau-Couture, Jean. 1942. "Que sera la musique canadienne?" Amerique
frangaise. 11/2 (octobre): pp. 24-26.
Pelletier, Frederic. 1917. "Le Nationalisme en musique." Le Devoir, VIII/264 (10
novembre): p. 6.
Rousseau, Marcelle. 1951. "The Rise of Music in Canada." Master's thesis, Columbia
University.
Skelton, Robert A. "Weinzweig, Gould, Schafer: Three Canadian String Quartets."
Doctoral dissertation, Indiana University.
268 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Talbot, Jean-Robert. 1942. "Avons-nous une culture musicale rationale?" Culture.
ffl/3 (septembre): pp. 304-309.
Wagner, Jacob Da. 1957. "Healey Willan, His Life and Organ Literature." Master's
thesis, Union Theological Seminary.
Sadie, Stanley, (ed.). 1980. "Style," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians. London: Macmillan, 18: pp. 316-321.
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE...
UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES:
REGIONAL MYTHS, IMAGES OF PLACE AND
NATIONAL IDENTITY IN CANADIAN COUNTRY Music
JOHN LEHR
Some years ago Maclean's magazine ran a contest in which readers were
invited to complete the phrase "As Canadian as..." Entries ranged from the
mundane "As Canadian as maple syrup" to those which tilted at political icons
or identified and lampooned our national character and foibles. Third place
was taken by "As Canadian as John Diefenbaker's French"; second place was
awarded to "As Canadian as a Royal Commission," but the first place went to
the incisive "As Canadian as possible...under the circumstances."
Indecision and compromise are perhaps not the two most useful charac-
teristics to be possessed by a people struggling to create a sense of identity
and forge a spirit of nationhood. Canada faces unique problems in this regard.
It is fragmented both linguistically and geographically and has as its neighbour
a dynamic, culturally aggressive English-speaking country which outnumbers it
by a ratio of ten to one. If English-speaking Canadians are to acquire a distinct
sense of identity, to formulate their own images of their nation and the regions
which comprise it, they must do so on their own terms, not in a cultural vacu-
um, but in a cultural environment protected in some measure from the onrush
of attitudes, beliefs, values and myths emanating from outside its borders, and
principally from its great neighbour to the south.
IDENTITY AND CULTURE
The process of building a sense of national identity is slow and uncertain.
Its success depends on the ability of a nation to maintain a vibrant popular cul-
ture which furthers the development of a sense of place and fosters the evolu-
tion of those myths and images which are at the base of the identity, loyalty,
270 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
and nationhood of all nation states.
This has not been lost upon the guardians of Canadian culture. The role
of popular culture as a vehicle for the dissemination of attitudes, values and
images which all contribute to the building of a Canadian identity was clearly
acknowledged in 1968 when the Federal government moved (once again) to
obtain control of the broadcasting media. Under the terms of the 1968
Broadcasting Act it was stated that "the Canadian broadcasting system (public
and private) should be effectively owned and controlled by Canadians so as to
safeguard, enrich, and strengthen the cultural, political, social and economic
fabric of Canada."
1
This act established the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommuni-
cations Commission (CRTC) as an agency to monitor and regulate the amount
of non-Canadian material broadcast by any Canadian radio or television sta-
tion. Power to regulate the amount of non-Canadian material was bestowed
through the control of licences to broadcast. Since 1970 the CRTC has insist-
ed that granting of new, or renewal of existing, licences be tied to the attain-
ment of Canadian content goals which it has established. In 1971, when the
rules were last revised, the Canadian content requirement for AM radio sta-
tions was fixed at 30 percent of all broadcast material; for FM stations, each
of which is treated separately, the percentage may be higher.
2
To reduce the impact of American-generated material and to increase the
propagation of material originating in Canada, the CRTC required that 30
percent of all recorded music broadcast by AM radio stations meet the defini-
tion of "Canadian" by satisfying any two of four criteria: a) the instrumentation
or lyrics were principally performed by a Canadian; b) the music was com-
posed by a Canadian; c) the lyrics were written by a Canadian; d) the live per-
formance was wholly recorded in Canada or broadcast live in Canada. It also
required that either the music or lyrics of at least five percent of the music
broadcast by a station between 6:00 am and midnight be composed by a
Canadian.
3
To ensure compliance, the CRTC requires that every station must furnish
broadcast logs and tapes which it spot-checks for infringements of its content
rules.
4
Canadian content regulations in the broadcasting media are frequently jus-
tified on economic grounds. It is claimed that these requirements ensure that
Canadians in the entertainment industry would be assured of exposure to the
Canadian market. There would thus be a direct employment benefit plus incal-
culable spin-off benefits for Canadians at all levels: singers, musicians, song-
writers, recording technicians and recording studios. Nevertheless, it is abun-
dantly clear that the CRTC was also motivated by a concern to nurture a fledg-
ling Canadian culture. In 1970, Pierre Juneau, Chairman of the CRTC, assert-
ed that:
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE. ..UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 271
Our mandate and our purpose is to ensure that Canadian broadcasting devel-
ops as a system of us to communicate with one another about our problems
and the problems of the world; about our ideas and our views of the world;
about our past and our hopes for the future, about our environment, about
the quality of our lives, about our role in this area of the universe.... There
should be wide and free expression through song and drama...of our feelings,
of our joys and sorrows, of our worries, and our enthusiasms, of our angers
and our generosities, of our hopes and our dreams. ^
The aim was to further national identity, and as Alan W. Johnson, then
president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, clearly thought, to erect
a cultural barrier to hold back the waves of material spawned in the United
States which reflect and propagate the values, images, and myths of American
society:
We are in a fight for our soul, for our cultural heritage and for our nation-
hood. Without a culture there is no political survival and we are not a nation.
It is impossible to calculate, or even describe, the devastating, cumulative
effects of the self-invited cultural invasion of Canada by American(s).... We
simply are different from Americans in our history, traditions, institutions and
values.... The timeless objective of surviving has been given a new imperative
by the sudden awakening of the contemporary version of our Canadian crises
of identity and nationhood.^
COUNTRY Music
If there is one genre of popular culture which stands to be influenced by
the Canadian content regulations it is that of country music. Modem commer-
cial country music is a popular cultural form which has strong folk antecedents
and distinctive regional origins and associations. Its lyrical content is rich in
environmental, social, and spatial images; and, unlike many other popular
musical styles, lyrics are important in country music. They serve more than to
accompany the melody; they are the focus of attention in the vast majority of
all country songs. In the same way that the true folk (traditional) music of the
past offers insights into the social and environmental attitudes of the common
non-literate folk from whence they sprang, modem commercial country music
through its lyrics similarly reflects the Weltanschauung of the functionally, but
not actively, literate ordinary people of our present society.
7
If the proliferation of country music stations and their estimated market
share of the listening audience is any guide, country music is now an extreme-
ly popular musical form throughout Canada. According to the Country Music
Association's 1982 figures there are now 147 radio stations broadcasting
country music in Canada, 41 of them on a full-time basis.
8
 Over the past
272 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
decade the audience for country music has expanded, partly as a result of
demographic factors, since it tends to appeal to a more mature (25-55) popu-
lation, and partly as a result of the erosion of the image of country music as
the preserve of rednecks and country simpletons. All of this makes country
music a potent agent for the reflection of the regional images and myths with
which it is so frequently concerned. It is a powerful medium for the creation,
dissemination and popularization of images of places, geographical stereo-
types and regional myths. For, as Aida Pavletich has noted, song carries a
message and it influences the thoughts of people far more than many are pre-
pared to acknowledge: "Songs may express a chic mentality of what people
believe they are supposed to think. Song expresses also what people feel,
which may differ from what they may admit to thinking."
9
 Furthermore,
music, even without words, has the power to create, or to capture, a sense of
place and to bestow special attributes to otherwise unremarkable places.
IMAGES IN COUNTRY Music RADIO BROADCASTS
To assess the effect that the CRTC's Canadian content regulations have
had upon the spectra of geographical images and settings referred to in the
lyrics of country songs broadcast in Canada, I randomly sampled 24 hours of
music broadcast by two Manitoba country music stations—CKRC 630 in
Winnipeg and CFRY 920 in Portage la Prairie—over an 11-month period
from June 1981 through April 1982. Each record played was analyzed as to
its Canadian content, lyrical content, references to places, environmental
inferences and action settings.
The material broadcast by the two stations differed in style, since CKRC is
oriented towards the urban "contemporary country" market and CFRY direct-
ed towards the rural "traditional country" market. For both stations about 40
percent of all material met the CRTC's definition of Canadian.
The lyrical imagery of the broadcast material was centred strongly in the
south of the United States, principally in the states of the Confederacy.
References to 'the South', 'Dixie', the Appalachians and the Ozarks were
common and uniformly positive. Individual states were frequently identified by
name and were attributed specific characteristics; Texas emerged as a kind of
easy-going macho Utopia; Tennessee was depicted as the guardian of the basic
values of rural North America, a place of poverty maybe, but rescued by
adherence to family and kinship; a place of tightly-knit rural communities,
well-established social order, and serenity:
In my Tennessee mountain home
Life is as peaceful as a baby's sigh
10
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE. ..UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 275
Kentucky, West Virginia, Louisiana and, to a lesser extent, Georgia,
Alabama and Oklahoma, all served as spatial metaphors for home, family, sta-
bility, and known trusted values. In all cases their images were strong and
complex. Despite the stress on family, security, and order, there was a coun-
terbalancing distrust of the official manifestation of the administration of the
law clearly shown by the open expression of approval of the manufacturing of
illicit liquor, the flouting of excise regulations and of other perceived unwar-
ranted intrusions into personal freedom.
If the southern states were the sacred world, the northeastern industrial
states were the profane. Portrayed as cold, in both the environmental and
social senses, the northern states were depicted as a Scylla and Charybdis for
the migrant southerner:
I've always heard a lot about the Big Apple
So I thought that I would come up here and see
But all I've seen so far is one big hassle...
11
California occupied an ambivalent position in country music imagery. On
the one hand it was portrayed as the promised land of ease, wealth and sun-
shine, whereas on the other it was the home of Hollywood, regarded as a lat-
ter-day Sodom, and used as a metaphor for shallow pretention and ostenta-
tion, the embodiment of all those values antithetical to the hard-working,
unpretentious and self-effacing country folk of Tennessee.
From the sample material it became evident that country music reflected
and perpetuated regional images and myths. In certain cases the regional
images were sufficiently strong to function as surrogates for value statements:
New York—profane; Tennessee—sacred; and the equally common country-
sacred and city-profane dichotomy, the spatial embodiment of the prostitute-
madonna syndrome so common in the portrayal of women in country
music.
12
There is thus a strong vision of North America purveyed to at least 20
percent of those Manitobans who listen to the radio. It is a distinctive set of
geographical images which influence the way in which North American
regions, cities, and towns are perceived by those who are exposed to country
music radio broadcasts in Canada. It is a view distorted to some extent, it must
be remembered, by the fact that at least 30 percent (and nearly 40 percent in
the sample) of this material is considered to be "Canadian content" and as
such should reflect our view of Canada and ourselves. However, a considera-
tion of the view of North America using only Canadian content material
reveals that the basic structure of the mythology is little different. The same
regions predominate, as attention is still focused south of the border.
Canadian content material accounts for practically all the references to
274 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Canadian places. Nevertheless, the balance is weighted strongly in favour of
imagery drawn from the entrenched mythology of the regions and towns of
the United States.
CANADIAN CONTENT AND PLACE IMAGERY
This preponderance of imagery centred in the United States found within
Canadian material is caused partly by the structure of the CRTC regulations,
partly by the origins of country music, and by the existence of a body of
entrenched images basic to country music songwriting.
Since the CRTC's definition of Canadian content may be met by having a
song with non-Canadian music and lyrics recorded in a Canadian studio by a
Canadian singer it is quite possible for lyrics promoting strong images of the
United States to be classified as Canadian. The case of "When I Die Just Let
Me Go to Texas" by Ed Bruce, Bobby Borchers and Patsy Bruce, is an excel-
lent example. This song, recorded by American country-rock singer Tanya
Tucker, enjoyed considerable popularity in the early 1980s. A "cover version"
of this by the Canadian singer Tracy Lynn, produced in a Canadian recording
studio in 1981, met the CRTC Canadian criteria and thus when broadcast was
listed as Canadian. While the subsequent broadcasting of this version of this
song undoubtedly contributed to the sale of Canadian manufactured records it
is questionable whether Canadian self-images were much advanced:
When I die, I may not go to heaven
I don't know if they let cowboys in
If they don't, just let me go to Texas
Texas is as close as I've been.
13
It seems evident that the promotion of distinctive images of Canada will
come from Canadian writers and not from Canadian singers who rely upon
American material. In this regard it is also evident that the structure of the
Canadian content regulations which are presently in force cannot prevent the
promotion of material with a cultural impact inimical to the philosophy of cul-
tural nationalism espoused by the government from whence the CRTC derives
its mandate.
MARKET FORCES
One of the realities facing the Canadian government in its attempts to
influence the type and content of material broadcast within its borders is that a
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE. ..UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 275
large proportion of the material from which Canadian recording artists may
draw emanates from the United States. In country music the situation is exac-
erbated by two factors: the strong influence of a few powerful record produc-
ers who determine what is marketable and hence, by controlling access to the
mass market, determine the direction of country music; and the strong region-
al dominance in country music writers and performers. The latter prefer to
deal with their subject in terms and in images familiar to themselves and the
bulk of their potential audience, and the producers, with an eye to market
potential, tend to select songs with appeal to the mass country music market
in the United States.
14
Identification with place can be an important aspect of the success of a
country music song, or any song, for that matter. In the early 1970s, for
example, a Canadian country musician, Rick Neufeld, composed "Moody
Manitoba Morning." He was pressed to change the title to "Moody Minnesota
Morning" to guarantee easy acceptance in the US market.
15
 To his credit he
did not do so, but although his song enjoyed success in Canada it did not
become popular south of the border. Neufeld missed the chance to earn thou-
sands of dollars. The importance of place identification in market acceptance
is also well-illustrated by the rewriting of the now standard "I've Been
Everywhere," popularized by Hank Snow. Written by an Australian, it cele-
brated Australian places; for the American market the lyrics were redrafted to
centre upon North American place names.
Concern for market acceptance and the financial rewards which attend
popularity in the United States market thus act against a Canadian writer
employing Canadian images in song lyrics. Certainly the CRTC Canadian con-
tent regulations do not address the problem and the CRTC presumably rests
content that unimaginative lyricists should promote an imported mythology
lauding Texas and Tennessee.
PLACE IMAGERY AND CANADIAN WRITERS
Despite this failure of the CRTC regulations to actively promote the build-
ing of a Canadian identity of place, in the lyrical content of Canadian country
music over the past decade there has been a strong sense of regional and
national identity emerging in the work of some of Canada's most talented
songwriters. Most notable are Ray Griff and Ian Tyson.
Griff, a former Albertan now living in Nashville, consistently celebrates
Canada, Alberta and his native town of Winfield in Alberta, in his composi-
tions. His "Canadian Pacific," which has been recorded by many established
country music artists, centres on a three thousand mile journey from the
276 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Maritimes to Vancouver and democratically mentions each Canadian
province. But though Griff's work is avowedly Canadian it lacks the powerful
imagery of the songs of Ian Tyson, who, in his music, deals extensively, but
not exclusively, with Canadian imagery.
Tyson has a rare feeling for sense of place and an unusual ability to evoke
strong images of the settings he selects for his songs. In his earlier work "Four
Strong Winds" he wrote the first popular song which captured the vastness
and melancholy of the Canadian West. He later gave a graphic and emotional-
ly-charged depiction of Vancouver, British Columbia, in "Summer Wages," a
song which reveals a deep understanding of the way in which physical and
social attributes combine to create a unique geographical ambience.
In all the beer parlours all down
along Main Street,
The dreams of the seasons are all spilled
down on the floor,
Of the big stands of timber, just waiting
for the fallin'
And the hookers standing watchfully
waiting by the door,
So I'll work on the tow boats with
my slippery city shoes,
Which I swore, I would never do again,
Through the grey fog-bound straits
Where the cedars stand watchin'
I'll be far off and gone, like
summer wages.
16
More recently Tyson has focused upon the grasslands of the great basin
and the Rocky Mountain foothills, seeking images of ranching life from
Alberta to Texas. A product of this was what many consider to be the quintes-
sential rodeo song, "Someday Soon," and others which are less well-known
but equally effective in their use of strong direct spatial imagery.
The natural lines of communication in North America run north-south,
not east-west. Tyson's music reflects this, for it stresses the natural geographic
linkages between Western Canada and the states of the Western interior of
the United States. The international boundary is artificial; politically significant,
but irrelevant on a socio-cultural level. The West, to Tyson, is a region; within
it are variations of climate and behaviour, but it retains a strong regional
integrity:
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE ... UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 277
Well, them ol' boys down in Texas
chew Copenhagen
Wash it all down with Coors
Ain't a bit bashful about speakin'
their minds.
They'll tell you what's theirs and
what's yours.
There's Waylon and there's Willie,
they own about half the state
And sing of her glories all in song...
Well up north it's saddle broncs and
its hockey and honky tonks,
Old Wilf Carter 78s,
Dumb stuff like chores when it's 20 below
They're the things a
country boy hates...
17
Here Tyson is formulating a distinctive Canadian approach to regional
imagery in writing music. The Nashville approach is to emphasize the north-
south, industrial-rural regional model which fits the poor southern white migra-
tory experience. This is inappropriate for Canada since the geographical rela-
tionships differ. In Canada real regional contrasts are intra-national—east-
west—not international—north-south.
Furthermore, the direction and form of the migratory experience basic to
country music differs markedly between Canada and the United States. The
model celebrated by United States' country music lyrics is that of the poor
white rural southerner seeking economic benefits by migrating to the urban-
industrial complexes of the northeastern states. In Canada the rural urban drift
has been less focused in a spatial sense. The recent migratory movements of
the 1970s, spawned by the growth of the hydrocarbon industries in Alberta
and Saskatchewan, saw a movement from the urban areas of central Canada
and the small towns of the Maritimes to the resource frontiers of the West. For
many of those involved this entailed leaving a major metropolitan centre such
as Toronto, Ontario, and moving to a small urban centre such as Edmonton,
or to the resource towns of the Rocky Mountain foothills, to the Peace River
district, or to the boreal margins. The migration path was east to west and
principally urban to urban, although the movement can also be seen as one
from the metropolitan heartland to the provinces of the largely rural hinter-
land.
All of this is succinctly expressed by Tyson, who identifies the major com-
ponents of this migration, creates new metaphors to convey its dynamism and
278 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
social character, and builds towards the establishment of a regional myth of
Alberta as wide open rural ranching frontier. Like all good country music
images, Tyson's image of Alberta is highly selective, with a blurred division of
reality and fiction:
It's wall to wall pickups in the parkin'
lot tonight.
That 'Oh thank god it's Friday'
feelin's here.
They got a line-up at the back door,
they got three deep at the bar
Just knockin' back the shooters and
drinkin' beer.
So gas up your old Chevrolet and
head 'er way out west
To the land of golden opportunity.
You'll get a first-hand education of how
the cowboy rocks and rolls
With that old Alberta Moon thrown
in for free
1
**
Not only is the feeling of rural small-town Alberta captured but, with star-
tling economy of words, the major socio-geographical regional differences
between Ontario and Alberta are portrayed by the use of simple socio-spatial
imagery. The implication is that Toronto is the urbane metropolitan centre but
that Alberta maintains a sense of adventure and freedom:
Toronto may be Rhythm and Blues,
but if you migrate here
You'll be howlin' at that
Old Alberta Moon.**
Put more simply, the image is Alberta—sacred, Toronto—profane.
THE CRTC
Canadians have similarly made considerable contributions to the evolution
of the imagery of country music in the United States, where they have been
instrumental in fabricating some of the most enduring regional myths perpetu-
ated through the genre. The image of the US southwest, for example, results
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE ... UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 279
partly from evocative country songs such as "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" and
"Cool Water," both regarded by many as the definitive western songs, and
both written by Bob Nolan, a Canadian from New Brunswick. Canadians are
equally capable of creating similarly powerful and lasting images for their own
country. Indeed, a brief presented to the Federal Cultural Policy Review
Committee in 1981 by the (Canadian) Academy of Country Music entertain-
ment argued that there is no shortage of Canadian-oriented country music
written, performed and recorded by Canadians.
20
 Yet if the sample of broad-
cast material examined in this study is at all representative, there is not yet a
distinctive Canadian exchange of images, analogies and metaphor being
broadcast on the airwaves of Canadian radio stations, despite their adherence
to the Canadian content rules of the CRTC. Clearly these regulations are inef-
fective in controlling the substance of the material broadcast within the nation.
If, as Alan Johnson claimed, "we are in a fight for our soul, for our cultural
heritage, and for our nationhood," the CRTC is fighting the wrong enemy
with the wrong weapons.
21
The CRTC does not appear to be concerned about the neglect of Canada
as a setting for country music lyrics, yet many Canadian songwriters do have
misgivings. In an oral presentation to the Federal Cultural Policy Review
Committee, the Academy of Country Music Entertainment let Canada song-
writer Wayne Rostad put their case for them:
We must look in our own backyards; we must not be afraid to name our
cities, our towns, our people. We have to stop writing for that American
hook, stop prostituting the art form, or the realism. In our own backyard
there is a wealth of stories and happenings to tell [of] that will contribute our
own unique [identity] to country music.
22
Market demands may argue against Rostad's exhortation. Commercial
radio program directors are interested in selling air time to clients who wish to
advertise a product or a service. Advertisers, in turn, demand a large audience
which has specific demographic characteristics, a demand which has a major
impact on the nature and content of music that is played. Ryand and Peterson
have argued that a pursuit of a wider listening audience has led to changes in
the nature of country music imagery, concluding that "the interests of Proctor
and Gamble, Burger King, and the local drugstore impinge directly upon the
aesthetics of country music."
23
In this Achilles heel lies the real opportunity of the CRTC to effectively
promote a sense of nationhood within the country music field in Canada.
Since programmers may be wary of songs with metaphors and images that
are new and unfamiliar to their listening audience, and hence may prefer to
rely upon formulaic repetition of old familiar images derived from south of the
border, Canadian writers may feel pressed to deal in such images, knowing
280 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
that market acceptance of their material is thereby enhanced. A rewording of
Canadian content criteria to acknowledge the significance of lyric material
treating a subject in Canadian terms might begin to counter this tendency and
encourage the broadcasting of material by Canadian writers such as Tyson,
Griff and Rostad.
Until Canadian country music songwriters feel able to draw with equal
facility for their images, analogies and metaphors from within Canada as well
as from the geographical mythology of the United States, they can do little to
further the cause of Canadian identity. In the meantime, Canadian country
music will simply have to remain as Canadian as possible...under the circum-
stances.
This chapter is taken from pages 16-19 of border/lines 2. Copyright © 1985 border/lines. Reprinted by permission of
border/lines.
ENDNOTES
1. Radio (A.M.) Broadcasting Regulations (Ottawa: Supply and Services Canada,
1979), pp. 10-11.
2. Ibid.; and Radio (P.M.) Broadcasting Regulations (Ottawa: Supply and
Services Canada, 1977), pp. 14-17.
3. Radio (A.M.) Broadcasting Regulations, pp. 10-11.
4. Personal communication, R.G. Gordon, Canadian Radio-Television and
Telecommunications Commission, Winnipeg, 29 April 1980.
5. Press release by Pierre Juneau, Chairman, Canadian Radio-Television and
Telecommunications Commission, 22 May 1970. (Ottawa: CRTC Research
Documentation [entre, typewritten ms.D pp. 5-6.
6. A.W. Johnson, "Touchstone for the C.B.C.," Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, June 1977, pp. 5-6.
7. E.V. Bunkse, "Commoner Attitudes Towards Landscape and Native," Annals
of the Association of American Geographers. 68 (1978), pp. 551-66; John
C. Lehr, "Texas (When I Die): National Identity and Images of Place in
Canadian Country Music Broadcasts," Canadian Geographer. 27 (1983), pp.
361-370; and L.R. Ford and L.M. Henderson, "The Image of Place in
American Popular Music: 1890-1970," Places. 1 (March 1974), pp. 31-7.
8. Winnipeg Free Press, 17 April 1982; and information from the Canadian
Country Music Association, 5 November 1982.
9. Aida Pavletich, Rocfc-A-Bye, Baby (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company,
1980), pp. 5-6.
10. "Tennessee Mountain Home," words and music by D. Parton.
11 . "Dixie on My Mind," words and music by Hank Williams Jr.
As CANADIAN As POSSIBLE. . .UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 28
12. Barbara B. Sims, '"She's Got to be a Saint, Lord Knows I Ain't': Feminine
masochism in American country music," Journal of Country Music. 5, No. 1
(1974), pp. 24-30.
13. "When I Die, Just Let Me Go to Texas," words and music by Ed Bruce, Bobby
Borchers and Patsy Bruce. Copyright 1977, 1978 Tree Publishing Company,
Inc., and Sugarplum Music Company International. All rights reserved.
14. John Ryan and Richard A. Peterson, "The Product Image: The Fate of
Creativity in Country Music Songwriting," in James S. Ettema and D. Charles
Whitney (eds.), Individuals in Mass Media Organizations, Sage Annual
Reviews of Communication Research, Vol. 10 (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications,
1982), pp. 11-32.
15. Personal communication, Peter Grant, president of the Academy of Country
Music Entertainment, 1980-1981, and station manager CHMM Winnipeg, 17
June 1982.
16. "Summer Wages," words and music by Ian Tyson.
17. "Alberta's Child," words and music by Ian Tyson. Speckled Bird Music. CAPAC.
18. "Old Alberta Moon," words and music by Ian Tyson 1978. Speckled Bird
music. CAPAC. All rights reserved.
19. Ibid.
20. Academy of Country Music Entertainment, "Submission to the Federal Cultural
Policy Review Committee," n.d. (1980?) Appendix II, pp. 5-6.
21. A.W. Johnson, op. cit., pp. 5-6.
22. Wayne Rostad in tape-recorded presentation to accompany the written
"Submission to Federal Cultural Policy Review Committee," Academy of
Country Music Entertainment, op. cit.
23. Ryan and Peterson, op. cit., pp. 20-21.
This page intentionally left blank 
"DREAM, COMFORT,
MEMORY, DESPAIR":
CANADIAN POPULAR MUSICIANS
AND THE DILEMMA OF NATIONALISM, 1968^1972
ROBERT A. WRIGHT
English-Canadian popular music matured thematically and economically
amid the euphoric nationalism of the Centennial era. Ironically, this matura-
tion owed less to the benevolence of the newly-created CRTC and the adula-
tion of the nationalist music press in Canada than it did to the influence of
American folk-protest music. Much Canadian pop music in these years
appeared stridently anti-American, but, in truth, thoughtful Canadian song-
writers like Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockbum, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young
were suspicious of the new Canadian nationalism and profoundly ambivalent
about the United States. Revulsion for 'official' America and sympathy for
American youth combined in the songs of these musicians to produce some of
the most poignant pop music of the Sixties generation.
Canadian popular music came of age during Richard Nixon's presidency.
Direct government involvement in the so-called cultural industries—a reasoned
and consistent effort to protect Canada from absorption into the mass culture
of the United States—became the policy of federal governments beginning in
the mid-1950s. Slowly that policy and the environment it had fostered yielded
internationally recognized theatre, scholarship, television programming and
journalism. Yet as late as 1970 Rolling Stone magazine observed that, with
respect to popular music, Canada was "notorious for virtual non-support of its
own talent."
1
 It is today axiomatic that the exodus of Canadian performers to
the United States after the Second World War was a great national loss; critics
still cite the careers of Guy Lombardo, Percy Faith, the Diamonds and espe-
cially Paul Anka as evidence of Canada's prolonged indifference toward popu-
lar music. Only in the late 1960s did it become acceptable, or profitable, for a
young Toronto folk singer to write a "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" or for a
284 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Winnipeg rock band to make a hit single out of "Running Back to Saskatoon."
Canadians recall with great pride how a soft-spoken teacher from Nova Scotia
began a career of superstardom with a song written in a Prince Edward Island
farmhouse, and how "Four Strong Winds" blew across their prairies.
2
 They
remember that two of the anthems of the "Sixties generation" in North
America—"Woodstock" and "Ohio"—were written by introspective folk
singers raised in small Canadian towns.
The aim of this paper is to explore the dynamics of national self-con-
sciousness in English-Canadian popular music during this "golden age," 1968-
1972.
3
 Of special concern is the tension that grew out of the connection of
Canadians to the American musical mainstream on the one hand and the
mounting pressure Canadian musicians and songwriters faced from the cultur-
al nationalists of the Centennial era on the other. Much of the music written
by Canadians in this period seemed to celebrate life in the Dominion and, as is
so often the case in periods of intense Canadian nationalism, it criticized the
United States. Not far beneath this facile exterior, however, lurked a haunting
anxiety about what it meant to be nationalistic. The commercial imperative of
the English-language pop music industry was, and remains, a profoundly
homogenizing force: even among Canadian musicians who did not relocate to
New York or Los Angeles, there was an implicit recognition that success
meant cracking the American market.
4
 Canadian musicians travelled widely in
the United States and recognized that there were a good many Americans
unhappy with the social and political status quo; they recognized as well that
Canada was not without problems of its own. Underscoring this dilemma,
above all, was the pervasive influence upon their music of what were quintes-
sentially American musical styles and lyrical themes. The emergence of
mature, politically sensitive, and broadly accessible Canadian popular music in
this era, it may be argued, had less to do with homage to Canadian geographi-
cal and historical landmarks than with the extent to which it had co-opted and
preserved an earlier American folk-protest tradition.
In the mid-1950s, when most learned Canadians believed the only music
worthy of study was "highbrow," essayist Leslie Bell made the courageous
observation that "the endless 'pop' tunes that are bom and buried each month
play a vital part in Canada's life and, despite their frequent lack of musical
worth, offer a valuable index to her habits, customs and ways of thinking."
Although less than impressed by the continental phenomenon by then known
as the "Hit Parade," mainly because it tended to have an homogenizing effect
on youth in all North American urban centres, Bell revered the preservation of
rural Canadian folk traditions in which one could find "a truly independent
national taste." Don Messer in Prince Edward Island, "singing cowboys" like
Wilf Carter and Hank Snow, square dances on the prairies, and the tradition-
ally isolated folk traditions of Quebec and Newfoundland—these were the last
"DREAM, COMFORT, MEMORY, DESPAIR" 285
bastions of musical distinctiveness in Canada. But even these, Bell'despaired,
were "losing ground against the onslaught of American radio."
5
For the most part, of course, "American radio" was also homogenizing
whatever American regional traditions had persisted into the age of the elec-
tric guitar. The Jeremiahs of the rock-and-roll age in the United States were
themselves busy lashing out against pop music's "lack of musical worth" as
well as against Elvis Presley's lasciviousness. Canadian and American suspi-
cions of this new music differed, however, on at least one level. For reflective
Canadians there was something additionally troubling about the fact that the
sound, the styles, and the records themselves were American. Here was fur-
ther evidence in this era of continental integration of Canada's incapacity to
resist the mass culture of the United States. A recently published survey-histo-
ry of post-war Canada has made the sardonic but not altogether misguided
point that some Canadians breathed a sigh of relief when Paul Anka's "Diana"
proved that "they could do it too."
6
 In such differing responses the first stir-
rings of the ambivalence that would later permeate the Canadian popular
music industry can be seen; however, as the authors of this volume are quick
to add, in Canada "no one cared very much." Voices like Leslie Bell's cried in
the wilderness.
The year 1967 was Canada's centennial and, just as Confederation had
been consolidated in part out of disgust for the "noisy" republic to the south,
Canadians expressed their celebration of this anniversary in terms of the relief
they felt at not being part of the United States. Canadians recoiled when ghet-
tos in Newark and Detroit exploded into violence that summer, when the Tet
Offensive of February 1968 revealed the futility of the Vietnam War, and
when Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. were gunned down the
following spring. Lyndon B. Johnson's popularity as president slipped to an
all-time low just as, on a wave of jubilant nationalism, Pierre Trudeau was
elected Prime Minister—even the youth of America looked to Trudeau's
Canada to harbour draft evaders and lead the crusade to liberalize marijuana
laws. Journalist Alexander Ross exclaimed that
Hundreds of young Americans, not all draft-dodgers by any means, are pour-
ing across the border in search of a simpler, cleaner alternative to the
American Way. The word is out that a country that can produce a poet as
great as Leonard Cohen and a politician as groovy as Pierre Trudeau must
know something Americans don't.?
That the border was indeed open to what one Canadian writer has called
"American refugees from militarism"^ helped to entrench the notion that
Canada was pacifistic. Thoughtful Canadians recognized that, in fact, their
government had done nothing to curb Canadian participation in the produc-
tion of arms destined for South-East Asia and that its selective admission of
286 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
fleeing Americans mimicked the class inequalities of the draft.
9
 Nonetheless, it
was not their war. Hawks were few in Canada; in the liberal press, Vietnam
served as a useful measure of the distance toward self-serving imperialism the
United States had travelled. Outspoken Canadian critics of "American imperi-
alism" openly associated the plight of the Vietnamese with their own struggle
against economic and cultural domination by the United States.
"Cultural nationalism" in the late 1960s was the beginning of the end of
Canadian indifference toward popular music. Along with the Liberal govern-
ment's crackdown on foreign ownership in Canada came the imposition by
the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission of a
quota system for radio broadcasting. Commencing in January 1970, the
CRTC ruled, 30 percent of the radio programming in Canada must be
"Canadian," that is, it must be written, performed, or produced in Canada.
This opened the recording industry to Canadian talent as nothing had done
previously, and a great scramble to build record companies and to sign artists
followed. Many who came to be identified with the nationalism of this era—
Bruce Cockbum and Murray McLauchlan, for example—owe the relative ease
with which they broke into the industry to this regulation. The Juno Awards,
named after CRTC president Pierre Juneau and based upon strict Canadian-
content criteria, were also founded in 1970.
