bellows & bows - Graham Blair Designs [PDF]

BELLOWS & BOWS: HISTORIC RECORDINGS OF TRADITIONAL FIDDLE & ACCORDION MUSIC FROM ACROSS CANADA

BACK ON TRACK SERIES Guest Producer: Sherry Johnson, York University Producers: Beverley Diamond, C. K. Szego Sound Engineer: Spencer Crewe Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media & Place (MMaP) School of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Contents Author Key Introduction

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History of Accordion in Canada| History of Fiddling in Canada | Commercial & Field Recordings | Radio & Television | Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media & Place School of Music Memorial University of Newfoundland St. John’s, NL Canada A1C 5S7 © 2012 by Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media & Place International Standard Book Number: 978-8-88901-438-1 No part of this book or CD set may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, not now or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming and recording, or in any information store or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Book printed by: Printing Services, Memorial University of Newfoundland CDs pressed by: MMS Atlantic, St. John’s, NL, Canada A1C 1M8 Graphic Design & Layout: Graham Blair

Relationship with Dance | Contests | Festivals | Transmission | Tune Composition | Accompaniment

Newfoundland and Labrador The Maritimes

27 38

Acadian | Downeast | Scottish

Nova Scotia 48 Prince Edward Island 56 New Brunswick 60 Quebec 65 Ontario 76 The Prairies 87 Manitoba 91 Saskatchewan 96 Alberta 101 British Columbia 109 The North 116 Yukon 121 Northwest Territories 125 Nunavut 127 Endnotes 133 Acknowledgements 150 Author Biographies 152 Selective Glossary 155

Author Key

Introduction

AH AI AL BD DM EO LO LW MFi MFo ML MO MV PM RO SJ TB TF YLG

Fiddle and accordion have long thrived in Canada—among early settlers who introduced them to the continent, in Inuit, Métis and First Nations societies that made them their own, and in recent immigrant communities. Fiddle and accordion music has served, at times, as a common “language” binding the nation’s diverse populations; more often, however, subtleties of style and approach have been used to mark distinct identities. Differences may be ethnocultural (as in the tempo differences of Scottish-derived and Acadian fiddle music in Maritime Canada) or class-related (as in the debates about the merits of competitions). Fiddle and accordion traditions in Canada have often been represented by the media, show promoters, and even by the musicians themselves either as a kind of nostalgic “barn dance” tradition (stereotyped as rural, uneducated and slightly rough), or else as a virtuosic “show” tradition (in recordings produced by award winners of the dozens of fiddle competitions that take place annually across the nation). The sixty-five tracks on this CD set demonstrate the artistry and social complexity of a number of accordion and fiddle communities and add nuance to the historical representations of these evolving traditions. A CD set of this nature could only be realized through the efforts of a team of scholars, archivists, and musicians. Experts in regional fiddle styles across Canada recommended historically significant tracks from archival and personal collections, as well as out-of-print commercial recordings. While we want the tracks to be representative of some aspect of fiddling in a particular region or culture, it is not our intention that the CD set be comprehensive. The listener may be surprised that such well-known musicians as Don Messer, Emile Benoit, Andy DeJarlis, and Philippe Bruneau, among many others, are not included on this CD set.Their exclusion is in no way meant to diminish their im-

Andy Hillhouse Amanda Ironside Anne Lederman Beverley Diamond Dan MacDonald Evelyn Osborne Lisa Ornstein Louise Wrazen Mark Finch Meghan Forsyth Maija Lutz Marcia Ostashewski Mila Volpe Paul McDonald Rod Olstad Sherry Johnson Trent Bruner Tiber Falzett  Yves Le Guével  

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portance; because their music is often better known and more accessible than that of many other Canadian fiddlers and accordion players, we have decided instead to present tracks that listeners might have more trouble finding. Where we have included a recording by iconic musicians, for example that of Graham and Eleanor Townsend, we have chosen a track that would otherwise be unavailable to the public; in

the case of Graham and Eleanor, we have included a performance of “Faded Love” from their guest appearance at the Canadian Open Fiddle Contest in 1982 (CD 1, Track 34). We also tried to include a diverse mix of age, ethnicity, geographic location, and gender. Fewer women musicians are represented on this CD set than men, reflecting the role of women in the public music-making of these musical traditions in the past. Women were more likely to be singing, playing back-up instruments, or playing in the home than taking part in a public activity such as recording. Also, many women musicians, such as Stella Burridge (CD 1, Track 9), stopped playing music for a period of time Lumbermen in Quebec, 1943: Guillaume Riendeau (Maniwaki, in order to raise Quebec) hits the strings of Romeo Clement’s (Farley, Quebec) fiddle families; fewer with a pair of sticks, adding rhythmic and harmonic accompaniment men cite this to the melody. Jean Claude Clement and Victor Moore (Maniwaki, Quebec) look on. (Courtesy of National Film Board of Canada, same reason for Library and Archives Canada, WRM 5415) breaks in their

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musical careers. It is nevertheless clear from the number of women musicians who are included on this CD set that they did make important contributions to the musical life of their communities. 1 Recordings included on this CD set are taken from a variety of time periods and contexts, using a range of technology. Sources ���������������������� for tracks include a home recording on one of the first commercially available tape machines (CD 1, Track 32), acetate (CD 1, Track 30), 78rpm recordings (ex., CD 1, Track 24), radio broadcasts (ex., CD 1, Tracks 10 and 34), and television broadcasts (ex., CD 1, Track 31 and CD 2, Track 6) among others. As a consequence, the quality of the recordings varies considerably. Tracks with a poorer recording quality are included, however, because of their historic significance. Along with the ����������������� fiddle and accordion selections, we have included some examples of instruments that have played an important role in the dance music of some regions or have strongly influenced fiddling and accordion traditions. Piping, for example, has had a significant influence on Cape Breton fiddling, and therefore we include the master piper, Alex Currie, of Cape Breton (CD 1, Track 13). Other examples include tracks of harmonica (CD 1, Track 3) and mouth music

(CD 1, Track 2) from Newfoundland and tautirut (CD 1, Track 29) from Nunavik. Grouping the musicians according to province provides a somewhat arbitrary arrangement of fiddle and accordion music in Canada, as stylistic regions do not always conform to provincial boundaries. For example, Acadian regions exist in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland. Also, fiddlers move around. Freddy Lang (CD 2, Track 15), for instance, was born in Carman, Manitoba and passed away in Merritt, British Columbia, but lived almost twenty years—perhaps his most productive musical years—in Alberta. Finally, although regional and stylistic categories themselves are more or less fixed—through the literature and popular stereotype—the fiddlers and tunes are more flexible, moving between categories, or inhabiting several at once. Even before the advent of modern mass media and improved transportation, tunes were exchanged by those crossing the country and often adapted to local, regional playing styles. Opportunities for fiddlers to move between styles or play several at once have only increased. Al Cherny (CD 1, Track 32) and Victor Pasowisty (CD 2, Track 2), for example, were among many fiddlers equally at home playing Ukrainian Canadian, Canadian

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old-time, contest, and country and western styles. The length of explanatory notes for each region and musician varies. This disparity is not meant to diminish the importance of any musician or particular locale. It is simply the result of available research. Twentyseven years ago, in editing a volume of the Canadian Folk Music Bulletin on fiddling across Canada (1985), Anne Lederman pointed out the lack of research on fiddling in several areas and challenged Canadian folk music scholars to fill the gaps. While there has been considerable research conducted since that time, there are still regions, rich in fiddle and accordion traditions, that are not well documented through either recordings or publications. Rather than fill those gaps, this project merely emphasizes them. It is our hope that in the next twentyfive years, traditional music scholars will continue to bring the stories and music of fiddlers and accordion players from diverse regions to the public, and particularly from those regions that are still not well researched. A note about names: We refer to most musicians by their first names because we, who are writing the notes, know them and/or their families. We have sat in their kitchens drinking tea. We have danced to or accompanied their music; perhaps we’ve played

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with them. It simply feels too impersonal to refer to them by the academically standard last name. And so we invite you, the listener, to get to know these musicians too, to learn a little bit about their lives, the influences on their music, the impact they’ve had on others, and to share their music. We bet you won’t be able to keep your toe from tapping. [SJ] History of Accordion in Canada Invented in Germany in 1829 (although the first patent that mentions the word “accordion” was deposited by Cyrill Demian in 1829 in Vienna, Austria), the accordion rapidly became popular throughout Europe and the Americas. German watchmaker Matthias Hohner established a company in 1857 that developed accordion production as an international industry, probably because there was obvious market potential. By 1910 Hohner was the largest accordion manufacturer in the world. Another important producer was the Paolo Soprani factory in Castelfidardo, Italy, named for the founder who built his first accordion in 1863. The first traces of the accordion in Quebec can be found in the account books at the convent of the Ursulines, who ran a boarding school in Quebec

City. The purchase of an acordia for three pounds is noted in November 1843,2 only twelve years after the invention of the Demian accordion (also known as the romantic accordion). Account books for the following years show that between 1846 and 1858, the Ursulines purchased five more accordions as well as two concertinas (a free-reed instrument, like a button accordion, but with hexagonal ends). Another accordion is documented at the Trois-Rivières convent of the Ursulines. The nuns used it to teach music, as music was an important part of their curriculum and a source of income for the religious community. In 1847, they also taught organ, harp, piano and guitar. Parents paid for use of the instrument as well as lessons.3 At least one of the six accordions was acquired in Montreal, according to a small label inside the bellows which indicates it came from Seebold Brothers Music Warehouse, 221, Notre-Dame Street, Montreal.4 Quebec City was the original centre of distribution for the accordion in Lower Canada. Establishments selling accordions, like that of Joseph Lyonnais, Quebec City’s first instrument maker, placed newspaper advertisements. Informing his clients that he had moved from the SaintRoch neighbourhood to 34 rue des Prairies, he also mentioned that he

made violins and repaired accordions.5 The Lyonnais business was a family affair, and after working with his father Joseph, Roch Lyonnais opened a shop in Saint-Roch in 1860. Like many instrument makers of his time, Roch Lyonnais was an innovator. In 1855, he invented and made a begarina, an instrument with free-reeds, a scale of two octaves and chords in G major and C major. The first accordion made in Quebec came from the Saint-Sauveur neighbourhood of Quebec City and the hands of Odilon Gagné, who was born in 1852. From a working class family, Gagné was a cabinet maker and a skilled musician. He opened a cabinet shop during the 1870s and began making furniture and pianos, which he sold along with harmoniums. He began making accordions in 1895, making his own tools, the molds for reeds, as well as his own chrome buttons for the keyboards; he also learned to use cardboard, canvas and leather, the main components of the accordion bellows. By 1916, the year of his death, he had made at least 150 accordions. Odilon Gagné’s two sons, Philias and Wilfrid, also musicians, continued the family business, renaming it la Maison Gagné et Frères. To this day, there are no accordion factories in Quebec, and this tradition of small home production continues. The leading accordion

