Canada History Week 2022

MUSIC

SOUNDS LIKE HISTORY is a podcast exploring the Virtual Gramophone collection from Library and Archives Canada. It is produced by Canada’s History Society in both official languages. Brought to North America by Europeans during early contact and colonization, fiddling is an instrumental folk tradition. Fiddling styles and songs have been influenced by different communities, such as the Métis, Irish, French, and English. The advent of recording and radio brought dramatic changes to regional music. Don Messer and His Islanders had wide exposure on the radio and television, causing his smoother style of fiddling to become the dominant style today. The banjo, used by fiddling bands, was popularized by the Bohee Brothers of Saint John, NB, who took the African-descended instrument to England.

(Canada’s History Society/Andrew Workman)

The earliest jazz musicians in Canada appeared in the mid to-late 1910s, though there is little surviving evidence of the first Canadian jazz bands and musicians. Although Vancouver’s Patricia Cafe boasted jazz acts as of 1917, Montreal’s Black population led the development of an enduring jazz scene, and by the mid-1940s Canada had its first jazz star: Oscar Peterson. Charlie Biddle was an important jazz promoter in Montreal. His organization of local festivals in the late 1970s and early 1980s helped lead to the Montreal International Jazz Festival, Canada’s largest music festival.

Music is a universal language. When words aren’t enough, music can bring people together, share powerful messages, and be part of healing. Face the music: Canadian musicians and human rights explores how musicians have broken down barriers with music.

CHICHO VALLE was a pioneer and popularizer of Latin American music in Canada. He began singing in Cuba at the age of nine. In 1946, he was invited to Toronto to sing by CBC radio. Afterwards, he remained in Canada, and formed a group called Chicho Valle y los Cubanos. The group grew from a trio to 10 musicians by 1956, and, at some points, included a 20-piece concert orchestra.

Playing Inuit Drum (Howard Sandler/Dreamstime.com).

Sainte-Catherine Street during the annual Montreal Jazz Festival (Paul Mckinnon/Dreamstime.com).

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