Paradoxically, however, the CRTC ruling was problematic for Canadian
performers. Perhaps unexpectedly, it fostered a keen and what would become
an enduring awareness in the Canadian pop music industry of the limitations
of nationalism. Canadian musicians did not want their success to appear to be
due solely to the meddling of the government. Musicians of every stripe
attempted to dispel the perception that they had a nationalist axe to grind or
worse, that their work was officially sanctioned. It was widely known, for
example, that prior to 1970 Anne Murray had identified very closely with her
maritime Canadian roots; as Jon Ruddy of MacLean's pointed out, only this
could explain why she had "languished" for several years in the chorus of
CBC's "Singalong Jubilee."
10
 Gene McClellan's "Snowbird" (1970) made her
the favoured child of Canadian pop music critics, for unlike Joni Mitchell and
Neil Young, they said, she had not forgotten the way back to Canada from the
United States. Laudatory articles like John Macfarlane's "What If Anne Murray
were an American?" abounded.
11
 Less than two years later, however, when
Murray had moved to an exclusive Toronto suburb and had begun to savour
enormous success in the American market, she reflected: "I don't like being
used by journalists. You know, as some kind of a national symbol. I'm an
entertainer. I just want to share some joy with other people. That's all."
12
Gordon Lightfoot's cool attitude toward Canadian content rules was no
secret in the burgeoning Canadian record industry. In 1971, he told Robert
Markle:
"DREAM. COMFORT. MEMORY. DESPAIR" 287
Well, the CRTC did absolutely nothing to me, I didn't want it, I didn't need it,
absolutely nothing...and I don't like it. They can ruin you, man. Canadian
content is fine if you're not doing well. But I'm in the music business and I
have a huge American audience. I'm going to do Carnegie Hall for the sec-
ond time. I like to record down there, but I like to live up here. I really dig
[Canada], but I'm not going to bring out any flags.
1
3
Nevertheless, the fact remained that Lightfoot was a pioneer in the
Canadian popular music industry and a hero to cultural protectionists precisely
because he wrote nationalistically and did not take up residence in the United
States. In a calmer moment that same year he admitted: "I guess there was a
Canadian flavour, a Canadian feeling to my music. And the 'Canadian
Railroad Trilogy' exemplified it."
14
One of the few Canadian artists to admit openly that he had benefited
from the CRTC regulation (and that he had received a Canada Council grant)
was Bruce Cockburn. Nonetheless, he felt compelled, like the others, to put as
much distance as possible between his music and overt political nationalism.
His first album was the inaugural release of Bernie Finkelstein's True North
Records, a production company established to promote Canadian talent under
the CRTC umbrella. It earned such dubious compliments as Toronto music
pundit Peter Goddard's observation that "radio's new appetite for Canadian
music has created for Bruce Cockburn an audience that it took Gordon
Lightfoot years to gather."
15
 In 1971 Cockburn told journalist Ritchie Yorke:
I'm a Canadian, true, but in a sense it's more or less by default. Canada is the
country I dislike the least at the moment. But I'm not really into nationalism—
I prefer to think of myself as being a member of the world.... The Canadian
music scene is not yet as rotten as the US scene. But it's showing signs of
catching up.
1
^
It is apparent in retrospect that Canadian musicians were attempting to
distance themselves not only from the protective shield of government regula-
tions but also from the intensely nationalist music media in Canada. Critics like
William Westfall of Canadian Forum and Jack Batten and John Ruddy, both
of MacLean's, had been adamant in 1968 and 1969 about the need to check
"derivativeness" in Canadian pop music. They argued that everything about
Canadian music, from rock festivals to programming at CHUM in Toronto,
was a shallow, predictable imitation of American sources.
17
 Typical of this
hostility was a November 1969 article by Ruddy entitled "How to Become An
American Without Really Trying." Its subtitle read, "Your First Move? Get
With The 'Canadian' Music Scene: It's as Yankee as Dylan and Drive-Ins."
Having lobbied for the introduction of government legislation to protect
Canadian music, the critics were at first euphoric about the CRTC decision.
They did not fancy themselves "protectionists" but they had come to realize
288 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
that subtle persuasion and even threats of regulation were having no impact
on Canadian broadcasters.
18
 The tone of pop music criticism in Canada
changed almost instantly. One month after the CRTC ruling went into effect
Courtney Tower produced an article for MacLean 's entitled "The Heartening
Surge of a New Canadian Nationalism," in which she wrote:
Canadian pop songs, contrary to the notions of most adults, don't deal exclu-
sively with sex, drugs and the hassles of adolescent love. Many recent lyrics
are, in the words of Ian Tyson of Ian and Sylvia 'getting into the patriotism
bag.' Increasingly, composer-performers such as Tyson, Gordon Lightfoot,
Neil Young (of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young) and Robbie Robertson (of the
Band) are producing songs that celebrate a fresh awareness of Canada. ^
Under this kind of pressure, it is little wonder that by 1970-71 many
Canadian musicians felt constrained rather than liberated by such pervasive
cultural nationalism.
Whether coincidentally or not, the government had intervened in
Canadian music at the moment when Canadian songwriters had begun to
respond lyrically to the political crises arising in the United States. No sooner
had Pierre Juneau been made the Canadian recording industry's man of the
year for 1970 than a song by a Canadian band made Billboard's Number
One position for the first time. The song was the Guess Who's "American
Woman" which featured the refrain
American woman, stay away from me
American woman, let me be
I don't need your war machines
I don't need your ghetto scenes.
20
Life in this instance appeared to copy art.
In the 1950s and even the early 1960s Canadians knew that they had no
chance of breaking into the Top 40 in the American-controlled music industry
with songs that challenged the status quo. Any doubt about the importance of
conformity and the necessity of avoiding controversy, especially in the form of
criticizing the capitalistic ethos that ruled the pop music business, was erased
in 1963 when the American television network ABC blacklisted pioneer
folksinger Pete Seeger from its national music show.
21
 'Protest' singers who
could fill university coffee houses night after night had trouble getting record-
ing contracts and, in any case, they were simply not welcome on the tightly
controlled playlists of AM radio stations. Canadians, like aspiring American
and British performers, quickly learned the lesson that kept rock-and-roll free
of disruptive folk influences: Top 40 pop stars did not bite the hand that fed
them. As critic John Orman suggests, rock-and-roll served to "maintain the
status quo by diverting people from serious political thought."
22
 How, then,
"DREAM. COMFORT. MEMORY. DESPAIR" 289
did Canadians come to be writing hit songs like "American Woman" less than
a decade later?
Even though protest musicians had faced extraordinary pressures from the
recording industry, their music was sufficiently powerful and popular to chip
away at the hegemony of repetitive, conformist pop music. Led by Pete
Seeger and Woody Guthrie, a handful of left-leaning American folk singers
persevered courageously through the barren years of McCarthyism and
emerged in the late 1950s as heroes to a generation of North American youth
that rejected the straitjacket of postwar conformity in all of its manifestations.
American music critics agree that the origins of the politically inspired music of
the Vietnam generation in the United States lay squarely in the
Seeger/Guthrie tradition.
23
 Much in the Canadian folk movement of the
1960s can also be traced to this source. Resurgent interest in the protest
songs of the 1950s prompted the release of several recordings beginning in
1958—Pete Seeger (1958), Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti (1960),
Dustbound Ballads (1964)—to which Canadians had relatively easy access.
Asked in 1971 what his formative musical influences had been, Gordon
Lightfoot recalled listening to "folk music, things by Pete Seeger and Bob
Gibson," after studying music in California in the late 1950s.
24
Like most of the American folk and pop singers of the 1960s, however,
Canadians were heirs to the Guthrie/Seeger tradition through a crucial con-
duit, Bob Dylan. From an adolescence of Top 40 rock-and-roll, according to
Jerome L. Rodnitzky, Dylan "picked up the mantle of Woody Guthrie and car-
ried protest songs to new heights of popularity and power."
25
 More than this,
adds John Orman, Dylan "liberated the lyrics of rock music."
26
 Dylan's influ-
ence on American folk, rock and pop music in the mid-1960s was nothing
less than revolutionary, for, in contrast to Seeger's experience, his favoured
place in the recording industry gave him access to an enormous audience. In
Canada, where there had been no indigenous tradition of politically motivated
folk music, his influence was in general terms nothing less than formative. Neil
Young recalls trading in his Gretsch guitar for a twelve-string acoustic in the
summer of 1965 under the sway of Dylan and others who had turned to
folk,
27
 and virtually all other Canadian "folkies" spoke of similar experiences.
Always eloquent, Bruce Cockburn described his perception of the impact that
the American folk tradition had upon Canada:
When you're young, you tend to act out roles with a passion and our role in
Ottawa in the 1960s was to be folkies and to sing mostly the folksongs of
other countries. The problem with Canadian songs is that they borrowed so
heavily from other traditions; for instance logging songs set to English ballads.
Sure, this happened in the States, too, but they went on to develop the
borrowings with the vigour and violence of their experience. They 'exploded'
the traditions and we never did. So, if you examine traditional Canadian
290 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
songs, you won't find anything applicable to today.... [BJecause social devel-
opments in the States always happened a generation before they did in
Canada, we soon began borrowing the social commentary and the songs that
went with it.
2
**
Since the 1960s, scholars and lay critics of popular music have debated
the difference between "folk" and "rock" music. This distinction is crucial to
understanding the development of Canadian popular music in the centennial
era. For Rodnitzky, a Guthrie/Seeger purist, Dylan's significance as a "folk"
singer was on the wane by 1963 precisely because he had electrified folk
music and forced its accommodation to the commercial standards of AM
radio. When folk music became "folk-rock," he argues, "mood replaced mes-
sage" and eventually the explicit social or political meaning of the folk tradition
was lost to a feeling of "general alienation and a hazy, nonconformist aura."
The "assimilation" of protest music into rock was all the more "sad" because it
had been "gradual and practically unnoticed."
29
 Orman is not as pessimistic
about the superficially of rock music in the mid- and late 1960s, seeing in
much of the politically inspired music of performers like the Jefferson
Airplane, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin the social awareness of the earlier folk
movement.
30
 In any case, both Rodnitzky and Orman would agree with Carl
Beltz that, by the "troubled period" of 1969-71, music in America became
"disillusioned, directionless [and] plagued by uncertainty about its own identi-
ty."
31
The superficial integration of protest themes in rock music is nowhere
dearer than in the Guess Who's "American Woman." Ritchie Yorke may have
been correct when he wrote in 1971 that the Guess Who had done more for
Canadian music than anything in history.
32
 But the truth was, as Rolling
Stone continually reminded its readers, they had done so at the expense of
originality.
33
 Burton Cummings, the lead singer and primary songwriter of the
Winnipeg band, recognized that there was nothing "intrinsically Canadian" in
its music: "We weren't influenced by anything except a rehash of North
Dakota AM radio."
3 4
 "American Woman" was not a considered political state-
ment in the Seeger/Dylan folk style; it was conceived spontaneously during a
jam session, a product of Cummings's "Bubblegum instinct for the quick, ordi-
nary, foolishly memorable phrase."
35
 Any doubt about the superficiality of the
song was put to rest in the summer of 1970 when the Guess Who accepted
an invitation to play at the White House, agreeing to omit "American
Woman" from the performance. Bassist Jim Kale later explained: "We're not
American, so we don't get involved in American politics....We're anti-war, of
course, but the Vietnam War isn't Richard Nixon's war. He didn't start it. He
simply inherited it."
36
 Kale added, "Neil Young told me we shouldn't play [the
White House] at all."
"DREAM, COMFORT, MEMORY, DESPAIR" 291
Jerome Rodnitzky had dissected the protest music of Woody Guthrie and
concluded that he was "essentially a piece of rural Americana reacting to the
Depression." The social issues in his music were clear and simple, and the
protest it expressed was always explicit. That rurality and directness were the
hallmark of this folk music seems indisputable, he argues, since the predomi-
nantly urban Sixties generation found it "corny, simplistic and irrelevant."
37
This helps to explain why folk artists like Phil Ochs, who refused to follow
Dylan's shift toward amplified, commercial music and "hazy" lyrics, could not
maintain popularity through the 1960s. The youth of an increasingly complex
and urban United States gravitated toward commercial musical forms because
commerciality characterized the world in which they lived.
By and large, this characterization of the folk/rock dichotomy has held
sway in popular music criticism, though most scholars are less likely than
Rodnitzky to see the two camps as wholly separate. Myrna Kostash recently
applied the same typology to the Canadian context:
Folk music, by definition, is rooted in particularity, in locales and events and
personalities which are historically specific and are named, and the singer-
songwriter was valued precisely for the individuality and personality s/he
brought to the corpus of the tradition.... But rock music was part of a conti-
nental culture produced by and distributed from the commercial and political
centres of North America (that is, the United States) which, because of their
metropolitan and corporate character, were deemed to be of universal signifi-
cance and value.38
Admittedly very much a product herself of the Sixties generation in
Canada, about which she is both critical and reminiscent, Kostash is vigilant in
her differentiation of Canadian "folk singers"—Ian and Sylvia, Gordon
Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Humphrey and the Dumptrucks—from pop and
rock music. The evidence suggest, however, that any hard definition of the dis-
tinction between folk and pop music obscures more than it illuminates about
Canadian music in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Rurality, directness and simplicity were, indeed, the cornerstones of
Canadian folk music; but these qualities were also evident in much of the pop
and rock music written by Canadians who had crossed over from folk in the
late 1960s. Even Rolling Stone observed in 1968 that a common feature of
Canadian rock bands was that they "have their country roots showing."
39
Canadian musicians seem not to have abandoned the folk themes they had co-
opted from Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan, even when Guthrie had become
anachronistic and Dylan had strapped on an electric guitar. For musicians like
Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Cockburn, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell, folk was a
medium perfectly suited to express what they, as Canadians, were seeing in
the world around them. Bruce Cockbum attempted to articulate this experi-
ence in 1972:
292 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
I think a lot of the songs that are being written are distinctively, if not obvious-
ly, Canadian. Playing something dose to American music but not of it. I think
it has something to do with the space that isn't in American music. Buffalo
Springfield had it.
Space may be a misleading word because it is so vague in relation to
music, but maybe it has to do with Canadians being more involved with the
space around them rather than trying to fill it up as Americans do. I mean
physical space and how it makes you feel about yourself. Media clutter may
follow. All of it a land of greed. The more Canadians fill up their space the
more they will be like Americans. Perhaps because our urban landscapes are
not yet deadly, and because they seem accidental to the whole expanse of the
land.
4
0
Myma Kostash is suspicious of the "back to the land" movement that
characterized the Sixties counterculture, calling it "essentially nostalgic" and
even "American."
41
 But, in truth, Canadian musicians have betrayed a deeply
rooted reverence for rural life and for natural ecology, and very often these
values were identified as "Canadian" and juxtaposed with urban America. This
attitude was not mere romanticism; it was based on experience. Gordon
Lightfoot, for example, was raised in Orillia, Ontario and identified himself
throughout the 1960s with rural simplicity in songs like "Early Momin' Rain"
and "Pussywillows, Cat-Tails." In 1968 he wrote a personal musical memoir
describing his increasing alienation as he travelled from Toronto via Albany to
New York city. "Cold Hands From New York" documented the myriad social
problems of large urban centres in the United States—greed, poverty, fear,
street violence; it also featured one of the first references in Canadian music to
the Vietnam War:
There were men who lived in style
And others who had died
Where no one knew them
'Cause they couldn't win.
42
Like many young Canadians, Lightfoot had gone to New York "to find
what I'd been missin'" and found it instead "unreal."
Bruce Cockburn's music was rooted in a profound love of wilderness.
Though raised in an Ottawa suburb, Cockbum's childhood fondness for his
grandfather's farm and his far-reaching tours to rural Canada as a young man
solidified his affinity for nature. "I prefer the country to the city," he remarked
in 1972, "because I feel better there and I like myself better there."
43
Cockbum abandoned an early career in rock music and some dabbling in jazz
for introspective folk music, making a name for himself by performing the
soundtrack to the acclaimed Canadian film Going Down the Road and by
writing songs like "Going to the Country." Like Lightfoot, Cockburn's
"DREAM, COMFORT, MEMORY, DESPAIR" 295
experiences of urban American had been troubling. During a year at Boston's
Berklee College of Music, he claimed to have developed an intense distrust of
America and a "sensitivity to the atmospheric tension so that he could tell,
even in his sleep, when his bus had crossed the border to the States."
44
The Canadian musicians who had moved to the United States and "for-
gotten the way home" expressed similar sentiments. Neil Young was raised in
Omemee, a rural village in Ontario, and as a high school student aspired to
attend the agricultural college at Guelph and become a farmer.
45
 He left
Canada to pursue a career in music because he was "fed up with the Canadian
scene" in the late 1960s, but by all accounts he was never comfortable with
life in America. Young's second solo album, Everybody Knows this is
Nowhere (1969), was "about the need for and the impossibility of escape
from Los Angeles."
46
 Escape, for Young, meant Canada. In 1970, at the
height of his "rock" success with the supergroup Crosby, Stills, Nash and
Young, he retreated to Omemee to contemplate his recent divorce. There he
wrote one of his most sensitive country-folk songs, "Helpless":
There is a town in North Ontario
There's dream, comfort, memory, despair
And in my mind I still need a place to go
All my changes were there
Blue blue windows behind the stars
Yellow moon on the rise
Big birds flying across the sky
throwing shadows on our eyes.
4
^
Though not identified as explicitly with rural life per se, Joni Mitchell's
concern for environment issues in songs like "Big Yellow Taxi" (1970) estab-
lished her reputation as a singer of unusual "innocence."
48
 It was rumoured in
late 1969 that Mitchell had become sufficiently alienated by the American
music industry that she was retiring to her home town, Saskatoon, to paint
and write poetry.
49
 Earlier that year she described her attitude toward life in
the United States: "It's good to be exposed to politics and what's going down
here, but it does damage to me. Too much of it can cripple me. And if I really
let myself think about it—the violence, the sickness, of it all—I think I'd flip
out."
50
This reverence for "space" and the need to be able to escape from the
"crippling" effects of life in violent, urban America did not, however, find
expression as simplistic anti-Americanism in the music of these Canadians.
For all that they disliked and feared in the United States of the turbulent
1960s, they recognized that there were many Americans who shared their
estrangement. They also knew that Canada was no Utopia, that it was naive
to look to life in Canada, or to any rural myth, as a panacea for the ills of the
294 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
United States. These conflicting impulses produced a remarkable ambivalence
in the protest music Canadians wrote: they were able to judge life in America
from the vantage point of the outsider and the insider simultaneously, blending
toughness and sympathy in a way that was unique to the American music
scene.
In 1968, the same year that he wrote "Cold Hands From New York,"
Gordon Lightfoot produced what was, in retrospect, the best song about the
Detroit race riots of 1967. "Black Day in July" was a song of explicit social
criticism in the tradition of Pete Seeger, expressing Lightfoot's sympathy for
American Blacks driven out of desperation to violence. With his usual flair for
history, he recognized that the origins of the trouble lay in the distant past:
Black day in July:
and the soul of Motor City is bared across the land
And the book of law and order is taken in the hands
Of the sons of the fathers who were carried to this land.
Though explicit lyrically, this song betrays none of the self-righteousness
of "American Woman." Lightfoot indicted those who believed they could
remain aloof of the crisis, adding the verse:
Black day in July:
The printing press is turning and the news is quickly flashed
And you read your morning paper and you sip you cup of tea
And you wonder just in passing, is it him or is it me?
51
"Black Day in July" was, predictably, ignored by AM radio in the United
States but 'underground' FM stations gave it wide coverage and American
music critics cited it as an important contribution to the American protest tra-
dition.
52
The best known protest song of Bruce Cockbum's early career was, ironi-
cally enough, produced in a pop, rather than folk, style. "It's Going Down
Slow" (1971) opened with a graphically anti-Vietnam verse set to a bouncy
piano rhythm:
Go tell the Sergeant Major to get that thing repaired
Their losing their pawns in Asia
There's slaughter in every square
Oh, it's going down slow.
Cockbum slowed the song down to an almost hymnal pace for the closing
refrain, a powerful expression of his conviction that corruption and warfare
were not unique to the United States but common to humanity:
"DREAM. COMFORT. MEMORY. DESPAIR" 295
God damn the hands of glory
That hold the bloody firebrand high
Close the book and end the story
Of how so many men have died.
Let the world retain in memory
That mighty tongues tell mighty lies
And if mankind must have an enemy
Let it be his warlike prided
The most poignant example of a Canadian's capacity to write with
ambivalence about American society in the Vietnam era is to be found in Joni
Mitchell's "The Fiddle and the Drum" (1969). Though not a "hit" by any
means, this song expressed the pathos and the confusion felt by those who
believed they were seeing the "good" in the United States turn inexplicably to
aggression. Typically, Mitchell's poetic lyrics spoke volumes:
And so once again, my dear Johnny, my dear friend
And so, once again, you are fighting us all.
And when I ask you why, you raise your sticks and cry
And I fall.
Oh, my friend, how did you come to trade the fiddle for the drum?
You say we have turned, like the enemies you've earned
But, we can remember all the good things you are
And so we ask you, please,
Can we help you find the peace and the star?
Oh, my friend, we have come to fear the beating of your drum.
54
Of all the protest songs of the Vietnam era, no doubt Neil Young's "Ohio"
was, and remains, the best known. On 4 May 1970, Ohio National
Guardsmen killed four students at Kent State University during a rally to
protest Nixon's decision to invade Cambodia. Though remarkably passive in
interviews, Young must have been enraged. Although he had no history of
writing protest music, by 21 May Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were in the
studio recording "Ohio":
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?55
296 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Although it was banned on many radio stations, "Ohio" had instant
appeal among American youth and stirred Vice President Spiro Agnew to a
speech denouncing rock music.56 Asked about the genesis of the song a
month after its release, David Crosby chided, "Neil surprised everybody. It
wasn't like he set out to write a protest song. It's just what came out of having
Huntley-Brinkley for breakfast."57 Young himself was just as vague: "I don't
know; I never wrote anything like this before...but there it is...."58
In the end, it was the natural affinity of Canadians for the American folk
tradition and their uniquely ambivalent perception of American society, not
anti-Americanism, that accounted for their remarkable ascendance as heroes
of the Sixties generation. Canadians did not simply offer a foreigner's critique
of American society—this kind of parochialism would only have alienated
them from their American audience. Rather, they had preserved in their music
the explicitness, sensitivity, and vitality of a protest tradition that was, in its
essence, American.
In this half-decade after Canada's centennial year, Canadian popular musi-
cians were at odds with the concept of "cultural nationalism." Some left the
country—"fled" was the term often used in the Canadian music press—and
were, therefore, spared much of the sentimental praise that accrued to those
who stayed. For the likes of Anne Murray, Gordon Lightfoot and Bruce
Cockbum, the pressure to be "Canadian" was unceasing and often stultifying.
More than most Canadians listening to their music perhaps, these artists had
become, by virtue of the music business itself, "members of the world."
However grateful they may have been for protective legislation that allowed
them a greater opportunity for success in the music business, they were frus-
trated by the tensions inherent in being national symbols as well as artists; and
however proud they may have been to be Canadian, intimate contact with the
United States and the world at large had sharpened their awareness of the lim-
itations of nationalism.
With the notable exception of Bruce Cockburn, Canadian musicians by
1972 had followed the American lead and abandoned political and social
themes altogether. Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray integrat-
ed thoroughly into mainstream American pop, producing no fewer than ten
hits each in the following decade-and-a-half, no mean feat in an industry
renowned for producing "one hit wonders."
59
 Neil Young's career eclipsed
after his resounding success as a solo artist in the early 1970s, but after some
dabbling in electronic and even rockabilly styles, he has returned in the mid-
1980s to his country roots. As the CRTC and others had hoped, Canadian
content rules opened the doors of the music industry to many Canadians in
the 1970s and 1980s. From Bachman-Tumer Overdrive to Bryan Adams,
however, this legacy has been largely one of conformity to American pop
standards.
60
"DREAM, COMFORT, MEMORY, DESPAIR" 297
In light of the homogenizing power of the North American popular music
business, Bruce Cockbum's ceaseless dedication to social action in the years
since "It's Going Down Slow" is truly remarkable. His inimitable acoustic
sound has been broadened to include searing electric guitars and tough percus-
sive rhythms, and Cockbum himself has made the transition from the country
to the "inner city front." Yet, if anything, his life and his music have becom
not less but more political. His travels in the 1980s have included a lengthy
stay at a refugee camp on the Honduran border of Nicaragua, on which he
based much of his Stealing Fire album, and concerts in British Columbia in
aid of Haida land claims in the Queen Charlotte Islands. Although he still lives
in Canada and frequently lashes out at what he perceives as inhumane
American policies, his accusation that Canada under the Mulroney govern-
ment is "open for business like a cheap bordello" suggest that he is no more
likely than in 1970 to embrace narrow political nationalism.^
1
Following the lead of the British pop music industry and the inspiration of
Bob Geldof in particular, Canadian musicians assembled in Toronto in
February 1986 to perform "Tears Are Not Enough" in aid of African famine
relief. With uncharacteristic sentimentality and patriotism, Canadians beamed
when their old favourites, led by Gordon Lightfoot, collaborated on the open-
ing verse. This was more than a charitable gathering; it was, as the CBC's
commercially released film production of the session evinced, a celebration of
the Canadian pop music tradition, a triumph of nationalism. Canadians may
have known that several of the "Northern Lights" were American citizens and
that David Foster had, in fact, written the tune for "Tunes Are Not Enough"
originally to be used as a love theme in an American movie; but no one let on.
Like the music media that had alienated the Canadian performers who left the
country in the late 1960s and defied those who remained, Canadians rallied
around a mythic nationalism, a sentiment of such power that it could, even in
the 1980s, suspend reason. The significance of the closing sequence in the
CBC film was not that beleaguered Ethiopia was receiving lifesaving wheat but
that the wheat was Canadian. Perhaps this is why Bruce Cockbum, still as
sensitive to shifting political fads in Canada as he was during the "golden age"
of Canadian pop music, chose to stay in Europe over the winter of 1986.
This chapter is taken from pages 27-43 of the Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'&tudes canodiennes 22(4). Copyright O
1987 Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes. Reprinted by permission of the Journal of Canadian
Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes.
298 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ENDNOTES
1. Juan Rodriguez, "Jesse Winchester's Trip to Canada," Rolling Stone, March
19, 1970.
2. Myma Kostash reminisces about Ian Tyson's "Four Strong Winds" in Long Way
From Home: The Story of the Sixties Generation in Canada (Toronto: James
Lorimer, 1980), p. 138.
3. Given the economic importance of the pop music industry in the English-speak-
ing world and the central place of rock-and-roll in youth culture, pop music as a
field of study is in a surprisingly rudimentary state. Widespread interest in the
sociology of popular music in the United States was generated in the early
1970s and has blossomed in the 1980s with the advent of punk rock, music
videos and recordings for charity. That the 1987 Popular Culture Association
conference featured no fewer than 40 papers on pop music and provided a truly
exciting forum for the discussion of methodologies as well as issues bodes well
for the future of the field.
The study of popular music in Canada lags well behind that of the United
States. In some ways this is puzzling, especially given Canada's rich regional and
ethnic folk heritage. Most of what little secondary literature exists on pop music
tends toward the celebratory rather than the analytical. See, for example,
Ritchie Yorke, Axes, Chops and Hot Licks (Edmonton: Hurtig, 1971) and
Martin Melhuish, Heart of Gold: 30 Years of Canadian Pop Music (Toronto:
CBC Enterprises, 1983). A noteworthy exception is to be found in Barry K.
Grant, '"Across the Great Divide': Imitation and Inflection in Canadian Rock
Music," Journal of Canadian Studies, 21 (Spring 1986), though his endorse-
ment of anti-Americanism as a "progressive step forward toward defining our
own popular music" (p. 126) evinces a similar bias. Problematic for the student
of Canadian popular music is a serious deficiency in the accessibility and quality
of music resource libraries in this country, though this situation is improving,
and the marked reluctance of the commercial radio industry to co-operate with
researchers in the field.
4. Bruce Cockbum's utter refusal to accommodate his music to the commercial
standards of the United States-dominated recording industry was exceptional.
5. Leslie Bell, "Popular Music" in Ernest MacMillan (ed.), Music in Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1955).
6. Robert Bothwell, Ian Drummond and John English, Canada Since 1945:
Power, Politics and Provincialism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1981), p. 174.
7. Alexander Ross, "Colour Them Big Pink," MacLean's, February 1969, p. 57.
See also Ritchie York, "I'd Rather be Burned in Canada," Rolling Stone,
December 13, 1969.
8. Renee G. Kasinsky, Refugees from Militarism: Draft-Age Americans in
Canada (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1976).
"DREAM, COMFORT, MEMORY, DESPAIR" 299
9. See, for example, "What American Involvement in Vietnam is Doing to
Canadian Business," Financial Post, October 14, 1967; Ian Adams, Lamar
Carson and Goffredo Praise, "Our War," MacLean's, February 1968; and
Walter Stewart, "Proudly We Stand the 'Butcher's Helper' in Southeast Asia,"
MacLean's, May 1970.
10. Jon Ruddy, "The Pit and the Star," MacLean's, November 1970, p. 43.
11. John Macfarlane, "What If Anne Murray Were an American?," MacLean's, May
1971.
12. Anne Murray, quoted in Bill Howell, "Upper Canada Romantic," MacLean's,
May 1972.
13. Gordon Lightfoot, quoted in Robert Markle, "Early Morning Afterthoughts,"
MacLean's, December 1971.
14. Gordon Lightfoot, quoted in Yorke, op. cit.
15. Peter Goddard, "A Maple Leaf on Every Turntable Means Made-In-Canada Pop
Stars," MacLean's, November 1970.
16. Bruce Cockbum, quoted in Yorke, op. cit.
17. See, for example, Jack Batten, "Canada's Rock Scene: Going, Going...,"
MacLean's, February 1968; William Westfall, "Pop Counter-Revolution?,"
Canadian Forum, August 1969; and Jon Ruddy, "How to Become a Rock Star
Without Really Trying," MacLean's, November 1969.
18. Ritchie Yorke was especially critical of Canadian broadcasters. See Axes, Chops
and Hot Licks, p. 11. Ironically, in the foreword to this book Pierre Juneau
included broadcasters among those who had helped the Canadian music indus-
try.
19. Courtney Tower, "The Heartening Surge of a New Canadian Nationalism,"
MacLean's, February 1970.
20. The Guess Who, "American Woman" (Cirrus Music, 1970).
21. Jerome L. Rodnitzky, Ministrels of the Dawn: The Folk-Protest Singer as a
Cultural Hero (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1976), p. 14; see also Tony Palmer, All
You Need is Love: The Story of Popular Music (New York, London: Penguin,
1977), pp. 206-7.
22. John Orman, The Politics of Rock Music (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1984), p. xi.
23. Rodnitzky, Orman and Palmer subscribe to this view, as does Carl Belz in The
Story of Rock (New York: Oxford, 1972).
24. Gordon Lightfoot, quoted in Yorke, op. cit.
25. Rodnitzky, op. cit., p. 20; see also Palmer, op. cit., p. 208.
26. Orman, op. cit., p. 51.
27. Scott Young, Neil and Me (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1984), p. 59.
28. Ibid, p. 59.
29. Rodnitzky, op. cit., pp. 20-21, 137.
30. Orman, op. cit., ch. 1.
500 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
31. Belz, op. cit., ch. 5.
32. Yorke, op. cit., p. 13.
33. See, for example, Nancy Edmunds's review of Wheatfield Soul in Rolling
Stone, June 14, 1969; Lester Bangs's review of Canned Heat in Rolling
Stone, February 7, 1970; and Craig Moddemo, "Guess Who: Good Business
Partners," Rolling Stone, January 7, 1971.
34. Burton Cummings, quoted in York, op. cit., p. 24. "Signs," by Canada's Five
Man Electrical Band, was another pop song to appeal to protest lyrics in vogue
at this time. It reached Number Three on the Billboard chart in 1970.
35. Jack Batten, "The Guess Who," MacLean's, June 1971. Batten was critical of
musicians who casually politicized their lyrics after seeing an arena full of Guess
Who fans shaking their fists during "American Woman."
36. Jim Kale, quoted in Moddemo, "Guess Who."
37. Rodnitzky, op. cit., ch. 8.
38. Kostash, op. cit., pp. 137-38.
39. n.a., Review of Buffalo Springfield, "Last Time Around" in Rolling Stone,
August 24, 1968.
40. Bruce Cockbum, quoted in Myma Kostash, "The pure unadulterated spaces of
Bruce Cockbum," Saturday Night, June 1972.
41. Kostash, Long Way, op. cit., p. 140.
42. Gordon Lightfoot, "Cold Hands From New York" (Warner Brothers, 1968).
43. Bruce Cockbum, quoted in Kostash, "The pure, unadulterated...," op. cit., p.
21.
44. Bruce Cockbum, quoted in ibid., p. 22.
45. Young, op. cit., p. 42.
46. n.a., Ro//ing Stone, August 9, 1969.
47. Neil Young, "Helpless" (Broken Arrow-Cotillion Publishing, 1970).
48. n.a., "Joni Mitchell," Ro//ing Stone, May 17, 1969. "Big Yellow Taxi" made
Bi//board's chart twice: in 1970 the studio version reached Number 67, and in
1974 the live performance climbed to Number 24.
49. n.a., "Joni Mitchell Hangs It Up," RoJJing Stone, December 13, 1969.
50. Ibid.
51. Gordon Lightfoot, "Black Day in July" (Warner Brothers, 1968).
52. Lightfoot did not get his first 'pop' hit—"If You Could Read My Mind"—until
1970, and of the 14 AM hits he subsequently wrote, none had a political
theme.
53. Bruce Cockbum, "It's Going Down Slow" (Golden Mountain Music
Corporation, 1970).
54. Joni Mitchell, "The Fiddle and the Drum" (Siquomb Publishing Corporation,
1969).
"DREAM, COMFORT, MEMORY, DESPAIR" 501
55. Neil Young, "Ohio" (Broken Arrow-Cotillion Publishing, 1970).
56. Scott Young, op. cit., p. 110.
57. David Crosby, quoted in n.a., "Tin Soldiers and Nixon's Coming," Rolling
Stone, June 25, 1970.
