Canadian Music Now
Ten years ago I graduated from McGill University with a degree in comparative religions and an uncertain future. My degree was by no means an instant ticket to a job and I didn't want to go to law school or hole up in an ashram in India. At the time my brother was living in New York, and his band Stars had just released their first record, Nightsongs. I volunteered to help them promote shows, manage tours, and pretty much do anything I could to get their career going. I basically became their de facto manager. I accompanied them to CMJ, CMW, NXNE, SXSW, and on tours across North America.
A few years later I started a music festival called POP Montreal with some friends. Our festival would be different from the events that existed in Canada at the time – industry showcases that seemed like mere musical meat markets. We asked our friends to perform, applied for grants, and did our best to find sponsors. In a short period of time, POP Montreal, which recently saw its eighth edition, has become a world class event. We've done this by working hard, being creative, and being different, featuring bands from around the world, and local talent, too.
In keeping with the work I did with my brother’s band a decade ago, Pop Montreal puts Canadian music in its rightful place alongside the best of the world. As such, it makes sense that much of what we do is supported by government. We are lucky in Canada that art is encouraged and supported by our government institutions, even if that funding remains ever precarious. Of course, as with any pursuit in the arts, funding is not enough. You need to be original, heartfelt, and relevant if you are going to make a mark on the world stage. To create a music industry that breeds these qualities, and one that successfully defends against the constant threats to arts funding, it's important to have a strong and vocal arts community. It’s essential that we constantly discuss and re-evaluate the state of Canadian music – the successes and failures of Canadian artists, governments, and listeners, all of whom have an important role to play in the cultural future of our country.
Strange End of the Dial
by Roland Pemberton (Cadence Weapon)
Rap artist; Poet Laureate, Edmonton.
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Strange End of the Dial
- First Posted: Dec 07 2009 08:53 AM
- Updated: 6 months ago
Outsider music that eschews the polished aesthetic of the mainstream is gaining momentum. And some of the best artists are from Canada.
Have you ever been just out of range on the radio dial? You know, turning it and hearing an unfamiliar signal from some far off land, the tinges and colours of sound dissipating and multiplying through layers of sludge and history. Well, it turns out there’s a whole discipline of music out there that purposefully hunts for that obscured sensation and much of their principals belong to our country.
Much like how what we now refer to as indie music existed long before the media appropriated the term and aesthetic for streamlining purposes, lo-fi music is not exactly a new concept. Pioneers such as R. Stevie Moore made home recordings such as 1976’s Phonography that unknowingly anticipated the current movement‘s desire to sidestep major label expectations to develop a completely sovereign style.
In its current form, it appears to be a direct response to almost two decades of the glossy girl pop and lobotomized rock dominating radio.
With modern trailblazers like California’s mysterious Ariel Pink doling out hundreds of tapes and defying genre with their experimentation, there are many in Canada similarly hacking away at the machine. The few, the proud, and the strange can easily be found on Weird Canada, a blog written by Edmonton’s Aaron Levin. A former CJSR 88.5 FM program director, his hunger for the sound hiding behind the sound has led him to chronicle the Canadian musicians who make outsider music.
Canada is privy to several bands that have drastically different sonic directions but adhere to the same recording ethos. The Pop Winds, originally from Ontario but settling in Montréal, have a unique band arrangement of guitar, samplers, and saxophone that sounds unappealing on paper but coalesces nicely live and on record. Montréal’s tUnE-yArDs is a one-woman project completed solely with a Sony digital recorder and a disparate array of instruments, manipulated with basic computer programs to develop the beds for Merrill Garbus’s strongly melodic yet fractured pop. Vancouver’s Makeout Videotape are Edmontonian ex-pats that use a low-budget drum and guitar attack to frame Mac Demarco’s impassioned vocals.
The dedication bands have to this recording methodology may be for different reasons (lack of funds, disdain for modern radio, personal listening habits) and presented in different ways, but they are nonetheless a part of the same community of Canadians searching the radio band for a sound that makes sense to them.
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