“Music, Race,
Ethnicity and Nationhood in Canada” by Mike Daley
York University, Toronto
Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: United States and Canada
It is something of a cliche to compare Canada’s “cultural mosaic”
to the United States’ “melting pot”. The analogy is not entirely
accurate, but like most stereotypes, it has a grain of truth. Unlike the more
clearly bifurcated racial divide of the U.S., Canada is a conglomeration of
several nations that are constituted along ethnic, racial and linguistic lines.
As Beverley Diamond has pointed out, these lines are fragile both in theory
and in practice, and music plays an important role in “the maintenance
of this fragile solidarity”(Diamond 1994:5).
The fragmented character of Canadian musical culture is somewhat abetted by
the government’s official policy on multiculturalism (1971), which promotes
and financially supports the preservation of the ethnocultural practices of
newcomers. In some ways, this is an institutionalization of the “mosaic”
trope, and is often cited as evidence of Canada’s difference from the
United States and grater understanding of ethnic and cultural diversity. As
Neil Bissoondath argues, this policy has come to take on a “cult”
quality, in that challenges to its orthodoxy are strictly proscribed, and usually
dismissed as racism. Multiculturalism, he asserts, creates unease on a number
of levels, as immigrant groups find themselves being used as political tools
and earlier generations of immigrants resent the special privileges given to
the newcomers. Furthermore, Bissoondath argues that multicultural policy esteems
exotic Otherness over Canadian identity and thus impairs community-building
across the usual borders (Bissondath 1994). Thus, Canada is replete each year
with “heritage festivals”, which often present developmentally frozen,
stereotyped versions of ethnic musical traditions. Canadian musical culture
is characterized by a montage of large and small ethnic enclaves. There exists
relatively little syncretism between groups, other than the sometime mixing
of any the “heritage” musics with the hegemonic English-Canadian
popular music for the purposes of commercial crossover. Possible exceptions
to the rule are only now beginning to appear among the youth cultures of second-generation
immigrant populations, for example Bhangra, which is a synthesis of hip-hop
and Punjabi traditional music (see Warwick 1996).
The First Nations of Canada, a group which is estimated to number up to 1.5
million in this country, with 53 different languages, covers a wide range of
musical genres of style, which divide along linguistic, regional, age and class
lines. Nonetheless, the “Indian” is an stereotype in the Canadian
music industry. Otherwise disparate artists, such as Susan Aglukark, Buffy Sainte-Marie
and Kashtin are often conflated under an essentialized, exoticized rubric for
marketing purposes. As a rule, the First Nations artists that have received
widespread acclaim have borrowed heavily for mainstream styles, including Kashtin,
a group from the remote Maliotenan reserve (800 kilometers north of Montreal)
whose lyrics were invariably written in the Innu language. Some Native musicians
have embraced popular styles that are strongly identified with African-Americans,
including Chicago blues and rap. These styles are then adapted to accommodate
lyrics addressing Native concerns and issues.
The black population of Canada is not insignificant, and was estimated at 500,000
by the mid 1980s. The largest concentration is in Toronto, and may in fact be
much higher due to heavy immigration from the Caribbean in the last 20 years.
Several black communities were prominent in the 19th century in parts of Ontario
and Nova Scotia, though these communities scattered to urban areas over time.
Important enclaves of black music include Montreal, where a significant number
of black slaves were employed as domestic servants as early as 1783. The Montreal
Black Community Youth Choir (1974-81) was succeeded by the successful Montreal
Jubilation Gospel Choir. Black performers played to racially mixed audiences
in Montreal from the 1920s, and African-Canadians have continued to play a significant
role in the Montreal jazz scene. In Toronto, a vital hip-hop scene has developed
in the 1990s. Several Torontonian rappers, for example Dream Warriors and UBAD,
highlight a Caribbean identity in their lyrics and visual images.
If one was to insist on naming a Canadian dichotomy analogous to the United
States’ black/white divide, the French/English one would probably do.
Canada’s two official languages instantiate an enduring difference. Canada’s
popular musical artists are primarily divided along lines of sung language;
vocalists who sing in French rarely gain exposure in mainstream media outlets
until they “cross over” linguistically (There are exceptions to
this, including the female pop singer Mitsou). One of the few Canadian figures
to gain true national popularity was an instrumental artist, Don Messer (Rosenberg
1990: 238). The Canadian popular music industry has in recent years depended
upon two music video cable channels, the English-language MuchMusic and the
French-language Musique-Plus (both channels are owned and operated by the same
media conglomerate, Chumcity). The musical repertories featured on each channel
are nearly mutually exclusive, and the difference is wholly constituted in the
sung languages of the artists.
Music is sometimes used to aid in the constitution of nationhood in Canada,
especially in localized contexts. In the early ‘90s, Cape Breton fiddle
music gained national popularity and became a metonymic representation of the
Maritime provinces, and for some, Canada in general. Through a strategy that
is part ideological work and part savvy marketing, Cape Breton fiddling has
become for many the epitome of the Canadian sound. As Neil Rosenberg points
out, “region has become ethnicity” in the case of the Maritimes
(Rosenberg 1990:238). This powerful melding of identities has allowed East Coast
traditional music to resonate as perhaps the most plausible example of “Canadian
music”. Furthermore, fiddle music has been cross-pollinated with pop and
rock elements to create a palatable commercial blend, a strategy reminiscent
of 1980s “worldbeat” productions.
Bissoondath, Neil. 1994. Selling Illusions: The Cult of Multiculturalism in
Canada. Toronto: Penguin Books.
Diamond, Beverley. 1994. “Issues of Hegemony and Identity in Canadian
Music”. Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity. Toronto: Canadian
Scholars’ Press.
Rosenberg, Neil V. 1990. “Whose Music is Canadian Country Music? A Precis”.
CanMus Documents 5: Ethnomusicology in Canada: 236-38.
Warwick, Jacqueline. 1996. “’Can Anyone Dance To This Music?’:
Bhangra and South Asian Youth in Toronto”. Master’s thesis, York
University.