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makers in Quebec today are Marcel Messervier from Montmagny, Sylvain Vézina and Raynald Ouellet from Montmagny and Clément Breton from Saint-Étienne-de-Lauzon. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, accordion sales in the U.S. and Canada were tied closely to the popularity of catalogue shopping. In remote parts of Canada, for instance, Eaton’s catalogues, first

published in 1884, were a source for household goods of all kinds, including musical instruments. In their second catalogue Eaton’s was already advertising eighteen different models of “Accordeons,” “Ideal Accordeons,” and “Kalbe Imperial Accordeons,” as well as many concertinas. Prices varied from sixty cents for a six-key instrument with single reeds to $7.50 for a nickel-keyed instrument with “two sets of English steel reeds.” The earliest models were button accordions with or without “stops” that coupled the reeds to produce rich octave doublings. Different reeds are activated and hence different pitches produced when the bellows of the button accordion are pulled apart or pushed closed. In 1901, Winner’s Canadian Method for German Accordions and Winner’s Canadian Method for German Concertinas became available through the catalogue, selling at thirty cents each until 1912. Women playing instruments. (Courtesy of Saskatchewan Eaton’s continued Archives Board, R-A14337)

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to sell accordions via catalogues throughout its history with a few gaps. From 1907 to 1915, only Hohners were sold, but from 1916, Hohner accordions were boycotted because of the war and not reinstated until 1924. From 1916 until 1918, Eaton’s sold only Swiss-made accordions, and from the spring of 1918 to the winter of 1921, there are no accordions at all. During World War Two, Hohner accordions were again boycotted. No accordions were advertised between 1941 and 1947, and Hohners were reintroduced in 1949. Piano accordions were first advertised in the catalogues in the 1930s, and from then through the 1950s, they were always depicted in the hands of a female performer, suggesting that it was an instrument appropriate for women. Prices rose dramatically in the early twentieth century, with button accordions ranging from $5.50 to $25 in the 1926 Eaton’s catalogue. Piano accordions were established as higher class instruments, costing much more than their button counterparts. In 1926, a piano accordion ranged from $16.95 to $105, while in 1948– 1949, it cost between $58 and $297. Although more expensive than their button counterparts, piano accordions were still considerably less expensive than pianos; therefore, they were able to serve as alternatives to pianos for

middle class families who wanted to play classical and popular music of the day, but could not afford a piano. Compared to the fiddle, the more stable tuning and rugged casing of accordions made them particularly popular in regions with extreme temperatures and more rugged means of transportation, such as Newfoundland and the far North, where they largely replaced the fiddle as the dance accompaniment of choice. In Quebec the accordion came to be preferred over the fiddle for dances because it was louder and could cut through a room full of dancers, an important quality before amplification was available. Quebec accordionists such as recording artist Alfred Montmarquette or the group Les Montagnards Laurentiens were local stars in the early decades of the twentieth century. The instrument’s popularity was also influenced by high profile vaudeville artists such as the McNulty Family of New York who toured in Canada in the 1950s, Gordie Fleming of Winnipeg, or other performers such as the Ontario player Walter Ostanek who has been named “Canada’s Polka King.” Accordions have also been popular in a wide variety of contemporary traditional bands, ranging from tradition-based groups such as La Bouttine Souriante (Montreal), Blou (Nova Scotia Acadian), or the Barra MacNeils (Cape

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Breton) to popular music groups such as the Barenaked Ladies (Toronto), or Mad Pudding (Vancouver). Ethnocultural groups mark their cultural identity in a number of ways—by their preference for a certain type of accordion, by the genres they perform, by playing techniques, style, and tone quality. The single row diatonic button accordion (often with one to four stops), now often called the Cajun accordion, has been popular in Quebec, Acadian regions, and Newfoundland. Instruments with a double row of right-hand buttons and left-hand buttons ranging from four to twelve or more were built in many European countries but are more often associated with Irish and Scots traditions in Canada; these types of instruments are widely used in Quebec, Newfoundland and elsewhere in the country. Concertinas first arrived with the English and Irish in the midnineteenth century and quickly spread throughout the country because of their small size and light weight. Immigrant groups who arrived after World War Two, particularly from Eastern European countries, played both button and piano accordions for their distinctive dance repertoires; for example, accordions are often part of klezmer ensembles (secular Jewish music originating in Eastern Europe). Piano accordions, with six rows

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of left-hand chord buttons that facilitate fuller harmonic accompaniment, are preferred for some genres such as polkas, as well as classical and popular music. A preference for chromatic music also affected the choice of instrument since it can be played either on a button accordion in which the rows of buttons are in keys a semitone apart, a chromatic button accordion with three rows of buttons, or a piano accordion with both white and black keys. The free bass accordion (individual buttons for individual chromatic notes, not chords) is used in classical music production, but not folk tradition. A number of Canadian classical accordionists have been leaders in promoting new compositions nationally and internationally. The combination of accordion and fiddle in ensembles is quite common among Irish and French traditionalists in Canada, unlike in Ireland where the accordion would normally not be played with the fiddle since the latter could not compete in volume. The use of bass buttons is another distinctive stylistic trait of accordion playing in Canada. Irish styles are melody-centric and bass notes are used sporadically, more for accent than harmony. Polkas or song repertoires, on the other hand, are usually played with bass note followed by chord in a pattern some-

times described as “oom-pah-pah.” Individual or group preference may also be reflected in the “dryness” or “wetness” of the sound. A dry sound is produced when reeds are in tune; it is a very clean, straight sound. A wet accordion has the reeds tuned with a slight divergence so that there is a “beating” quality to the tone; this sound is preferred in Quebec and by Cajun zydeco musicians. By the late twentieth century, a profusion of accordion clubs and festivals reflected the popularity of the instrument and encouraged members to learn and perform a wide variety of musical repertoires. One of the largest events is the Carrefour mondial de l’accordéon de Montmagny (near Quebec City), in a community that

also has an accordion maker, accordion museum,6 and school for traditional Québécois music. The Guinness Book of Records documents the largest number of accordions assembled and playing together at one time in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in 2005, where 989 accordion players convened. Yet, despite its popularity across the country, there has been less research on the accordion than on fiddle traditions of Canada.7 [BD,YLG8] History of Fiddling in Canada The early history of fiddling in Canada closely mirrors European immigration and settlement patterns, starting with French and Scottish immigration

Camp-made violin and its maker, Sept. 1934, Vancouver Island, B.C. (Courtesy of Canada. Dept. of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada, RP-57.92)

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in the sixteenth century. According to fiddle scholar, Anne Lederman, the earliest known written record of violins in Canada, found in the letters of Jesuit missionaries, is the description of a wedding on November 27, 1645 in Quebec at which two violins were played “for the 1st time.”9 There is little existing written documentation of fiddling over the next hundred years, although there are numerous references to veillées (evening social gatherings) and balls; given that the fiddle

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had commonly accompanied dancing in Europe since the early fifteenth century, we can assume that it was also played to accompany dances in the new world. Early descriptions of dancing in Quebec include square, circle, couple, and line formations.10 Two manuscripts, Livre de contredanses (ca. 1767)11 and Manuscrit de contredanses (ca. 1850),12 housed in the Musée de la civilization, are the main sources of information about early Québécois dance music; they include tunes from

“Christmas Ball in Bachelors’ Hall,” York Factory, 1840s by Bayard. Taken from Hudson Bay; or Everyday Life in the Wilds of North America during six years’ residence in the territories of the Hon. Hudson’s Bay Company, by Robert Michael Ballantyne (London: T. Nelson and Sons, Peternoster Row, Edinburgh and New York) 1875. (Courtesy of Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Archives of Manitoba, HBCA N76561)

France, as well as some probably composed in Canada.13 At the same time, Scottish employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company brought fiddles from Scotland to Canada. They were quickly adopted throughout Hudson’s Bay lands via the fur trade. The repertoire of the fur traders through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was based on Scottish reels, jigs, and hornpipes, and influenced by French, Native and American contact. The merging of Native with Scottish or French elements eventually became one of the most recognizable styles of Métis fiddling.14 Métis and French Canadian styles of fiddling were predominant in Canada until the next wave of European immigration, primarily from Ireland, Scotland, and England, in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.15 Various regional styles of fiddling began to emerge based on the settlement patterns of these newest immigrants: Native and Métis styles in the Canadian west and north; French Canadian in Quebec, as well as francophone areas of Ontario and Atlantic Canada; Scottish in Cape Breton and some pockets of eastern Ontario; Irish in Newfoundland, Quebec, the Ottawa Valley and the Maritimes; and English, with Scottish and Irish influences, in southwestern

Ontario, and parts of Atlantic Canada. The 1890s brought new immigration to Canada from Eastern Europe. The Ukrainian influence on fiddling and social dancing was extensive throughout the Prairies, while Romanian, Hungarian, Polish, and Icelandic settlements, and therefore, their influence, were less widespread. Since in many rural communities members of different ethnic groups join together to attend the same dances, weddings, and celebrations, the repertoires of dance music mixed easily. Less integration of repertoire occurred in urban settings where higher concentrations of each ethnic group made it easier for immigrants to socialize only within their own ethnic communities.16 With a few exceptions, there was, and continues to be, considerable interaction among musicians of the various regional and ethnic styles found across Canada. While each region has a recognizable style and repertoire of tunes and steps, there are many local sub-styles, and many instances of musical sharing. Traditional dance music flourished in many communities across Canada during the first half of the twentieth century, but began to decline by midcentury. Rural electrification, mass communications, improved roads, automobile usage, mechanized agriculture, and school consolidation brought