58. Neil Young, quoted in ibid.
59. See Joel Whitbum (ed.), Top Pop, 1955-1982 (Wisconsin: Record Research,
1983).
60. Barry K. Grant in "Across the Great Divide" has argued that "generic subver-
sion" has been a persistent strain in Canadian rock music from the 1950s to the
present. He cites the music of The Band in the mid-1970s and of Rough Trade
in the 1980s as evidence of a continuing tradition of Canadian self-conscious-
ness in which American music styles and popular icons are frequently parodied.
Grant also points, appropriately, to the important role CFNY-FM of Toronto
has played in the promotion of new Canadian talent. Unfortunately CFNY's
Casby awards, conceived originally as a much-needed alternative to the Junos,
have evolved into a forum for the kind of smug nationalism that characterized
the Centennial era. Carol Pope set Canadian music back 15 years when she
introduced the 1985 Casby award show with the quip that Anne Murray should
"wake up and smell the coffee."
61. Bruce Cockbum, "Call It Democracy" (Golden Mountain Music Corporation,
1985).
This page intentionally left blank 
SECTION IV
IDENTITIES:
BOUNDARIES OF REGION, CIASS, GENDER,
AND ETHNOCULTURAL COMMUNITY
One of the editors recalls a conversation about musical preferences with a
niece, a couple of years ago. "I thought you really liked listening to Bryan
Adams" was one comment directed toward the girl, who replied with disdain,
"Not any more. Girls in Grade 8 don't listen to Bryan Adams!" The incident
reminds us that, on a day-to-day basis, we define who we are through the
music we share either as listeners or music-makers with our friends.
The story suggests a couple of factors about shared social identities that
are important "theoretical" concepts. First, although our friends may consti-
tute a "community" by virtue of age or gender—as in the incident just
described, or by virtue of many other "social identity markers"—it is clear that
different communities or circles of acquaintance choose to speak about differ-
ent identity markers in different contexts. For children or young adults, for
example, age is an extremely important means of defining one's community
of associates and the musical tastes or activities they share. The academics
included in this volume, on the other hand, have paid less attention to age and
more to region, class and ethnocultural community. Gender was rarely consid-
ered in music research prior to the late 1980s but has been widely explored
since that time. Hence, concepts about social identity are constructed or
"imagined," to use the terminology of Benedict Anderson (Imagined
Communities, 1983), and music plays a major role in that process of con-
struction.
Second, the ever-changing communities of age and the constantly renego-
tiated definitions of gender implied in our story remind us that social identity
is not static and fixed but dynamic. In turn, this suggests that it is less fruitful
to read for information about sharply drawn distinctions between different
social groups than to read for the wide-ranging means of dealing with social
504 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
differences—emotionally, intellectually, and experientially. This sort of reading
might be described as "relational" rather than "separational" (Lippard 1990).
Relational reading permits us to acknowledge that Canadian culture may be
less defined by boundaries than by ways of "crossing the boundaries" of com-
munities.
There have, of course, been many published attempts within Canada to
define the distinctiveness of different groups within our society, whether those
groups are bounded by a common ethnocultural heritage, region, economic
class, gender, age, religion, or other kind of be(long)ing. (Hence it is no sur-
prise that this section is the longest in this anthology.) The study of regional
differences within Canadian culture is perhaps the oldest theme. Exploration
of ethnocultural difference has a long and complex academic history inter-
twined with changes in immigration policies in Canada in ways that scholars
have not always taken care to acknowledge. The scholarly treatment of issues
of class, gender and their intersection in music(-making) are newer themes
(much newer than in most other humanistic and social-scientific disciplines).
It would be ludicrous, however, to regard this section as representative or
balanced in any sense. The myriad subcultural groupings within Canadian soci-
ety are both too numerous and too dynamic to permit comprehensive or static
representation. We present this particular grouping of studies, however, in the
belief that the qualitative understanding of Canadian society will not be
achieved by comprehensive surveys but by examinations which are "interpre-
tive of the flow of social discourse" (Geertz 1973: 20).
The first three articles demonstrate historical shifts from 1973 to 1990 in
approaches to studying ethnocultural communities. Buchignani's survey is his-
torical, not musicological, while Klymasz and Qureshi focus more specifically
on music from the perspective of a folklorist and ethnomusicologist respective-
ly. It is not coincidental that all three of these authors have themselves helped
groups deal with labels such as "ethnic" and "multicultural" within the Italian,
Ukrainian and East Indian communities which constitute parts of their own
lives. They might be read together with De Shane's and Carpenter's articles in
Section II.
Anthropologist Norman Buchignani explores the relationship of social sci-
ence to social action and political policy, particularly following the Massey
Commission and in the first decade following the official recognition of multi-
culturalism in Canada in 1971. His criticism of the narrowness of academic
study (in ignoring demographic research, for example, or disregarding a large
body of international research which might inform Canadian interpretations) is
particularly relevant for the discipline of music, although his comments are not
in any way oriented toward it. His pessimistic prognosis for future research
will hopefully incite a generation of scholars to prove him wrong. At any rate,
his contention that the role of social research will likely remain "a conservative
IDENTITIES 505
one, supportive of the status quo in most respects" is, we hope, already begin-
ning to be challenged in a volume such as this one.
Klymasz also adopts an historical approach focused on the layers of
change which an immigrant culture undergoes through several generations
and several socio-political shifts. His aim is to construct a framework for study-
ing cultural processes which does not overfocus on accomodation but
acknowledges retention, which does not lament cultural loss without celebrat-
ing new cultural acquisitions. He examines "ethnicity" as a New World con-
cept, one which gradually replaces the Old World understanding of "immi-
grant."
Some of Qureshi's comments resonate with several of Klymasz' although
17 years elapsed between the two publications. Qureshi also advises us to be
wary of an over-emphasis on cultural accommodation (there may be no devel-
opment of distinctive styles or repertoires) and, more directly than Klymasz,
problematizes the position of the researcher who is both insider and outsider.
Her approach differs, however, in its greater emphasis on social values
(described with Marx's distinction between use value and exchange value) and
issues of commodification. Finally, she confronts the tough issues of academic
colonialism, a subject which is explored more directly by Young Man and in
the Kennedy-Campbell debate.
The next two articles juxtapose the experiences of one of the newest and
clearly the oldest of ethnocultural communities in Canada. Gallaugher
describes and interprets the reinvention of Caribbean culture within the very
active calypso community in Toronto, a city which has welcomed large num-
bers of islanders since the early 1980s. She asks how calypso—a way of life
which emphasizes ebullient behaviour, inclusivity, ambiguity through mockery
and many other values which contrast with those of Canadian institutions and
mainstream attitudes—re-roots itself within the diasporic community. She
explores the development of local transmission processes, community support
structures, and song texts which give voice to local concerns.
Alfred Young Man stands on the boundary between his Alberta Cree
elders and his teachers and colleagues in anthropology as he explores the
"Native perspective" on North American Indian art in relation to dominant
Western perspectives. Although his comments do not touch on music, the
same fundamental ideological structures have shaped the "official" histories of
First Nations music and visual art. Ranging widely into socio-political and sci-
entific subjects, rather like an elder telling a story whose very digressions may
not be immediately perceived as relevant to the linear-thinking reader/listener
Young Man begins with two fundamental premises: "the right of history
to have opinions other than the status quo" and "the right of any culture
to change itself." He stresses that belief in a continuum of Native American
cultural essence/existence is fundamental to the Native perspective though
506 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
largely unacknowledged by Western academics.
The tension between cultural pragmatics and academic theorizing may be
embodied by one individual, as in the case of Young Man, or represented in
dialogue between individuals. The latter is the case in the Kennedy-Campbell
debate reproduced from several 1992 issues of the popular Maritime cultural
quarterly, The Clansman. The issue here is debated between two supporters
of Gaelic culture who adopt different positions with regard to cultural "authen-
ticity." We are reminded that ethnocultural identity is negotiated and construct-
ed. The published articles also reveal that academic journals may not be the
only place to find thorough explorations of issues of identity.
The Kennedy-Campbell debate is the first in a series of articles focusing
on the Maritime provinces. This series recognizes heterogeneity and develop-
ment within a regional community, by considering various aspects of the musi-
cal culture of that region from different perspectives and within different disci-
plinary traditions. Folklorist Neil Rosenberg focuses on Nova Scotia's African-
Canadian community, the oldest Black community in the country. Qureshi's
comments about musical values are echoed in this study of the ways in which
different styles and repertoires of music were used by Brent Williams and
Harry Cromwell in the 1950s to negotiate the borders of ethnicity and class.
While Rosenberg is the only author in this section to discuss class as a social
marker in a focused manner, references in Hall and Brunton et al. provide
useful points of comparison.
Musicologist Frederick A. Hall outlines a different set of boundaries
between Yankees and Tories in the 18th century. The intersection of political
and religious ideologies in the creation of theatre, singing schools or other
artistic enterprises in Nova Scotia as a result of the failure of such enterprises
in the New England colonies, informs us about the constraints of colonialism.
Ronald Brunton and his colleagues turn to a different kind of document,
folk song texts, as a source of information about regional identity. The com-
plex relationship between cultural production and economic development is
explored.
The final article in this section focuses on a different dimension of sub-cul-
tural identity: gender. Like Young Man, Rosenberg, Hall and Gallaugher,
Andra McCartney does not isolate gender as a social category, however, but
looks at the ways in which gender constructions intersect with other construc-
tions, in this case, the discourse surrounding new music technologies. Her
work might be contrasted with that of Tippett, Lefebvre and Berland who also
identify a number of ways in which music making reflects gender structures.
Concerned, centrally, with the humanistic problem of "representing" multivo-
cality, McCartney also provides a segue into the final section of this anthology
where the discourse of individual musicians and their rich musical experiences
is further explored.
IDENTITIES 507
SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
A collection of papers which explore the literal and metaphoric aspects of
borders (with particular attention to the Canada/U.S. border) is the special
topic issue, Boundaries/Frontieres, of Canadian Folklore Canadian 13/1,
1991. For further information about specific ethnocultural communities in
Canada, readers should consult the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (2nd
ed., 1992) which contains a survey article on each specific community with
cross-references to other citations and up-to-date bibliographies and discogra-
phies. The survey articles on "Folk Music" and "Ethnomusicology in Canada"
in EMC provide bibliographic references to much of the relevant research.
The Proceedings of the First Conference on Ethnomusicology in Canada (R.
Witmer, ed., Ethnomusicology in Canada, 1990) includes work by many of
the scholars working in Canada in the 80s and 90s. The publications of the
Multicultural History Society of Ontario (both their periodical Polyphony and
topical monographs), or the educational kits (many with slides, cassettes, and
videotapes) prepared by the Western Education Development Group in
Vancouver, are examples of important regional research and teaching materi-
als. Urban dwellers may find that local tourist agencies or provincial Ministries
have produced information about diverse cultural communities. The City of
Toronto, for example, has facilitated the publication of Toronto's Many Faces
(1990), an introduction to 60 ethnocultural communities in the metropolitan
area: major cultural events, organizations, restaurants, cultural centres, etc.
Readers who want to pursue the musical cultures of specific ethnocultural
communities described in the articles in this section will find other work by
these and other authors. Klymasz has compiled several volumes of Ukrainian
folk songs (see especially An Introduction to the Ukrainian Canadian
Folksong Cycle, 1970, and The Ukrainian Winter Folksong Cycle in
Canada, 1970, both of which include flexidisc recordings of selected folk-
songs). Volumes 2, 11 and 17 of the Canadian Folk Music Journal also
include studies of Ukrainian-Canadian music by Alan Henderson and Anthony
Proracki, Mark Bandera, and Claudette Berthiaume-Zavada. Scholars interest-
ed in more intensive research should start at the Ukrainian Cultural and
Educational Centre Archives in Winnipeg.
Several theses have been produced about the burgeoning Caribbean and
Latin communities in Canadian cities such as Toronto in the 1980s: Pauline
Haslebacher's "Pan on the Move: A Historical and Ethnomusicological
Overview of the Toronto Steelband Community" (1988), Annemarie
Gallaugher's "From Trinidad to Toronto: Calypso as a Way of Life" (1990)
and Lise Waxer's "Latin Popular Musicians in Toronto: Issues of Ethnicity and
Cross-cultural Integration" (1991). Canadian scholars have been in the fore-
front of international studies: Jocelyne Guilbault's Zouk: A History and
508 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Interpretation of a Caribbean Popular Music (1993), Monique Desroches'
"Structure sonore d'un espace sacre: la musique rituelle tamoule a la
Martinique" (1987), James Robbins' "Practical and Abstract Taxonomy in
Cuban Music" (1989), as well as Robert Witmer's "'Local' and 'Foreign': The
Popular Music Culture of Kingston, Jamaica, before Ska, Rock Steady, and
Reggae" (1987), are cases in point.
Gaelic traditional music in Canada has an enormous bibliography and
discography. The quarterly from which we have excerpted the Kennedy-
Campbell debate also included, in the course of one year, articles on tradition-
al wedding reels in Cape Breton, on the relationship of fiddling ornamentation
to the Gaelic language, on Gaelic choral competitions, and on the repertoire
and compositions of specific fiddlers. Numerous anthologies of fiddle tunes,
from Gordon MacQuarrie's The Cape Breton Collection of Scottish
Melodies for Violin (1975) to the currently popular Jerry Holland's
Collection of Fiddle Tunes (1988), are cited in the EMC article on "Fiddling."
A revival of fiddling and step dancing on Prince Edward Island, stimulated in
part by the thriving tourist industry, has yielded numerous local recordings
(e.g., three cassettes, titled Prince Edward Island Fiddlers, and numerous
releases by Islander Records in Charlottetown).
The concept of "parallel histories" put forward by Young Man has been
carried out in various recent postmodern ethnographies and histories. The cat-
alogue Indigena (1992) from which his article is excerpted is a good entree.
Metis historican Olive Dickason's Canada's First Nations: A History of
Founding Peoples from Earliest Times (1992), Ronald Wright's award-win-
ning book Stolen Continents: The 'New World' Through Indian Eyes
(1993) or Daniel Francis' The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in
Canadian Culture (1992, especially Chapter 5 on "Performing Indians") pre-
sent further "Native perspectives" which ground the distinctive aesthetic
explored by Young Man.
Theoretically oriented work relevant to this section is also vast. A good
starting point is Mark Slobin's "Micromusics of the West: A Comparative
Approach" (1992), an ambitious study of intercultural musical processes and
an exploration of small group music-making in relation to large-scale national,
international, or global forces which now provide a frame for much musical
activity. Carl James' Seeing Ourselves (1988) addresses more general issues
of intercultural interaction within the Canadian context. Also see the bibliogra-
phy of De Shane's article in Section II which refers to monographs on ethnici-
ty by Frideres and Royce. Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities
(1983) has previously been referenced in relation to nationalism but it is again
relevant to this section. Lucy Lippard's Mixed Blessings: New Art in a
Multicultural America (1990) was referenced earlier in this introduction. By
comparison, the relatively small and recent literature on the intersection of
IDENTITIES 509
gender and technology issues is mostly referenced in the bibliography for
McCartney's article. Her work, like that of virtually all feminist musicologists, is
indebted to pioneering publications by Susan McClary, especially her
Feminine Endings (1991).
REFERENCES
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Desroches, Monique. 1987. "Structure sonore d'un espace sacre: la musique rituelle
tamoule a la Martinique." Ph.D. thesis. Universite de Montreal.
Dickason, Olive. 1992. Canada's First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples
from Earliest Times. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Francis, Daniel. 1992. The Imaginary Indian: The Image of the Indian in Canadian
Culture. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.
Gallaugher, Annemarie. 1990. "From Trinidad to Toronto: Calypso as a Way of Life."
M.A. thesis. York University.
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books Inc.
Guilbault, Jocelyne. 1993. Zouk: A History and Interpretation of a Caribbean
Popular Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Haslebacher, Pauline. 1988. "Pan on the Move: a Historical and Ethnomusicological
Overview of the Toronto Steelband Community." M.F.A. thesis. York
University.
Holland, Jerry. 1988. Jerry Holland's Collection of Fiddle Tunes. Sydney: Cranford
Publications.
James, Carl. 1988. Seeing Ourselves. Oakville: Sheridan College.
Kallmann, Helmut et al. 1992. Encyc/opedia of Music in Canada. 2nd edition.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Klymasz, Robert. 1970. An Introduction to the Ukrainian Canadian Folksong
Cycle. Ottawa: National Museums.
. 1970. The Ukrainian Winter Folksong Cycle in Canada. Ottawa: National
Museums.
Lippard, Lucy. 1990. Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America. New
York: Pantheon.
MacQuarrie, Gordon. 1975. The Cape Breton Collection of Scottish Melodies for
Violin. Medford: Beaton.
McClary, Susan. 1991. Feminine Endings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
510 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Press.
Prince Edward Island Fiddlers, cassettes. Volumes 1-3. Charlottetown: Sound
Ventures Studio, n.d.
Robbins, James. 1989. "Practical and Abstract Taxonomy in Cuban Music."
Ethnomusico/ogy. 33/3: pp. 379-89.
Ruprecht, Tony et al. 1990. Toronto's Many Faces. Vancouver and Toronto:
Whitecap Books Ltd.
Slobin, Mark. 1992. "Micromusics of the West: A Comparative Approach."
Ethnomusico/ogy. 36/1: pp. 1-87.
Waxer, Lise. 1991. "Latin Popular Musicians in Toronto: Issues of Ethnicity and Cross-
cultural Integration." M.A. thesis. York University.
Witmer, Robert (ed.). 1990. Ethnomusico/ogy in Canada, CanMus Documents 5.
Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music.
Witmer, Robert. 1987. "'Local' and 'Foreign': The Popular Music Culture of Kingston,
Jamaica, before Ska, Rock Steady, and Reggae." Latin American Music
Review. 8/1: pp. 1-25.
Wright, Ronald. 1993. Stolen Continents: The 'New World' Through Indian Eyes.
Harmondsworth: Penguin.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH
AND MULTICULTURALISM
NORMAN BUCHIGNANI
Sociological and anthropological research on ethnicity in Canada has
historically reflected both majority group views on ethnicity and strong
methodological and theoretical constraints on what have been consid-
ered appropriate lines of social science inquiry. Prior to 1965 these
factors produced a systematic disregard of ethnic phenomena by both
disciplines despite their societal importance. The quantity of research
has increased dramatically in subsequent years, due partially to the rise
of multicultural policy and ethnic interest groups, to changing discipli-
nary interests and to a massive expansion of both fields in Canada.
Even so, this increase has been very selective and important ethnic
phenomena and processes have not received even basic descriptive
treatment; neither have many major ethnic populations. This quantita-
tive expansion also belies the generally atheoretical and non-cumulative
nature of present-day research, which typically reflects neither an over-
all explanatory perspective on ethnicity nor a humanistic vision of eth-
nicity's possible contributions to Canadian society.
Social science is often objective but it is rarely neutral, especially in terms
of the interaction between information creation and the rest of society. Its sub-
ject matter is human life and as such has always been involved in people's
interests and values. Moreover, it is carried out by people, who inevitably
merge their own human experience with their work. Research is therefore a
social process par excellence, subject to quite the same social forces as other
human activity. It is the common view that scientific research can mysteriously
see through human biases to 'what's really out there'. A moment's reflection
will dispel this myth; science is more accurately a way of organizing our biases
through an appropriate method such that we can understand more of our
world. This is especially the case in the social sciences. The production of
knowledge in the social sciences is severely constrained by the conceptual
512 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
world view of the disciplines involved as well as by self interest, funding and
the personal backgrounds of investigators.
Social science information can have profound influences in the interpreta-
tion of social phenomena in circles far removed from academics. Research
findings are frequently ideological resources in political conflict, where 'facts'
can be selectively interpreted to support very contradictory positions. The
same data (Henry 1977) just as well supports the thesis that 85 percent of
Canadians are more or less racially tolerant as it does the claim that a hard
core of 15 percent are racists. In a more subtle sense, the perspective with
which the social sciences view the world also influences perceptions outside
the disciplines involved. This is particularly true for two reasons. First of all,
the social sciences have never practically separated themselves from values.
They are latent everywhere, even in basic terminology: family disorganization,
deviant behaviour, racial prejudice. These values typically reflect the classes
and nationalities of researchers. They affect the legitimation of societal values
when they are interjected into political debate under the guise of fact.
Secondly, in attempting to explain social phenomena the social sciences con-
sciously try to build connections between facts, thereby generating theory.
Reflected into society, social theories tend to influence discussion by pointing
to particular connections and by neglecting others. Such processes exercise
strong constraints on the realm of discourse.
This dialogue between social science and social action is nowhere more
easily demonstrated than in the ongoing debate about the role of ethnicity in
Canadian society. I would like to take this opportunity to review this relation-
ship, especially as it has developed over the past decade and a half. In doing
so I would like to illustrate how social interest in ethnicity has affected research
on it. I would also like to comment on the social uses to which the particular
knowledge produced about Canadian ethnic relations has been put. In the light
of Howard Palmer's review of the literature on historical studies of Canadian
ethnicity in this issue, I will deal primarily with anglophone sociology and
anthropology, the disciplines which have produced the lion's share of ethnic
research outside of history.
THE RISE OF MULTICULTURALISM
The period in question frames an important development in Canadian
ethnic relations, which has had a remarkable stimulative impact on ethnic and
race relations research. Ten years ago the federal government announced the
creation of a Canadian policy on multiculturalism. At the time it was clearly
designed to appease ethnic discontent with bilingualism and biculturalism. The
Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism had
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 51 5
carefully constrained the role which government recognized for minority lan-
guages and cultures.
1
 Multiculturalism was an outgrowth of the Report. When
it was introduced by Pierre Trudeau it contained nothing really new.
2
 The gov-
ernment would help ethnic groups "contribute to Canada" and "overcome cul-
tural barriers to full participation in Canadian society."
3
 It would also support
ethnic culture and the arts and would provide assistance for people to learn
English or French. The announced policy was overtly assimilationist and did
not differ fundamentally from liberal Canadian attitudes on ethnicity voiced
twenty years before:
Although we look to the assimilation of the foreign strains to one or
another of the permanent cultures in our national life which came from
the British Isles and France, in the process these new groups need not
forget all traces of their heritage. (Massey 1948: 53)
It was not the government's intention to open debate on the place of eth-
nicity in Canadian society. "Multiculturalism in a bilingual framework" at the
very most was meant to give official recognition and protection to the role of
non-charter groups in Canadian society. Clearly, the architects of multicultural-
ism did not suggest how potentially dangerous it was to the ethnic status quo.
Canadian ethnic minorities have long realized that their ethnicity has often
been a determinant of social, political and economic access. Their spokesper-
sons were vitally self-interested in a program which offered the chance for a
larger minority group say in Canada. The original charter of multiculturalism
was so vague that actual programs implemented in its name were at first large-
ly determined by ethnic interest groups rather than by government. Policy and
programs soon diverged. Funding dispersed to these interest groups was
quickly translated into ethnic political pressure. Overnight the program gener-
ated a legion of ethnic spokespersons and provided them with a forum to
voice their opinions. It encouraged the creation of ethnic-based associations to
the point where they are now endemic. By way of example, there are over
twenty such organizations purporting to represent the eight thousand people
of various South Asian origins in Edmonton. Support was also forthcoming for
non-official language publications, which also were frequently political vehicles
to generate ethnic solidarity. In a few years multiculturalism was beginning to
look like something quite different than had been intended. In essence, it
brought up for negotiation the very notion of what Canada was all about. The
Canadian identity and its "official history" were under review.
These were potentially radical developments, inasmuch as they were ulti-
mately a threat to the well-secured role of ethnicity in determining who gets
what in Canada. This was especially so with respect to control over Canada's
national ideologies, which had been traditionally determined in the image of
514 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
the charter group elite. It should be recalled that it was not so long ago that
Canadian nationhood was simply identified with the British and the French. In
anglophone Canada this was so pervasive that newspapers rarely even used
"Canadian" as a term of individual reference until World War II.
4
 The com-
mon terms were "British" or "foreigner." It would be naive to think that only a
decade later a new balance had been struck. Nevertheless, it is now possible to
see some real changes in how ethnicity is approached in Canada. These
changes have, however, been highly selective. The Canadian economy and
the basic framework of Canada's dual national cultures were quickly placed
outside the charter of multiculturalism, thereby negating the most radical
claims. There has been no substantive change in a single major social or eco-
nomic institution as a result of multiculturalism policy.
Even so, through multiculturalism minority group interests have made
strong gains in becoming recognized for their contribution to Canada's her-
itage and in changing anglophone versions of Canadian identity to include
them. School curricula now include far more social history and consequently
far more about ethnic Canadians than ever before. Canada Day has become a
largely ethnic celebration. These are not trivial changes. They have strong
symbolic value and they make it possible for individuals to be prideful ethnics
and Canadians for the first time. A great downfall of the program has been its
inability to effect the same changes in francophone Canada. Francophones
have rightfully been suspicious of multiculturalism as a plot to reduce the
French from the status of a charter group to that of an ethnic group.
Moreover, the rise of Quebecois nationalism has been so culturally based that
it leaves very little ideological room for a theory of cultural pluralism.
Multiculturalism remains basically an anglophone program.
Multiculturalism has also been able to effectively shore up ethnic identity
and self confidence. It has given positive support for the symbolic preservation
of key aspects of ethnic culture and language. It has far less well been able to
address ethnic relations, perhaps in equal measure because it was not based
on an overall philosophy of Canadian ethnic pluralism and because its
resources were quite limited. In any case, multiculturalism has been a program
aimed primarily at the interests of ethnic pressure groups and not the general
public. Little has been done to contextualize ethnicity in terms which would
make it something worthy of support by the substantial majority of Canadians
who think of themselves primarily as Canadians and only secondarily (at best)
as ethnics. This has been nowhere more manifest than in the reluctance of
multiculturalism to address the question of ethnic equality. It is ironic that a
policy which so blatantly assumes ethnic integration does little to assure that
those ethnic Canadians who concede the constraints of national culture and
economy are actually accorded the same treatment as others of the same
class, sex and age. Eliminating ethnic discrimination was outside of the pre-
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 515
serve of the Multicultural Directorate until just a few months ago. In addition,
multiculturalism based on ethnic culture is simply not enough in a polyracial
society like Canada. A Canadian policy of multiracialism desperately needs to
be developed.
CANADIAN ETHNIC STUDIES
BEFORE MULTICULTURALISM
It would be naive to think that social inquiry into ethnicity in Canada has
gone on in isolation from these very political struggles. Academic perspectives
on ethnicity in places where ethnic conflict is sharper than here have been
highly polarized and have been used to support all possible sides and interest
groups. Such groups inevitably generate their own academic lines, which serve
chiefly to legitimate their own ethnic or racial claims; South Africa and
Palestine are two obvious instances where this process has reached a fine art.
In such contexts the role of scholarly research has gone far beyond questions
of knowledge for knowledge's sake. Such research (and discussion of it) have
intimately participated in the social definition of ethnicity, constraining the uni-
verse of discourse about it in many ways. Academics of course themselves
constitute interest groups with their own subcultures and constraints.
Consequently, academic discussion is never a simple reflection of societal val-
ues and conflicts. It nevertheless does reflect them. This is very much the case
for ethnic research in Canada.
Prior to World War II there was scarcely any sociology or anthropology
being done in Canada and ethnic research was almost non-existent. Aside
from the minute number of practitioners in either discipline there were other
factors which led to a studied disconcern with ethnicity. Sociology was tied up
with the Canadian political economy tradition, which then tended to focus pri-
marily on the English, French and Americans. Anthropology in Canada was
synonymous with the study of Native cultures and was constrained by its theo-
retical orientation from directly addressing Native-white relations.$ Most work
was done either by amateurs or by Royal Commissions and both primarily
addressed ethnicity as a social problem. From 1900 to 1930 a series of works
came out in response to immigrant settlement, all of which were prone to
accept the prevailing stereotypes of ethnic groups. These include
Woodsworth's Strangers Within Our Gates (1909), Kate Foster's Our
Canadian Mosaic (1924), England's The Central European Immigrant in
Canada (1929) and The Colonization of Western Canada (1936), Dawson's
Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western Canada (1936), John
Gibbon's Canadian Mosaic (1938) and Morton's History of Prairie
516 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Settlement (1938). These works were all atheoretical, British oriented, value
laden and assimilationist.
Perhaps the only research done in a strictly sociological framework was
the result of the influence of the Chicago school of sociology. In the early
1920s Robert Park and his compatriots at the University of Chicago devel-
oped an intensely personal, community-oriented style of sociology that was
almost ideal for the descriptive investigation of ethnic phenomena. This
approach was reflected in a handful of Canadian studies in the period, includ-
ing Bradwin's The Bunkhouse Man (1928), Cheng Tien-Fang's Oriental
Immigration in Canada (1931), Sumida's The Japanese in British Columbia
(1935), Roundtree's The Railway Worker (1936) and, most importantly,
Horace Miner's St. Denis (1939). These few monographs were the first to
present ethnic Canadian concerns and culture in a sympathetic and detailed
fashion.
By selective omission, both sociology and anthropology in pre-World War
II Canada supported the ethnic status quo at least as much as did historians,
whose ability to write Native and ethnic Canadians out of Canadian history
has been well documented. By dealing with Canadian native cultures as if they
were pristine, anthropologists avoided addressing rank subordination.
Sociology's concerns were with the East, the British and the French.
This state of affairs persisted until well after World War II. Indeed, neither
sociology nor anthropology developed much of an interest in ethnicity and
race until the 1960s. When one considers that the academic heartland of
Ontario and Quebec experienced the influx of over two million immigrants in
the 20 years after the War this was hardly because ethnicity was a minor local
phenomenon. Throughout the 1950s and the early 1960s Canadian anthro-
pology maintained its hypertraditional interest in original native cultures, virtu-
ally ignoring important developments in ethnic relations theory coming out of
British anthropology at the time.
6
 In sociology things were somewhat more
productive. At the interface between sociology and history a number of social
histories and community studies were produced, including Everett Hughes'
French Canada in Transition (1943), Lysenko's Men in Sheepskin Coats
(1947), Jean Burnet's excellent Next Year Country (1951), Yuzyk's The
Ukrainians in Manitoba (1953), John Rosa's The Land of Choice: The
Hungarians in Canada (1957) and Andracki's The Immigration of Orientals
into Canada with Special Reference to Chinese (1958). These generally
gave a far more sympathetic account of ethnic people and ethnic relations
than the 'problem-oriented' research of the decades before. Immigration also
attracted some interest as manifested in William Peterson's (1955) work on
Dutch migration and Corbett's (1957) landmark book on immigration policy.
Nevertheless, with few exceptions (Hughes 1948; La Violette 1948), it
was not until the late 1950s that sociologists began to move towards more
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 51 7
explanatory, less descriptive issues. Prior to then it would be fair to say that
there was no prevailing well developed sociological view of ethnicity in
Canada. In one of the first theoretical works done in Canada, Frank Vallee et
a/. (1957) made an initial attempt to distinguish the structural integration of
ethnic groups from assimilation in Canada. Several pioneering attempts were
also made to sort out the important relationship between social class and eth-
nicity; Blishen (1958) first developed scales whereby one could quantify the
former and began to establish correlations between ethnic origin and class.
Perhaps the most sophisticated study of the decade was H.C. Pentland's doc-
toral thesis, "Labour and the Development of Industrial Capitalism in Canada"
(1958, 1959). It was firmly in the Canadian political economy tradition and
approached ethnicity as an outgrowth of economic conditions stemming from
a staples economy tied to Britain and the United States.
In essence, though, Canada moved into the 1960s relatively ignorant of
how ethnicity operated in the lives of its citizens. No one could even have any
assurance in the basic parameters—how many people from what places were
where doing what? On an empirical level most areas were virtually untouched.
Few community studies had been carried out since the War. Not a single pub-
lished work that I have seen dealt primarily with ethnic relations up to 1959
(Dunning 1959; Balikci 1960). There was no theoretical development of
which to speak. Even basic concepts like ethnicity were ill-defined and incon-
sistently used.
The 1960s saw a great expansion in Canadian social sciences. As funding
and enrolments mushroomed, sociology and anthropology departments so vig-
orously recruited outside the country that most were soon made up primarily
of immigrants. New departments were created across the country. One would
reasonably expect that, having been trained elsewhere, these new Canadians
would have rather different notions of ethnicity than the Anglo-Canadian old
guard which they superseded, and that this would have a determinant effect
on ethnic research. Looking back, the situation is not so clear. In support of
this view there was a sharp increase in ethnic research after 1965, which cor-
responds with departmental expansion. In overview, output in the 1960s was
easily four times that of the 1950s. Moreover, many of those who were pub-
lishing in the late 1960s were immigrants. Another indication of the effect of
immigrants was a decided shift in sociological research methods towards the
American 1950s-style inductive survey approach. At the same time,
Canadian-bom researchers were well represented in the first post-War set of
dissertations of ethnicity in Canada as well as in some of the more important
research carried out during the 1960s.
In any case, the 1960s did see changes in research which had strong
implications outside the discipline. One positive consequence of the nearly
complete domination of survey-based statistical technique in sociology was the
51 8 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
production of the first quantitative data on ethnicity in which one could have
any confidence. Typical examples are Osenberg's (1964) comparative study of
immigrant adjustment in Montreal and Toronto, Breton and Rosenberg's
(1968) analysis of ethnic status and Richmond's foundation work, Post-war
Immigrants in Canada (1967). Even so, slavish devotion to the method seri-
ously circumscribed what topics would be approached by sociology as well as
how they would be explained. All survey research is essentially attitudinal, in
that it is based on asking questions about behaviour. In this respect it is a
good instrument to investigate structure but it is a poor one to look at process.
One learned with some certainty the range of incomes of Italian immigrants
and some background correlations with it, but how these things hung together
was left uninvestigated. Moreover, survey research of the sort typical in the
1960s depoliticized ethnicity, reducing it to a background variable. It also
tended to take assimilation as axiomatic. The method was one of "outsiders
looking in," which a priori worked in a different knowledge frame than the
people being investigated—a serious weakness in investigating something as
personal as ethnicity. With some exceptions survey research in the 1960s
operated entirely in conformity with liberal thought of the era about ethnicity
in Canada.
