"Dream, Comfort, Memory, Despair": Canadian Popular Musicians and the Dilemma of Nationalism, 1968-1972

Abstract

English-Canadian popular music matured thematically and economically amid the euphoric nationalism of the Centennial era. Ironically, this maturation owed less to the benevolence of the newly-created CRTC and the adulation 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 Cockburn, 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.

Popular Music and Canadian National Identity

“…Globally there has been very little empirical research focusing primarily on national identity and pop music (Folkestad, 2002), and as such it is relatively safe to say that in the Canadian context there is next to nothing in terms of such research. Canadian music has borrowed heavily from other sources, while American musicians took their borrowed music and added their own experiences and beliefs, creating a newness to the point where many Americans believe that aspects of their culture are embedded in certain types of music, namely jazz and rock (Hebert & Campbell, 2000;Wright, 1994), a phenomenon that has not occurred in Canadian music (Cockburn, cited in Wright, 1994). American composers defined themselves and their music, somewhat indicative of the individualism valued by their nation; Canadian composers, however, waited for the moment when society-the collective valued by Canadians-would define their music.…”

“…In facing the realities of producing music for a market much larger than the Canadian one, Canadian composers and musicians have been and continue to be strongly biased toward the existing myths of American regions, places, and experiences and produce very little "Canadian" content in terms of values and places (Lehr, 1994). Most Canadian musicians have integrated into American mainstream pop music (Wright, 1994) and are relatively unknown on the national Canadian scene until they first emerge in the U.S. (Fredlund, 2000).…”

Introduction

“…In a situation where identities of English-Canadian musical culture were at worst tenuous, fragmented, unformed and unspoken, folded within a double articulation of silence and absence (Shepherd and Giles, 1989), or at best developed and spoken only in complex relation to those of United States musical culture (Wright, 1988), policies such as those of the Sound Development Recording Progam -replacing cultural capital with financial capital -could result only in the orientation of successful Canadian musicians towards the sounds of transnational market-places. Policies of cultural protectionism have hardly helped the development of 'Canadian' culture.…”