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many changes to rural Canada, including a move away from communitybased entertainment, such as that provided by local fiddlers.17  With less demand for community fiddlers, and the rising popularity of new genres of music and dance (including rock and roll), interest in fiddling waned. Canadian fiddlers responded to the decline by forming provincial and regional associations and societies to preserve and promote their music: British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers Association (est.1970), Cape Breton Fiddlers’ Association (est.1973), l’Association des Violoneux du Québec (est.1975),18 Prince Edward Island Fiddlers Society (est.1976), Wild Rose Old Tyme Fiddlers Association (est.1989), Maritime Fiddlers Association (est.1981), Prairie Mountain Fiddlers (est.1986), Alberta Society of Fiddlers (est.1991), Manitoba Fiddlers Association (est.1999), Saskatchewan Fiddlers Association (est.2001), Newfoundland and Labrador Fiddlers Association (est.2008). The associations coordinate activities amongst local clubs and maintain contact amongst fiddlers through mailing lists, websites, and newsletters. They host camps and workshops for fiddlers and judges; organize performances in the community (for both publicity and fundraising purposes); sponsor contests;

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and sometimes choose provincial representatives for the Canadian Grand Masters annual competition. Some associations help their local clubs and contests financially by donating money from membership fees and fundraising efforts, or by distributing provincial arts grants. A resurgence in the popularity of traditional fiddle and accordion-based dance musics has occurred in many communities in the latter twentieth century. In some regions, it was precipitated by particular events, such as the drive for sovereignty in Quebec, or the CBC film, The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler,19 in Cape Breton. In other regions, individual musicians played an important role in its increased popularity, for example, the recordings of Emile Benoit and Rufus Guinchard in Newfoundland and the efforts of Andrea Hansen in Northwest Territories. In some cases, older styles are dying away and being replaced by new styles, based on those older styles, that are attractive to younger musicians; in others, there is a strong emphasis on tradition, and playing like the elders. The presence of old and new provides today’s musicians with a rich, dynamic tradition within which they can develop and to which they can contribute.

Commercial and Field Recordings The advent of the recording and broadcast industries in the early twentieth century dramatically increased cross-fertilization of fiddle styles. The first fiddlers in Canada to record were in Quebec and Cape Breton. As early as 1917/18, the Berliner Gramophone Company recorded tunes by J.B. Roy in Montreal for the Victor label. Columbia and Starr labels soon got in on the action. Many fiddlers from Quebec recorded in the 1920s.20 Some of these recordings are now available online at The Virtual Gramophone website of the National Library and Archives of Canada.21 In Cape Breton, recording began in the late 1920s under

Columbia’s “Irish” series and the Brunswick label. In 1935, Bernie MacIsaac founded the Celtic Music Company in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. These early 78 rpm recordings from Quebec and Cape Breton were influential in setting up some tunes as standards and creating a hierarchy among recorded musicians and others.22 Don Messer, of New Brunswick, recorded his first tunes for Apex in 1942, and a plethora of recording of Downeast and old-time fiddling followed. Banff, Rodeo, and London labels were all important,23 and examples from each of these labels are included on this CD set. In Western Canada, recording developed somewhat later; Andy DeJarlis didn’t record for Quality Records until 1956.

Men in boat playing instruments, Alberta. (Courtesy of the Glenbow Archives, NA-471-1)

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Sunshine Records, established in Winnipeg in 1974, recorded many fiddlers of the “Red River style,”24 including the tracks by Reg Bouvette (CD 2, Track 3)and Marcel Meilleur (CD 2, Track 4) on this CD set. Field recordings of instrumental traditions have received much less attention in Canada than field recordings of folk song traditions. Usually held in provincial, national, university or museum archives, field recordings are little known by the public and used only by occasional scholars. In the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA), there are collections by Herbert Halpert and John Widdowson made on the west coast of Newfoundland in the 1960s, by Wilf Wareham on the Avalon and Burin Peninsulas in the 1970s, and by Margaret Bennett in the Codroy Valley from 1969. The University of Moncton's Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson houses the Georges Arsenault collection of P.E.I. from 1969 to 1987, the Anselme Chiasson collection of Nova Scotia (mainly Cheticamp) and Quebec (Magdalen Islands) from 1957 to 1979, and the Ronald Labelle and Charlotte Cormier collections of New Brunswick from 1980 and 1977 respectively. The Luc Lacourcière collection of Quebec from 1939 to

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1983 is held at the Université Laval Archives de folklore et d’ethnologie. In the Canadian Museum of Civilization, there are collections by George Proctor of Ontario fiddling in 1961; by Maija Lutz of Inuit accordion playing in Pangnirtung, Nunavut in 1974 and Nain, Labrador in 1979; by Roy Gibbons of fiddling in Western Canada in 1978/79 and Prince George, British Columbia in 1981; by Lynn Whidden of Cree fiddlers from James Bay in 1982; by Carmelle Bégin of Ottawa Valley fiddling and step dancing in 1977 and 1985 and Québécois fiddling and accordion playing from 1984 to 2000; and by Anne Lederman of Métis fiddling and jigging in Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1985. The Northern Alberta Fiddle Project (NAFP), an archival collection created by Rod Olstad between 1994 and 1998, is housed at the Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology, University of Alberta. Several tracks on this CD set have been taken from these collections. As recording technologies have become less expensive and more widely available, many Canadian fiddlers are now making their own independent commercial recordings, which they sell at shows, contests and through their websites.

Radio and Television Old-time dance music figured prominently in early radio and television broadcasts across the country. Local stations such as CKNX in Wingham, Ontario, CHRC in Quebec City, Quebec, and CJCB in Sydney, Nova Scotia provided regular employment for local fiddlers and country musicians beginning in the late 1920s. The first fiddle-based group to broadcast nationally was George Wade and the Cornhuskers. They began playing on CRBC (Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, established in 1932, which was replaced in 1936 by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)25

in 1933 and through the late 1930s.26 The first television show to broadcast fiddlers and fiddle-related musics across the country may have been CBC’s Holiday Ranch (1953–1959). This variety show, structured around a loose plot and aimed at fans of country music, gave national exposure to a number of fiddlers, among them King Ganam and Ward Allen. It became a model for several musical variety shows developed by CBC, including Country Hoedown (1956–1965), starring King Ganam and his Sons of the West; Don Messer’s Jubilee (1959–1969); Singalong Jubilee (1962–1970);27 and the Tommy Hunter Show (1965–1992),

CKNX Ranch Boys. (Courtesy of Lynn Russwurm)

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with house fiddler Al Cherny and many guest fiddlers over the years. Other television shows combining country music and old-time dance music were broadcast across the country; two notable examples are CTV’s Cross-Canada Barndance (1961–1962), which was recorded in different cities across the country and Soirée canadienne, which broadcast throughout Quebec from 1960 to 1983. It was Don Messer (1909–1973), however, who was most influential. His expos-

ure on CBC Radio and Television was largely responsible for the creation of the Canadian “old-time” fiddle style. Messer began playing the violin at the age of five, learning fiddle tunes from his relatives and neighbours.28 At seven years of age, he was already playing for local dances and social events. His only formal training on the violin was in Boston where he studied with Henry Davis and Edith Hurter. Returning to New Brunswick, Messer began his radio career in 1929 at CFBO in Saint John, New Brunswick. By 1934 he had formed a studio band, called the New Brunswick Lumberjacks, which played regularly on CRBC in Saint John. His studio band had as many as nineteen performers at a time; a smaller group, the Backwoods Breakdown, toured throughout the Maritimes and northeastern United States. Messer joined CFCY Radio in Charlottetown, P.E.I. as its musical director in 1939, where he created the band that Hillbilly Jewels, c. 1953. From top to bottom: Joe Brown, would become a houseRandy Stewart, Freddy Lang, Vivian Brown. (Courtesy of Fred hold name in Canada: Lang)

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the Islanders. He started recording for Apex in 1942, churning out over thirty-five 78 rpm records over the next ten years; he produced another thirty LPs on the Apex, MCA, and Rodeo labels. By 1944, Don Messer and his Islanders were heard nationally three times a week on CBC Radio. Messer created a professional sound appropriate for national radio, with clean beginnings and endings and tight arrangements of the band. Reflecting the popularity of swing and Dixieland bands of the time, he used clarinet, and sometimes trumpet and trombone in his band, and tunes were often played a number of times so that individual instruments could take solo breaks.29 Once his radio show was established and had gained a national fan base, Messer started touring outside of the Maritimes. He made his first tour of Ontario in 1949, and completed seventeen more tours within Canada by 1969, including a three-month centennial tour in 1967 that included sixty-one stops across the country. In 1956, Don Messer and his Islanders began making regular appearances on CHBY-TV in Halifax. Three years later CBC Television broadcast nationally a special summer series called The Don Messer Show. It continued through the fall with weekly half-hour shows called Don Messer’s Jubilee. During its ten-year

run, the show frequently led the ratings, even outranking Hockey Night in Canada for three seasons.30 When it was cancelled by the CBC in 1969, it was still at the height of its popularity and there was a huge public outcry, prompting a letter campaign and two rallies on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Feelings about the cancellation still run high in the fiddle community today. Fiddle contest MC, Art Jamison, of Beachburg, Ontario, said: I know farmers that would stop milking a cow, hand milking a cow, to go and listen to Don Messer.The country stopped when they played, and I’m like, “Geeze, that is listenership.” You’re doing something right with broadcasting when you’ve got an audience that’s dedicated to that degree. Where was the sense of the CBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation? What in hell was more Canadian than that?31