The limitations of survey research in the 1960s were partially mitigated by
the concomitant rise of a variety of community-based studies. Even those
based on survey method like Breton's (1961, 1964) analysis of ethnic rela-
tions and institutional completeness tended more easily to bring into play cul-
tural and local economic variables than survey work done on "populations."
Other works in sociology based on community study include several on Blacks
in Toronto (Hill 1960) and the Maritimes (Potter 1961; Potter and Hill 1966;
Winks 1968), Marston's (1969) and Crysdale's (1968) research on social class,
as well as dissertations on Italians (Sidlofsky 1969), Chinese (Erickson 1966)
and Arabs (Khattab 1969).
Participant observation techniques make community studies social anthro-
pology's great strength. It only took a change of empirical focus to turn a
number of Canadian anthropologists towards ethnic studies. By the end of the
decade these included a look at Greeks in Toronto (Nagata 1964), Arabs in
Alberta (Barclay 1968), several others on Hutterites (Bennett 1967, 1969;
Hostetler and Huntingdon 1967), as well as on leadership among Italian immi-
grants (Jansen 1969), British Columbian Chinese community organization
(Wilmott 1968) and the first Canadian anthropological studies of Indian-white
ethnic relations (Braroe 1965; Honigmann 1965; Hawthorn 1966, 1967).
Towering above every other work in lasting importance was John Porter's
The Vertical Mosaic (1965). It was the first detailed study of the Canadian
class structure and its determinants. Ethnicity was only one of many factors
considered by Porter, but, perhaps because of its metaphorical title reference
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 5 19
to ethnicity, The Vertical Mosaic has strongly influenced subsequent research.
Perhaps this was also because of the use value to minority group advocates of
Porter's basic thesis that ethnicity was a primary determinant of social class in
Canada.
Very little else on ethnicity came out of the 1960s.
7
 Things were never-
theless on the move. The Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism
definitely increased the salience of ethnicity among academics and even fund-
ed a limited amount of ethnic research (e.g., Boissevain, 1970). Even so, at
the end of the 1960s ethnic research in sociology and anthropology was still
very meagre. Most research had been done in Toronto or Montreal. Few
book-length studies of ethnic communities had seen print since World War II.
Forums for publication in Canada (Canadian Review of Sociology and
Anthropology; Canadian Ethnic Studies) were only a few years old. There
were neither Canadian texts nor readers on Canadian ethnic relations. The
sum total of post-War publications on ethnicity in Canada was something less
than a hundred. So things stood at the time when multiculturalism was
announced.
CANADIAN ETHNIC STUDIES AND MULTICULTURALISM
There can be no doubt that multiculturalism and the consequent increase
in public awareness of ethnicity contributed to what has been an exponential
increase in ethnic research in the 1970s. About one out of ten sociologists
and social anthropologists presently lists ethnicity as one of his/her research
areas.
8
 Even so, ethnicity is by no means a major focus of either discipline.
For example, in a recent directory of Canadian departments almost no one
gave ethnicity as their first research area.
9
 There remains an historical preju-
dice against ethnic research in both disciplines, which is reflected in the pre-
ponderance of junior staff, ethnics and women who participate in it. In sociol-
ogy, the study of ethnicity is still considered somewhat lightweight. Canadian
anthropology remains limited by a continuing disciplinary bias against non-
native research in Canada; ethnic studies of Dar-es-Salaam are somehow
intrinsically more worthwhile than those of Winnipeg.
The increase in ethnic research over the past decade cannot therefore be
attributed to a shift in the reward system within sociology and anthropology.
Many factors seem to me to be personal: a greater commitment to studying
Canadian social issues, a higher prevalence of non-Anglo graduate students,
and a slightly greater academic profile on ethnicity in the classroom.
Multiculturalism programs have also affected the level and direction of
research. The Multiculturalism Directorate has funded certain kinds of
research, primarily ethnic social history. This research funding has been
520 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
augmented by Employment and Immigration Canada, which has contracted
several demographic analyses of immigration and immigrant adaptation (e.g.,
Richmond 1974). The Secretary of State has indirectly stimulated ethnic
research through its support of a number of academic conferences dealing
with ethnic themes, the biennial meetings of the Canadian Ethnic Studies
Association and the annual Asians in Canada Symposia of the Canadian Asian
Studies Association, to name but two. The number of research papers pro-
duced for these two conference series alone exceeds the total Canadian output
on ethnicity prior to 1970.
I believe that research has also been stimulated by the more ready access
which academics now have to other people's work. Ethnicity was not much
taught in sociology and anthropology departments in the 1960s and until the
publication of Hughes and Kallen's The Anatomy of Racism: Canadian
Dimension (1974) no text on Canadian race and ethnic relations had ever
been produced. With the recent publication of Anderson and Frideres'
Ethnicity in Canada (1981), the number is now only two, but the 1970s saw
many edited readers published, including: Jean Elliott's two-volume Minority
Canadians (1971) and Two Nations, Many Cultures (1979); Goldstein and
Bienvenue's Ethnicity and Ethnic Relations in Canada (1980); Palmer's
Immigration and the Rise of Multiculturalism (1975); Novak's Ethnic
Canadians: Culture and Education (1978); and Gardiner and Kalin's A
Canadian Social Psychology of Ethnic Relations (1981). Secretary of State
support has facilitated the publications of several others, including Hirabayashi
and Ujimoto's Visible Minorities: Asians in Canada (1980) and Tepper's
Southeast Asian Exodus: From Tradition to Resettlement (1980). The
Canadian Ethnic Studies Association has put out a number, also with
Multiculturalism funding. These include Sounds Canadian: Languages and
Cultures in Multi-Ethnic Society (Migus 1975); Identities: The Impact of
Ethnicity on Canadian Society (Isajiw 1977); The Canadian Ethnic Mosaic
(Driedger 1978); Frontieres Ethniques en Deuenir (Emerging Ethnic
Boundaries) (Lee and Laforge 1979); and Ethnicity, Power and Politics in
Canada (Dahlie and Fernando 1981). These have made it vastly easier to
teach Canadian ethnicity and have definitely made ethnicity more salient at
graduate levels.
The scope and sophistication of research also increased in the 1970s.
This can be seen best in the sharp rise in community studies during the
decade. Those done earlier tended to be very descriptive general outlines of
community life; they even had the routine title: The X's in Y. More recent
studies have been less totalistic and have focused on specific aspects of ethnic
life. This has made them better able to connect their descriptive findings to the
theoretical and comparative literature on that area. Thus, there were mono-
graphs produced on Portuguese (G. Anderson 1974) and Italian (Boissevain
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 521
1970) social networks, ethnic identity (Makabe 1976; Sawchuck 1978;
Maxwell 1971; Fernandez 1978), structural community change (Gold 1975;
Hoe 1976; Thompson 1979; Clairmont and Magill 1974; Ujimoto 1973; A.
Anderson 1972), immigrant settlement decisions and their constraints
(Buchignani 1977; Abu Laban 1980) and ethnic economic specialization
(Herman 1978). Others concentrated on family (Maykovich 1976; Latowski
1971; Barclay 1976), ethnic-religious minorities (Shaffir 1974; Dusenbury
1979) and Maritime Blacks (Winks 1971; Henry 1973; Clairmont and Magill
1971). These and other community studies done in the 1970s are just begin-
ning to bring out the same level of human feeling and understanding exempli-
fied by good social history- As such, they are beginning to allow us for the first
time to see the nexus of goals, choices and decision-making processes
involved in everyday ethnic behaviour. They are also bringing out a greater
awareness that relatively little of what 'ethnics' do is ethnic behaviour in the
sense of being predicated on ethnic allegiance or culture. This is so much so
that anyone reasonably familiar with the literature could construct a rather
accurate general outline of the settlement of an immigrant group knowing
rather few things about them: their class, the general structure of the source
country, when they came to Canada, and how many of them came. The
major determinants of ethnic Canadian life are clearly the national economy
and mass culture.
It should be pointed out that there remain many unexplored or ill-devel-
oped aspects of community-based ethnic studies. This is especially so of the
concept of community, which needs to be much further refined. Sociologists
and anthropologists have tended to use the term with considerable impreci-
sion, often as a short-hand term of reference for the people under investiga-
tion. Researchers have always known that a heterogeneous population like
Italians in Toronto is not a community no matter how one defines it. Even so,
the concept of community has had great attraction, because it allows one to
bound tidily the scope of inquiry and to generalize about the people contained
by it. Such procedures may make life simple for social scientists but do so at
the cost of misapprehending social reality. Actual ethnic communities are per-
haps best seen as a set of overlapping personal social networks between eth-
nic individuals. As such, they have no clear boundaries, membership in them is
variable, profound sub-ethnic social cleavages are common and rarely do they
act as a group.
Growing recognition in the social sciences that communities are so com-
plex has not yet made much of an impact on the popular use of the term.
Indeed, it is generally fair to say that knowledge of all sorts produced by com-
munity studies does not transfer easily into the public arena. Unlike survey
results, such insights are often quite synthetic and are commonly framed in
terms of a considerable knowledge of community values and practices. Their
522 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
immediate use value is therefore considerably reduced. In any case, the popu-
lar concept of community is crucial to the legitimation of the relationship
between ethnic individuals and government. This perhaps also explains why
such an archaic notion of community has persisted undiminished for so long.
Multiculturalism has used the concept of community as a cataloguing device in
order to simplify its constituency. Calling Germans in Vancouver an ethnic
community allows government bureaucrats to orient their programs towards
German Vancouverites as if they were indeed culturally homogeneous and
shared common interests. One program response is therefore possible for
each 'community'. This fiction is vigorously supported by ethnic leaders, who
typically neither lead nor represent a community. The rise of ethnic
spokespersons can be attributed largely to this synthesis of interest.
Government gets a few individuals who can stand for a very disparate popula-
tion. Spokespersons get the power and status conferred by their supposed
middlemen positions. So mutually useful is this popular notion of community
that contrary research findings are unlikely ever to have much effect on it.
Community studies also remain rather weak in their ability to contextualize
the communities under inquiry within the main currents of Canadian society.
This is partially a penalty of the method as it has developed so far. Even so, I
believe that much more could be done to provide a Canadian context for com-
munity studies than is presently being done, even considering the methodolog-
ical problems. It is not unavoidable that so many community studies focus so
closely on ethnic culture or social organization that it appears that both are
freely formed, unconstrained by majority group institutions. In particular,
researchers typically neglect the work of their intellectual cousins, the social
historians, or relegate history to an introductory chapter tacked onto an essen-
tially synchronic analysis. In addition, I am convinced that researchers who do
community studies so frequently specialize in a particular ethnic population
that they make little use of the growing body of comparative material on other
groups in Canadian society. This results in the identification of far too much
behaviour as ethnic; we have not realized that much of it derives from the
large-scale constraints experienced by many other ethnic populations. It also
results in an enormous duplication of effort.
Despite these empirical weaknesses, theoretical developments arising
from community-based research have been considerable. This has even been
the case in respect to inter-group relations, an area which most community
studies still approach rather tangentially, if at all. Inter-group relations are
methodologically difficult things to investigate, because they require a
researcher to sit on the inter-group social boundary and be reasonably conver-
sant with values and beliefs on both sides of it. Also, a researcher cannot use
the comforting fiction that he or she is looking at a 'community'. Even so,
such work is slowly becoming more common, especially in anthropology.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 525
Neils Braroe's Indian and White: Self Image and Interaction in a Canadian
Plains Community (1975) is already something of an international classic in
symbolic interactionism. The most productive source of this sort of work has
been the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Memorial University.
Most of its publications deal with Newfoundland and the North, as exemplified
by the two books edited by Robert Paine (1971, 1977). Both of these are at
the state of the art in their approach to ethnic interaction, middleman roles
and brokerage. Elsewhere, anthropological concern with Native-white power
relations has led to increased interest in Native-white relations generally. This
has been manifest in work on the Inuit (Brody 1975; Smith 1975) and some
preliminary work with urban Native people (Brody 1971; Dosman 1972;
Stymeist 1975). Anthropological research on non-Native inter-group relations
remains relatively rare (Buchignani 1979, 1981; Buchignani and Indra 1981).
It is rarer still in sociology. Relations between minority ethnic groups have
been rarely investigated. This enormous gap in the literature implies that virtu-
ally everything said publicly about ethnic and race inter-group relations is
unsupported by research data.
It should be pointed out that cross-fertilization between ethnic research in
sociology and anthropology unfortunately remains the exception rather than
the rule. This has demonstrably weakened both. Anthropologists tend to be
oriented towards the world literature on community and ethnicity and thereby
continue to have difficulty tying their work to macro-Canadian social and eco-
nomic processes. Their disregard of survey-based sociological findings is large-
ly academic chauvinism; they know far more than the sociologists how socially
discontextualized survey findings really are, yet take this criticism to the
extreme. The reverse is no less true. From my own experience it is hard to
present research based on participant observation to Canadian sociologists
without it being dismissed out of hand as unscientific and unverifiable. Many
sociologists in this way unproductively divorce themselves from evidence of the
field of human choice which underlies ethnic behaviour and indeed rarely deal
with actual behaviour at all. Even sophisticated survey-based studies (e.g.,
Richmond 1972; Ziegler and Richmond 1972) produce vast amounts of data
yet supply few of the intervening causal links. No explicitly multi-disciplinary
research has been done to date, with the exception of G. Gold's forthcoming
study of Timmins.
In the absence of such work it can be fairly said that sociological research
has a far stronger impact on the discussion of ethnicity in Canada than does
its anthropological counterpart; the only obvious exception is in Native studies.
Much anthropological research is community-based, and it consequently suf-
fers from the difficulty of 'translation' into public knowledge which is the bane
of community studies generally. Even so, from a government point of view
sociology research seems to be politically safer and more productive of results
524 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
which government can use in formulating and legitimating policy. It produces
'hard data', which now is all that counts as being scientific in govemmentally
produced research. Survey results can also be highly constrained by the initial
parameters of the study and thus typically produce nothing very unexpected.
Funding for large-scale studies consequently goes almost exclusively to sociolo-
gy and most anthropological research on ethnicity continues to be carried out
by single field investigators. In fairness to sociology, part of overwhelmingly
larger public salience of its findings is the result of idiosyncrasies in anthropol-
ogy which have severely limited its potential impact. Anthropology still has a
strong streak of natively-conceived cultural relativism which makes researchers
reluctant to participate in value-based arguments. Anthropologists also tend to
be very suspicious of government, to the point where many types of govem-
mentally funded research are considered morally objectionable. Much funding
therefore goes to sociology by default.
Although sociologically oriented ethnic studies have greatly increased in
number, one area of inquiry has actually suffered a decline since the 1960s.
This is the political economy approach to ethnicity pioneered by Pentland and
Porter. The relationship between ethnicity and social stratification in Canada
continues under investigation (Kelner 1970; Darroch 1979; Clement and
Olsen 1974; Clement 1975; Forcese 1975; Tepperman 1975; Ramcharan
1976; Turrittin 1976; Pineo 1977; Li 1978; Goldstein 1978). Even so, the
mode of description and explanation involved has changed considerably. Most
involve either methodologically sophisticated correlations of ethnicity with
social class variables or are studies of economic adaptation. Large-scale
approaches to ethnicity and the Canadian national economic political structure
have all but disappeared. It is tempting to suggest that this can be attributed
primarily to the growth of the social sciences in the late 60s and early 70s,
which brought many people into Canadian ethnic studies who had not been
exposed to this tradition.
I believe that this weakness has important social and political conse-
quences. First of all, the approach is distinctively Canadian. Modem research
is more or less in direct descent from historical work by Innis, and therefore is
the only large-scale perspective presently available to easily contextualize
Canadian ethnicity in time. Secondly, it is intrinsically political in its implica-
tions. Many other concentrations and approaches in ethnic studies are not and
its demise therefore indicates a certain depoliticization of the use value of eth-
nic research. This can be seen in many other areas. For example, very little
has been done on the politics of ethnicity (Stasiulus 1980) or, for that matter,
on formal ethnic politics (Wood 1978, 1981). Even the literature on political
behaviour within ethnic communities does not fully come to terms with this
important ethnic phenomenon. International political connections are also not
well explored. I would suggest that ethnicity is depoliticized by much research
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 525
because it takes as a priori dominant political 'rules of the game' and political
forces. This results in ethnic politics appearing to be far more assimilated and
non-revolutionary than it often is.
Research into other ethnic phenomena has been quite spotty. On one
hand, there is now such a large literature on ethnicity and education that it
may well exceed all the rest put together.
10
 Virtually all of it has been done
outside of sociology and anthropology departments, chiefly by people in edu-
cation. This has resulted in the education literature being far more concrete
and more oriented towards social problems than the rest. Much of it concerns
a few basic areas: teaching the general curriculum to a culturally variable stu-
dent population, remedial studies for immigrant children, analyses of the eth-
nic content of school texts, techniques for integrating ethnic culture into the
curriculum and programs for the reduction of ethnic prejudices in children.
This is perhaps the only major area of present-day ethnic research that could
be said to be largely a product of grassroots concern. I believe that a major
charge which can be levelled at most contemporary ethnic research is that it is
paternalistic and comes from the top down—initiated by academics in terms of
their own or government interests. There is presently almost no social science
work being done on ethnicity where researchers are using their research skills
to answer questions which ethnic groups themselves pose. Consequently there
are very few studies in areas of strong ethnic concern such as actual immigrant
selection (Hawkins 1972; Dirks 1978; Allen 1978; Green 1976), ethnicity
and work (Cassin 1977), the portrayal of ethnicity by the mass media (Indra
1979a, 1979b, 1981; Scanlon 1975) or ethnicity and the social service sys-
tem. In addition, even when research is done on what are legitimate communi-
ty concerns the results are rarely presented in an available context or in a style
which makes much sense to an intelligent lay person. This severely limits the
potential use value of much ethnic research.
Another area which now boasts a considerable literature is that on ethnic
stereotypes and ethnic status. There has been a steady stream of such studies,
almost all of which have been survey-based analyses of majority group (or
"public") opinions (Gardener et al. 1970; Henry 1977; Mackie 1974, 1978;
Gibbins and Ponting 1976; Berry et al. 1977; Pineo 1977; Goldstein 1978;
Frideres 1978; Li 1979; Ziegler 1980). These have ranged in quality and
scope from the extremely well-crafted national study by Berry et al to a few
made up entirely of loaded "do you beat your mother more than three times a
day" questions. Taken in overview, this body of work has produced consistent
findings. People continue to evaluate ethnic status by traditional Canadian cri-
teria: perceived closeness to Franco-British culture and biology. They have
also shown that Canadians have become far more tolerant of ethnic and racial
difference than they once were and are now much more so than, say, the
British (Richmond 1975). They have also shown that a substantial majority of
526 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
people consider their first group identity to be Canadian, not ethnic.
The scope and interpretation of these studies of ethnic evaluation clearly
show the influence of political interests and available funding. For one thing,
they are almost always to do with majority attitudes, unless they are on minori-
ty perceptions of discrimination. This selective interest must necessarily sup-
port the political point that Canadians are prejudiced, because this result is vir-
tually built into the method. Scales don't usually range from 'love' (positive) to
'hate' (negative) but rather from tolerant (neutral) to intolerant (negative).
Some will always be intolerant and therefore any such study will produce the
result that those sampled are prejudiced. Moreover, the total absence of com-
parative studies of minority group prejudices conveys the mistaken impression
that prejudice is primarily a majority group vice. Neither have these findings
been compared with sex prejudices, which are far more pervasive.
What is even more serious is that they also provide support for the ethnic
political contention and folk belief that Canadian ethnic and racial prejudices
(beliefs) lead directly to discrimination (behaviour). One continuously sees this
in the fluid way that ethnic group spokespersons interchangeably use the
terms prejudice and discrimination, racism and racialism. In fact, the relation-
ship is not so direct. Prejudiced people are often constrained from being able
to put their prejudices into action. It is easy to discriminate without being prej-
udiced. What is shocking in the light of this confusion and deep ethnic con-
cern is that there have been virtually no studies of discrimination carried out in
Canada. The paucity of such information has been such that the two major
reports on discrimination done in the late 1970s (Ubale 1977; Pitman 1977)
both had to depend primarily on anecdotal information of racialist incidents. I
know of only one controlled study of discrimination ever carried out in Canada
(Chandra 1973). Despite the high salience of discrimination among ethnic
individuals we know almost nothing about its prevalence. In the absence of
such information spokespersons for visible minorities have argued that it is
pervasive.
Beyond these, there remain vast gaps in our knowledge of ethnicity in
Canada. Whole areas have been more or less ignored. The worst instance of
this is really damning. Almost no social science research has been done on
women and ethnicity.
11
1 cannot really overstate how profoundly this weakens
the value of what we say about ethnicity. Most of it is primarily an expression
of male ethnicity—male concerns, criteria of status, roles and achievement.
Part of this can be accounted for by the rank sex biases still implicit in sociolo-
gy and anthropology. Part also can be attributed to the difficulty with which
male researchers can correctly address women's roles because of the high
social distance between men and women in many ethnic communities; what a
male researcher sees of the activities of ethnic women in such communities, as
well as how they respond to a survey done by or in the presence of men,
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 527
is always modified in the light of male expectations.
Even so, I believe that there are also political determinants of this gross
omission which come from outside academia. Most ethnic spokespersons are
male and their sexual chauvinism is generally no less great than that of social
scientists. They often have no intellectual difficulty in lambasting Canadian eth-
nic and racial descrimination while at the same time supporting ethnic sexual
discrimination. As a consequence they are rarely the advocates of ethnic
women and the version of ethnicity which they offer up to government and
the social sciences is primarily male. They rationalize ethnic sexual discrimina-
tion by arguing that it does not exist—what does exist is "traditional cultural
roles and beliefs."
Social scientists are not a brave lot and they know very well that this eth-
nic sensitivity to criticism of ethnic sex roles is such that to do work in the area
is to guarantee a negative ethnic response. They therefore avoid the topic.
This is part of a far wider tendency of the Canadian social sciences to stay
away from ethnic research topics which might provoke an ethnic response.
Beyond its male bias, the version of ethnicity typically offered up by
spokespersons is a paradox of Robert Redfield's "little tradition": homoge-
neous, well-ordered, stable, peaceful, equalitarian and to be valued in its own
terms. Ethnic communities more often than not honour this characterization in
the breach. Even so, filial piety and fears of provoking ethnic displeasure lead
researchers to provide far more support for the "little tradition" version of eth-
nicity than is empirically justified. There is a virtual taboo on research on eth-
nic class and sexual oppression, illegal immigration, the exploitation of
Canadian society by ethnics, immigrant maladaptation or the negative effects
of immigration on indigenous Canadians.
Many other aspects of ethnicity in Canada have been little investigated.
For one thing the social sciences have tended to accept uncritically folk
Canadian notions of which ethnicities are the most evident. The consequence
is that most sociology and anthropology interest is focused on charter groups
or those who have been traditionally perceived to be visibly and culturally dif-
ferent—Asians, Blacks, Southern Europeans, Native people, Hutterites. By
contrast, we know almost nothing about the very large 'invisible' immigrant
populations in Canada: British, Americans, Germans, Ukrainians, Dutch and
Polish, to name only a few. Neither do we know very much about their
Canadian-bom counterparts. There has been a parallel regional domination of
research carried out in Metro Toronto, the corpus of which exceeds that car-
ried out in the rest of the country. The ethnically diverse Prairies remain
almost uncharted research territory and outside of Black and Native studies
there are only a handful dealing with the Maritimes. A similar bias of concen-
tration exists generally in favour of urban ethnic processes and people. Rural
ethnicity and the ethnic panorama of resource towns have been more or less
528 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ignored. As in the public arena, urban ethnicity determines the framework for
discussion in academia today.
The same lack of knowledge also holds for certain ethnic phenomena
regardless of group. Immigration plays a critical role in shaping Canadian soci-
ety, yet remains largely ignored by the research community outside of demog-
raphy and quantitative economics. Even these areas remain so weak that after
a decade of involvement with South Asian immigration I cannot say how many
South Asian Canadians there are with any certainty. Similarly, the role of
immigration in determining the shape, composition and conditions of the
workplace is very unclear. Many people fear that immigration threatens their
job prospects, wage levels and working conditions. Does it, and if so, who par-
ticularly is most affected? What are the legitimate economic benefits from
immigration and specifically who gains from them? Is the justification of
125,000 immigrant arrivals a year in a country with a million unemployed
only the benefits which these people confer on employers? How accurately do
immigrant flows actually reflect government policy? Why, if immigration policy
is non-racialist, are there more yearly immigrants from Britain and the United
States than from all of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean together?
Social science has not done very much to investigate these questions. The
result is to cede the management of the ideology of immigration to self-inter-
ested government bureaucrats and ethnic pressure groups. There is an acute
need for a concerted analysis of the political economy of immigration which I
fear will be a long time in coming.
One of the nagging frustrations which I have had with ethnic research
over the past decade is that it has not fully incorporated insights into ethnic
and race relations generated by a half century of work outside of Canada.
Most researchers come to ethnic relations from a basic orientation towards
either a social organizational focus (e.g., the family) or a general theory of
process (e.g., social change). Surprisingly few are primarily interested in what
is specifically ethnic about ethnic phenomena; this is rather easily understand-
able when one considers that at no university in Canada can an aspiring grad-
uate student interested in ethnic relations take more than two or three courses
directly to do with the subject. Most university departments do not even regu-
larly teach a course on ethnic theory. Many researchers are therefore mani-
festly unprepared to use comparative data and theory as a foundation for their
Canadian research. Such material is vital to the development of explanatory
theory. Canadian ethnic research has been far too descriptive and too much
oriented toward inductive generalization to be as explanatorily productive as it
might be.
Research also suffers from a rather consistent disregard of history and
process and consequently tends to produce static 'snapshots' of ethnic behav-
iour frozen in time. We know many of the 'nouns' of ethnic behaviour but we
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 529
have learned few of the 'verbs'. If Vietnamese in Edmonton (not so hypotheti-
cally) now try to have two or three children, what has led them to this conclu-
sion and how has it been implemented? If twice this number of children was
more typical in Vietnam, how has this affected Vietnamese values and family
organization? We are still largely at the 2.3 children per family stage of ethnic
studies and have a long way to go before these questions can be answered.
There are a few aspects of ethnicity where there has been considerable
theoretical development. Inter-group social interaction is one of these which
has already been mentioned. Another is in the growing sophistication with
which the concept of ethnicity itself is being used. This has been largely a con-
ceptual and definitional development rather than an empirical one. Ethnicity is
a surprisingly new concept by sociological and anthropological standards
which was little used before the 1950s. There has been, therefore, little con-
sensus on its referent. Up to 1970 it was almost always used with one of two
basic definitions: people with common origins or people with a common cul-
ture. Neither of these necessarily singles out something sociologically real. The
fact that one's great grandparents came here from Ireland may not be very rel-
evant to one's life. Alternatively, that one cannot speak Gaelic does not neces-
sarily make one not Irish. Even so, the prevalence of these two alternative def-
initions in the 1960s (and to a certain extent today) allowed for a large degree
of flexibility in debate about the place of ethnicity in Canadian society. The
former was often implicitly used to overemphasize the importance of ethnicity,
as in "30 percent of Canadians are neither British nor French." The latter
could easily be used to argue the opposite case. After all, isn't ethnic culture
more or less peripheral to Canadian society?
By 1970 researchers began to come to terms with the hard fact that nei-
ther of these ways of looking at ethnicity was accurate. Since then perspec-
tives on ethnicity which emphasize identity and identification have become
current (Isajiw 1974, 1975, 1978; Taylor et al 1973; Driedger 1975, 1978;
Denton 1975; Richmond 1974; Makabe 1976, 1978; Buchignani 1981). In
this view ethnicity socially establishes the criteria for one of the many role sets
in which individuals participate. It is a concept of ethnicity which now predom-
inates in anthropology and it is gaining ground in sociology despite the
methodological problems which it poses for survey research. Its use has result-
ed in far greater ease in looking at ethnicity 'from the inside'—something
rather rare until recently.
It seems also that this view of ethnicity is slowly being reflected into the
sociopolitical debate about Canadian multiculturalism. To the extent that it
does, it must of necessity lead to less pessimistic analyses of multiculturalism
than those which have predominated earlier. Crudely put, it seems that
Canadian nationalists like Porter (1972) have long argued that ethnic culture
is intrinsically divisive and destructive of a unified Canadian identity; so, the
5 50 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
argument goes, its perpetuation inevitably leads to less than full socioeconomic
participation for minority group members. Ethnic spokespersons generally
take the opposite tack, claiming that multiculturalism does not do enough to
help ethnic cultures persist (Schroeter 1978). Cynics point to the awesome
assimilative powers of the mainstream culture and suggest that multiculturalism
is just a political sop for disgruntled ethnics. If one sees ethnic identity as
something like the role of 'father' which is only activated at certain times and
places, all these criticisms can be easily countered. As two of many personal
identities, ethnic allegiance and a strong identification with Canadianness are
not necessarily in contradiction with each other, at least if Canadian identity is
shaped in such a way as to be ethnically universal. As Bumet (1973, 1978)
has noted, if multicultural programs are seen as being supportive of those key,
highly symbolic aspects of ethnic culture which support both ethnic identity
and Canadianness, its objectives are indeed realizable. In this perspective mul-
ticulturalism is rather a misnomer. Multi-identity is a more accurate title.
FUTURE PROSPECTS FOR ETHNIC RESEARCH IN CANADA
I look to the future of ethnic research in sociology and anthropology with
ambivalent feelings. To begin on the positive side, there is no doubt that the
academic dialogue about ethnicity which has arisen in the past twenty years
will continue. The quantity of ethnic research being carried out has grown
exponentially for quite some time and there seems to be no doubt that it will
increase further for many years. Information is already flooding in so quickly
that no one could hope to incorporate it all. This is in the strongest contrast to
the 1950s. In a decade's time the national literature on ethnicity in Canada
will be large by world standards.
At the same time, I am more pessimistic about the quality, intellectual
sophistication and scope of future research. Overall, quality has not increased
appreciably over the past decade, as measured by the standards of method-
ological care, thoroughness of investigation or power of explanation. Indeed, I
believe that the average quality of research has dropped a bit. This is due pri-
marily to the rise of a large pseudo-sociological literature produced by ethnic
communities, academics dabbling in ethnic research or in education faculties,
where research standards remain weak. As for intellectual sophistication, I
foresee little development for some time. Most research still proceeds from
essentially descriptive goals. With the few exceptions noted previously, theo-
retical development has been very slow. Indeed, there has been little specifical-
ly theoretical discussion of ethncity in Canada. Most of what passes for it are
really just programmatic or definitional exercises. We do not have an overall
theory of Canadian ethnicity, and I do not see one coming soon. Neither do I
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 551
see a greater sythesis of research findings into cross-societal race and ethnic
relations theory. Moreover, ethnic theory is a branch of the overall theory of
the organization of social difference. As such it forms many parallels with the-
ories of other inter-group phenomena such as class, sex, religion and age.
Even so, in Canada these have remained largely distinct and I believe will con-
tinue so.
I believe that the scope of ethnic research already shows signs of prema-
ture closure. Certain phenomena are being actively investigated while others
with more social importance are systemically ignored. These interests and
avoidances are unlikely to change much in coming years. Perhaps the only
presently ignored areas where I foresee much future development are racial
and ethnic discrimination and the historical analysis of Canadian ethnicity.
Ethnic spokespersons have become increasingly concerned with discrimina-
tion, and the Secretary of State is presently beginning to respond to the pres-
sure. This will certainly be reflected in research. Racial troubles in Britain may
(inapppropriately) also motivate such research. As for historical analysis,
already some people in sociology and anthropology are in actuality closet
social historians. It is only a small step from social history to using historical
data to develop a comparative base for the present and I would not be sur-
prised if this becomes much more common in the next decade. Such historical
comparisons have long been made by ethnic spokespersons wishing to sup-
port interest group concerns by pointing out historical inequities.
12
 Perhaps
the future will see historical comparison made a bit more critically.
Finally, I see the social role of ethnic research in Canada remaining pri-
marily a conservative one, supportive of the status quo in most respects.
Ethnic research in sociology and anthropology is coloured by filial piety to the
ideal image of the groups under investigation and is almost uniformly written
with a liberal assimilationist perspective. In this sense, ethnic research will con-
tinue to advocate implicitly full ethnic participation in Canadian society as it is
presently structured. I believe that research, like the ethnic demands of the
early 1970s, has evolved in directions which for government are politically
acceptable. I foresee the next radical demands coming from racial rather than
cultural minorities, especially from Chinese, South Asian and Caribbean inter-
est groups. Already claims are being made that past and present levels of dis-
crimination are such that the government must establish affirmative action hir-
ing and job advancement programs.
1
^ Only time will tell how Canadian
researchers will respond to this new social challenge.
This chapter is taken from pages 16-34 of the Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes 17(1). Copyright ©
1982 Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes. Reprinted by permission of the Journal of Canadian
Studies/Revue d'etudes canadiennes.
552 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
ENDNOTES
1. See particularly Volume Four, The Cultural Contribution of Other Ethnic
Groups (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1970).
2. Canada, House of Commons (1971).
3. Ibid.
4. Indra (1979a).
5. There was a strong tendency for anthropology of that era to neglect the pre-
sent day Native situation in search of pre-contact culture and social organiza-
tion.
6. In particular, anthropology at the University of Manchester under Max
Gluckman (1940; Epstein 1958; Mitchell 1956, 1960, 1966) was a forerun-
ner of this sort of research.
7. Wangenheim's (1966) analysis of Ukrainian ethnic political action was the
first that really came to grips with ethnic political power. Johnson's (1967)
thesis and Dales' (1966) paper were the first to address immigration and the
labour force since Pentland. One of the earliest studies of perceived discrimi-
nation was Henry (1969). Shortly thereafter Millet (1971) took an initial look
at ethnic and religious identity. See also Jackson (1966) on English-French
relations.
8. See the 1978-9 Guide to Departments of Sociology, Anthropology and
Archaeology, Museum of Man (Ottawa: Canadian Sociology and
Anthropology Association).
9. Ibid.
10. See Mallea and Philip (1976) for a review of the literature and Buchignani
(1980) for a critique of Canadian educational perspectives on ethnicity.