After its cancellation, a syndicated version of Don Messer’s Jubilee was broadcast from CHCH-TV in Hamilton until Messer’s death in 1973. Messer’s influence on AngloCanadian fiddling is unparalleled. Because of his media exposure from coast to coast, from the 1940s through the 1960s, first on radio and then on television, Messer has been credited

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with creating the Canadian old-time fiddle canon, through both his repertoire and accessible playing style.32 By soliciting tunes from all parts of the country and playing them on national media, Messer was able to communicate with fiddlers from diverse regions of the country. They could identify with his music.33 Ontario fiddler John Crozman calls Messer’s style “the common language for all Canadian fiddlers, regardless of their dialect”;34 fiddle scholar Anne Lederman writes that Messer has been credited with “a synthesis of the many and varied fiddle

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traditions in Canada.”35 He removed distinctive regional stylistic traits such as ornaments (melodic decorations),36 simplified the melody, and grouped notes into shorter phrases to make the tunes easier for fiddlers from all regions of Canada to identify with and of all skill levels to learn by ear. Fiddler Graham Townsend called it “music that people can understand.”37 And since Messer’s music was primarily to be used for dancing, “the simpler the better…. That was why Messer’s music was so popular.”38 Although local regional styles continued to thrive,

Ukrainian wedding, Chipman District, Alberta, 1916. (Courtesy of Marcia Ostashewski)

Don Messer’s “old-time” style (also called “Downeast” and “Messer-style”) and band arrangements were adopted by many fiddlers right across Canada, and can be heard on the plethora of old-time fiddle recordings on the Banff, Rodeo, and London labels popular in the 1950s and 60s.39 The style is not unusual on recordings even in the twenty-first century, and it is the basis of the style performed at fiddle contests across Canada. While Don Messer is the best known example, many Canadian fiddlers used radio and television to advance their careers. Guest performances on shows such as Don Messer’s Jubilee, and later, CBC’s Tommy Hunter Show, did not guarantee fame and fortune, but they certainly garnered respect within local communities across the country. As described in the musicians’ biographies that follow, many fiddlers also hosted their own shows on local radio and television, for example, Mel Lavigne’s Country Junction, out of Barrie, Ontario, and The Western Senators’ PolkaRama on Access Television in Saskatchewan. Even the briefest media appearances are typically included in a musician’s biography, so important are they to the performer’s sense of accomplishment.

Relationship with Dance Fiddling in Canada has developed in relation to dancing, both social set dancing and step dancing. With a few exceptions, almost all the tunes on this CD set are dance tunes. Even in performance contexts in which the audience is primarily a listening one (as in contests or media broadcasts), the tunes come from dance repertoire and are used in other contexts as an accompaniment to dancing. Many of the biographies of the musicians on this CD set mention when they started

Freddy Flett doing the Red River Jig with Manitoban fiddler Lawrence Houle in the background. (Courtesy of Bill Henry)

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playing for dances; clearly this was an important moment in their musical development. Musicians from all parts of Canada identify the ability to energize a room full of dancers as the ultimate mark of a great fiddler. Unlike Canadian old-time fiddling, which to a degree shares a common style because of national radio and television coverage, there is no pan-Canadian style of step dancing; different styles have developed across the country. While some dancers may choose to learn a style different from their own, the styles remain relatively contained within geographic or cultural boundaries. Similarly, while some couples and group dances, such as the waltz, polka, and square dance, are performed across the country, regional variations exist in the way partners hold each other, footwork, and preferred tempos and tunes. The introductory notes to provinces and regions present brief descriptions of some of the dancing as it relates to the tunes on the CD set. Contests A lack of danceability in the music is probably the most serious charge levelled at the many fiddle contests held across the country. While fiddle contests are often thought of as a modern phenomenon, they have

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a long history, stretching back several centuries into the countries of origin of Canadian immigrants. Contests quickly arose in Canada as well, although their documentation is sparse. Fiddle contests remain popular in some parts of the country but not others. For example, they were once held all over P.E.I., with great prestige given to the winners,40 but the animosity created by contests led to them being discouraged in the late 1920s.41  Non-competitive festivals are now favoured in most parts of P.E.I., Newfoundland, and Cape Breton. There is no doubt that contests do transform fiddle music to some extent, just as synthetic strings, amplification and the recording industry have already changed it, and increasing globalization and technological developments will continue to bring change. When music is moved from a dance context and put into a listening context, there is increased accuracy or “cleanness”; greater concern with variation in the tune to maintain listeners’ interest; increased complexity in order to display technical skill; and greater attention to musicality, such as the shaping of phrases and use of dynamics. Yet a prevailing concern for danceability is evident in the rules and score sheets used at many of the contests. Furthermore, the tunes

played on stage are only one part of the contest weekend. Fiddlers are also jamming in practice rooms and the adjoining campground where many of the competitors and their families and friends spend the weekend. At some contests, particularly in Western Canada, the same fiddlers who compete on stage take turns playing for dances after the contest. The best fiddlers still know how to play by ear and play for dancers, skills that have been important for many generations of fiddlers.42 Fiddle contests provide a place where fiddlers gather to share tunes

and techniques. The Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Championship (est.1990), to which five fiddlers from each province and territory are invited to compete annually, has been particularly influential in spreading Canadian old-time or contest repertoire from coast to coast to coast. The fiddlers who attend the contest are often influential fiddlers in their own localities, as performers and teachers, and so the spread of repertoire goes far beyond even those musicians fortunate enough to attend the contest. Contests have played a significant role in initiating or advancing

Mel Lavigne at a fiddle competition in Shelburne, Ontario. (Courtesy of Lynn Russwurm)

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the performing careers of a number of Canada’s best known fiddlers. Although many of the musicians on this CD set have won numerous awards at fiddle contests, as well as the Order of Canada and induction into numerous Halls of Fame, we have chosen not to highlight these awards; rather we focus on the importance of the musicians to their communities, as well as the significance of the venues, the tunes, and the styles in which they are played. Festivals Festivals are popular even in regions where contests are also held, and some contests are now only small parts of larger festival events which also include workshops, performances, and dances, for example, the Carman Fiddle Festival in Manitoba and the Maritime Fiddle Festival in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Festivals provide exposure for musicians and opportunities to play in front of an audience without the pressure and bad feelings that may accompany contests within small communities. Some festivals are annual events, such as the Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival, held annually in P.E.I. since 1976, while others are one-time events, such as the CBC 60th Anniversary Inuit Accordion Festival held in Iqaluit, Nunavut in

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1996. A number of the tracks on this CD set were taken from festival contexts, either recorded professionally and released as follow-up to the festival, for example, Stephen Toole (CD 1, Track 15); broadcast over the radio, for example, Simeonie Keenainak (CD 2, Track 29); or recorded for personal use, for example, Ken and Kevin Chaisson (CD 1,Track 16). Transmission Many of these musicians come from musical families or communities in which tunes and instruments are passed down over generations.43 Many of them, both men and women, learned to play by imitating their fathers or brothers on borrowed instruments. Fewer musicians, for example, fiddler Reg Hill of the Ottawa Valley, credit an older female family member for teaching them to play or for acting as a role model. Several musicians tell stories about sneaking a family member’s fiddle and learning to play “in secret.” There are so many stories to this effect that one almost wonders if prohibition was a deliberate strategy to encourage children to play. In some instances, “practice” violins were used. Such was the case with Newfoundland fiddler, Emile Benoit, who learned the fundamen-

tals of bowing and posture by playing on two sticks. Sometimes basic instruction was given informally by family or friends. Singing and “turlutting” are widespread methods for learning tunes. Charlie Peter Charlie of Old Crow, Yukon Territory sang tunes constantly as he worked on the land. This was a traditional way for young Gwich’in men to learn the established repertoire of fiddle melodies.44 Likewise, Gerald Quinton of Newfoundland used rhymes to remember tunes. One such example is recorded at the end of CD 1, Track 3. In Cape Breton, a Scottish Gaelic song genre called puirt-a-beul (“tunes from the mouth”), composed of repetitive, silly, and often humorous texts set to tunes that were usually played on an instrument, was once used both to transmit tunes and to provide dance tunes in the absence of instruments.45 Locally accessible media—recordings, radio and television— were a common source of repertoire. Leroy Brown, originally from the Rimbey area in Alberta, told his daughter, Barb Jackson, about learning “Bonanza Waltz” from a jukebox in the 1940s. She asked, “I wonder how many nickels you had to put in before you learned it?” He replied, “Not too many. At that time I used to be able to learn quicker. Probably fifteen or

twenty cents.”46 Edmonton fiddler Alfie Myhre learned tunes from Don Messer’s radio programs: Other (tunes) were learned from just off of the radio, which is a difficult way to learn but you’d get the melody in your mind and then you’d try to play the first part. You’d have to wait usually two or three weeks before they’d play the same song again on the radio, and learn the second part. It was certainly a way of getting a little bit of individuality into your playing, because you never did get the exact notes but you had the melody pretty much the same, the chords and that type of thing. It served as a real good instruction at that time anyway.47

Today, many young fiddlers take music lessons at school, in community groups, fiddle camps or private lessons. Some young fiddlers begin with, or at some point take, lessons in classical violin, including the Suzuki program and Royal Conservatory of Music exams, and most children are now learning how to read music. Downeast fiddlers Bill Guest and Ivan Hicks are among those who suggest that learning tunes exclusively by reading may result in less variation of the tunes,48 and so it is still con-

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sidered important for fiddlers to be able to learn by ear; many young fiddlers do prefer to learn tunes by ear through jamming with others and from their own self-made field recordings and commercial discs. For those who prefer notation, there are a plethora of tune books. Tune collections began to be published in Canada in 1933, starting with the Cornhuskers Series released by Thomas Burt & Company. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, tune collections of such iconic fiddlers as Ward Allen and Andy DeJarlis were published by BMI Canada,49 and today many fiddlers publish their own collections of original compositions. Note reading has taken on a particular importance in the Cape Breton fiddle tradition, resulting in tune collections gaining unusual authority within the tradition; melodies found in printed collections are considered to be “authentic,” and although they may be subsequently ornamented, are seldom altered or varied. Authors of the tune book, Traditional Celtic Violin Music of Cape Breton, Kate Dunlay and David Greenberg, call it a “tighter” tradition, and allow that there is some room for personal expression and variation within bounds.50 Others point out that in this literate tradition many

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tunes are known by their composer, whereas without print, composers are soon forgotten and the tunes become “traditional.”51 In the liner notes to many Cape Breton recordings (once liner notes came into fashion), the fiddlers are careful to credit the sources, including composers, of their renditions and tunes; knowledge of the lineage of tunes in Cape Breton is an important part of its tradition. Tune Composition Many traditional musicians across the country actively compose new repertoire, and many original tunes are included on this CD set. With few exceptions, these tunes conform to one of the many accepted styles across the country, and have entered either regional or national repertoires. Many of the composers use local place names in naming their tunes (“Cape Blomidon Reel,” “Loggieville Two-step,” “Grand Valley Breakdown,” and “Barkerville Connection” among others). Some have named the tunes after themselves or the tune has come to be known by the composer’s name (“Schultz’s Polka,” “Olle’s Waltz,” “La John Muise”). Others pay tribute to people important to the composer, often family

members (Fred Lang’s “Curly Hair,” Johnny Mooring’s “Marion Waltz”). Young musicians across the country continue to write new tunes; some remain clearly within the boundaries of locally accepted styles and others push those boundaries to their outermost limits. Ethnomusicologist Colin Quigley’s examination of the compositional process of Newfoundland fiddler Emile Benoit52 is one of the few bodies of work that has focused on original tune composition in Canadian traditional dance music.

Accompaniment Not only does this CD set include a wide variety of tunes and styles, but it also showcases a wide range of accompanying instruments, styles, and musicians. Some tracks are played without any accompaniment. In many cases we don’t know whether this practice is typical of a particular region and time, idiosyncratic to the specific performer, or whether there just happened to be no accompanist available for an impromptu recording session. In some tracks without instrumental accompani-

Tony Stolz on accordion, Freddy Lang on fiddle, Curly Konchin on guitar. Photo taken at Stampede time, in front of the Royal Hotel in Calgary, 1950. (Courtesy of Fred Lang)

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ment we can hear the solo musicians accompanying themselves rhythmically with their feet. From a simple tapping on the beat to the more complicated “clogging” common to French Canadian and Métis styles, this rhythmic accompaniment provides an effect similar to percussive dancing. Different instruments tend to be preferred to accompany different styles of fiddling. For example, piano is often the instrument of choice in Cape Breton, Downeast and old-time styles, whereas guitar seems to be more prevalent for Newfoundland, Acadian, Métis and

Aboriginal styles. Exceptions to these trends often depend on what instruments are played by the fiddler or accordion player’s family members and close friends. Many of the principal musicians on this CD set are accompanied by sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, and cousins, highlighting the fact that traditional fiddle and accordion music in Canada is often a family affair. While we have tried to include the names of all the accompanists where possible, on some recordings, both commercial and personal, the accompanists are not identified. [SJ]

Newfoundland and Labrador Newfoundland has long been known for its wealth of folk songs, including Child ballads, local disaster ballads, and comic compositions. During the twentieth century collectors produced many volumes that were published both locally and internationally.53 In most regions a rich tradition of instrumental dance music lived alongside folk songs; however, it was rarely of interest to song collectors. The first field recordings of Newfoundland dance fiddlers were made by folklorists Herbert Halpert and J.D.A. Widdowson. During their 1960s trips to the island’s west coast, they encountered Rufus Guinchard (1899–1990) who was later “discovered” by folk revivalists and performed internationally. In the 1970s, Canadian folklorist Wilf Wareham interviewed fiddlers and accordion players on the Avalon and Burin Peninsulas. The earliest published tune collection appeared in a now out-of-print biography of Rufus Guinchard, which included sixty transcriptions.54 In the past decade or so, both Kelly Russell and Christina Smith have produced tune collections aimed at making a dance repertoire more widely available.55 As well as interviewing and recording fiddler Emile Benoit in the early 1980s, as discussed earlier, Colin Quigley also wrote about Bonavista Bay dance traditions.56 Other studies examine the dance music traditions of Bonavista and Conception Bays,57 the life and music of fiddler Don Randell,58 the influence of radio on the style and repertoire choices of fiddlers,59 three periods of Irish influence on the Newfoundland tradition from the 1940s to present day,60 and asymmetry as a stylistic element of Newfoundland dance music.61 With the possible exception of singer and accordionist Harry Hibbs, Newfoundland dance musicians have not enjoyed the popularity of players in other regions of the country. Hibbs included dance tunes on his albums

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Newfoundland and Labrador.

between 1968 and 1972, but instrumental albums were generally scarce. The first accordion album was produced by Wilf Doyle in 1956, followed by another in 1960.62 In 1957, the Shamrocks, also known as the Happy Valley Boys featuring fiddlers Don Randell and Ted Blanchard, released an album entitled Shamrocks: Newfoundland Fiddle Music.63 A solo accordion album by Raymond Walsh in 1966 on the Arc label came out as Ray Walsh: Favorite Reels and Jigs of Newfoundland.64 Perhaps the best remembered and celebrated solo albums were released by fiddlers Emile Benoit (1913–1993) of the Port-auPort Peninsula,65 Rufus Guinchard (1899–1990) of the Great Northern Peninsula,66 and accordionist Minnie White (1916–2002) of the Codroy Valley.67 Until the mid-twentieth century, the main performance context for Newfoundland dance music was the “time,” consisting of a dinner and dance, often organized by a church group as a fundraising event. In a natural resources based economy, both work and social entertainment were seasonal. Most “times” occurred in the fall and winter as the summer was busy with fishing and logging work. A solo “fiddler” was employed for the evening but other local musicians were expected to relieve him dur-

ing breaks. If the musician was hired from the surrounding region, he often walked many kilometres to the event. Prior to the 1950s, payments ranged from two to five dollars, but many fiddlers volunteered their services. The “fiddler” was not necessarily a violinist, but any dance musician regardless of instrument. The music and dancing started about 9 p.m. and continued until the wee hours. The majority of dances were square sets, with some waltzes and solo male step dancing.68 During the twentieth century there was a shift from the violin towards accordion for dance accompaniment. It was louder, easier to learn and did not go out of tune in a variable climate. There are also a small number of mouth organ or harmonica players in the province of which one, Gerald Quinton, is featured on this recording. Another important type of “instrumentalist” sang tunes. This vocal style, known as mouth, chin, or gob music, was used when a “fiddler” was not available. Very often the singer started with a tune rhyme or short verse before continuing with vocables known as “diddling.” In recent decades the breadth of instrumentation used on the island to play dance music has expanded with the influence of visiting musicians and recordings from Ireland, the UK and the U.S.A.

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Bouzouki, guitar, bodhrán, banjo, tin whistle, Irish flute and Irish pipes are now common amongst the younger generations who participate in Irishstyle pub sessions in St. John’s. The decline and revival of traditional dance musics throughout Canada, as described in the introduction, were accelerated in Newfoundland by confederation with Canada in 1949, a shift from inshore to offshore fishing, and substantial improvements to roads and electricity. All these factors worked together to change the basic economics and rhythms of outport life. The resettlement program of the 1950s, whereby small isolated outports were moved

Nain in the 1970s. (Courtesy of Maija Lutz)

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into larger �������������������������� centres������������������� , disrupted the local dances and challenged the overall sense of community. There are several regional styles of dance music around the island of Newfoundland constructed according to immigration patterns and dominant musical characteristics.69 Immigration to Newfoundland and Labrador was predominantly English and Irish, as well as some Scottish and French. The influence of these cultures can still be heard in the traditional music of the province today. Overall the Newfoundland island style is recognized as having simple melodies, a strong beat driving the dance, and including many “crook-

ed” tunes to accommodate localized dance patterns. This aesthetic can be attributed to influences from an older dance style from the Sliabh Luchra region of southern Ireland, English Morris dancing and French Québécois tunes.  In St. John’s and along the southern shore, fiddlers tend towards Irish styles, having had long exposure to the Irish recording industry. On the west coast in the Codroy Valley and the Port-au-Port Peninsula there is a striking ScottishCape Breton style brought to the Codroy by late nineteenth century settlers from Nova Scotia and learned and reinforced by those on the Portau-Port by radio. Originally, the Port-

au-Port was a French area; its unique repertoire still exists, but is now rarely played.  The French Newfoundland style is best recognized in the early recordings of fiddler Emile Benoit. In Labrador, Scottish influence is heard in the playing of Inuit-Scottish Métis fiddlers in North West River passed down from members of the trading and trapping network. The Great Northern Peninsula, epitomized by fiddler Rufus Guinchard, is a blend of English, Irish and French influences. While the French did not officially settle the area, they built temporary fishing structures and left Irish hired hands to tend them over winter. Today, the Newfoundland fiddle and

Joe Ford playing accordion in Nain in the 1970s. (Courtesy of Maija Lutz)

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fast polkas in 2/4 rather than the “single” Irish jig in 6/8 (which has a predominant quarter and eighth note rhythmic pattern). “Doubles” or “double jigs,” then, are any jig in 6/8, including both the Irish “single” and “double” (which has a predominant three eighth note rhythmic pattern) jigs. In some areas, “triples” or “trebles” were used to refer to what are now called “reels.” [EO] The last two tracks in this section were recorded in Nain, Labrador in the winter of 1979 by Maija Lutz. Nain, the earliest permanent settlement in northern Labrador, was founded in 1771 by Moravian missionaries. The Moravians, long noted for their love of music and a rich musical culture, placed so much emphasis on the musical life of the Inuit that in relatively short order the Labrador Inuit came to be identified with choral singing in four-part harmony and the playing of string and brass instruments. Accordion and fiddle tunes were introduced to accompany square and step dancing.70 During her stay in the community, Maija observed dancing only in a single household rather than as a community activity, although she was told that step dancing was very common among the Settlers and was catching on among the Inuit. [ML]  