11. See Boyd (1975), Naidoo (1977, 1979a, 1979b) and the special issue of
Canadian Ethnic Studies (Vol. 13, No. 1).
12. A major branch of ethnic pseudo-science is involved in this sort of ad hoc
comparison. For example, anti-Chinese discrimination during the building of
the CPR (a hundred years ago) is commonly used to legitimate the rights and
privileges of today's Chinese Canadians, the majority of whom are historically
unconnected with those early pioneers.
13. Here again, spokespersons neglect the original rationale upon which affirma-
tive action programs in the United States were built—that historical discrimi-
nation so lowered the social class resources of certain racial groups that the
country has an obligation to help them catch up. The only present-day
Canadian racial groups which can make such a claim are Native people and
Maritime Blacks.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 555
REFERENCES
Abu-Laban, Baha. 1980. An Olive Branch on the Family Tree: The Arabs in
Canada. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Allen, J. 1978. "The Economic Factor in Canadian Immigration Policy," in Driedger,
L. (ed.), The Canadian Ethnic Mosaic. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Anderson, A.B. 1972. "Assimilation in the Bloc Settlements of North-Central
Saskatchewan: A Comparative Study of Identity Change Among Seven
Ethno-Religious Groups in a Canadian Prairie Region." Ph.D. Dissertation.
University of Saskatchewan.
Anderson, A.B. and J. Frideres. 1981. Ethnicity in Canada: Theoretical
Perspectives. Toronto: Butterworths.
Anderson, G.M. 1974. Networks of Contact: The Portuguese and Toronto.
Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University.
Andracki, S. 1958. "The Immigration of Orientals into Canada with Special Reference
to Chinese." Ph.D. Dissertation. McGill University.
Balikci, Asen. 1960. "Ethnic Relations and the Marginal Man in Canada: A
Comment." Human Organization. 19(4): pp. 170-172.
Barclay, Harold B. 1968. "An Arab Community in the Canadian Northwest: A
Preliminary Discussion of the Lebanese Community in Lac La Biche,
Alberta." Anthropologia. 10(2).
. 1976. "The Lebanese Muslim Family," in Ishwaran, K. (ed.), The Canadian
Family. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Bennet, John. 1967. Hutterian Brethren: The Agricultural Economy of a
Communal People. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
. 1969. Northern Plainsmen. Chicago: Aldine.
Berry, John et al. 1977. Multiculturalism and Ethnic Attitudes in Canada. Ottawa:
Information Canada.
Blishen, B.R. 1958. "The Construction and Use of an Occupational Scale." Canadian
Journal of Economics and Political Science. 24(4): pp. 519-525.
Boissevain, Jeremy. 1970. The Italians of Montreal. Ottawa: Queen's Printer.
Boyd, Monica. 1975. "The Status of Immigrant Women in Canada." Canadian
Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 12(4): pp. 406-416.
Bradwin, E.W. 1928. The Bunkhouse Man: A Study of Work and Pay in the Camps
of Canada, 1903-1914. New York: Macmillan.
Braroe, Neils. 1965. "Reciprocal Exploitation in an Indian-White Community."
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology. 21: pp. 166-178.
. 1975. Indian and White: Self Image and Interaction in a Canadian
Plains Community. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Breton, Raymond. 1961. "Ethnic Communities and the Personal Relations of
554 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Immigrants." Ph.D. Dissertation. Johns Hopkins University.
. 1964. "Institutional Completeness of Ethnic Communities and Personal
Relations of Immigrants." American Journal of Sociology. 70(2): pp. 193-
205.
and H. Rosenborough. 1968. "Ethnic Differences in Status," in Blishen, B.R.
et al. (eds.), Canadian Society. Toronto: Macmillan.
Brody, Hugh. 1971. Indians on Skid Row. Ottawa: Department of Northern
Development.
. 1975. The People's Land. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Buchignani, N. 1977. "Immigration, Adaptation and the Management of Ethnic
Identity: An Examination of Fijian East Indians in British Columbia." Ph.D.
Dissertation. Simon Fraser University.
. 1979. "Recent East Indian Immigration to British Columbia: Identity
Formation Among Fijians," in Elliot, J. (ed.), Two Nations, Many Cultures.
Scarborough: Prentice-Hall.
. 1980. "Culture or Identity: Addressing Ethnicity in Canadian Education."
McGill Journal of Education. 15(1): pp. 79-93.
. 1981. "The Social and Self Identities of Fijian Indians in Vancouver." Urban
Anthropology. 9(1): pp. 75-98.
and Doreen Indra. 1981. "Inter-group Conflict and Community Solidarity:
Sikhs and South Asian Fijians in Vancouver." Canadian Journal of
Anthropology. 1(2): pp. 149-157.
Bumet, Jean. 1951. Next Year Country: A Study of Social Organization in Alberta.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
. 1973. "Ethnic Relations and Ethnic Policies in Canadian Society." IX
International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. Mimeo.
. 1978. "The Policy of Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework: A
Stock-taking." Canadian Ethnic Studies. 10(2): pp. 107-113.
Canada, House of Commons. 1971. The Federal Government's Response to Book
IV of the Report of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and
Biculturalism (October 8, 1971). Ottawa: Queen's Printer.
Canada, Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism. 1970. The Cultural
Contribution of Other Ethnic Groups. Ottawa: Queen's Printer.
Cassin, A.M. 1977. "Class and Ethnicity: The Social Organization of Working Class
East Indian Immigrants in Vancouver." M.A. Thesis. University of British
Columbia.
Chandra, K.V. 1973. Racial Discrimination in Canada. San Francisco: R. and E.
Research Associates.
Ch'eng, Tien-Fang. 1931. Oriental Immigration in Canada. Shanghai: Commercial
Press.
Clairmont, Donald H. and Dennis W. Magill. 1971. "Nova Scotia Blacks: Marginality
in a Depressed Region," in Mann, W. (ed.), Canada: A Social Profile.
Toronto: Copp Clark.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 555
and Dennis W. Magill. 1974. Africuille: The Life and Death of a Canadian
Black Community. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Clement, Wallace. 1975. The Canadian Corporate Elite. Toronto: Macmillan.
and D. Olsen. 1974. "The Ethnic Composition of Canada's Elite: 1951 to
1973." Mimeo.
Corbett, D. 1957. Canada's Immigration Policy: A Critique. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Crysdale, Stewart. 1968. "Occupational and Social Mobility in Riverdale, A Blue Collar
Community." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto.
Dales, John. 1966. "Protectionism, Immigration, and Canadian Nationalism," in
Russell, P. (ed.), Nationalism in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill.
Dahlie, J. and T. Fernando (eds.). 1981. Ethnicity, Power and Politics in Canada.
Toronto: Methuen.
Darroch, A. 1979. "Another Look at Ethnicity, Stratification and Social Mobility in
Canada." Canadian Journal of Sociology. 4(1): pp. 1-25.
Dawson, Carl A. 1936. Group Settlement: Ethnic Communities in Western
Canada. Toronto: Macmillan.
Denton, J. 1975. "Indian Migrants and Impression Management of Ethnic Stigma."
Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 12: pp. 65-71.
Dirks, Gerald. 1978. Canada's Refugee Policy. Indifference or Opportunism?
Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Dosman, Edgar J. 1972. Indians-. The Urban Dilemma. Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart.
Driedger, Leo. 1975. "In Search of Cultural Identity Factors: A Comparison of Ethnic
Students." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 12(2): pp.
150-62.
. 1978a. "Ukrainian Identity in Winnipeg,
7
' in Kovacs, M. (ed.), Ethnic
Canadians: Culture and Education. Regina: Plains Research Council.
(ed.). 1978b. The Canadian Ethnic Mosaic: A Quest for Identity. Toronto:
McClelland and Stewart.
Dunning, R.W. 1959. "Ethnic Relations and the Marginal Man in Canada." Human
Organization. 18(3): pp. 117-22.
Dusenbery, V. 1979. "Canadian Ideology and Public Policy: The Impact on Vancouver
Sikh 'Ethnic' and 'Religious' Organization." Mimeo.
England, Robert. 1929. The Central European Immigrant in Canada. Toronto:
Macmillan.
. 1936. The Colonization of Western Canada, 1896-1934. London: P.S.
King.
. (ed.). 1971. Minority Canadians (Vol. 1: Native Peoples, Vol. 2:
Immigrant Groups). Scarborough: Prentice-Hall.
_. 1979. Two Nations, Many Cultures: Ethnic Groups in Canada.
Scarborough: Prentice-Hall.
556 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Epstein, A.L. 1958. Politics in an Urban African Community. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Erikson, Bonnie H. 1966. "Prestige, Power and the Chinese." M.A. Thesis. University
of British Columbia.
Fernandez, Ronald L. 1978. "The Logic of Ethnicity: A Study of the Montreal
Portuguese." Ph.D. Dissertation. McGill University.
Forcese, D. 1975. The Canadian Class Structure. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Foster, Kate A. 1924. Our Canadian Mosaic. Toronto: Dominion Council of the
Y.W.C.A.
Frideres, J. 1978. "British Canadian. Attitudes toward Minority Ethnic Groups in
Canada." Ethnicity. 5(1): pp. 20-33.
Gardiner, R.C. et al. 1970. "Ethnic Stereotypes: Attitudes or Beliefs." Canadian
Journal of Psychiatry. 24(5): pp. 321-24.
and R. Kalin (eds.). 1981. A Canadian Social Psychology of Ethnic
Relations. Toronto: Methuen.
Gibbins, R. and J.R. Ponting. 1976. "Public Opinion and Canadian Indians."
Canadian Ethnic Studies. 8(2): pp. 1-17.
Gibbon, John M. 1938. Canadian Ethnic Mosaic: The Making of a Northern
Nation. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Gluckman, M. 1940. "Analysis of a Social Situation in Modern Zululand." Bantu
Studies. 14: pp. 1-30, 147-74.
Gold, Gerald. 1975. Saint-Pasca/: Changing Leadership and Social Organization in
a Quebec Town. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Goldstein, Jay. 1978. "The Prestige of Canadian Ethnic Groups: Some New
Evidence." Canadian Ethnic Studies. 10(1): pp. 84-95.
and R. Bienvenue (eds.). 1980. Ethnicity and Ethnic Relations in Canada.
Toronto: Butterworths.
Green, A.G. 1976. Immigration and the Post-mar Canadian Economy. Toronto:
Macmillan.
Hawkins, Freda. 1972. Canada and Immigration: Public Policy and Public Concern.
Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press.
Hawthorn, H. (ed.). 1966-7. A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada: A
Report on Economic, Political, Educational Needs and Policies (2v.).
Ottawa: Indian Affairs Branch.
Henry, F. 1969. "The Measurement of Perceived Discrimination: A Canadian Case
Study." Race. 10(4): pp. 449-62.
. 1973. Forgotten Canadians: The Blacks of Nova Scotia. Don Mills:
Longman.
. 1977. "The Dynamics of Racism in Toronto." Mimeo.
Herman, H. 1978. Men in White Aprons. A Study of Ethnicity and Occupation.
Toronto: Peter Martin.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 557
Hill, D. 1960. "Negroes in Toronto: A Sociological Study of a Minority Group." Ph.D.
Dissertation. University of Toronto.
Hirabayashi, G. and K.V. Ujimoto (eds.). 1980. Visible Minorities: Asians in Canada.
Toronto: Butterworths.
Hoe, Ban Seng. 1976. Structural Changes of Two Chinese Communities in
Alberta. Ottawa: Museum of Man.
Honigmann, J.J. 1965. "Social Disintegration in Five Northern Canadian
Communities." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 2: pp.
199-214.
Hostetler, John A. and G.E. Huntington. 1967. The Hutterites in North America.
Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Hughes, David and Evelyn Kallen. 1974. The Anatomy of Racism: Canadian
Dimensions. Montreal: Harvest House.
Hughes, Everett C. 1943. French Canada in Transition. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
. 1948. "The Study of Ethnic Relations." Reprinted in The Sociological Eye.
(1971). Chicago: Aldine.
Indra, Doreen M. 1979a. "Ethnicity, Social Stratification, and Opinion Formation: An
Analysis of Ethnic Portrayal in the Vancouver Newspaper Press, 1903-
1976." Ph.D. Dissertation. Simon Fraser University.
. 1979b. "The Portrayal of South Asians in the Vancouver Press, 1905-
1976." Ethnic and Racial Studies. 2(2): pp. 164-87.
. 1981. "Women, Ethnicity, and the Media." Canadian Ethnic Studies.
13(1): pp. 63-74.
Isajiw, W. 1974. "Definitions of Ethnicity." Ethnicity. 1: pp. 111-24.
. 1975. "The Process of Maintenance of Ethnic Identity: The Canadian
Context," in Migus, P. (ed.), Sounds Canadian. Toronto: Peter Martin.
(ed.). 1977. Identities: The Impact of Ethnicity on Canadian Society.
Toronto: Peter Martin.
. 1978. "Olga in Wonderland: Ethnicity in a Technological Society," in
Driedger, Leo (ed.), The Canadian Ethnic Mosaic. Toronto: McClelland and
Stewart.
Jackson, J. 1966. "French-English Relations in an Ontario Community." Canadian
Reuiew of Sociology and Anthropology. 3: pp. 117-31.
Johnson, Caswell. 1967. "The Structure of Immigration and the Labor Force: An
Inquiry into the Economic Characteristics of Canada's Postwar Immigration,
1946-1962." Ph.D. Dissertation. Columbia University.
Kelner, Marrijoy. 1970. "Ethnic Penetration into Toronto's Bite Structure." Canadian
Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 7: pp. 128-37.
Khattab, A.M. 1969. "The Assimilation of Arab Muslims in Alberta." M.A. Thesis.
University of Alberta.
558 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Kosa, John. 1957. Land of Choice: The Hungarians in Canada. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press.
Kovak, M. (ed.). 1978. Ethnic Canadians: Culture and Education. Regina: Plains
Research Council.
Latowski, E. 1971. "Family Lifestyles and Jewish Culture," in Ishwaran, K. (ed.), The
Canadian Family. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
La Violette, Forest E. 1948. The Canadian Japanese and World War II: A
Sociological and Psychological Account. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
Lee, D. and L. La Forge (eds.). 1979. Frontieres Ethniques En Devenir (Emerging
Ethnic Boundaries). Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
Li, P. 1978. "The Stratification of Ethnic Immigrants of Toronto." Canadian Review
of Sociology and Anthropology. 15(1): pp. 31-40.
. . 1979. "Prejudice Against Asians in a Canadian City." Canadian Ethnic
Studies. 10(2): pp. 70-7.
Lysenko, Vera. 1947. Men in Sheepskin Coats: A Study in Assimilation. Toronto:
Ryerson Press.
Mackie, M. 1974. "Ethnic Stereotypes and Prejudice: Alberta Indians, Hutterites and
Ukrainians." Canadian Ethnic Studies. 6: pp. 39-52.
. 1978. "Ethnicity and Nationalism: How Much do They Matter to Western
Canadians?" Canadian Ethnic Studies. 10(2): pp. 118-29.
Makabe, Tomoko. 1976. "Ethnic Group Identity: Canadian-born Japanese in
Metropolitan Toronto." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto.
. 1978. "Ethnic Identity and Social Mobility: The Case of the Second
Generation Japanese in Metropolitan Toronto." Canadian Ethnic Studies.
10(1): pp. 106-23.
Mallea, J.R. and P. Philip. 1976. "Canadian Cultural Pluralism and Education: A Select
Bibliography." Canadian Ethnic Studies. 8(1): pp. 81-8.
Marston, Wilfred G. 1969. "Social Class Segregation within Ethnic Groups in
Toronto." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 6: pp. 65-79.
Massey, Vincent. 1948. On Being Canadian. Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons.
Maxwell, Thomas R. 1971. "The French Population of Metro Toronto: A Study of
Ethnic Participation and Ethnic Identity." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of
Toronto.
Maykovich, Minako K. 1976. "The Japanese Family in Transition and Change," in
Ishwaran, K. (ed.), The Canadian Family. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and
Winston.
Migus, P. (ed.). 1975. Sounds Canadian: Languages and Cultures in Multi-Ethnic
Society. Toronto: Peter Martin.
Millet, D. 1971. "Religion as a Source of Perpetuation of Ethnic Identity," in David, D.
and K. Herman (eds.), Social Space: Canadian Perspectives. Toronto: New
Press.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 559
Miner, Horace. 1939. St. Denis: A French-Canadian Parish. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Mitchell, J.C. 1956. "The Kalela Dance." Rhodes-Livingstone Papers. 27.
. 1960. Tribalism and the Plural Society: An Inaugural Lecture. London:
Oxford University Press.
. 1966. "Theoretical Orientations in African Urban Studies," in Banton, M.
(ed.), The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies. London: Tavistock.
Morton, Arthur S. 1938. History of Prairie Settlement (Canadian Frontiers of
Settlement, Vol. 2). Toronto: Macmillan.
Nagata, Judith. 1964. "Adaptation and Integration of Greek Working Class Immigrants
in the City of Toronto: A Situational Approach." International Migration
Review. 4(1): pp. 44-68.
Naidoo, J. 1977. "The East Indian Woman: Potential Contributions to Canadian
Society." Mimeo.
. 1979a. "Women of South Asian and Anglo Saxon Origins in the Canadian
Context: Self Perceptions, Socialization, Achievement Aspirations," in Adam.
C.S. (ed.), Sex Roles. Montreal: Eden Press.
. 1979b. "New Perspectives on South Asian Women in Canada." Mimeo.
Ossenberg, R.J. 1964. "The Social Integration and Adjustment of Post-War
Immigrants in Montreal and Toronto." Canadian Review of Sociology and
Anthropology. 1(4): pp. 202-14.
Paine, Robert (ed.). 1971. Patrons and Brokers in the East Arctic. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press.
(ed.). 1977. The White Arctic: Anthropological Essays on Tutelage and
Ethnicity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Palmer, H. (ed.). 1975. Immigration and the Rise of Multiculturalism. Toronto:
Copp Clark.
Pentland, H.C. 1958. "Labour and the Development of Individual Capitalism in
Canada." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto.
. 1959. "The Development of a Capitalistic Labour Market in Canada."
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science. 25(4): pp. 450-61.
Pineo, Peter C. 1977. "The Social Standing of Ethnic and Racial Groupings."
Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 14(2): pp. 147-57.
Petersen, W. 1955. Planned Migration: The Social Determinants of the Dutch-
Canadian Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pitman, W. 1977. Now is Not Too Late. Toronto: Task Force on Human Relations.
Porter, John. 1965. The Vertical Mosaic: An Analysis of Social Class and Power in
Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
. 1972. "Dilemmas and Contradictions of a Multi-ethnic Society."
Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada. 10(4): pp. 193-205.
Potter, Harold H. 1961. "Negroes in Canada." Race. 3(1): pp. 39-56.
540 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Potter, H. and D. Hill. 1966. "Negro Settlement in Canada." Presentation to the Royal
Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism.
Ramcharan, Subhas. 1976. "The Economic Adaptation of West Indians in Toronto."
Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 13(3): pp. 295-305.
Richmond, Anthony. 1967. Post-war Immigrants in Canada. Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
. 1972. Ethnic Residential Segregation in Metropolitan Toronto. York:
Institute of Behavioral Studies.
. 1974a. Aspects of the Absorption and Adaptation of Immigrants.
Ottawa: Department of Manpower and Immigration.
. 1974b. "Language, Ethnicity and the Problem of Identity in a Canadian
Metropolis." Ethnicity. I: pp. 175-206.
. 1975. "Black and Asian Immigrants in Britain and Canada: Experiences of
Prejudice and Discrimination." Presented at the Conference on
Multiculturalism and Third World Immigrants in Canada. Edmonton.
Roundtree, George M. 1936. The Railway Worker. A Study of Employment and
Unemployment Problems of the Canadian Railways. Toronto: Oxford
University Press.
Sawchuck, Joe. 1978. The Metis of Manitoba: Reformulation of Ethnic Identity.
Toronto: Peter Martin.
Scanlon, T. Joseph. 1975. "The Sikhs of Vancouver: A Case Study of the Role of the
Media in Ethnic Relations." Mimeo.
Schroeter, Gerd. 1978. "In Search of Ethnicity: Multiculturalism in Canada." Journal
of Ethnic Studies. 6(1): pp. 98-108.
Schaffir, William. 1974. Life in a Religious Community: The Lubavitcher Chassidim
in Montreal. Toronto: Holt Rinehart and Winston.
Sidlofsky, Samuel. 1969. "Post-war Immigrants in the Changing Metropolis With
Special Reference to Toronto's Italian Population." Ph.D. Dissertation.
University of Toronto.
Smith, D. 1975. Natives and Outsiders. Ottawa: Northern Research Centre.
Srivastava, R. 1975. "Family Organization and Change Among the Overseas Indians
with Special Reference to Immigrant Families in British Columbia, Canada,"
in Kurian, G. (ed.), Family in India. The Hague: Mouton.
Stasiulis, D. 1980. "The Political Structuring of Ethnic Community Action: A
Reformulation." Canadian Ethnic Studies. 12(3): pp. 18-44.
Stymeist, D. 1975. Ethnics and Indians: Social Relations in a Northwestern Ontario
Town. Toronto: Peter Martin.
Sumida, R. 1935. "The Japanese in British Columbia." M.A. Thesis. University of
British Columbia.
Taylor, D.M., J.M. Bassil and F.E. Aboud. 1973. "Dimensions of Ethnic Identity in
Canada." Journal of Social Psychology. 89: pp. 185-92.
Tepper, E. (ed.). 1980. Southeast Asian Exodus: From Tradition to Resettlement.
CANADIAN ETHNIC RESEARCH AND MULTICULTURALISM 54
Ottawa: Canadian Asian Studies Association.
Tepperman, L. 1975. Social Mobility in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
Thompson, Richard H. 1979. "The State and the Ethnic Community: The Changing
Social Organization of Toronto's Chinatown." Ph.D. Dissertation. University
of Michigan.
Turrittin, J.S. 1976. "Networks and Mobility: The Case of West Indian Domestics from
Montserrat." Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology. 13(3): pp.
305-20.
Ubale, B. 1977. "Equal Opportunity and Public Policy." Mimeo.
Ujimoto, K.V. 1973. "Post-war Japanese Immigrants in Canada." Ph.D. Dissertation.
University of British Columbia.
Vallee, F.G., M. Schwartz and F. Darknell. 1957. "Ethnic Assimilation and
Differentiation in Canada." Canadian Journal of Economics and Political
Science. 23(4): pp. 540-49.
Wangenheim, E. 1966. "The Ukrainians: A Case Study of the Third Force.'" in
Russell, P. (ed.), Nationalism in Canada. Toronto: McGraw-Hill.
Wilmott, W. 1968. "Some Aspects of Chinese Communities in British Columbia
Towns." B.C. Studies. 27-36.
Winks, R. 1968-9. "Negroes in the Maritimes." Dalhousie Review. 27(3): pp. 453-71.
. 1971. The Blacks in Canada. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Wood, John. 1978. "East Indians and Canada's New Immigration Policy." Canadian
Public Policy. 4(4): pp. 547-67.
. 1981. "A Visible Minority Votes: East Indian Electoral Behaviour in the
Vancouver South Provincial and Federal Election." in Dahlie. J. and T.
Fernando, op. cit..
Woodsworth, James S. 1909. Strangers within our Gates or. Coming Canadians.
Toronto: Missionary Society of the Methodist Church. Canada.
Yuzyk, P. 1953. The Ukrainians in Manitoba: A Social History. Toronto: University
of Toronto Press.
Ziegler, S. 1980. "Measuring Inter-Ethnic Attitudes in a Multi-Ethnic Context."
Canadian Ethnic Studies. 12(3): pp. 45-55.
with A. Richmond. 1972. Characteristics of Italian Householders in
Metropolitan Toronto. York: Survey Research Centre.
This page intentionally left blank 
Focus ON ETHNIC Music
REGULA BURCKHARDT OURESHI
My intent in proposing this panel* was to focus on the unique reality of
doing ethnomusicology within our own national community, and I admit to a
certain degree of nationalism motivating the whole idea. The term ethnic, too,
is used here in the "official" Canadian sense, i.e., a minority immigrant group
as distinct from Native on one side, anglophone or francophone on the
other—perhaps our panel is really discriminating against anglophone and fran-
cophone groups, especially where they are in a minority situation. Throughout
this conference, experiences relevant to this topic were shared and variously
articulated in different sessions; particular cases were identified and responded
to. Here my intent is to complement those inductive experiential insights with
an attempt to deal with the issue somewhat more paradigmatically, by propos-
ing a loose theoretical frame—maybe somewhat outrageous—which can help
generate interpretations and strategies, perhaps even policy.
Let me start briefly with my own experience which led me to this kind of
thinking. I started as an official ethnic researcher in 1970 for the Provincial
Archives of Alberta, and that gave me a broad exposure to the whole notion
of addressing the ethnic reality in music. Since then, Canada has witnessed a
surge and incremental increase in the study of ethnic music which is well
reflected in our conference. Ethnic music is, however, no monolith, and even
in its brief history, important changes have to be registered. The first of these I
see as essentially being a shift from early and pioneering music-making com-
munities that have rural roots to more recently formed urban communities. A
good example is the Moravian community who settled in the Prairies in the
1890s and were entirely rural-based but have now become largely urban, with
the rural settlements becoming scattered and secondary. A second important
example are the Ukrainians, whose early rural character has been overlaid
with the urbanization of the second generation, reinforced by recent urban
immigrants. Indeed, recent immigration, regardless of immigrant background,
has been almost exclusively urban, as is .evident in examples as diverse as the
Portuguese, East Indian and Vietnamese communities in Canada.
544 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
The second change is a concomitant shift from an exclusively inward focus
musically, to a mixture between inward and outward foci: that is, now there is
always a glance toward the larger community. This shift also means moving
from a community-specific setting of music making to a stage/entertainment
kind of setting—from a private, family audience all the way to a public, com-
munity audience. The phenomenon is observable among rural as well as urban
immigrants like East Indians who, within barely a quarter century, have
expanded their musical focus from family to their own larger community and
finally to the Canadian public at large.
My experience with trying to leam, research and collect music from this
diverse group of music-making communities has forced reflection on two fun-
damental issues which I am highlighting here. One pertains to the musical
sound, to the musical repertoire of ethnic Canadians. What I found from the
beginning is that even the older settlers did not really have much music that is
distinct from the music of their home country. Very little of it was uniquely
Canadian, and thus I often found it difficult to provide the Alberta Archives
with something that was Alberta-Ukrainian as against Ukrainian, or Alberta-
Moravian, and so on. The few exceptions are those of continuing rural com-
munities with a religious basis; the Hutterites are an outstanding example. In
total, the music of most ethnic Canadians is simply too new, and then mass
communication came in so quickly that there was no adequate time period for
this music to develop indigenously. Recent immigration has made this even
more pronounced because direct contact with the home culture is now easy
and is actively practised. Ethnomusicologists would be naive to ignore the fact
that ethnic music in Canada and the music of the country of origin are today
closely linked and that the latter provides a powerful—and changing—frame of
reference. One need only consider ethnic record and video stores, visiting per-
formers, exchanges, and ethnic Canadians returning to the homelands to
study.
The second issue pertains to the distinction between the researcher and
the human subject of his research. In my work in Canada, this distinction
became uncomfortably blurred, quite in contrast to my earlier fieldwork in
South Asia, where a very clear insider-outsider distinction always obtained.
There I was the researcher, "they" were the informants. Yes, there was a
search for equality and I continuously made genuine moves toward identifica-
tion, like learning the language and wearing the dress, and I became accultur-
ated at a personal level. At the same time, our respective identities remained
distinct and there was a frame by which structural equivalence could be gener-
ated because each of us belonged to two different countries whose citizenship
helped define our respective social, economic and political status. Indeed,
between two countries, structural equivalence between researcher and infor-
mants can be legislated and controlled. In the case of India, where that is in
Focus ON ETHNIC Music 545
fact happening, it was easy and gratifying for both "sides" to offer generous
moves toward equality through gestures of identification at the personal level,
for at the same time, I knew I would go back to my own country/community
and change back, while they knew I was only a visitor. In one sense, that was
practising ethnomusicology through something close to cultural disguise, or at
least through highly stylized forms of encounter.
In Canada, the process and flavour of doing ethnomusicology are very dif-
ferent. I found that my research resulted in ambiguities from the start, arising
from my own identity and involvement uis-d-uis my "informants" and their
music. For example, the German Moravian and Mennonite groups that I
worked with sing their 19th-century Pietist hymns which I, in a Swiss
Protestant milieu, had grown up to despise as sentimental. Now they brought
tears to my eyes and a sudden sense of a common destiny between us. The
experience raised questions about complexities of identification, involvement,
about shared experience and emotional distance.
My second example relates to the ethnomusicologist's participation in eth-
nic music making. I always have been a participant in Indian music making,
but unlike bimusical Mantle Hood and his disciples, I have also been a member
of the community by affiliation. Thus, when I was researching Indo-Canadian
music making, I was an integral part of that social and musical scene as well.
Now the dilemma was, should I bracket myself out and pretend not really to be
there, or change my persona and thereby the musical character of the group?
This raised questions of behavioural distance, but more so of authenticity and
boundaries.
Another facet of such "participant research" gained profile for me through
a doctoral student who is himself of Ukrainian background. In Canada, he
does research on the bandura epic; at the same time he is committed to revi-
talizing this tradition as a performer. An activist as a musician, is he putting his
historical research in the service of praxis, or is he turning musical praxis into
research?
My own reflection on this entire complex of issues has led me to a para-
digm which is originally derived from Marx (1906: 43, 8Iff.), because it is
based on his concepts relative to the whole notion of what is a value. Value,
including that of a valued thing, is not inherent, it is assigned by people either
as a value for use or for exchange. Both kinds of values ultimately become
manifest in the relationships which govern them, whether they take the form
of use or exchange. Thus even an apparent object-like property is more use-
fully seen in terms of the relationship which governs its use: between the
"owner," someone who can prevent others from having access to it, and all
those others. A piece of property, as such, has no meaning itself: its meaning
as property comes from that relationship between owner and non-owner. This
perspective proposes the study not of value in objects—property or music—
546 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
but of the human dynamic of that value.
It is in the same sense that I see for ourselves the need for a shift in focus
from the music to the relationships that generate music. Musical sound is an
acoustic object; its meaning is ultimately the product of the relationship
between those creating it, i.e., the people who make (compose and perform)
the music, the people who listen to the music, and those who control its pro-
duction. Embodied in the concept "relations of production" (Marx 1906:
8 Iff.), this perspective encompasses the entire community of people involved
in the production, control and use of music.
If music is not an acoustic product but the acoustic manifestation of a rela-
tionship, then the project "focus on ethnic music" would then mean focusing
on those whose relationship results in the musical sound, i.e., the community
of music makers—in fact, a number of ethnomusicologists are already coming
to that conclusion without a paradigm, and even some musicologists have
taken a bold initiative in the same direction, emphasizing music makers over
musical product (Duckies 1980: 836). The problem is that "officially" we still
have to call our subject of study music to fit into our system of educational
institutions. One exception is the discipline of anthropology, but curiously few
ethnomusicologists have found acceptance there—our homes are mostly
departments of music.
Maybe the Cree—as we heard earlier in this conference—have it right,
with their language full of verbs denoting activity, not nouns; English and other
Indo-European languages are full of nouns denotative of things, and our soci-
etal arrangements, our university setup, reflect the conceptual tendency of
objectification. This does not prevent us, however, from turning our focus on
music into a focus on people and the activity of music making—a new, non-
elitist humanism is particularly appropriate for ethnomusicologists.
From this vantage point, let me now look back at the two issues I raised
earlier. Taking first the sound of music: how do we deal with the fact that the
sound of ethnic music in Canada is so inconveniently undefinable and indistin-
guishable from its predecessors in the "home country"? Once we consider the
music from the perspective of the music makers then, if they want reference
to the home culture or its original music, that may be inconvenient but it is
clearly relevant. In fact, as researchers we need, in order to have any credibili-
ty at all, to share in the ethnic music makers' frame of reference to the home-
land's music. Given the fact that today the home culture is increasingly a pri-
mary referent for ethnic communities, we as researchers have to accept that,
even though it may seem to make the musical product less "original," less
"interesting," less "uniquely Canadian." This acceptance means that we can
now stop looking for "old" ethnic songs. We can stop looking for an ethnic
sound identity at all costs.
What then should the music researcher look for? We need to be guided by
Focus ON ETHNIC Music 547
the priorities of the music-making communities themselves, if we want to gain
access to their system of significance for their music. A primary concern which
emerges here is self-definition. Not accidentally, several of our conference ses-
sions are gathered within the major rubric "ethnicity and identity," a theme
that I understand as having two senses: one is the group's internal self-defini-
tion, the other is self-definition uis-d-uis the larger society, outside researchers
included. It is from such culture-specific priorities that a meaningful approach
to music making and repertoire needs to be generated.
The second issue was the blur between the researcher and the subject of
research, or the people whose music is being researched. Doing research is
praxis, and so is music making. In the light of my "paradigm," the issue
becomes one of creating equivalence between the protagonists in the
process—the researcher and the music makers. Doing ethnic music research is
thus the process of relating to the makers of ethnic music as members of the
same larger community which, of course, is Canada. In some sense, we are
fortunate for being forced into this process here, and perhaps, what we leam
from it can extend to teaching something to ethnomusicologists elsewhere.
The simple agenda, in my view, is to get away from the "commodity
approach" to music research. Because if music is the manifestation of a rela-
tionship, then our focus on ethnic music, too, implies a relationship between
ethnomusicologist and music maker.
From this perspective, when ethnomusicologists are recording music or
obtaining information about music it means that we are obtaining something
valuable to the music maker, we are appropriating a value. To invoke Marx
once again very loosely, value is essentially of two kinds: one is use value, the
other exchange value of which money is the ultimate symbol (Marx 1906: 43).
That the inherent value of music is use value has come out very clearly for me
when working with ethnic music making, and also that this use value is some-
thing intrinsically precious which cannot be paid for. As a researcher I, in fact,
participate in its use; in effect, I receive a gift or appropriate a value. The issue
then becomes: what kind of reciprocity can I offer? Since, if it has no
exchange value, music cannot be paid for, can use values be exchanged
instead? To reciprocate with use value would mean that the music maker
should receive or participate in the use of something valuable to the ethnomu-
sicologist; an example that comes to mind is Beverley Diamond Cavanagh's
invitation to Native music makers to speak from the platform of her university.