CD1 TRACK 01

Mrs. Belle’s Cotillion Belle Fennelly Field Collection of Christina Smith, 2003. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF COLETTE PHILLIPS

accordion repertoire consists of local tunes handed down through families and communities, those learned from Newfoundland recordings or folklore collections, popular songs turned into tunes, and transnational Celtic repertoire learned from radio and recordings. Despite regional variations, fiddle and accordion music in Newfoundland is quite distinctive. As many tracks on this CD set are from the dance tradition, and therefore primarily functional, the tunes are performed with a strong, steady beat and a lack of complex ornamentation. Jigs, more widespread than reels, are often played faster than reels; reels are commonly reserved for step dancing and therefore played at a slower tempo. Crooked tunes, or tunes with non-standard beat structures, are a signature of Newfoundland music. The rhythmic emphasis tends to be strong on each beat rather than the “strong weak strong weak” pattern used for certain time signatures in most of the rest of the country. Prior to increased contact with musicians from Ireland in the late twentieth century, many musicians in Newfoundland used a unique terminology to identify tune types, which is still used by older musicians and those in rural areas. “Singles” or “single jigs,” in Newfoundland, are

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Mrs. Clara Belle Fennelly was born in Aquaforte, Newfoundland in 1919.  She learned her repertoire of square dance and lancers tunes from her brothers, from bankers (fishermen of the banking schooners who visited Aquaforte to buy bait), from the radio, and from Bill Jones who played for many of the dances in the area.  Since it was typical in the area for musicians to refrain from playing in public during a period of mourning after a family member or friend passed away, it often happened that all the musicians in a small community would be unavailable for local dances because of a death. By the age of eight, Mrs. Belle was playing for dances in her community when the usual musicians were unavailable due to bereavement. Upon her marriage to Raymond Fennelly, the lighthouse

keeper for Bear Cove Point, she moved to Port Kirwan where she continued to play for dances, while raising a family and keeping a shop. Mrs. Belle is a wellrespected dance player on the southern shore. Playing the melody with her right hand and a simple offbeat chordal accompaniment with her left hand, Mrs. Belle ends this single jig (fast polka in 2/4) with a common “shave and a haircut” tag phrase. A cotillion is a French square dance from the late eighteenth century that was brought to Newfoundland and remained popular in several regions. [EO]

CD1 TRACK 02

I’se the B’y Lillian Collins Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive 83-59, collector Dianne Gilbert, Tape number C10399, 1983. Used by permission.

Lillian Collins (1895–1987) was born in Placentia, Placentia Bay. Both her parents were Newfoundlanders and her paternal grandfather was from Ireland. All seven children were encouraged by their father to sing in the evenings after dinner. Lillian herself was both a singer and instrumentalist. She played guitar and accordion for set dances, step dances and waltzes. She

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CD1 TRACK 03

Young Man You Kissed Me Daughter Gerald Quinton Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive 2008-002, collector Evelyn Osborne, 2002. Used by permission.

This tune is a single (fast polka in 2/4) with syncopations and irregular repetition patterns. Quinton follows the tune with a rhyme used to remember the music: “Young man you kissed me daughter, you did young man, you did young man. You went to the well for water, you did young man, you did young man.” These “tune rhymes” are widespread and often contain slightly racy references.

They were traded among fiddlers to help identify common tunes, which often had different titles. [EO]   CD1 TRACK 04

Oh My Pretty Dear, Won’t You Come and Rub Me? Dorman Ralph Memorial University Folklore and Language Archive 83-185, collector Peter Narváez, Tape Number C6247, ca. 1983. Used by permission.

Dorman Ralph (1923–1999), who became blind as an infant, was best known as a vocalist but is featured here on the accordion he often used to accompany his own singing. Dorman grew up in Little Harbour Deep, White Bay on Newfoundland’s northern coast where he learned to sing from his mother. As a child he learned mouth organ before trying his uncle’s accordion. He quickly took to the single row button accordion and moved on to a double row, which became his lifelong instrument. In the 1950s his community was resettled, and in 1956 he moved to St. John’s where he became a popular musician. A CD of his songs was released by SingSong Inc. in 1999. This is a “crooked” tune or a piece with a non-standard metric structure. The first phrase of each turn or strain

has ten beats followed by a standard phrase of eight beats. Although the first turn, then, might be said to have an extra bar, the accents suggest that the player is actually playing the standard four bars, but alternating between bars of 3/4 and 2/4. “Crooked” tunes might have been used to accommodate dances with extra steps. The unusual title of this tune is likely connected to a longer rhyme used to remember it. [EO]   CD1 TRACK 05

French Reel Ivan White (Laurus White, guitar) Music From French Newfoundland. Pigeon Inlet Productions, 1980. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF EVELYN OSBORNE

We could all sing. See my father was a great singer. My grandfather Lannon headed a choir in Ireland. He was a schoolmaster and he came to Newfoundland and he stayed in Placentia. He taught the boys in school there for a few years and he went back to Ireland. [EO] 

Mouth organ or harmonica players are not abundant in Newfoundland, but they fill the same role as accordionists. Gerald Quinton (1922–2009) was born in Red Cliff, Bonavista Bay, and was one of the Quinton merchants who ran a family business from 1884 to 1990. Gerald took up accordion at age seven or eight but is best known for his mouth organ playing. He started playing for local dances in 1939 and played solo until he paired up with Larry Barker from the neighboring community of Open Hall. They played together for over fifty years.

COURTESY OF SARAH QUINTON

moved to Grand Falls in 1983 at the age of eighty-seven. Singers were called upon to fill the role of the “fiddler” whenever one was not available. As there were more female singers than female instrumentalists, it was common for women to perform mouth or chin music. A popular Newfoundland recording of chin music is by Minnie Mousseau from Mouse Island. This recording presents another performer, Lillian Collins, singing the well-known “I’se the B’y,” which crosses the singing and dance traditions. The clap at the end mimics the stomp that fiddlers use to end their tunes. After performing the tune, Lillian said:

Ivan White (1943–2008), of Stephenville on the west coast of Newfoundland, was a left-handed fiddler. Rather than reversing the order of the strings from low to high, as

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many left-handed fiddlers do, Ivan played a standard violin on the opposite shoulder. He worked in the paper industry for many years. The White or LeBlanc families were originally from Cape Breton and moved to Stephenville in the nineteenth century. Ivan’s family has four generations of dance fiddlers and as a boy he chorded on guitar for his father at dances. When he was twenty, Ivan was inspired to learn fiddle from a French Canadian family friend, Walter March. Ivan issued two solo recordings during his life and was featured on Music of French Newfoundland (1980). Although Ivan played primarily Cape Breton music in his later years, this tune is considered to be part of the French tradition of the area.The structure is unusual in that the A part is not repeated and the B strain is repeated one and a half times. Ivan used drones and some fingered ornamentation in this performance. [EO]   CD1 TRACK 06

Golden Slippers Tom Uvloriak

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Labrador. It was closed in the 1950s and its inhabitants moved to the larger community of Nain. Tom became heavily involved in music-making in Nain. He was one of the church organists, directed the church choir, played violin in the small orchestra that accompanied anthems on special feast days, taught violin in the school, and ran the community radio station. He owned a portable organ that he carried from house to house, hosting singalongs in people’s kitchens.71 In his mid-forties at the time of this special recording session, he played a mixture of dance-like tunes, folk songs, and religious songs. “Golden Slippers” is a popular instrumental tune based on James A. Bland’s song “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” (1879), which was a parody of a spiritual sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers called “Golden Slippers.”72 Tom plays the tune quite smoothly, with little ornamentation, and a wavering tempo, suggesting perhaps that his performance was meant for listening rather than dancing. [ML, SJ]

In

this selection, Tom’s wife, Sybilla (1942–2000), is singing along with his playing. Sybilla was born in Hebron, Labrador, a Moravian mission from 1831 to 1959. When the mission was closed in 1959 due to poor conditions that allowed disease to flourish, the Inuit population was relocated throughout Labrador. Sybilla moved with her family approximately two hundred kilometres south to Nain, the first Moravian mission in Labrador, which had been established in 1771. In Nain, Sybilla sang in the Inuktitut church choir. At the time of this recording, Nain Inuit were relying heavily on

printed songbooks, especially a collection of one hundred secular and sacred songs, many of them adaptations of German folk songs, translated into Inuktitut and published in 1872 by the Moravian missionaries. These tunes were known by many people and sung readily whenever music was called for in an informal context such as a family get-together or birthday party. It is likely that Tom used some of these hymn tunes in his fiddle teaching as well. According to Tom and Sybilla’s daughter, Maria Uvloriak Lyall, this hymn is called “Inosiga,” translated as “It’s Life.”73 [ML, SJ]

Maija Lutz Collection, 1979. Used by permission.

Tom Uvloriak (1928–2005) was born in Nutak, a community on a small island off the northwest coast of

CD1 TRACK 07

Inosiga Tom and Sybilla Uvloriak Maija Lutz Collection, 1979. Used by permission.

Tom Uvloriak teaching violin to Philip Igloliorte in the Labrador Studies Program. (Courtesy of Tim Borlase)

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The Maritimes The Maritime provinces—Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and New Brunswick—are a mosaic of historically distinct cultural and musical styles— Acadian, Downeast, and Scottish—among others.74

the (Catholic) Acadians from their fertile lands. The first Acadian families moved from mainland Nova Scotia to the French colony of Île SaintJean in 1720. Although at first only a small number of Acadians decided to resettle on the island, the population quadrupled between 1748 and 1755 as tensions between the French and English on the mainland became increasingly hostile and the threat of

Acadian  Acadians are descendents of Canada’s first settlers of the French colony of Acadie (Acadia), now the provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. Acadia was founded in 1604, although major colonization did not start until after 1632. The first French families established a settlement at Port-Royal, a fishing port at Chedabouctou Bay, and a number of smaller settlements throughout the region. Because of its geographical and strategic position, Acadia was coveted by both the English and French. Disputes between these two colonial powers over the division of territory resulted in the land changing hands numerous times between 1604 and 1710.The Acadians prided themselves on their independence and their neutral position in the midst of Old World conflicts. They were successful farmers and developed a unique land reclamation system known as aboiteaux (a drainage system using dykes) which enabled them to open up new land for cultivation in the tidal marshes along the Bay of Fundy.75 Following the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, mainland Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were ceded to the British government, while Île Royale (now Cape Breton Island) and Île Saint-Jean (now Prince Edward Island) remained under French control. This change had little effect on the Acadians, who continued to govern their own day-to-day affairs until Governor Lawrence took office in 1753 and began putting pressure on the British government to remove The Maritimes.

deportation loomed over the mainland Acadian population. The threat of exile became a reality with the deportation of mainland Acadians from Nova Scotia in 1755, immortalised in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous poem “Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie” (1854). Three years later, Acadians were exiled from Île Royale and Île Saint-Jean. During le Grand Dérangement (the Great Upheaval),

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between 1755 and 1763, more than other Acadian communities spread 12,000 people of French ancestry throughout Nova Scotia (including were expelled from their homes along Cape Breton Island and along the Canada’s east coast. Those who did Northumberland shore) and P.E.I. not perish from famine or shipwrecks (la région Évangéline/the Evangeline were scattered through the east and Region is the only part of the Island southeast coasts of North America, where Francophone Acadian culture port cities of England and France, is predominant); there are also many French Guiana, the Caribbean, Saint Acadians living throughout Ontario, Pierre et Miquelon off the south coast and smaller numbers in other regions of Newfoundland and the Falkland of Canada and the United States, inIslands. Many Acadians ended up in cluding Quebec (particularly les Îles Louisiana, where there is a large popu- de la Madeleine), Newfoundland, and lation of Acadian descendents known eastern Maine. Many Francophone as Cajuns. Fortunately, the deportation was only one part of the Acadian story. When amity between France and England was struck in 1763, many Acadians made their way back home. Without land ownership and protection of cultural rights, however, some Acadian settlements were assimilated by English culture. Others were able to hold on to their French language and traditions. Today the majority of Frenchspeaking Acadians live in the province of Fiddler Gérard Richard of Bédec (Kent County, New Photo taken by Claudette Richard, in Bédec ca. New Brunswick, with Brunswick). 1940. (Courtesy of Centre d’études acadiennes)

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Acadians speak both standard French and localised dialects known as “Acadian French” or chiac which feature English influences, old French words and verb conjugations, and regional pronunciations. Since the arrival of these first settlers in the seventeenth century, the Acadians have maintained their vibrant musical traditions of song and instrumental music, primarily fiddle. The style of Acadian music varies considerably from province to province; it also reflects the influences of other cultural groups throughout Eastern Canada. Acadian fiddling on P.E.I. is characterised by a rhythmic drive and vigorous playing style. Fiddlers in the Evangeline Region blend Cape Breton influences with an older Acadian style, and play a mix of Scottish, French and locally-composed Acadian tunes. Many P.E.I. Acadian fiddlers accompany themselves with a seated, percussive foot-tapping pattern known regionally as “the shuffle.” It corresponds to a syncopated bowed rhythm of the same name. Acadian music in P.E.I.’s most western region (West Prince) is a blend of Acadian and Irish elements, due to the influence of Irish and Newfoundland settlers in the region. Acadian music in Nova Scotia is influenced by local Scottish and Irish traditions, particularly Scottish fiddling from Cape Breton, all the while

retaining a distinctly Acadian sound with its accented, rhythmic flavour. Acadian music is also popular in New Brunswick (Canada’s only official bilingual province). From tintamarres (festive, noise-making parades) and the annual Caraquet Acadian Festival to houses painted in the colours of the Acadian flag, Acadian culture is an important part of that province’s identity. Acadian fiddling in New Brunswick varies significantly from region to region, and within those regions it is highly individualised. Some regions are more influenced by Irish traditions, while others have adopted Don Messer’s Downeast style. Acadian music is performed in many settings, from kitchen parties to festivals, dances, competitions, and concert stages; many Acadian musicians and groups, such as Barachois (P.E.I.), 1755 (New Brunswick) and Grand Dérangement (Nova Scotia), have earned national and international reputations. [MFo]   Downeast “Downeast” refers to the Don Messerinfluenced fiddling of Canada’s east coast. The music is smooth, with a combination of slurring and straight bows; it is less ornamented than many other styles, and eminently “danceable.”76 While some scholars have written about the Downeast style as

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a distinct style from a particular geographic region (Maritime Canada), many fiddlers make little distinction between Downeast and Canadian oldtime styles. Fiddlers from the east coast will say they play “old-time” as often as fiddlers from Ontario say they play “Downeast.”  Common tune genres include the waltz, jig, two-step, reel, hornpipe, clog, and schottische. Dance tempos vary according to the locale, as different groups of dancers prefer different tempos. The piano accompaniment style is a cross between that used in

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old-time and Cape Breton styles. The left hand plays an important role providing a strong bass line, often including chromatic bass runs; pianists stay on the bottom half of the piano so as to not interfere with the fiddle.77 Downeast fiddling in the Maritimes is partly sustained by fiddle (and sometimes step dancing) contests in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The Maritime Old-Time Fiddling Contest in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia is considered the oldest continually running fiddle contest in Canada, predating the Canadian National Fiddling

Ned Landry and His New Brunswick Lumberjacks: Ned joined Don Messer and His New Brunswick Lumberjacks in the mid-1930s and took over as band leader in 1939 when Messer moved to Charlottetown. (Courtesy of Centre d’études acadiennes)

Championship in Shelburne, Ontario by one year. It was created in 1950 when a group of Catholic men decided they would hold a fiddle and step dancing contest as a fundraiser to build a new church.The first one gathered approximately ten fiddlers, ten step dancers, and a “respectable audience,”78 and was deemed successful enough for the group to plan a second contest. They were unprepared, however, for the traffic jams and crowds in 1951; the windows of the church hall had to be opened so people could listen from outside. In order to accommodate the crowds that numbered between three and four thousand, the contest was moved to the Dartmouth Memorial Rink, where it was held until the rink burned down in 1974; then it moved to

a high school auditorium. As revenues increased, contest organizers were able to bring in special entertainment such as Ned Landry, Earl Mitton, Don Messer, Cec MacEachern, Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald, and John Allen Cameron, as well as step dancers from Ontario. Now called the Maritime Fiddling Festival, the contest has become a multi-day event including jam sessions, visits to local seniors’ homes, and a dance.79 In New Brunswick and mainland Nova Scotia, fiddling and step dancing contests peaked in popularity in the 1980s but waned in the 1990s, largely replaced with “fiddledoos” or “potlucks” as venues for contemporary fiddling and step dancing. [SJ]

Men step dancing at Bathurst Lumber Company Second Annual Picnic, August 9, 1919. (Courtesy of Provincial Archives New Brunswick Assorted Photo Acquisitions #4: P37-484-20)

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Scottish Scottish immigrants came to Cape Breton Island in large numbers— some 30,000 in the first part of the nineteenth century—bringing their music, culture, and language. The use of Gaelic declined as an everyday language, but the music of bagpipes, fiddles, and step dancing flourish on Cape Breton today.   For many, dancing is the essential ingredient. While the traditional style fell out of practice in Scotland, the energy and timing of the Cape Breton dancers drove the music to continue, aided by the isolation of the island. By 1972, however, there was some concern that the fiddle music was also dying away,80 sparking a drive to more formal promotion. The first Festival of Scottish Fiddling was held in July 1973 and has continued every year since then. The Cape Breton Fiddlers’ Association was established as a result of the festival to foster the music’s accessibility and growth. There is no doubt that these efforts have been successful. In the mid-1990s, Cape Breton fiddling, step dancing, and Gaelic song took the Canadian music scene by storm, fuelled by arrangements of traditional music and performances by young musicians such as Ashley MacIsaac, Natalie

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MacMaster, the Rankin Family, and the Barra MacNeils. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries also saw an increase in research related to Cape Breton fiddle81 and piping82 traditions. The tracks on this CD set represent older styles of fiddling and piping by musicians who are looked up to as role models by today’s generation. Although dominated by reels and jigs, the repertoire of Cape Breton musicians contains certain tune types that are not generally played in other parts of the country. For example, the strathspey is unique to Scottish and Scottish Canadian fiddling. Unlike reels, which were first played by bagpipes and are much older, strathspeys were originally played on the fiddle using a particular bowing technique to create the characteristic “scotch snap” rhythmic pattern. Other common Cape Breton tune types include pastoral or slow airs and marches. Tunes are usually played in medleys that follow strict rules, the order being a march or slow air, slow strathspey, one or two fast strathspeys, and several reels. Jigs are typically played in medleys by themselves. Tunes within the medley traditionally have the same tonic, although they will often go through several changes of mode (major, mixolyd-

ian, dorian, and gapped). If a tune modulates within itself the medley can continue using the new tonic.83 The Scottish bagpipes have greatly influenced both the ornamentation and modes used in Cape Breton fiddling. Because the bagpipe does not use a tempered scale, Cape Breton fiddle tunes are more likely to be in one or more modes, rather than strict major and minor keys, sometimes playing between two versions of a scale degree, such as the raised and lowered third. At other times the fiddler uses “neutral notes” (notes between semitones). They are sometimes played right

in the middle, as quarter tones, but more often are closer to one semitone than the other. The third, sixth, and seventh degrees of the scale are the ones most likely to be played neutrally; they are also the ones that determine modality, making it sometimes hard to identify the scale. In the past, tune collectors often forced Cape Breton tunes to fit into major or minor keys in their transcriptions, and thus printed them inaccurately; however, oral tradition has managed to maintain the modal structure of the tunes. The rhythmic drive of Scottish Canadian fiddling derives, in part,

Jack Greenough playing at the Maritime Old-Time Fiddling Contest. (Courtesy of Jack Greenough)