However, exchange value can also enter the domain of music, and among
ethnic communities—perhaps unlike among Native people—the buying and
selling of commodities, including the use of money as an equivalent for music,
is to some extent a part of their reality. Many ethnic groups have adapted to
this as part of their assimilation to the market exchange system in Canada.
And so, at least some of the music of ethnic groups has become a marketable
548 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
product for public consumption; that is, the groups themselves are willing to
commoditize some of their music and invest it with exchange value. This is a
wonderful facilitator for ethnomusicologists, because we can actually go out
and buy their music; we can literally buy into it. But it is a deceptive facility,
because this means that some ethnic music becomes subject to market forces
just as our own mainstream music has, in turn raising prospects of profession-
alization and standardization. As an ethnic performer I have personally faced
questions such as whether ethnic music should have musicians' union cover-
age and equivalent fee schedules, e.g., $150 for three hours of performance,
and so on. These are the inevitable musical solutions of Canadian mainstream
society; it therefore hardly surprises that the least commoditized music chal-
lenges ethnomusicologists most directly.
But fortunately it is quite inappropriate for the ethnomusicologist to initi-
ate a solution to the question of whether ethnic music should be commoditized
in this way. Because real equivalence means mutuality between me as the
researcher and the ethnic parties as music makers. Thanks to multiculturalism,
the members of the ethnic community themselves are becoming increasingly
aware of how they can define themselves and they are gaining the kind of
sense of self-definition that enables them to start taking the initiative, to decide
what they want regarding their music, and how they want it to be dealt with—
whether as a use value, an exchange value, or both. A few such groups have
now gained the self-confidence to face an ethnomusicologist as an equal even
at the university, especially if their members occupy collegial space with the
ethnomusicologist. My personal experience is based on a lot of contact with
South Asian groups, including many university professors who are my col-
leagues; clearly I cannot get away with anything less than equivalence, and
that is a good learning situation. In fact, it makes it very easy for me to listen,
simply because I have to. For while we all have good will, I think at some level,
our very professional character has been invested with a certain amount of
patronizing attitude, following years of intellectual/academic colonialism and
post-colonialism. Maybe I am speaking only for myself, but I am speaking for
myself.
The real challenge, then, is to live equivalence and mutuality even where
we can get away with less for the moment, because ultimately our very legiti-
macy as researchers in the Canadian mosaic is at stake. Such equivalence
means no less than to include community representatives in our own policy
making, from research goals to teaching. For ultimately, it is the members of
the music-making groups who are their own best experts. What I am propos-
ing is simple: just as I myself have been involved in the process of indigenizing
Indian ethnomusicology in India, we need to promote the same goals here vis-
a-vis ethnic music research.
A first suggestion toward this end is to design formal mechanisms, such as
Focus ON ETHNIC Music 549
advisory bodies, memberships in our "fraternity"—the Steering Committee of
our not-yet-existing organization already brought up the participation of music
makers in our group in some real, equivalent way. A second suggestion is
affirmative action, to create access to the discipline for students from ethnic
groups who want to move to different levels of musical self-expression and
self-understanding. York University has already moved ahead in this direction,
but it is not always easy for students to join an ethnomusicology program in a
music department because the stepping-stone to entering is normally a spe-
cialized music degree, which more or less requires a Western musical back-
ground.
My last suggestion pertains to the need for equivalence in the informal
sphere of interaction in which we create the experiences shared between our-
selves and the people with whom we work. For it is at this concrete level of
personal contact that real equivalence is actually practised and perceived,
where style and substance converge—and no one knows the power of that
convergence better than music makers!
* This paper was initially presented in the panel "Doing Ethnomusicology in
Canada: Focus and Community" at the First Conference on Ethnomusicology
in Canada, Toronto, May 1988.
This chapter is taken from pages 339-344 of Robert Witmer (ed.), Ethnomusicology in Canada. Copyright ffl 1990 Institute for
Canadian Music. Reprinted by permission of the Institute for Canadian Music.
REFERENCES
Duckies, Vincent et al. 1980. "Musicology," in Sadie, Stanley (ed.), The New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: MacMillan.
Marx, Karl. 1906. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. The Process of
Capitalist Production. Translated by Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling and
Ernest Untermann. New York: Random House (The Modem Library).
This page intentionally left blank 
FROM IMMIGRANT
TO ETHNIC FOLKLORE:
A CANADIAN VIEW OF PROCESS
AND TRANSITION
ROBERT B. KLYMASZ
Stimulated by the new influx of immigrants after World War II, folklore
research in North America began to redouble earlier efforts to investigate the
field of immigrant folklore. By 1959, however, this particular area of scientific
enquiry was still approached in terms of several largely unresolved yet crucial
questions:
What happens to the inherited traditions of European and Asiatic folk
after they settle in the United States and leam a new language and
new ways? How much of the old lore is retained and transmitted to
their children? What parts are sloughed off, what intrusions appear,
what accommodation is made between Old Country beliefs and the
American physical scene?
1
Unfortunately, subsequent attempts to study "intrusions" and "accommo-
dation" have hardly matched the continued predilection for retentions and sur-
vivals.
2
 Based on procedures developed by standard European folklore schol-
arship with its focus on fully structured and ethnically homogeneous oral tradi-
tions, reports on immigrant folklore have tended to bemoan the collapse of a
given Old World complex in its New World setting and to degrade and ignore
those processes and phenomena that, in the vigorous contact situation so rich-
ly exemplified by immigrant folklore, inevitably diverge from the old, estab-
lished models.
3
The purpose of the present paper is to underline the need to reexamine
the scope and dimensions of immigrant folklore research and to suggest the
formulation of a new and extended framework for observation that considers
both dissolution and acquisition as inextricable, concomitant processes that
accompany the fragmentation of the immigrant folklore complex in North
552 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
America. The views expressed here are admittedly somewhat programmatic in
nature and represent a synthesis of findings drawn from the author's study of
various aspects of the Ukrainian immigrant folklore heritage as found in
Western Canada.
4
THE TRADITION IN FLUX
The universal components of folklore change can be readily discerned in
the Ukrainian-Canadian folklore complex that operates in terms of three inter-
related yet fairly distinct segments or layers of materials: traditional, transition-
al, and innovational. Individually and collectively they bring into focus those
contrastive trends and processes that in actual practice combine with one
another in a continual state of dynamic interaction. The first segment marks
the most conservative stratum in the living folklore heritage and is easily linked
to traditional Old Country antecedents. The second layer of materials is distin-
guished by a string of antithetical features whose combined threat of dissolu-
tion is itself expressed in terms of verbal lore but only partially conceded by
the complex that begins, instead, to absorb and generate new features, and to
reinforce, heighten, and crystallize certain traditional elements as others fade
away.
5
 The third, the innovational layer, shows an attempt to reconstruct the
tradition as selected retentions merge with new phenomena to produce a
streamlined, modem-day version of the folklore legacy. The implications of the
resultant construct and its relationship to the old traditional stratum are most
crucial for an understanding of the overall direction of change and the various
shifts and adjustments that are made in terms of form, content, function, carri-
ers as well as vehicles, and occasions for the transmission of folkloric materi-
als.
THE IMPACT OF LANGUAGE Loss
Undoubtedly the most important single factor to have influenced the
development of Ukrainian folklore in Western Canada has been the loss of the
old mother tongue as a viable means of communication among the Canadian-
bom.
6
 In general, the traditional folktale corpus has failed to leap the language
wall and limits its circulation to an ever-shrinking group of old-timers,
7
 leaving
the younger members of the Ukrainian community to view the Old Country
heritage in terms of a derisive, riddling cycle of ethnic jokes expressed
in English.
8
 Similarly, the traditional folksong repertoire, once the common
property of all within the group, has taken on the stature of a "lost art"
FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC FOLKLORE 555
transmitted almost exclusively by a small, select band of semi-professional and
commercial Ukrainian country music vocalists.
9
 The degenerative impact of
language loss has, of course, spawned various efforts to revitalize the mother
tongue via the production of appropriate folkloric material to counter this
process. Though interesting in themselves, such attempts are generally isolat-
ed and hardly compensate for the loss of the rich verbal core of the traditional
Ukrainian folklore complex that under the catalytic impact of acculturation has
begun, instead, to stress the remaining, nonverbal elements in order to bal-
ance off, as it were, the resultant vacuum. Thus the folklore heritage comes to
be disseminated more or less in sensory terms alone—acoustic, optical and
tactile manifestations devoted, for instance, to the "sound" of Ukrainian coun-
try music, the "art" of traditional crafts such as folk embroidery and Easter egg
ornamentation, and the "taste" of Old Country foods.
10
 Much of the time
these residual yet streamlined components of the old folklore complex exist
only on a part-time, unrelated and informal basis, and in a highly condensed,
hyperbolic form as a kind of packaged "instant" folklore that from time to time
suddenly springs into open view.
11
 On occasion, however, these same discon-
nected components are brought into play in a new, novel relationship and in a
new context as reflected, for example, in the popularity of Ukrainian and
other ethnic folk festivals in Canada and the United States.
12
THE DIACHRONIC Vis^A-Vis THE SYNCHRONIC
Diachronically and in terms of the acculturative process, the evolution of
the immigrant folklore complex usually proceeds along a rather conventional
route marked by a sequence of three stages: resistance (to change), breakdown
(due to change) and reconstitution (adjustment to change). As far as Ukrainian-
Canadian immigrant folklore materials are concerned, the initial stage of resis-
tance is best exemplified by an effort to retain and amplify that segment of the
Old Country narrative corpus that serves to promote and maintain a tight and
cohesive framework for group continuity in the new and ostensibly hostile
social and natural environment. The second stage in the diachronic process,
that of breakdown, signals the crucial attempt on the part of certain segments
of the community to scrutinize and evaluate its traditions, and to detach itself
from what appear to be meaningless and dysfunctional survivals, while assert-
ing the need for a continuity of the folklore heritage in some form or
another.
13
 The third stage, that of reconstruction, acts to resolve the ongoing
tensions between the old and the new by meeting the challenge of accultura-
tion, and on its own terms, as it were, and by reformulating the folklore legacy
in keeping with the demands and pressures of a modem and materialistic civi-
lization.
14
554 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
The tripartite sequence of stages outlined above does not mean, however,
that both the old and the new are unable to coexist together as constituent ele-
ments of a single folklore complex, even though the two layers frequently rep-
resent two highly polarized and opposite contrastive sets of features. In this
connection, on the following two pages, tabulation of seven selected traits
serves to underscore this particular antinomy.
From the synchronic point of view, and as suggested by the "ideal" com-
parison of new and old traits in the tabulation,
15
 the contemporary immigrant
folklore complex forms a unique conglomerate composed of ingoing, ongoing
and outgoing features. Despite the differences between the old and the new, it
is important to note that the latter are always at least partially related to the
older, more traditional elements of the immigrant and Old Country folklore
complex, which provides the indispensable materia for the formulation and
construction of a new ethnic folklore complex.
1. Societal and
economic
orientation
2. Milieu
3. Carriers
4. General
structure
Old Immigrant
Folklore Complex
agrarian, with calendaric
and/or seasonal
conservatism
closed, isolated ingroup
circulation and setting
peasants, with marked
division of the various
forms of traditional
folkloric creativity
according to sex
inward, subjective, with
a high level of internal
variation and diversity
conditioned by tradi-
tional Old Country lines
of parochial distri-
bution; content, form
and context are in-
extricably integrated
with one another, and
the entire folklore
complex permeates the
whole culture
New Ethnic
Folklore Complex
urbanized, with
breakdown of traditional
calendaric, cyclic framework
unrestricted
nonpeasants, with a
deeper and widened
gap between the
active, individual
performers) and the
passive spectator or
audience
objectified, accompanied
by consolidation
and standardization
in an effort to
formulate "representative"
items; emphasis on
formal features; a fragmented,
compartmentalized and loosely
integrated complex
composed of highly
independent units that
merge together and/or
with the total culture
only sporadically
FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC FOLKLORE 555
5. Relation to
the Old
Country folk-
lore complex
6. Functions
7. Ways of
transmission
details of the Old
Country complex remain
intact and/or are easily
recalled; unconscious
retention of Old World
features; conscious
hostility towards New
World pressures to
modify
varied and numerous,
as per Old Country
folklore complex
maximum dependence on
verbal, direct, inter-
personal means of trans-
mission for all oral
genres as well as other
forms of folkloric
creativity
the specifics of the
Old Country folklore
complex are forgotten,
unknown, or blurred;
conscious selection of
retentions; unaware of
New World pressures to
modify, change, or
adapt
limited in number to
two or three: to entertain
and to promote ethnic
identification and
economic prosperity
the direct, "word of
mouth" form of trans-
mission is minimized
and supplemented with
help of indirect, non-
personal and mech-
anical vehicles of
transmission
The extract itself, whether acoustic, optical, ceremonial or verbal, is then
combined with other features that are borrowed from the surrounding main-
stream culture. As far as the Ukrainian experience is concerned, the resultant
"blend" may be seen on various levels, as, for example, in macaronic folksong
texts, Ukrainian country music, ethnic folk festivals, the Ukrainian ethnic joke
cycle, commercial long-playing albums, Ukrainian weddings and so forth.
These new folkloric manifestations depart from the traditional Old Country
complex not only by virtue of their highly acculturated form, style, context,
and content, but perhaps even more fundamentally by replacing the old multi-
functional diversity that characterized the old complex with a single basic func-
tion devoted almost exclusively to the expression and transmission of ethnic
distinctiveness.
A NEW DIMENSION FOR CONTINUITY
In general, then, we encounter the immigrant folklore complex in a
dynamic state of flux replete with the various tensions, seeming contradictions,
and ambivalence that reflect the conditioning impact of the acculturative
process in the New World. When compared with the specifics of traditional
Old Country manifestations of folklore, signs of seeming degeneration and the
55 6 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
emergence of radical departures from the immigrant folklore heritage actually
mark a kind of autogenesis that serves to demonstrate the ability of the old
folklore heritage to identify, respond to, and exploit the various opportunities
for meaningful continuity afforded by the new environment and contact situa-
tion. The concomitant experimentation and changes largely correspond to the
gradual transformation of the immigrant community into an integrated seg-
ment of the total population. In the course of this process, many of the old
folkways are abandoned without any massive resistance; others linger on; still
others are reexamined, revamped and reactivated in an effort to depict, vali-
date and perpetuate the community's sense of ethnic loyalty and identity.
16
To a large extent, the latter phenomenon is part of the contemporary
search for effective antidotes to the homogenizing pressures of modern civi-
lization to adopt and maintain uniform attitudes, habits and rights.
17
 As such,
the resultant reformulation of the immigrant folklore complex can and does
serve to provide some measure of relief from the humdrum monotony of
everyday urban conformity and uniformity. At the same time, however, it is
the dominant, mainstream culture itself that dictates and furnishes the appro-
priate escape mechanisms and makes available the various generative tools
and productive vehicles with which to reshape and refine the old folklore lega-
cy. In effect, then, the reconstructed folklore complex allows its assorted carri-
ers and enthusiasts to indulge in a fantasy of ethnic separateness and individu-
ality without transgressing the limits and patterns prescribed and sanctioned by
the surrounding English-speaking culture.
To sum up, the transformation of the tradition from an immigrant to an
ethnic folklore complex is marked primarily by its discovery of ethnicity as a
new and dynamic raison d'etre in the New World. The result is the emer-
gence of a new and uniquely comprehensive dimension for continuity that is
inextricably attuned to the demands and pressures of a swiftly-moving, modem
civilization that, unlike the peasant lore of yesteryear, finds no need to placate
and glorify the elements of nature and assorted supernatural entities and
forces, or to commemorate the shades and deeds of half-forgotten heroes and
ancestors. Like the old, however, the new ethnic complex reflects the same
universal ability of folklore to bridge the gap of time and to meet the needs of
today by providing an ever-ready vehicle that, without fail, always leads jaded
appetites to an amazingly rich and seemingly limitless source of entertainment,
instruction, wonder and pride.
This chapter is taken from pages 131-139 of the Journal of Folklore Research 10. Copyright © 1973 Journal of Folklore
Research. Reprinted by permission of the Journal of Folklore Research, Indiana University.
FROM IMMIGRANT TO ETHNIC FOLKLORE 557
ENDNOTES
1. Richard M. Dorson, American Folklore (Chicago, 1959), pp. 135-136.
2. See, for example, the rather impressive collections of Harriet M. Pawlowska,
Merrily We Sing. 105 Polish Folksongs (Detroit: Wayne State University
Press, 1961), and Susie Hoogasian-Villa, 100 Armenian Tales and their
Folkloristic Relevance (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1966); or, the
unpublished Ph.D. dissertations of Robert A. Georges, "Greek-American Folk
Beliefs and Narratives: Survivals and Living Tradition" (Bloomington: Indiana
University, 1964), and Frank M. Paulsen, "Danish-American Folk Traditions: A
Study in Fading Survivals" (Bloomington: Indiana University, 1967). In Canada,
the same trend is reflected, for instance, in Kenneth Peacock, Songs of the
Doukhobors (Ottawa: National Museums, 1970), and Herbert Halpert and
G.M. Story, eds., Christmas Mumming in Newfoundland (Toronto: Published
for the Memorial University of Newfoundland by University of Toronto Press,
1969).
3. The almost revolutionary implications of such a new and vastly different social
situation for immigrant folklore research in North America are outlined in Linda
Degh's "Approaches to Folklore Research among Immigrant Groups," Journal
of American Folklore. 79 (1966): p. 553.
4. See Robert B. Klymasz, "Ukrainian Folklore in Canada: An Immigrant Complex
in Transition" (Ph.D. dissertation, Folklore Department, Indiana University,
Bloomington, 1971).
5. C/., Degh, "Approaches to Folklore Research," p. 555: "both the strength and
the flexibility of tradition" make "it possible to assimilate similar and related
motifs of the dominant as well as of the immigrant subcultures and to mold
them into new forms."
6. See Zenon S. Pohorechy and Alexander Royick, "Anglicization of Ukrainian in
Canada Between 1895 and 1970: A Case Study of Linguistic Crystallization,"
Canadian Ethnic Studies. 1 (1969): pp. 141-219.
7. The eclipse of the old immigrant folk narrative corpus has been compensated to
some extent by the gradual influx of currently productive, English-language nar-
rative forms and materials that originate in the verbal lore of the doninant main-
stream culture that surrounds the Ukrainian community in Western Canada.
8. See Robert B. Klymasz, "The Ethnic Joke in Canada Today," Keystone
Folklore Quarterly. 15 (1970): pp. 167-173.
9. A descriptive account of this particular phenomenon appears in my article,
"'Sounds You Never Before Heard': Ukrainian Country Music in Western
Canada," Ethnomusico/ogy. 16 (1972): pp. 372-380.
10. The interplay of various aspects and components of folklore is the subject of
Jevhen Kaharov's outline of the forms and elements of folk ritual, "Formy ta
elementy narodn'oji obrjadovosty," Pervisne hromadjanstvo [Primitive society!
1 (Kiev: Iskusstro, 1928): pp. 21-56, and Petr G. Bogatyrev's "K voprosu o
558 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
sravnitel'nom izucenii narodnogo slovesnogo, izobraziternogo i xoreograficesko-
go iskusstva u slavjan" [On the question of the comparative study of verbal,
graphic and choreographic folk art among the Slavs], recently reprinted in his
collection of articles and studies, Voprosy teorii narodnogo iskusstva
[Questions on the theory of folk art! (Moskow, 1971), pp. 422-431. C/.,
Anthony Jackson, "Sound and Ritual," Man. n.s. 3 (1968): pp. 293-299.
11. C/., "...the exaggeration and embellishment of those elements of traditional cul-
ture by means of which...the minority comes to identify itself," as noted by Ruth
Katz on page 469 of her article "Mannerism and Cultural Change: An
Ethnomusicological Example," Current Anthropology. 11 (1970): pp. 465-
475.
12. See, for example, the section of "Folk Festivals" in Robert Meyer, Jr., Festivals
U.S.A. and Canada, rev. ed. (New York: I. Washbum, 1970), pp. 109-124.
13. A most productive expression of this phenomenon is reflected in the ethnic joke
cycle, as discussed in my article "The Ethnic Joke in Canada Today," noted ear-
lier.
14. A most radical feature reflected in this process of reformulation is the unabashed
effort to commercialize certain aspects of the immigrant folk heritage. For vary-
ing assessments of this general phenomenon in contemporary American folk-
lore, see R.M. Dorson on "fakelore," in American Folklore, pp. 4, 214-216;
and John Greenway, "Folklore and the Big Money," in Tristram, P. Coffin (ed.),
Our Liuing Traditions: An Introduction to American Folklore (New York:
Basic Books 1968), pp. 283-291.
15. Although Ukrainian folklore in Western Canada is a case that favours a sharp
differentiation between immigrant and ethnic folklore, it would be premature to
suggest at such an early stage in comparative immigrant folklore studies on this
continent that this same distinction is applicable to the folklore of other immi-
grant and ethnic groups either in Canada or the United States. To be sure, all
of our minority groups are or have been subjected to similar if not identical
acculturative pressures. Nonetheless, the resultant "output" in terms of folklore
remains largely unpredictable since so much depends on the inner specifics of
the given folklore complex itself as well as a host of other external variables, as
outlined by Degh in "Approaches to Folklore Research," p. 556.
16. For evaluative comments on the intensity and newly emerged respectability of
ethnic consciousness in contemporary American culture see, for example,
Americo Paredes, "Tributaries to the Mainstream: The Ethnic Groups," in
Tristram P. Coffin (op. cit.), pp. 70-80; Linda Degh, "Survival and Revival of
European Folk Cultures in America," Ethno/ogia Europaea. 2-3 (1968-69): p.
100; and Peter Schrag, The Decline of the WASP (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1971).
17. In this connection, see, for instance, Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media:
The Extensions of Man, 2nd paperback ed. (New York: New American
Library, 1964), pp. 281-282.
TRINBAGO NORTH:
CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO'
ANNEMARIE GALLAUGHER
Culturally, the calypso, just as the carnival itself, fills a deep cultural
void for many persons, especially when Caribbean people travel over-
seas. The social and cultural excitement it provides allows its adherents
and followers to relax in times of stress and to laugh in times of con-
flict. From the plantation itself to Chieftain Douglas' Tent in 1921, till
the present day, the calypso has brought joy and excitement to thou-
sands, and its music when hammered out by steel bands, string orches-
tras, and brass bands has drifted across many a country to further lift
the spirits of thousands more. (Liverpool 1986: 34)
The diasporic diffusion
2
 of Caribbean peoples to various parts of the
globe has had a major effect on the cultural life of cities such as London, New
York and Toronto.
3
 Each year, each of these cities hosts a huge summer cele-
bration based on Trinidad's annual pre-Lenten Carnival, an event which
evolved largely out of the social and political struggle of the African-
Trinidadian underclass and which reveals a mixture of verbal, theatric, and
musical traditions reflecting the country's richly diverse ethnocultural makeup.
Under the spell of these offshoot Carnivals, cold, gray concrete streets are
brought to colourful new life in the metropoles, feeling the feet of multitudes
of masqueraders and revelry makers, moving and dancing and jamming to the
insistent rhythms of calypso and steelband. For the many Caribbeans who cre-
ate this special spirit across diasporic distances, Carnival is a way of inventing
identity, of imagining, maintaining and creating community, and calypso, as
they are so often heard to say, "is a way of life."
Calypso—"the wave of sound on which Carnival moves" (De Shane
1980: 64)—is predicated on the lively tensions of carnival celebration. At
once caught by and capturing the dynamic, ambiguous interplay between play
and ritual, cosmos and chaos, art and life, calypso like Carnival itself is a cul-
tural "text."
4
 It can be read, as the symbolic anthropologist Frank Manning
5 60 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
suggested, as "a vivid aesthetic creation that reflexively depicts, interprets and
informs its social context" (Manning 1983b: 6).
But while its aesthetic aspects are indeed fascinating (Nunley and
Bettelheim 1988), calypso, particularly in its song form, serves purposes
which are far beyond narrow, removed abstractions of emotion and art. As
both a cultural process and a cultural production, calypso is "a basis of shared
values and sensitivities...the generative basis of myths, lifestyles and even
worldviews" (ibid.). As a translation of power relations within Caribbean soci-
ety, as a voicing of political positions and oppositions, as a social diary of daily
life, as an analysis of local and international affairs, as both a self-reflexive
rhetoric and a critique of competing rhetorics, calypso integrates life and art,
stimulating "an ongoing dialectic between cultural expression and political
processes" (Manning 1983a: 187).
5
In this article, I examine some of the ways in which calypso, as both cul-
tural expression and political process, can be "read" (and listened to) as a text.
The reading situates calypso, not indigenously within its original social context,
but diasporically within a globally restructured context that extends across new
sociomusical spaces and times, new geographic and historic locations. The
particular geography of this migrating music with which I will be concerned is
what some Trinbagonians (people from Trinidad and Tobago) regularly refer
to as "Trinbago North," the place that on official maps would be marked as
Toronto. The particular history is from August 1967, the date of the first
annual Caribana festival in Toronto, to the early 1990s.
One of the main purposes behind the reading of calypso given here is to
better understand the processes of change encountered when a Caribbean
musical culture is uprooted and transplanted into a Canadian context. What
are the "predicaments of culture" (to invoke anthropologist James Clifford's
arresting formulation) that arise when the hybrid and heteroglot lifeways and
mindways of the Caribbean are confronted with a dominant society that is, by
contrast, more homogenous, a society where Western European musical ide-
ologies, practices and sounds are predominant and often oppositional to
calypso, if not actually oppressive? What happens to the values, meanings,
and functions of calypso when it is juxtaposed against a Canadian world of
music often predisposed—despite enthusiastic claims of multiculturalism and
struggle for an integrated national identity—to separating life from art, cultur
from politics, and work from play? How does calypso—with its life-injecting
emphases on integration rather than separation, on movement rather than
stability, on change rather than conservatism, on the multivocal rather than
the unequivocal, on ambiguity rather than certainty, on open-ended argument
rather than closure, on displacement rather than establishment, on inclusivity
and collectivity rather than exclusion and individualism, on relativity, subjectivi-
ty, and circularity, rather than absolutism, objectivity and linearity, on mockery
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 561
and subversion rather than niceness and compliance—re-root itself as a way of
life when daily confronted with the whitebread rhetoric and straight-line power
structures that continue to influence and often regulate many of our Canadian
institutions, belief systems and attitudes?
In order to frame these questions, I will first discuss two concepts of criti-
cal importance to contemporary ethnography, to ethnomusicology, and to
Caribbean studies as a whole: (1) the concept of a Caribbean diaspora and (2)
the concept of community. Following this discussion, I look specifically at the
Toronto calypso community, tracing the history of its construction since the
"Caribbean exodus" (Levine 1987) of the 1950s and 60s, and describing its
membership, roles, and organization. Included in this account is a considera-
tion of several of the institutions, belief systems, and attitudes that have influ-
enced the social maintenance and individual creation and experience of the
Toronto calypso community and its members.
6
Another purpose for exploring calypso as I do here is to consider two
notions that Clifford, in The Predicament of Culture (1988), introduces. The
first of these notions is that the global restructuring of space in our increasing-
ly cosmopolitan, conjunctive and postmodern world necessitates a restructur-
ing (or, perhaps, a re-reading or re-listening) of concepts such as culture, com
munity, identity and, I would add, music. The second of these notions is that
the Caribbean experience, with its multiple and mobile emphases on past, pre-
sent, and future possibilities, may serve as a welcome postmodern countervi-
sion to structuralism's gray levelling "narrative of progressive monoculture,"
and thereby engender exciting, alternative ways of being in the world (Clifford
1988: 15 passim).
Finally, this article is written with an aim to dispelling some of the myths
and misconceptions (both from within and without calypso culture) which, in
my view, often act against the Toronto calypso community and its efforts to
re-create and re-invent a Caribbean cultural identity on Canadian soil.
THE CARIBBEAN DIASPORA
The term "Caribbean diaspora" appears in various sources dealing with
the social history and culture of the Caribbean. In most of these sources the
term is used to connote, at one level, the widespread migration, particularly
since the late 1950s, of Caribbean peoples to various urban centres outside
the Caribbean region, primarily to the former colonial metropoles of North
America and England. Precipitating the massive mid-century migration of
many Caribbeans has been the allure and promise of a better life in more
industrialized and economically advanced societies. Upon arrival in the new
surroundings however, the allure often tarnishes, the promise is frequently
562 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
broken, and the illusion of advancement is replaced by the harsh realities of
unemployment, loneliness and a hostile climate. Relocation, or a series of relo-
cations, whether to a new job, a new street, a new city or a new country, may
then become necessary, bringing with it repeated experiences of uprootedness
and displacement.
Thus the notion of "home" plays a significant role in the diasporic process
of dislocation:
...the concept "home" or "homeland" for Blacks in the Diaspora may
refer to different places, real or imagined, in their trek across the conti-
nent and passage across the ocean to the city or locality of their pre-
sent abode...black people from different parts of the Diaspora have
begun to share broader concepts or multiple references of "home"
which transcend both place and time. In some way, "home" both as
reference and reality has become so transplanted, so diffused, among
Blacks that the scope of the Black Diaspora may eventually take on
new meanings, bring on new tensions, and point to new possibilities.
(Bonnett and Watson 1990: xviii)
What Bonnett and Watson fail to mention, however, is that flexibility in
the definition of "home" does not necessarily mean that one is immediately
accepted on returning home. Toronto calypso community members with roots
in Trinidad or elsewhere in the Caribbean often speak of the problem of being
treated like "foreigners" when they return "home" to the Caribbean.
Conversely, many of them are apt to look upon visiting Trinidadians here as
"foreigners."
7
Within many Caribbean diasporic communities, the successful transplanta-
tion of cultural expressive forms, particularly Trinidad Carnival and its atten-
dant expressions calypso, steelband, dance and masquerade, has helped to
encourage visitors to come from the Caribbean to these communities and to
thereby shift the focus of home from strictly "there" to include "here" as well.
Upwards of one million people are attracted to the larger carnival celebrations
(Nottinghill in London, Labour Day in New York and Caribana in Toronto)
each year and many travel from city to city on the "Carnival circuit."
The concept of the Caribbean diaspora has largely focused on
black/African descended people, the historical conditions of slavery, colonial-
ism, migration and neocolonialism that have so deeply affected their lives, and
the "persistence and resilience" (Bonnett and Watson 1990) which, particular-
ly as expressed through cultural expressive forms, have animated their lives
and linked them across great distances of geographic space. But it must be
noted here that the Caribbean diaspora in a larger sense includes dimensions
contributed from non-black/African groups as well. The multiple and het-
erogenous nature of Caribbean society as a whole presupposes this larger,
more complex sense; it is not only African-Caribbeans who have migrated
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 565
from their homeland to create the Caribbean diaspora but also people of East
Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, European and British descent.
Thus, like the notion of home, there is a certain semantic flexibility where
the term Caribbean diaspora is concerned. The semantics are important not
only as the term is used by those who identify themselves as members of the
diaspora, but also as the term is interpreted and used by non-members. Thus,
there can be no single, essential meaning of Caribbean diaspora, as there can
be no single, essential diasporic identity. Borrowing from the ideas of Clifford,
we see that diasporic identity, like all other human identities, is not fixed but is
rather "mixed, relational, and inventive" (Clifford 1988: 10).
Nevertheless, as Clifford points out, identity may be posed as fixed, essen-
tial, authentic, pure, or true as a social strategy:
Questionable acts of purification are involved in any attainment of a
promised land, return to "original" sources, or gathering up of a true
tradition. Such claims to purity are in any event always subverted by
the need to stage authenticity in opposition to external, often domi-
nating alternatives. Thus the "Third World" plays itself against the
"First World," and vice versa.... If authenticity is relational, there can
be no essence except as a political, cultural invention, a local tactic.
(Clifford 1988: 12)
Thus it becomes incumbent to raise some questions, if only rhetorically, of
the various tactical meanings of the label Caribbean diaspora, and the atten-
dant terms and identities that are often associated with it: "West Indian,"
"Jamaican," "African-Trinidadian," "East Indian Trinidadian," "Canadian,"
"white Canadian" and "Caribbean immigrant," to cite some common exam-
ples. This is perhaps especially so given Canada's particular preoccupation
with strategies for inventing its own national identity as well as its official con-
cern with enabling the maintenance of a plethora of multicultural identities.
Given these contexts and tactics, then, it is necessary to understand that a
multiplicity of meanings may lie behind these terms and that their particular
interpretation at any one time has much to do with perceived power relations
and conflicts over entitlements to social, political and cultural space.
8
Anderson and Grant 1987 stress repeatedly the importance of recogniz-
ing such multiplicities in order to understand the Caribbean experience in mul-
ticultural Canada:
An important step in establishing the status of West Indians is to
attempt to discover the popular definition of "West Indian." In the
minds of the Canadian public, is West Indian coterminous with Blacks?
Because of the social significance accorded racial diversity, assumed
and perceived colour gradations on the part of West Indians them-
selves, it would be inappropriate and perhaps prejudicial to hold this
564 CANADIAN Music ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
view.... Conversely, it is a mistake to consider that all Blacks are West
Indians. (Anderson and Grant 1987: 61)
COMMUNITY
Closely linked to the concept of diaspora is the notion of community. In
contemporary, cosmopolitan Toronto, "community" assumes a variety of con-
notations. Like many cities across the country, Toronto is currently a city in
transition, moving from a once fairly ethnically homogenous population to
one that is rapidly becoming increasingly heterogenous. Particularly as a result
of the large "third world" immigration wave of the 1960s and 1970s, Toronto
is now attempting to redefine itself socially, politically, economically and cul-
turally.
Part of this redefinition involves paying attention to how various individu-
als and groups who call Toronto "home" define and label themselves, how
they define and label others and how they are defined and labelled by others.
Thus a lot of concern is expressed with notions such as "the local communi-
ty," "the alternative community," "the immigrant community," "the ethnic
community," "the minority community," "the multicultural community," "the
Caribbean community," "the black community" and at times, simply, "the
community."
Again, like "home" and "diaspora," the term "community" is bound up
with strategies for inventing identity and for associating with or, conversely,
disassociating from other identities. Often the various groups and individuals
for whom Toronto is now home create their identities and strategically label
them in opposition (Clifford above) to perceived external, competing, and/or
dominant identities (be they in the workplace, in government, or in society at
large) which they may attempt to ignore or exclude. Such exclusionary prac-
tices (whether imposed internally or externally) may take the form of foreign
language maintenance, of residential enclaves, or of "sub"-cultural activities
(Brake 1985; Hebdige 1987, 1979).
Of course, "community" also presupposes commonalities, ways of includ-
ing as much as ways of excluding. Emphasizing the inclusive side of "commu-
nity" is Morris Freilich's definition:
A community is a communication system with a name or identification
tag, and a definable membership who share information with each
other and thereby develop both a common set of operational rules and
strongly shared sentiments. (Freilich 1970: 520)
This definition neglects the possibility that, while some of a particular
community's members may share one set of rules and sentiments, there also
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 565
may be other community rules and sentiments that they don't share; thus the
community may not always be homogenous and unified. Further, community
members may also share other sets of rules and sentiments with other commu-
nities, thus entitling them to simultaneous membership in different communi-
ties. Finally, Freilich's definition seems wrongly to imply a certain continuity or
stasis of community, without any consideration to changing contexts of space
and time. Such a static, homogenous and one-sided definition cannot satisfac-
torily be applied to communities of the Caribbean diaspora where prominent
features are continual geographical movement, extraordinary social hetero-
geneity and a self-definition often conceived in terms of exclusion from the
dominant mainstream of society.
A more flexible definition of community is needed—one which can
accommodate displacement, whether as a consequence of slavery, of contem-
porary mass migrations, of mass media technology or, in more economic
terms, of the global spatialization of capital (Harvey 1989; Soja 1989).
Moreover, such a definition must recognize that under different conditions of
displacement, processes of social organization and community formation may
be very fluid as community members move from place to place, geographical-
ly, socially and even ideologically. Finally, such a definition must also take into
account the power relations—be they understood as relations of race, class,
gender, etc.—which influence perceptions and inventions of community identi-
ty both from within the community itself and from the outside.9
To some extent, "imagined community," a powerful conceptual tool pro-
posed by Benedict Anderson in his definition of "the nation" (Anderson
1983), offers this kind of flexibility. It allows for multiple referents (i.e., one
can be a member of several communities at any one time), it does not "essen-
tialize" but rather takes into account the inventiveness and tactics involved in
creating and defining community, and it transcends boundaries of space and
time. Imagined communities, according to Anderson, are predicated on the
knowledge that even though "the members of even the smallest nation will
never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them,
yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion." Further, "com-
munities are to be distinguished not by their falsity/genuineness but rather by
the style in which they are imagined" (Anderson 1983: 15; see also
Waterman 1990).
For many Caribbeans living in Toronto, calypso is an image of commu-
nion and a style of imagining community, just as diaspora is a strategy for
inventing identity. A large part of that image has been constructed through the
shared belief that "calypso is a way of life," whether in Trinidad or here. I now
turn to consider some of the ways in which the image has been re-projected,
re-framed and re-focused by processes of historical construction (the bringing
of calypso to Toronto) and social maintenance (the institutions, attitudes, and
566 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
belief systems which affect calypso musical life here) involved in creating a
Toronto calypso community.
THE TRANSPLANTATION OF CALYPSO TO TORONTO
While there is evidence that some calypso—disseminated primarily
through recordings owned by visiting students and occasional live perfor-
mances by visiting musicians—existed here previously (Gallaugher 1991), the
most significant date in the history of the transmission of calypso from
Trinidad to Toronto is August 1, 1967. It was on this day that the first annual
Toronto Caribana Parade was held. In keeping with the Trinidad Carnival tra-
dition, calypso was the rhythm and the music to make Caribana move. Many
of the participants and performers in this event—calypsonians (singers), steel-
bands and dance troupes from Trinidad—had come to Toronto by way of the
EXPO '67 festival in Montreal and were responding to a request from provin-
cial authorities for a Caribbean contingent to mount a Carnival-type celebra-
tion in Toronto as part of the country's centennial festivities. Pat Shepperd
recalls that first Caribana celebration:
The effect on me—it was an exhilarating feeling! Because at last we
were able to, as West Indians, listen to West Indian music and enjoy it.
Because we did not get it on the radio; we did not get it on the televi-
sion; and there was no outlet for it on public broadcast. So that
momentary effect was electrifying. It was really nice to have our music
ringing in my ear.... The response from participants was overwhelm-
ing—a magnificent explosion of emotion and joy! (Shepperd 1986)
The sharp contrast between this review and one appearing in The
Toronto Star a year before Caribana's inception is exemplary of the kinds of
cultural clashes that calypso has continually confronted since it was first carried
here:
There were a few good moments during last night's Calypso Fiesta at
Massey Hall—but only for those who delight in dirty songs. The rest
was a bore. It convinced me, for one, that once you've heard one
calypso song and seen one dance you've seen them all.... This show
was supposed to show Torontonians what authentic calypso music
with authentic calypsonians from Trinidad is all about. The calypsoni-
ans might have come from Trinidad all right, but give me supposedly
"unauthentic" calypso singers such as Harry Belafonte any day.
(Thomas 1966: 18)
Despite criticism such as this, calypso in Toronto has resiliency persisted.
Caribana 1967 was the first major statement of this persistence.
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 567
Shepperd writes:
Caribana began as the dream of ten enthusiastic individuals from
diverse backgrounds but with a common West Indian heritage.... Their
dream was the construction of a monument of goodwill, a confirma-
tion of Caribbean culture and a statement of belonging to their adopt-
ed land, Canada. (Shepperd 1984: 135)
As major reforms to Canadian immigration policy in 1967 virtually dou-
bled the Caribbean population of 12,000 that had arrived in Canada between
1961 and 1966, and as the concept of an official multicultural Canada began
to emerge, dreams such as Caribana represented began to be realized.
A flurry of Caribbean clubs started up in Toronto throughout the late 60s
and into the 70s. In these venues, calypso music could be heard on record
and, eventually, in live performance as calypsonians from Trinidad were
brought in by promoters to perform. As well, large-scale importation of calyp-
so records (a new crop of calypso recordings is produced each year in
Trinidad) was begun. In most of these cases, the business of calypso was car-
ried out by Caribbean immigrants themselves.
Other important mechanisms for the maintenance of calypso in Toronto
around this time were the inception of the radio program "The Caribbean
Connection" on multicultural station CHIN, articles about calypso and other
cultural concerns in the local Caribbean community newspapers Share and
Contrast, the development of local steelbands and brassbands (the typical
accompanying ensemble behind a calypsonian) and the continued efforts by
individual promoters to bring performers in from Trinidad.
Of greatest significance, however, was the appearance by local (resident)
calypsonians in Toronto in performances where they presented original mater-
ial which they had composed here. The first of these local calypsonians had
originally come from Trinidad and, although they all had had some form of
musical experience there, that experience had not necessarily included com-
posing or performing calypsos. These local calypsonians,
10
 in "appropriating"
a vocal form from their first culture in order to give voice in their second, have
been instrumental in keeping calypso culture alive in Toronto. However, per-
haps due to a strange co-mingling of Canadian and Trinidadian-Canadian infe-
riority complexes (on the former see Robbins 1990), they have not always
received their due credit. In the general view of both non-Trinidadian and
Trinidadian-Canadians, Trinidad Carnival and Trinidadian performers tend to
be regarded as being of superior quality than what is now known, in an ironic
cultural reversal, as the "home-grown" variety. Because of this perceived bias,
local calypsonians and their supporters are constantly lobbying the Caribbean
Cultural Committee (the official Caribana organization) to feature them
at Caribana events, and they frequently call for boycotts of independently
568 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
produced calypso shows which import talent from Trinidad at their exclusion.
Regular formal calypso "tents" (shows) and competitions among local
calypsonians (based on the annual competitions in Trinidad) were begun in the
early 1980s and, in 1982, were mainly presented by the Calypso Association
of Canada (CAC), an organization founded around that time with a list of
objectives based on themes of "fellowship," "problems," "education,"
"Caribbean culture," "research," "knowledge" and "expertise" (CAC
Constitution, ca. 1980). This list indicates a set of sociocultural concerns far
beyond the strictly musical ones of calypso composition and performance.
Such concerns are, in turn, an indication of the deep significance carried by
the statement "calypso is a way of life." Clearly, calypso is more than "just
music" in the usual sense.
Calypso texts themselves highlight the close connection between art and
everyday life that calypso forges. Many of the calypsos composed by Toronto
calypsonians make reference to Trinidad, whether for the purpose of com-
menting on current events there and updating listeners, or as a way to invoke
nostalgia for the homeland culture. Many other calypsos, however, are
focused more upon local Canadian topics and concerns and in this way a new,
organic process of indigenizing calypso—a process that Clifford might refer to
as "creolized interculture" (Clifford 1988: 15)—is taking place here.
Part of that indigenization process is the culture shock experienced by
many of those who have crossed over the border between a first and a second
culture. The following calypso text, composed by Toronto calypsonian
"Cosmos," is a revealing study of the trauma of transition:
Culture Shock
It was a Trini who come up here to this country
He was searchin' for better opportunity
But too much pressure, he wanted to give it all up
He was leavin', because of culture shock.
He say that it faceless, man it voiceless
It colourless, man it even odourless
I just come here to get off of the rock
Man it all around me, Mr. Culture Shock.
No oxtail, cow tongue, pig foot, chicken foot
That is culture shock
I can't get me old time parang for Christmas
That is culture shock
The police stop me without a purpose
That is culture shock
People don't like me because I cook curry
That is culture shock
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 569
People kiss dog but don't want to kiss me
That is culture shock
People say I have a accent
That is culture shock.
Well Mr. Trini, make me feel so uneasy
With his stories of hardship and misery
He was ambitious, but he couldn't pass all them roadblocks
He was grievin' because of culture shock
He say this long winter have me freezin' all over
In the bus shelter, man this coldness is murder
I met a Canadian who went down to the islands
He say man you crazy to leave the West Indies.
Don't even see me next door neighbour
That is culture shock
People don't see me on the elevator
That is culture shock
Canadian experience to pick up some garbage
That is culture shock
Vacant apartment and don't want to rent me
That is culture shock
Immigration consultants tryin' to rob me
That is culture shock
When I can't say gay to mean I happy
That is culture shock.
I touch me children and they want to sue me
That is culture shock
Government say we can't call it beef patty
That is culture shock
I come up here and they callin' me ethnic
That is culture shock
They rip me off and say business is business
That is culture shock
Friends take me number and don't want to call me
That is culture shock
I can't visit them without an appointment
That is culture shock.
For consolation I tell him I am West Indian
But Mr. Trini just couldn't understand
I say listen partner, I come up here off the same rock
So what you talkin' about your culture shock
He say look at TV, while the hell they don't show we
Neglectin' we culture they make a man suffer
Is millions o' dollars showing all the others
Ignoring the brothers and sisters
That is culture shock.
5 70 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
People usin' knife and fork to eat roti
That is culture shock
They say I over-qualified with one degree
That is culture shock
On a crowded bus the seat next to me empty
That is culture shock
They say all black people look just like me
That is culture shock
I switch on the radio and I can't hear me soca
That is culture shock
When they say all West Indians come from Jamaica
That is culture shock. * *
This outstanding calypso, with its empathetic and humorous account of
the "shocking" litany of everyday life experiences encountered by the
Caribbean newcomer to Canada, was a winner of the 1985 CAC competition
category "Best Composition on a Local Topic." The category is a part of the
institutionalized structuring of calypso here which has provided a lot of impe-
tus for the local indigenization process. However, there has often been contro-
versy among Toronto calypso community members over their interpretations
of the term "local" with respect to transplanted calypso. Some CAC members
have interpreted "local" as "local to Trinidad," while others have understood it
to mean "local to any specific geographic region." Still others have thought of
"local" as "current" and have considered calypsos dealing with women's
issues—Lady Pearl's "Women of the World Unite" for example—as composi-
tions qualifying under the "local" category. In 1989, the CAC executive adopt-
ed a motion to establish an appropriate definition of the category. As a result
of this motion, "local" is now interpreted to mean "Canadian"; accordingly,
the category has been renamed "Best Composition on a Canadian Topic."
Primarily as a result of the momentum generated by the CAC, particularly
through the annual Calypso Monarch of Canada Competition, upwards of 30
calypsonians now practise in Toronto. While none can make a full-time living
at this musical profession, several have begun to record and some are making
appearances at more established venues.
12
 Community radio stations are
beginning to air locally composed calypsos alongside calypso material import-
ed from the Caribbean. The achievement in 1991 by Jayson—a four-time
Calypso Monarch of Canada—of a Juno award was a major move forward for
calypso in Canada.
TRINBACO NORTH.- CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 5 71
THE TORONTO CALYPSO COMMUNITY: ORGANIZATION,
MEMBERSHIP, AND ROLES
On the surface, it may appear to outsiders that no Toronto calypso com-
munity exists: there are no strongly defined residential concentrations of
Caribbeans in Toronto as there are for some ethnic groups in the city; various
attempts at establishing community organizations may appear unstable, short-
lived and fraught with internecine conflict; and the strong emphasis on individ-
ual professional and commercial accomplishment, particularly through staged
competitions, may appear to the outside observer to preclude any spirit of col-
lective co-operation.
As was discussed above, a flexible definition of community, such as that
provided by the concept "imagined community," is required when referring to
communities in the Caribbean diaspora. It is only by means of such flexibility
that the "Toronto calypso community"—as an example of a Caribbean dias-
poric community—can be fairly described. Although for these reasons, the
structure, organization, boundaries, membership and roles of the Toronto
calypso community may appear difficult to define and delineate, such difficulty
does not negate the possibility of community altogether as some observers of
calypso culture have mistakenly, or perhaps, at times, strategically, suggested.
Communal strength is, of course, most palpable during Caribana. The
cogent words of one Nottinghill Carnival organizer in London, England are
equally applicable to Carnival in Toronto. Note how the author dispels a
rather cliched myth, while at the same time indicating the power that Carnival
has to mobilize community:
One quarter of a million black people on the streets of Britain [the
numbers have now increased to over one million]...is a political
event.... It is not simply an artistic festival of fun-loving West Indians.
(Nettleford 1985: iii quoting Howe 1976)
Who belongs to the calypso community? Involved in its creation are calyp-
sonians, composers, arrangers and accompanying musicians who practise the
making of calypso and Carnival. The community also includes performance
organizers and promoters, emcees and deejays, writers and record producers,
steelband members, dancers, masqueraders, costume makers, academics, crit-
ics and listeners who participate in, interpret, evaluate and engender calypso
culture here. These members represent a broad range of economic and occu-
pational backgrounds including teachers, taxi drivers, lawyers, electricians, ser-
vice occupations, session musicians, actors and government officials. While
the majority of these members are recent (within the last 30 years) immigrants
from Trinidad and Tobago, membership also includes people from the
572 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Caribbean region in general, as well as a number of non-Caribbeans. Relative
interest and participation in the community can fluctuate at any point in time.
There are also occasional extremes in these fluctuations such that some cur-
rent and very active members, when they first arrived in Toronto, chose to
leave "we t'ing" or "we culture" behind, not coming back to it until several
years later, while others, who had no particular interest in calypso when in
Trinidad, are now very involved and concerned about the future of calypso
and the passing on of this cultural form to successive generations.
It must also be noted that membership in the Toronto calypso community
is not just restricted to those who have immigrated from the Caribbean. Non-
Caribbean involvement occurs at many levels, including calypso performance
itself, membership within the CAC and the Caribbean Cultural Committee,
journalistic and academic study of calypso, and, of course, dancing, mas-
querading and "getting on bad" (enjoying oneself immensely) during the
Caribana fetes and parade.
Members of the Toronto calypso community may live permanently in
Toronto or they may be visitors from Trinidad or other points in the
Caribbean diaspora. It is not necessary that members live within a certain
proximity, see each other on a frequent basis, or even "know" each other to
feel part of this community. There is no particular immutable structural shape;
even within more formally organized settings such as the CAC or the Calypso
Monarch Competition, roles of dominance or subordination, prominence or
reclusiveness, leadership or support, may be frequently interchanged.
CALYPSO Music, CALYPSO LIVES
The parallels between aspects of African-Caribbean culture and musical
features and performance practice characteristics of calypso are quite striking.
To the listener using conventional Western European units of musical analysis,
the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic structures of calypso may seem to sub-
stantiate a commonly-held misconception among the wider Toronto society
that tends to dismiss calypso (and, by extension, Carnival) as "insignificant par-
tying."
13
 Its formulaic and repetitive qualities are foregrounded above all else
in this type of analysis. In these terms, calypso is relegated, at best, to the role
of simple dance music and, at worst, is criticized as being devoid of musical
substance and artistic merit altogether.
A more "emic" analysis, however, reveals that while formula and repeti-
tion are certainly stylistic features of calypso, they are by no means the only
ones that matter. Further, rather than serving as indications of weakness, they
form an integral part of a larger performance complex (cf. Abrahams 1983)
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 575
that imbues calypso with cultural relevance and strength. Formula and repeti-
tion do not exist as isolated, essential features but instead are the frame for a
communicative calypso collage in which are juxtaposed musical, textual and
extra-musical features of improvisation, ambiguity, unpredictability, contrasts
and borrowings from a multiplicity of sources including other ethnic
Trinidadian musics such as East Indian, Spanish and Chinese; other African-
American musics such as jazz, soul, gospel and reggae; African popular musics
such as high-life and mbaqanga; and North American rock, pop and country
music.
While these borrowings provide calypso with an eclectic range of sounds,
they may often be incorporated for the purpose of making humorous, ironic
or satirical musical statements (particularly at the expense of persons and
structures perceived as having pretensions to domination). Thus the musical
references complement statements in the lyrics and in the Caribbean experi-
ence as a whole.
The overall impression created is that calypso is a composite of bits and
pieces of melodies, harmonies, rhythms and textures, a "calalloo" (Trinidad's
famous spinach-based stew) of musical fragments culled from a variety of dif-
ferent sources. It is not uncommon to hear the same fragments appropriated
and distributed over a number of calypsos, nor is it uncommon to hear calyp-
sos that are about calypso as a phenomenon itself, thus a sort of collective and
self-reflexive linkage—a diaspora, as it were—among individual calypsos is set
up (Hebdige 1987; Warner 1983). This linkage is perhaps best expressed in
the Carnival slogan, "All of we is one."
The musical rules governing calypso are, like the rules governing the
calypso community itself, fluid and set up to accommodate and encourage
innovation and change, to incorporate new ideas into music, lyrics and perfor-
mance. The emphasis is on movement and re-creation as calypsonians and
their supporting musicians "code-switch" from point to point along the musi-
cal-linguistic-cultural spectrum (c/., Rohlehr 1985) adopting any number of
sociomusical identities.
14
This is not to say that within the calypso community anything goes in
terms of musical features, performance practices or, indeed, everyday life.
Certainly standards of judgement exist as the strong emphasis on competition
attests to. Within the Toronto calypso community, arguments abound con-
cerning the criteria by which calypso (particularly local calypso) is judged and
there has been tremendous controversy with regard to commercial or party
"soca"
15
 music versus serious, authentic calypso,
16
 just as there have been
heated debates about the need, not just to preserve, but to actually re-create a
genuine Caribbean culture under the impact of a dominant, non-Caribbean
society.
Pivoting as it does in Toronto between local and international, insider and
5 74 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
outsider, supportive and critical audiences, calypso, as music, takes its identity
only in relation to other musics; there is no one calypso essence or set of
essentials. While therefore apparently resistant to the more standard types of
Western musical analysis,
17
 calypso yet transcends these analytical difficulties
such that (for community members at least) there still exists a kind of cultural
guarantee—as one community member certifies, "Once you hear calypso, you
know it."
THE PREDICAMENT OF CULTURE:
CREATING A CARIBBEAN^CANADIAN IDENTITY
The many ironies and paradoxes found in calypso culture are extremely
complex and cannot adequately be conceived in simple mutually exclusive
"either/or" terms. The mixing of heightened respect for individual expression
and presentation of self (as symbolized in the often flamboyant attire, exagger-
ated body movements, hyperbolic and sometimes confrontational language of
calypso performance) with an equally strong collective respect for community,
the mixing of blatant commercial and entrepreneurial practices with a serious
concern for authenticity and integrity, and the mixing of serious, socially con-
scious lyrics with what on the surface sounds to be carefree dance music, can-
not be appropriately interpreted as inconsequential or random conflicts.
18
The dominant Canadian tendency in responding to the cultures of new-
comers to the country is often to try and force such "either/or" dichotomies,
to minimize or segment "the other" into superficial categories with separate
goals, or, by contrast, to overgeneralize (Paquet 1989; hooks 1990; Spivak
1990). While these limiting practices may, in some cases, be honest attempts
to understand what is unfamiliar, they are more often the basis of unfair
stereotypings and systemic discriminatory behaviours.
These behaviours occur at all levels of society from individual perceptions
on the street ("Boy, you West Indians surely know how to partyl"
1
^), to busi-
nesses, academic institutions, the media and government agencies whose
funding and policy practices often belie a condescending attitude to those
communities and cultural expressive forms considered "ethnic."
The following quotes, by African Canadian writers Marlene Nourbese
Philip and Daniel Caudeiron respectively, voice the concerns of some commu-
nity members with regard to such perceived condescension, particularly as it is
felt in arts council funding practices and broadcasting regulations as they relate
to official multiculturalism:
In terms of arts funding, multiculturalism is the catch-all trough at
which all but Ontario's anglophone, francophone, and Native popula-
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 575
tion must feed. In my interviews with various arts organizations, as
soon as I mentioned Black artists and questioned what the agency's
position was regarding the funding of art by such artists, the issue of
multiculturalism would rear its head, suggesting to me that these artists,
at least from the perspective of the bureaucrats, were perceived as a
group apart. (Nourbese Philip 1987: 16)
They have allowed in broadcasting, people to have these narrow cast
ideas which exclude the original ethos of multiculturalism which on
paper was very nice. From each according to his ability, to each
according to his merit. That essentially was a sound proposition but it
has not worked because what we have is ethnic contribution kept as a
culture, let's-go-visit-the-exotic-bazaar level, and we are not part of the
literary, media, cultural decision making of this country. We are there
on Canada Day to do a little exotic dancing in Ottawa, on the stage, a
limbo. But we're not there on any hour of the day on television, on
radio or in the film industry, or in the literary industry, participating
with our contribution. It is ignored. (Caudeiron 1989: 8)
The Toronto calypso community is not immune from such attitudes. While
engaged in research for my Master's thesis, I witnessed some of the institution-
al prejudices described above directly. When, in my role as secretary of the
CAC, I approached the Ontario Arts Council for funding for our 1988 sum-
mer season, I was first questioned about the "level" and "quality" of musician-
ship in our organization and was asked to define calypso music. As soon as I
mentioned calypso's connection to the Caribbean, I was told that we could
probably be accommodated under the Council's new multicultural mandate
which now meant the Council was in a position to provide funding for groups
at "the highest level, like the Toronto Symphony, all the way down to com-
munity-based organizations like yours" (emphasis mine).
20
 In 1989, while
preparing for my annual visit to Trinidad Carnival, I spoke to an Arts and
Entertainment section editor at The Toronto Star with the offer to write a
piece on Carnival for the newspaper. His response was:
Well, quite frankly, what more is it really than just a bunch of people
jumping up in the streets? There are no real artists or arts value there.
Why don't you try the Tourism Section?
This mainstream media attitude is also further reflected in the annual cov-
erage of Caribana which tends to focus, not on the musical or cultural aspects
of the event, nor its contributions to Canadian society, but rather, on weather
conditions, policing and security, and disputes over whose responsibility it is to
clean up the garbage on the day following the parade.
In 1990, one of the biggest blows to African and Caribbean culture in
Toronto was the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications
576 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Commission (CRTC) decision to reject applications submitted for a black music
radio station and, instead, to award a broadcasting licence for a country music
station. In voicing his dissenting opinion, then CRTC Chair, Keith Spicer said
of the decision:
...[it] ignores the principle of broadcasting diversity at its most funda-
mental: the need to serve today's multicultural, multiracial Toronto....
the decision ignores the music of probably 200,000 black
Torontonians, largely from the Caribbean, constituting Canada's
largest black community.... the decision ignores the new racial mix in
Toronto, and indeed the sometimes difficult interracial climate we have
seen there in recent years and months. Canada's broadcasting system
must seek out opportunities to show respect and acceptance for com-
munities which may feel insecure and left out in our societies. (Spicer
1990)
Lack of government and mainstream media support has been accompa-
nied by a paucity of offers from businesses and corporations to help finance
calypso and Caribana performance or at least to share in the profits that they
accrue as a result of the tourist industry that flourishes because of them. The
paucity of academic research about Caribbeans in Canada, coupled with the
tendency to neglect the importance of musical and cultural life in the few stud-
ies which do exist, is further evidence of the kinds of institutional barriers and
attitudes erected to prevent calypso from taking root in Canadian soil.
On the more positive side, processes of change appear to be occurring
within the Toronto calypso community itself which may signal a coming to
terms with the Canadian-Caribbean cultural predicament. A recent proposal to
amend the CAC Constitution, for example, indicates a general turning by the
Caribbean-Canadian community at large towards greater consideration of the
"Canadian" aspect of their identity. The proposed new objectives read as fol-
lows:
(a) To create and foster a spirit of understanding among Caribbean peo-
ple and Canadians through the art of calypso.
(b) To promote the principles of good citizenship.
(c) To take an active role in Cultural, Social and Civic Activities that
would benefit Caribbeans in Canada and the Canadian Community as
a whole.
(Calypso Association of Canada ca. 1989)
The spirit of community and accommodation that these constitutional
principles represent will undoubtedly take some time to be fully realized.
However, the process is underway.
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 577
CONCLUSIONS
More and more Caribbean and non-Caribbean Canadians are participat-
ing each year in Caribana where new possibilities for shaping identities,
whether individual, community, cultural, or national, arise. Particularly through
the compelling and mobilizing medium of calypso music, Caribana forces a
once-a-year re-examination of mainstream Canadian self-definition by, literal-
ly, shaking Canadians to their knees.
Calypso demands participation and interaction, the diasporic and the
dominant coming together. It demands that its music be not only listened to,
but also lived. And, finally, it demands that there be no simple straight-line
parades, either on the street, or in the minds of the paraders.
Within the confines of the dominant Canadian culture, these demands
may be difficult to readily accept. However, as calypso moves in "Trinbago
north" from the divisive notions of serious versus party calypso to a more
inclusive and politically powerful concept of "serious partying," there develops
a greater potential for acceptance of a way of life that can potentially take us
out of our current cultural predicaments.
In Toronto, the values, meanings and functions that obtained for calypso
in Trinidad have been far from lost; rather, they have been somewhat re-root-
ed in their transplantation. Under these circumstances, the process of calypso
making, like the process of imagining the community, has become as much
the site of identity as the actual product or community itself. Once these
processes are more widely recognized, once we are able to move to the new
conceptual rhythms proposed by advocates like Clifford and by calypso culture
itself, once we open up new definitions of community and music, we will be in
a better position to bridge some of the cultural distances that, ironically,
appear to be the diasporic consequence of shrinking "postmodern geogra-
phies" (Soja 1989).
ENDNOTES
1. This paper is adapted from the author's M.A. thesis, "From Trinidad to
Toronto: Calypso as a Way of Life," York University, 1991. The author grate-
fully acknowledges York University faculty, students, and staff who have con-
tributed to the development of the ideas presented here as well as all those
members of calypso communities in Toronto, St. Catharines, Montreal,
Winnipeg, Trinidad, London (UK) and Copenhagen involved in the fieldwork
578 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
upon which these ideas have been based. Thanks also to those who have spent
time reviewing the paper and suggesting improvements. Funding support for
much of the primary research was received from the Canadian Museum of
Civilization.
2. While the terms "diaspora" and "diffusion" both denote a dispersal or scattering,
the connotations of the term diaspora reach far beyond mere physical migra-
tion. Diaspora carries with it the notion of a common origin and separation
from a shared homeland. For some, it is exile and "the yearning to retain,
reclaim or return to that land or the traditional culture, history, symbols or creed
specifically identified with it—as their own" (Bonnett and Watson 1990: xii).
3. See also Witmer 1992.
4. The term calypso has a number of referents. First, and most commonly, it is
used to refer to a Caribbean syncretic song form (hailed as the national song of
Trinidad and Tobago) based largely on West African griot traditions and incor-
porating a number of other influences representing the ethnocultural diversity of
the Caribbean region. Important textual characteristics of the calypso are topi-
cality and verbal wit, while of major musical value are: an "infectious" duple-
metre rhythm; emphasis on I-IV-V, or I-V harmonic progressions; and the repe-
tition of monotonic or stepwise motion melodic fragments which may be appro-
priated from other musical sources. Within this framework, improvisation and
versioning occur, often at unexpected moments. Music and texts are often
meant to be ironic, humorous, and/or ambiguous in meaning and may contain
an element of surprise or unpredictability. The roles of instruments and perform-
ers may be frequently exchanged. Secondly, calypso may refer to the instrumen-
tal versions of the songs, and sometimes, original instrumental compositions,
particularly as performed by steelbands. Thirdly, the term often denotes a whole
performance complex that includes not just musical and textual elements, but
also performance practice elements, particularly the dynamics of stage presenta-
tion and interaction with the audience. Finally, "calypso" may be interchanged
with "Carnival" and used as an adjective before the word "culture." When used
in this way, the term acquires social, political and cultural connotations which far
exceed the strictly musical ones. See also Caudeiron 1992, Lewin 1980, Owens
1988.
5. That dialectic is perhaps most strongly apparent in the Caribbean political
arena. Historical attempts by various Trinidadian governments to ban or sup-
press calypso have been widely documented (Brereton 1981; Elder 1966; Hill
1972). The power of calypso to decide the fate of elections in some parts of the
Caribbean has also been discussed (Fraser 1985; Manning 1985).
6. Historical construction, social maintenance, and individual creation and experi-
ence, comprise the three-part model for ethnomusicology proposed by Tim Rice
(Rice 1987). While not actually adopted as a model here, these components
serve as a particularly useful framework for discussion. They are broad enough
to promote an attempt at understanding that the expression "calypso is a way of
life" is not just some idle, offhand remark but a deeply felt and deeply lived cul-
tural experience.
7. As a result of my own fieldwork experience, which has enabled me to live in
calypso culture to some degree, I, too, have broadened my own concept of
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 579
home and am struck by the lovely irony each year as Trinidadians ask if I am
going "home" for Carnival.
8. For a focused discussion of several of these conflicts as they pertain to Caribana
specifically, see Jackson 1992.
9. For a more comprehensive, ethnographic description of the flexibility of
Caribbean communities see LJeber 1981.
10. Notable among these early calypso practitioners are: Young Beginner, Smokey,
Pan Man Pat and Cosmos. As these names suggest, it is quite common practice
for calypsonians to adopt a sobriquet. This may be interpreted as another
means by which ambiguity of identity is constructed.
11. By Henry "Cosmos" Gomez; reprinted with permission.
12. For example, Bread, Charlo, Cosmos, Ellsworth James, Jayson, Juno D., Lady
Pearl, Pan Man Pat, Skel, Skippy, Smokey, Tracey Ann, Trevor B.
13. Cf., Manning 1983 and Jackson 1992 for a discussion of conflicting attitudes to
calypso and carnival within the calypso community itself.
14. Perhaps the most audible example of musical code-switching are the frequent
exchanges between instruments such that melodic instruments take on percus-
sive roles and vice versa.
15. A neologism combining the first two letters of "soul" and "calypso."
16. For more on the serious-party debate, see Gallaugher 1991.
17. Some of the difficulties of analyzing calypso musically are acknowledged in
Gallaugher 1991.
18. For further description of the complexities of Caribbean culture see Abrahams
1983; Clifford 1988; Hebdige 1987; Lieber 1981; Rohlehr 1985; Stewart
1989.
19. An anonymous, but "outsider" comment on Caribana reported to the author by
a Trinidadian journalist to whom the comment was made.
20. Toronto record producer Billy Bryans, who is currently investigating arts funding
in Ontario, has reported to me in a personal communication that, despite recent
efforts to ensure a more equitable distribution of funding across a range of
musics, approximately 90 percent of Ontario taxpayers' contributions to the
arts still go to the classical music sector. There are no funding programs specifi-
cally dedicated to black musics.
REFERENCES
Abrahams, Roger D. 1983. The Man-of-Words in the West Indies: Performance and
the Emergence of Creole Culture. .Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University
Press.
5 80 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Anderson, W.W. and G. Grant. 1987. The New Newcomers. Toronto: Canadian
Scholars' Press Inc.
Bonnett, Aubrey W. and G. Llewellyn Watson. 1990. Emerging Perspectives on the
Black Diaspora. Lanham: University Press of America, Inc.
Brake, Michael. 1985. Comparative Youth Culture: The Sociology of Youth
Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain, and Canada. New
York: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Brereton, Bridget. 1981. A History of Modern Trinidad 1783-1962. Kingston,
Jamaica: Heinemann.
Calypso Association of Canada, ca. 1980. Constitution. Toronto: Calypso
Association of Canada.
ca. 1989. Proposal to Amend the Constitution. Toronto: Calypso
Association of Canada.
Caudeiron, Daniel. 1992. "Calypso," in Kallmann, Helmut and Gilles Potvin (eds.),
Encyclopedia of Music in Canada. 2nd ed. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press.
. 1989. Interview on "Sunday Morning." Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation, 12 February.
Clifford, James. 1988. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth-Century
Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
De Shane, Nina. 1980. "The Evolution of Trinidad Carnival: 1945-1978." M.A.
Thesis. York University.
Elder, Jacob Delworth. 1966. "Evolution of the Traditional Calypso of Trinidad and
Tobago: A Socio-historical Analysis of Song Change." Ph.D. Dissertation.
University of Pennsylvania.
Eraser, Adrian. 1985. "Horn for them: calypso in the St. Vincent elections." Paper
presented to the Ontario Co-operative Program for Latin American and
Caribbean Studies (OCPLACS) Conference, University of Western Ontario,
March.
Freilich, Morris. 1970. Marginal Natives: Anthropologists at Work. New York:
Harper and Row.
Gallaugher, Annemarie. 1992. "Caribana," in Kallmann, Helmut and Gilles Potvin
(eds.), op. cit.
. 1991. "From Trinidad to Toronto: Calypso as a Way of Life." M.A. Thesis.
York University.
. 1990. "Some of we is one: Calypso by association," in Witmer, Robert
(ed.), Ethnomusicology in Canada. Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music
(CanMus Documents, 5).
Gomez, Henry. 1989. Culture Shock. Toronto: Wazuri Productions, WAZ 105
(phonorecord).
TRINBACO NORTH: CALYPSO CULTURE IN TORONTO 581
Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. An Inquiry Into the Origins
of Cultural Change. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Hebdige, Dick. 1987. Cut 'N' Mix: Culture, Identity and Caribbean Music. London:
Methuen.
. 1979. Subcu/fures: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen.
Hill, Errol. 1972. The Trinidad Carnival: Mandate for a National Theatre. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
hooks, bell. 1990. Yearnings.- Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. Boston: South
End Press.
Jackson, Peter. 1992. "The politics of the streets: A geography of Caribana." Political
Geography. 11/2: pp. 130-151.
Levine, Barry. 1987. Caribbean Exodus. New York: Praeger, 1987.
Lewin, Olive. 1980. "Calypso," in Sadie, Stanley (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians. Vol. 3. London: Macmillan.
Lieber, Michael. 1981. Street Life: Afro-American Culture in Urban Trinidad.
Boston: G.K. Hall and Co.
Liverpool, Hollis. 1986. Kaiso and Society. St. Thomas: Virgin Islands Commission
on Youth.
Manning, Frank. 1985. "Gabby and politics in Barbados." Paper presented to the
Ontario Co-operative Program for Latin American and Caribbean Studies
(OCPLACS) Conference, University of Western Ontario, March.
. 1983a. "Carnival and the West Indian Diaspora." The Round Table. 286:
pp. 186-96.
. 1983b. "Cosmos and chaos: celebration in the modem world," in Manning,
Frank (ed.), The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary
Cultural Performance. London, ON: Congress of Social and Humanistic
Studies, University of Western Ontario.
Nettleford, Rex. 1985 . "Foreword." Caribbean Quarterly. 31/2: pp. iii-iv.
Nourbese Philip, Marlene. 1987. "The 'multicultural' whitewash: racism in Ontario's
arts funding system." Fuse. 11/3: pp. 13-22.
Nunley, John W. and Judith Bettelheim. 1988. Caribbean Festival Arts: Each and
Every Bit of Difference. Seattle: The Saint Louis Art Museum and the
University of Washington Press.
Owens, Thomas. 1988. "Calypso," in Kernfeld, Barry (ed.), The New Grove
Dictionary of Jazz. Vol. 1 . London: Macmillan.
Paquet, Gilles. 1989. "Multiculturalism as national policy." Journal of Cultural
Economics. 13/1: pp. 17-34.
Rice, Tim. 1987. "Toward the remodelling of ethnomusicology." Ethnomusicology.
31/3: pp. 469-516.
Robbins, James. 1990. "What can we leam when they sing, eh?" in Witmer, Robert
(ed.), Efhnomusico/ogy in Canada. Toronto: Institute for Canadian Music
(CanMus Documents, 5).
582 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
Rohlehr, Gordon. 1985. "The problem of the problem of form." Caribbean
Quarterly. 31/1: pp. 1-52.
Shepperd, Patrick. 1986. Interview by author. 12 December.
. 1984. "Caribana." Polyphony: Bulletin of the Multicultural History
Society of Ontario. "Toronto's People." 6/1: pp. 135-39.
Soja, E. W. 1989. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical
Social Theory. New York: Verso.
Spicer, Keith. 1990. Quoted in "Why black music lost out." The Toronto Star, 9
August: p. A21.
Spivak, G.C. 1990. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogue. New
York: Routledge.
Stewart, John O. 1989. Drinkers, Drummers, and Decent Folk: Ethnographic
Narratives of Village Trinidad. New York: State University of New York
Press.
Thomas, Ralph. 1966. "Calypso fiesta O.K.—if you like dirty jokes." The Toronto
Star, 21 November: p. 18.
Warner, Keith. 1988. Kaiso! The Trinidad Calypso: A Study of the Calypso as Oral
Literature. London: Heinemann.
Waterman, Christopher A. 1990. '"Our tradition is a very modem tradition': popular
music and the construction of pan-Yoruba identity." Ethnomusicology. 34/3:
pp. 367-379.
Witmer, Robert. 1992. "Caribbean," in Kallmann, Helmut and Gilles Potvin, op. cit.
THE METAPHYSICS OF
NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART
ALFRED YOUNG MAN
INTRODUCTION
Before an individual can understand and appreciate North American
Indian art—practice and theory—it is advisable and even imperative to leam
something about the arguments that rage around it. In particular, it is essential
to become familiar with the North American Indian Native perspective.
l
 The
Native perspective should be applied both rigidly and boldly, and made an
integral part of the various critical, analytical and historical instruments that
make up the lexicon of art, not just when it is convenient to do so but whenev-
er the "edges" of the Native American art world rub up against those of the
so-called Western art world.
The first question is, "what constitutes North American Indian art?" Exit
Art, a gallery on Broadway in New York City, has an interesting art policy
statement that is pertinent to this question. Its policy asserts the right of histo-
ry to have opinions other than those of the status quo, parallel histories if you
will. It also believes in the right of any culture to change itself. Native culture
enjoys this right no less than any other. These concepts may at first seem self-
evident but in the area of Native art, as we shall see, Western society doesn't
always practise what it preaches.
American anthropologist William K. Powers
2
 views this right to change—
a kind of cultural growth or flowering—as inevitably involving a reinvention of
culture, as in Claude Levi-Strauss's notion of bricohge in which the bricoleur
fashions new things out of the shreds and patches of the things salvaged.
Powers uses the Lakota A.I.M. sun dance at Pine Ridge, South Dakota to
make his point.
3
 How this seemingly unrelated concept fits in with the Native
art argument can be discussed later in more detail. Suffice it to say that this
notion of culture change is important to an overall understanding of this essay.
Others may view culture change not as reinvention of culture at all but more
584 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
as a reconnection with the mainline culture. The Native perspective would
prefer to state that Native art is, in fact, part of a continuum of Native
American
4
 cultural and metaphysical existence that has persisted for thou-
sands of years with no loss of authenticity. Indian activism, as a concept for
continuity, has been around for centuries and certainly was in existence at the
time of Columbus. Though this fact has many detractors, it needs no further
proof than the walking, talking Native Americans themselves, wherever they
may be found on the American continent. Science, to the contrary, through
anthropology and archaeology, has mounds of evidence to prove that the
Native Americans living today have no real relationship with the First
Americans who lived 2000 years ago. These same scientists, strangely
enough, would have no qualms whatsoever accepting the dominant Christian
world view that they in 1992 still have some kind of direct factual relationship
with a certain person crucified on a cross 1,992 years ago on the other side of
the world! Such "subjective" rationality does not hinder them from taking the
continuum concept to task just the same.
There are more questions to be asked. Given that there is a universally
acceptable category called Native American art, is it now "dead"? And accord-
ing to whom, and why? Are North American Indians "real"? Can a non-Indian
do Native American art? Is the so-called "ghetto-ization" of Native American
art real or imagined? Why are Native American artists and "mainstream"
gallery operators overly concerned with and intimidated by the so-called prob-
lem of "ghetto-ization"? Does the loss of language necessarily imply cultural
loss and if so why does this raise questions of whether or not an artist is still
culturally a Native American? Who finally decides when an Indian is something
other than an Indian? And when this "someone" decides, why must it always
be a "specialist"—someone who is mysteriously given authority by society at
large—who decides rather than an Indian? Why is there a general perception
from the Native perspective that it is the Western art and scientific establish-
ments that are responsible for isolating and packaging Native American soci-
eties and their art into neat little archetypes for world consumption? What has
anthropology got to do with the art polemics as found in the Native art world
anyway? What is anthropology's reaction to critical analysis relative to these
questions? And the larger, perhaps most important question of them all: Why
have Western art critics and historians neglected and all but rejected the Native
American art world as a valid subject for study, research and exhibition when
they most certainly have not rejected the English, French, Italian and other
European, American, Canadian or even Russian cultural histories as being
invalid subjects? In addition, the obvious question of how one arrives at a clear
distinction between Native American fine art, folk art and arts and crafts must
be addressed by all concerned. All of these questions deserve seriously
researched answers.
THE METAPHYSICS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART 585
From the Native perspective, any analysis of North American Indian art
must be sensitive to Native art's current aesthetic attitude and critical literature
which are in a less than satisfying, some would even say insipid, state of
affairs. This is not to be misconstrued as criticizing those who are doing good
work in this area.
To an American Indian artist, Native perspective texts may seem all too
true and an absolute vindication. However, a Euro-Canadian who reads them
may begin to feel uneasy and ultimately culpable in a very nasty historical
drama indeed. In the struggle to define Native art, some readers may suffer
twinges of guilt and some may even lapse into throes of despair if they perse-
vere through what can at times be excruciatingly insulting and accusatory
material. In his Meeting Ground essay on teaching American Indian history to
non-Indians, Frederick E. Hoxie of the Newberry Library realizes this is a
problem and warns us to "Excite your students and do as little damage as pos-
sible."
5
 The Native perspective may not be easy to accept, particularly by
those who feel adversely implicated by its conclusions. There is no escaping
the dynamic theme once the wheels are set in motion. However, this conflict
is a necessary evil and an integral part of the critical analysis. Some students
find that their only solution to this conflict is simply to "agree to disagree,"
which is itself part of the problem. Consider, for example:
What we call the scientific and anthropological image of the Indian is
fundamental to modem White understanding of Native Americans. To
trace completely the genealogy of that image involves nothing less
than telling the entire story of changes in the basic intellectual orienta-
tions of Western civilization.^
In a nutshell, it is the Western orientation and its prerogatives versus the
new retelling from the Native perspective. The retelling involves the unmask-
ing of a profound fallacious unconsciousness, the exposing of many false
images (including those that Berkhofer lists), and the unveiling of deeply felt,
unconscious antipathies and jealousies among laymen, anthropologists, art stu-
dents, art historians, art critics and curators.
7
 Aboriginal Americans, their his-
tory and their art have always challenged the popular American and European
ethnocentric archetypical notions of "history" and undoubtedly will continue to
do so.
Many Aboriginal American artists are abandoning the world of Native art
today at the urging of mainstream art galleries, museums, art critics and cura-
tors. This is the "Native American art is dead,"
8
 "ghetto-ization" syndrome.
9
However, these artists are taking an incredible risk, personally, culturally and
historically. There is no guarantee that the cliques and experts in the world's
major art centres who are involved in researching, promoting and selling art,
and controlling the art discourse, will keep accurate historical records of Native
586 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
art history or learn to criticize their work from the Native perspective. The
outcome has been and will continue to be appropriation, and sadly enough,
appropriation serves only to deny and reject the premises of Native art.
Native American artists and all concerned may have to leam to accept the
idea that all that is "dead" is assimilation into a mass melting pot. Native
American self-determination, in fact, lives on through art. A new Native
American art history must be bom
10
 and allowed to flourish. Since a kind of
deconstructionism in Native American art has been going on for some time
anyway, it is only natural that this rebirth will occur out of the present morass
of confusion and contradictions in the worlds of art and anthropology.
As for the question of how to differentiate fine art from crafts and both
from folk art, Powers asserts that it is a problem of typology, which has been
around for more than a century:
Why did we [sic]
11
 develop a society that insists on arguing over the
differences, since the definitions of each must always be provisional or
operational?... It is quite dear that the way we IsicJ traditionally classify
art is simply an extension of the way we [sic] classify people, and the
whole scheme smacks of the classificatory system made famous by
numerous social theorists living in the mid-nineteenth century. Sir
Edwin B. Tylor of England and Lewis Henry Morgan reflected current
Victorian perceptions in seeing all of humankind as culturally evolving
through three stages of development, namely savagery, a period char-
acterized by hunting and gathering; barbarism, a period characterized
by the development of agriculture and ceramic industries; and finally
civilization, whose hallmark was the invention of writing. Thus we have
a popular view of primitive art, folk art, and Art writ large as, in effect,
structural analogs of savagery, barbarism, and civilization.... These
ideas are still very much alive among laymen, although anthropologists
rejected these theories long ago.
1
^
Powers is only being realistic when he writes: "It is unlikely that a new
classification system, one that does not distinguish between Art writ large, and
arts written with a small 'a' and pluralized, will come into effect in a very short
time, because we [sic] are all fortunately or unfortunately products of our own
cultures and the values associated with them."
13
 All the more reason to accept
Native art as a valid genre without qualification.
Critics in the Western art world believe in the "art for art's sake" slogan
that was bom in the 60s, a time when social consciousness and sense of order
were vastly different from what they are today. That was a time when most of
the Euro-American world believed Communism to have designs on the shape
of all human societies and the U.S.A. was bogged down in the Vietnam war
trying to prove that such designs would never be allowed to succeed. During
this time, bourgeois political opposition to Communism was at its height. We
all know better in the 90s, but Native American artists suspected the truth
THE METAPHYSICS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART 587
even in the 60s. The Institute of American Indian Arts in Sante Fe, New
Mexico, has a celebrated American Indian art collection that documents very
eloquently the attitude of Native American artists to the political conflict of
that period. Of an October 1990 exhibition of Native art of the 60s entitled
Radicals and Renegades: American Indian Protest Art, curator Richard Hill
wrote in the catalogue's introduction:
When did the Indian Defense of their sovereign nations end and Indian
activism begin? It is difficult to separate Indian dissent into time peri-
ods, as Indian people have struggled since the time of Columbus to this
very day for recognition of tribal rights, human rights and indigenous
rights. The chronicles of Indian protest date to before the founding of
the United States, and Indians have been very vocal over the last five
centuries in defence of rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of the Great
Spirit in their own homelands. ^
In the past, conflict in the political world has served some very noble and
useful purposes in Euro-America's art and Native American art has clearly
turned it to a similar purpose. It does not deserve to be allocated the lowly sta-
tus of "marginal art" which is now the practice among the power-elite of the
art world. It is most certainly "Art writ large" in its own right. If and when the
problem of the special place of Native art is thoroughly addressed and sorted
out we may find that its supposed "marginality" is yet another false image that
Berkhofer can add to his already crammed closet of "false images" of just who
the Native Americans really are.
Jimmie Durham, the Cherokee artist, writes, "The last frontier is not outer
space...but a breaking down of our complicity in the colonialism of the
American Indian and other Fourth World Indigenous Peoples, to admit within
and without ourselves no less than a duplicity in the invention of an alien
Western culture founded upon the false dichotomy of civilized vs. savage."
15
"There is no Western culture, but a power structure that pretends to be
Western culture."
16
 Since the study of "Art writ large" is the highest source of
knowledge, in order to participate in the Native art nexus at its most profound
level, as in "the last frontier," Native artists must insist on using the Native
perspective. One can only acquire the Native perspective through in-depth
study which, in turn, can reveal the most acute existential knowledge about art
that an individual can possibly discern.
THE DIALOGUE: A DIALECTICAL BEGINNING
No centre can move without its fringes, and as these shift they are
bound to make strange encounters. Some of these will turn out wasted
but it is unlikely that all will be, though this can only be proved later.
588 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
In any case some such far-out exploration is essential to any live soci-
ety or art. If there is no movement round the extremities you can count
the centre as dead.
Nigel Gosling, art critic for The Observer, 1971,
London, England
The presumed "universality" of Western civilization was addressed at
length by Vine Deloria Jr. in his Wolf Memorial Lecture (1977) entitled
"Civilization and Isolation." In his lecture Deloria writes that Arnold Toynbee
once said, "To call the present way we articulate history 'a history of the
world' is like calling a map of the Mediterranean a map of the world." The
existence of a Westernized, parochial, provincialized existentialism in the criti-
cal and scholarly literature of Euro-American academics is seen by Deloria as
reason enough to explain the lack of inclusion of American Indian history, art,
languages, philosophies, dance, drama and religion in the dominant world
view. Deloria argues that the radical ideas of the Russian physicist Immanuel
Velikovsky
17
 are germane to liberating the metaphysical world of the
American Indian, and by proxy the Western world of metaphysics, from the
"bonds of the past." More precisely, in the case of Native American art this
would mean freedom from the insular theories of art, anthropology, dogmatic
Christian theological doctrine and ethno-racist politics practised by various
groups and individuals in their relationship with Native Americans over the
past 500 years. In other words, he is saying there is a deep-seated need in
Western and Native American thinking to resolve these conflicts to our mutual
benefit.
In the 1940s, Velikovsky advanced a revolutionary concept postulating
the chaotic nature of our solar system's past and therefore the Earth's plane-
tary past, clearly challenging the long-accepted Newtonian idea of the "clock-
work universe" where planets reside in fixed orbits and can never stray outside
these parameters. This theory, known as the theory of uniformitarianism,
serves as the cornerstone for modem physics, astronomy, geology, paleontol-
ogy, anthropology, archaeology and other (hard) sciences, and for our con-
cepts of linear time and space as we understand these notions today.
Velikovsky's scientific research, on the other hand, led him to theorize
that close encounters of some of the planets (particularly Venus, the Earth and
Mars) thousands of years ago were the real source of what were considered by
Western scientists for centuries to be merely "primitive" superstitious folk tales
of cataclysmic events. By comparing Biblical stories with the many contempo-
rary and ancient "primitive" mythologies (or histories) from cultures and soci-
eties throughout the world he challenged the chronology used for certain his-
torical periods (notably the period from the fall of the Egyptian Middle
Kingdom to the time of Alexander the Great's successor in Egypt, Ptolemy I)
THE METAPHYSICS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART 589
and in doing so, perhaps unintentionally, was able to demonstrate that "primi-
tive" histories were at least as important as Western history. This, of course,
was the last thing anthropologists, historians or politicians wanted to hear
after nearly four centuries of denying the efficacy of aboriginal scientific theory
as applied to the world of physics.
18
Velikovsky's theories have been the bane of conventional scientific theo-
rists for the past half century or so because he sees the myths, legends and
stories of non-Western peoples as valid clues to what has happened in Earth's
planetary past. Popular Euro-American national and religious histories are
held up to rigorous scrutiny and are shown, as a result, to be less than accu-
rate in their presumed "truth." This comparatively new style of history is seen
by Deloria as the wave of the future. An analysis of the literal truth of the
Bible, for instance, is not beyond Velikovsky's existentialist theories or
Deloria's metaphysical scepticism.
The written and philosophical core of the Native perspective is alive and
well. In an interview in the March 1990 issue of Omni magazine, University of
New Mexico's Tewa Pueblo anthropologist Alfonso Ortiz calls for nothing less
than the ultimate return of the Black Hills of South Dakota to the Lakota.
"From a religious perspective," he says, "[the Sioux leaders!...would want the
Black Hills to be restored to a pristine condition. Let the presidents' faces
become worn away." Similarly, Metaphysics of Modern Existence is Deloria's
attempt to break new trails in thinking, both perceptually and conceptually. It
is a welcome addition to the Native perspective and should not simply be
weighed as yet another technical treatise endeavouring to establish still anoth-
er quasi-scientific alternative to Western thought. A new academic conscious-
ness is evident in both Deloria's and Ortiz's outlook—old to them, perhaps,
but new to the world at large. In true art theory and historical fashion, such
styles of critical writing must continue to be one of the functions and preroga-
tives of this and future generations of American Indian writers, artists, art crit-
ics and art historians.
As the following quote points out, such fresh approaches are rare among
academics:
Our existence in the present is unique, irrevocable. It causes us to erect
structures between ourselves and the reality of it, but at the same time
it is constantly infiltrating, continually impinging on our sense of stabili-
ty. Essentially there is an absolute schism between those who would
naturally follow established patterns and those who find it necessary to
formulate relationships through their work reflecting an awareness of.
and adherence to, actual and impending social political change, and
whose work also contributes to actuate those changes. In professional
and educational circles the tendency is towards ensuring the continua-
tion of established and specialized behaviour which embellishes the
society as it is. ^
5 90 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
North American Indian artists, on the other hand, have literally reinvented
their cultures many times over with no loss of continuity with earlier Native
cultures and consequently, they have had, and do have, an untold influence on
the way the "outside" world perceives them. They have structured their soci-
eties as true artists must, as technicians who were, and continue to be,
involved in the actual creative process from within. Evidence of this continuous
deconstruct/reconstruct/deconstruct again element of North American Indian
cosmology across time and space has been available to archaeologists and
anthropologists ever since Thomas Jefferson first dug up the ancient Mound
Builder architectural concepts in Ohio in the 1770s. This is not to imply that
Jefferson or his predecessors recognized this continuum of culture. Whether
even the Native people of the time were conscious of this ongoing phenome-
non is a moot point, since not even literate societies can claim to know how
their past of 2000 years ago is linked with the future. As for the archaeolo-
gists and anthropologists who give us our world views, for them a "dead" cul-
ture is a dead culture and they see no continuum between those early Mound
Builders and today's Native Americans.
But can we be so sure? Does culture, at least among the Native Americans
in North America, ever really die? That depends on how culture is defined and
by whom. To an anthropologist and an archaeologist, cultures do die. To a
Native American cosmologist, perhaps they do not. "Far from being a static
entity, cosmology is dynamic, changing and moving through time as ritual
moves through space."
20
 Cosmology—the theory of the universe as an
ordered whole—gives birth to new art which builds contemporary structures.
"All things exist in Wah'kon-tah and Wah'kon-tah exists in all things."
21
 This
is pure Native American philosophy which anthropology belatedly redefines as
theory, and which Native artists in turn reconstruct as art. It is also an impor-
tant conceptual and cultural distinction that deserves more attention and
exploration. For now, suffice it to say that Native cosmology is worthy of more
of our time and understanding and should not be forgotten.
When Rennard Strickland writes in Magic Images that the Native
American artist lives in a house of mirrors, this continuum may be part of the
problem he, and others, are so confounded by. This concept as used in Native
art theory is also in direct contradiction to Benjamin Lee Whorf's theory on
the nature of language as he has expressed it in Language, Thought and
Reality. Whorf has dominated the intellectual state of anthropology, and
through inference much, if not all, of Western art polemics and analysis rela-
tive to the nature of cultural and historical dynamics in the Western and "prim-
itive" worlds in the past three decades.
Whorf's theory holds that language and speech shape an individual's
thought processes unilaterally. This implies a cultural evolutionary social struc-
ture and self-evident cultural loss should language be lost to any culture.
THE METAPHYSICS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART 591
(Whorf has not bothered to define language. Indeed, no one has.) These kinds
of "impressions" are being deconstructed today by the new generation of
anthropologists who not only see anthropology constructing mythical "natural
laws," models to which Native behaviour is then attributed all in the name of
objective knowledge,
22
 but also these models disproven within anthropology's
scientifically designated "living laboratories," or original "spheres of studies"
themselves, namely inside the Canadian and American Indian nations.
Edmund R. Leach is perhaps more forthright and direct in his assertion
that:
Much of the work of social anthropologists involves the interpretation
of symbolic behaviour. When we talk about "social structure," we are
translating into our own special jargon various bits and pieces of cultur-
ally defined behaviour which we choose to consider as "symbols." This
is particularly obvious in the case of religious ritual;... [we] assume
anthropologists possess some kind of golden key whereby they can
blandly assert that a particular piece of stereotyped human behaviour
"stands for" or "is a symbol of" this, that, or the other thing. I agree
that most such interpretation has no sound logical justification.
As an exercise in turning the tables, let us postulate art as ritual in
Western society. If we paraphrase, we are led to conclude, as Leach writes:
In the kind of rituals which an anthropologist [Native art historian]
ordinarily observes, the meaning of the performance [statement], in
the eyes of the assembled congregation [cliques] is seldom in doubt.
Admittedly every ritual [art] sequence has had both historical and psy-
chological origins, but what the anthropologist [Native art historian]
can directly observe is the social context of contemporary perfor-
mance. That being so, it is surely useless to enquire just why one set of
symbolizations [art] is employed in preference to another [ritual] %3
In other words, when is art ritual and ritual art in Western society? Leach's
statement draws us back to Power's probing question, "Why did we [sicj devel-
op a society that insists on arguing over the symbolic differences between fine
arts and crafts?" The question is problematical.
For our purposes ritual may be defined here as stereotyped activity or
behaviour, any formal act, institution, or procedure that is followed consistent-
ly, such as the ritual of the law. Producing art is very much based upon
learned formalistic principles which are in turn wrought out of a tradition origi-
nally taught in a highly ritualistic fashion. In this sense, the foundation of art is
indeed ritualistic and, theoretically at least, is said to have begun in ritual which
may be one reason why there is such fascination with the cave paintings in
Lascaux, France (ca. 40,000 B.C.), that.are thought to have be "painted" for
religious reasons (although of course ritual need not necessarily imply religion).
592 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
However, this remains a controversial area of social anthropology and the
extrapolation of this theory to Native American traditions, art, and religion
seems bizarre. As Powers correctly asks, "Why has the Western art establish-
ment adopted without qualification the Victorian rubrics, or symbols of two
anthropologists [Tylor and Morgan] from another century?" And the crucial
questions which Native artists must ask here are, "Why are Native artists
uncritically accepting these still unproven theories as some kind of rule of
thumb to judge their own lives and art by? And who is forcing these issues?"
Meanwhile the battle for theoretical superiority rages on. Noted anthropol-
ogist Clifford Geertz of Princeton University calls for nothing less than the
investigation of textual meaning (the meaning behind the "dominant symbols"
of myth, totems, the cockfights and so on). He prefers to label structuralism,
whose primary concern is with "explaining" the internal social structure of a
"primitive society" in order to arrive at an understanding of it, essentially dead;
this in spite of the fact that Levi-Strauss, the Father of Structuralism, is highly
respected by many anthropologists as the one scholar who finally made
anthropology "respectable" and most nearly acceptable as a true, or hard, sci-
ence. Needless to say, there's no love lost between structuralist practitioners
and Geertz. By contrast, at the University of British Columbia's Museum of
Anthropology in Vancouver, anthropologist Michael M. Ames is not only writ-
ing about the meaning of his subject matter but, unlike Geertz, is actually
attempting to make contemporary Northwest Coast and other Canadian
Indian artists a living, breathing part of the fabric of his museum's outreach
programs. Deloria, of course, looks upon anthropology as fiction—a very
super-sophisticated fiction perhaps, but nevertheless fiction. Anthropological
theories may be compared to the automobiles of a car salesman—with one
major difference. When a car salesman sells you a new vehicle and the car
turns out to be faulty, the written warranty guarantees a quick, worry-free
recall and settlement of the grievance. Anthropological theories, on the other
hand, have no warranties and they cannot be recalled, ever, if they are not
true. Once they are unleashed upon an unsuspecting public they take on a life
of their own and cannot be called back for readjustment when or if they turn
out to be lemons. One need look no further than the declaration made by
Peter Farb in Man's Rise to Civilization where he unwittingly admits duplici-
ty: "No anthropologist has ever witnessed a band grow into a tribe," a clear
case of shooting down his own theories; or the "scientific" studies done in the
70s which purport to show Indians as alcoholic savage xenophobes who can-
not handle a beer. And for real anthropological racism, no one can beat John
Greenway of the University of Colorado who denigrates everything Indian and
neurotically attacks white "liberals" who defend Native rights.
24
 (Farb actually
praises Greenway in his above-mentioned book.)
On a more harmonious note, why would a theory, if it is true, need to be
THF METAPHYSICS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART 595
reassessed in the first place? (I do not mean to imply here that all theories are
bogus, although many are. Such an all-out accusation would only suggest that
I am no less mad than anyone else.) The Native perspective does not demand
a reassessment just for the sake of argument. The practice of anthropological
self-analysis is a fact of contemporary academic anthropology. A theory that
was the rage of the 50s, for instance, may be seen by young anthropologists
today as nothing more than an idea that was improperly thought through to
its logical conclusions, or was perhaps based upon specious knowledge to
begin with—much like Columbus calling Aboriginal Americans "Indians" or
the renaming of The Great Turtle Island "America" after Amerigo Vespucci.
The rethinking of anthropological theory from the Native perspective needs
to occur for the same reasons that anthropologist deconstructionists feel an
overwhelming need to reconstruct the hundreds of anthropological theories
currently undergoing analysis, rearrangement and even outright trashing, or
artists feel a calling to find creative new ways of defining their respective "real-
ities." For the most part, these anthropological theories are not as universal as
was once thought; or they are built upon false archetypes and unsound resid-
ual principles from earlier theories; or perhaps the theory's fundamental
axioms are not as important, or as relevant, or as true as originally believed.
For example, in 1949 the theory of an "archaic primitive unconscious-
ness" was put forward. Leach writes that Freud's justification for Totem and
Taboo is provided by the now-outdated belief that "primitive" societies are in
some sense chronologically archaic.
2
^ A quote of some length is helpful here,
though of course the use of the word "primitive" presents us with additional
analytical difficulties:
Freud (1919, chapter 1, para. 1) specifically stated that "we can recog-
nize in the psychic life (of primitives) a well-preserved early stage of our
[sic] own development." By this analogy, lack of sexual inhibition in
the customary conventions of a primitive society is deemed to corre-
spond to the uninhibited behaviour of a young child in our [sic] own
society. Furthermore, primitive societies are often represented as hav-
ing a kind of collective personality so that the myths and rituals of
primitive peoples correspond to the dreams and play of individual
western children. Consistent with this, the rituals of primitive society
are represented as obsessions corresponding to the obsessional behav-
iour of neurotics in our [sic] society. Indeed many psycho-therapists use
the terms "ritual" and "obsessional behaviour" as synonyms. It is not
merely that Freud wrote like this in 1906; eminent analysts still do so
in 1956.
Given this kind of assumption, the rest follows. Primitive rituals, as
displayed in the ethnographic literature, are demonstrated as contain-
ing symbolic components similar to those which crop up in the dreams
and imaginings of individual psychopaths. It is then asserted that the
symbols in the primitive rituals "mean" the same thing as the same
594 CANADIAN Music: ISSUES OF HEGEMONY AND IDENTITY
symbols "mean" in the psychoanalyst's consulting room. This is held to
"prove" that certain types of symbolic meanings are universals for all
of humanity.
The logical fallacies of this argument are obvious. But the empirical
fallacies are not. If an anthropologist sets out to discover what a social
symbol means, considered simply as an element in a system of com-
munication, it is very unlikely that he will arrive at precisely the same
conclusion as that reached by the psychoanalyst by his atrocious tech-
niques of hit or miss intuition.26
We no longer hear about this "archaic primitive unconsciousness," but
Leach is interested in it not so much to prove psychoanalytic theorists wrong
but rather to find out how they arrived at what appeared to be "correct"
answers independently of ethnology—rather like accidentally finding the light
switch in the dark. While this example may appear to have little to do with
anthropology, as cognitive anthropology goes it is as good an example as the
theories and writings of Karl Marx and certainly no less important, and no less
wrong. All the same, anthropology has no centre and there is absolutely no
way for deconstructed American Indians to lobby the Anthropological
Association for an indemnification on past and contemporary misuses of their
cultural dignity and pride.
Since art and anthropology will not and cannot legislate a conscience for
their own members, the schism remains between art, anthropology and Native
American art. This is the vacuum Native art theory rushes in to fill. Only the
Native artist can satisfy, with "real" nourishment, this thirst and hunger for an
Indian aesthetic that years of scientific research and study, years of religious
and cultural denial and many more years of Western historical and political
chauvinism have tried to obliterate. But if the fissure is to close, nothing less
than a new frame of reference must be adopted for the scholarly analysis and
criticism of Native American art. This is not to imply a "separate but equal"
status for Native art. Good literature is available and excellent thinkers and
writers are around who would be thrilled to fashion a completely new con-
sciousness out of Native American existentialism in art or metaphysics in tan-
dem with the Western world view. Any individual who becomes a specialist in
the field soon realizes this.
The future demands a new sensitivity to the most important questions of
our time. We can no longer live exclusively by old adages and stereotypes, rit-
uals, and "theories." Berkhofer writes:
In the light of the history of White-Indian imagery, it seems certain that
the term and the idea of Indian otherness will continue into the future.
Partly such a prediction seems warranted by the continued usefulness
of that otherness and the moral judgments on it for so many groups in
the White population. Counter-cultural and pro-societal uses alike for
THE METAPHYSICS OF NORTH AMERICAN INDIAN ART 595
White polemicists, policy makers, media people, and artists dictate the
persistence of the idea of the Indian into the future just as they did in
the past. Moreover, some Native American leaders' success in consoli-
dating their own political influence depends upon their ability to per-
suade their followers to see themselves as Indians as opposed to indi-
vidual tribespeople. Even as these leaders do so, they must play upon
the White image of Indian otherness to achieve their own ends for
their followers in the larger society. Mostly, however, the history of the
White images of the Indian leads one to cynicism about the ability of
one people to understand another in mutually acceptable terms.
Both politics and culture militate against such a compromise of power
and ideation. To the extent that the way different ethnic groups see
each other is not purely a function of the power relationships prevail-
ing among them, then the conceptual and ideological screens to their
own cultures must still interpose between the observer and the
observed to color the "reality" of mutual perceptions. Although the
modem concept of culture carries with it as intellectual and moral bag-
gage the ideas of relativity and pluralism, it also postulates the interme-
diation of ideological preconceptions between seeing the world and
responding to it. So long as the modern understanding of human
actions assumes some sort of cultural influence between stimulus and
response, then the future of the Indian as image must be determined
by the preconceptions of White cultural premises. The great question,
given contemporary understanding, then becomes: To what extent can
new meaning be infused into the old term to cancel old prejudices and
invent a new evaluative image? At the moment, Native American lead-
ers and scholars as well as liberal Whites are directing their efforts to
this transformation. Their success will depend as much on the future
intellectual trends in Western, perhaps world, cultures as in the balance
of power among people