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from the heavy use of dotted rhythms, particularly the “scotch snap,” a rhythmic pattern notated as a sixteenth note followed by a dotted eighth that is used abundantly in strathspeys. In Scotland the note lengths are consistently shortened sixteenths and doubledotted eighths, which tends to shift the beat toward the longer note. In Cape Breton, however, the rhythmic lengths of the scotch snap are variable, more rounded, and the shifting of the beat never occurs because the beat must be emphasized for dancing.84 Dunlay and Greenberg call this “subtle inequality of note lengths” “lilt.”85 In reels it is created by occasionally accenting selected weak beats. Cape Breton fiddlers generally accompany themselves with their feet. Strathspeys are marked by four beats to the bar; jigs and marches are marked with only two beats to the bar, all with the same part of the foot; and reels use the rocking motion between the toe and the heel, marking four beats to the bar, with the heel accenting the strong beat.86 The taps are an audible and integral part of the music, yet there is no audible foot-tapping on the examples on this CD set. Producers once tried to eliminate the “interference” of foot-tapping by putting

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a piece of foam or carpet under the fiddler’s feet in the studio, but this practice is less common now, as fiddlers and producers recognize the importance of foot-tapping to the overall sound of the performance.87 In many modern recordings, foottapping is clearly audible. One of the most identifiable features of Cape Breton fiddling is its distinctive and heavy use of ornamentation. Double stops are used frequently to add variety and to imitate the bagpipe; open strings are the most prevalent, but fingered double stops, particularly using the fourth finger to double an open string, are also used. The frequent use of A-E-A-E tuning was used to increase volume before amplification became possible since more open strings are available for droning (creating the sound of the bagpipes).88 Scordatura allows two fiddlers to play together in different octaves, although for the most part, the Cape Breton fiddle tradition is a solo tradition. While large groups of fiddlers may play together in concert finales and group lessons, one fiddler with an accompanist is the usual arrangement. Many fiddlers playing together is said to inhibit the personal expression that is so important to Cape Breton fiddling.

The earliest fiddling was unaccompanied. Harpsichord and early pianos were used for accompanimental purposes in Scotland, while pump organs were introduced into Cape Breton in the late nineteenth century. Pianos arrived on the island at the turn of the twentieth century and had become the accompanimental instrument of choice by the 1930s; guitar is also used, but not as popular.89 A unique style of percussive, syncopated piano accompaniment evolved in Cape Breton.90 Contemporary step dancing in Cape Breton descended from Scottish step dancing brought in the early nineteenth century—that is, the popular four-handed and eight-handed reels, which were performed with some stepping, as well as a number of solo step dances.91 Step dancing is performed as a solo strathspey and reel medley as well as part of the square set. Cape Breton square sets are derivatives of the quadrille or lancers which came to Cape Breton from New England in the twentieth century.92 There is an intimate relationship between the step dancer and fiddler. While dancers will perform certain steps to certain tunes, they also improvise variations to those steps in response to the ornaments and rhythms of the fiddle.

According to MacEachen, the best step dancers are not those with the most steps, but those with a “total mastery of a smaller number, the ability to improvise effective variations on their steps, and a recognizable personal style.”93 Like fiddling, Cape Breton step dancing is becoming known internationally through performances by touring artists such as Natalie MacMaster. Increased exposure has led to increased innovation in step creation, as well as borrowing from Acadian and Ottawa Valley styles.94 Scottish music and dancing is not restricted to Cape Breton, of course. Boatloads ������������������������� of Scottish immigrants, mostly from the West Highlands and Hebrides, landed on the northeast shore of Queens County, P.E.I. in the late eighteenth century.95 Generally, fiddlers in the most eastern regions of P.E.I. (Kings County) and the central Queens and East Prince regions have a Scottish-based style. Acadian fiddlers in western P.E.I.’s région Évangéline blend Cape Breton influences with an older Acadian style, and play a primarily Scottish repertoire. Radio broadcasts from Nova Scotia in the 1940s and 50s strengthened interest amongst Island fiddlers in Scottish fiddling. [DM, SJ, MFo]

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La John Muise Muriel Saulnier (née Muise) (Sonny Cullins, guitar) CIFA FM Archives, 2001.

COURTESY OF MURIEL SAULNIER

Used by permission.

Born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 1917, Muriel Saulnier moved to Station-de-Meteghan (Meteghan Station) when she was seven years old. Muriel’s father, John Muise (1884–1954), was a fisherman and an influential fiddler in the Baie SainteMarie area (a region historically known as Clare). He began playing the fiddle as a young boy and composed numerous tunes. His reel “La John Muise” is a standard tune that every local fiddler learns to play. Muriel has many memories of music-making in her family. Her father played his fiddle every day, often seated on the veranda, and people would come by the house to listen. Carrying

he got married, and it was not until her own children were married that she bought an accordion of her own and started to play again. She plays by ear and often plays at seniors’ residences in her community, at Meteghan church suppers, and at family gatherings. She has also been featured at the New Brunswick Accordion Festival and as a guest with bands for dances at the Legion hall. Although the accordion is her primary instrument, Stella also plays guitar and some fiddle.

CD1 TRACK 09

Stella learned the tune “La Bastringue” by hearing it performed in her community. The tune has its origins in a seventeenth- or eighteenthcentury French song. It has since become a popular party song throughout French Canada and is often played as a dance tune in Nova Scotia. The extra beat heard the second time through the A part of this recording was a common feature of Acadian music throughout the Maritimes and is still heard in the playing of some older musicians. This

La Bastringue Stella Burridge (Ray Burridge, piano; Don Doucet, percussion and bass) CIFA FM Archives, 2003. Used by permission.

One of nine children, Stella Burridge (b.1923) of Salmon River, Nova Scotia learned to play on her brother’s accordion when she was fourteen years old. Her brother sold his accordion when

performance was recorded in 2003 in the recording studio of the local radio station CIFA FM. [MFo]

CD1 TRACK 10

Marion Waltz / Caledonian Jig / Trip to Windsor Johnny Mooring (Carol Kennedy, piano) CBC Radio Archive, Toronto, 1966. Courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

COURTESY OF BANFF RECORDS

CD1 TRACK 08

on her family’s musical tradition, she learned to play the fiddle when she was seven or eight years old and has taught her own children. Her older brother, Frank, is also a well-known fiddler in the region. She recalls playing the fiddle with her brother and her father on Sunday afternoons after church when she was a child, accompanied by another brother, Ned, on harmonica. Today, Muriel plays the fiddle with friends for fundraising activities and entertains at senior citizens’ homes. Muriel recorded her father’s tune at the CIFA FM studio at the age of eighty-four. The syncopated rhythmic motif, repeated throughout both the A and B sections of the tune, and the strong accents add a distinctive Acadian flavour and are typical of Muriel’s playing style. [MFo]  

COURTESY OF STELLA BURRIDGE

Nova Scotia

Born in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Johnny Mooring (1928–1974) began playing the fiddle at age nine, probably influenced by his mother, who played the violin. Johnny was a popular competitor at the Canadian Old-time Fiddle Contest in Shelburne, Ontario, where he was the first person to win the title for three years in a row, from 1964 to 1966. It was for this achievement that he was inducted posthumously into the Fiddler’s Hall of Fame.96 

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CD1 TRACK 11

Cape Blomidon Reel Jack Greenough (Bill Guest, piano; Hubert Smart, drums; Don Armstrong, guitar; Bill Mallard, bass) Maritime Old Time Fiddling Contest. Banff RBS-1251, ca. 1966. Used by permission.

At age twelve, Jack Greenough (b.1935) of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, took some violin lessons that were offered after school; within a couple of years he was playing a number of oldtime fiddle tunes. By age fifteen he was

a popular fiddler for local dances. His father, Edmond Greenough, was one of the founding members of the Maritime Old-Time Fiddling Contest, started in 1950. Jack won this contest, as well as a number of others, several times. He has also performed on radio and television, including guest appearances on Don Messer’s Jubilee and a thirteen-week run on ATV’s Saturday Nite Party. “Cape Blomidon Reel” was composed by Nova Scotian fiddler, Ron Goodwin, from the Annapolis Valley, and is a popular tune in the Downeast fiddle repertoire of the Maritimes. Despite the name of the original album, this track was not recorded at the Maritime Old-Time Fiddling Contest, but is a studio production with a band accompaniment typical for the time. The wood block in the B sections of the tune is reminiscent of arrangements made popular by Don Messer and his various bands. [SJ]

CD1 TRACK 12

Welcome to Your Feet Again / The Bonny Lass of Fisherrow / The Bird’s Nest Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald (Beattie Wallace, piano; Estwood Davidson, guitar) Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald Classic Cuts. Breton Books and Music BBM-CD04. Used by permission.

Born in the isolated fishing community of White Point in northern Victoria County, Winston Fitzgerald (1914– 1987) was of Irish and French heritage. Due to his skill in Scottish music, he was known far and wide simply as “Scotty.” By the age of eight he had already performed his first gig, and at the age of twelve, as the fiddler for the local school picnic, he helped to raise money to pay the teacher. While he was still a teenager, Winston performed with the Maritime Merrimakers, a minstrel show that toured the small towns and rural communities of Eastern Canada. In the 1930s, he became part of country music star Hank Snow’s band, spending almost three years with this fellow PHOTO BY ABBASS STUDIO, SYDNEY, NS; COURTESY OF CAPE BRETON'S MAGAZINE, WRECK COVE, NS

the late 1950s to the early 1970s. This recording captures the excitement of the audience as Johnny begins his reel. Johnny’s reels were among the fastest ever played in the Shelburne contest, to the extent that they almost felt like they were out of control.The audience applause for this performance was by far the loudest of the three finalists that evening. [SJ]  

COURTESY OF JACK GREENOUGH

Carol Kennedy (b.1948) was a popular piano accompanist at the Shelburne contest for several years. Besides Johnny, with whom she played for four years, she also accompanied Graham Townsend, Peter Dawson, and even Don Messer on two occasions. She was also a popular studio musician.97 Also a fiddler, Carol is well known in fiddle circles as a composer, one of her most popular tunes being the “Red Carpet Waltz.” This track was recorded at the Shelburne contest in 1966, the year Johnny won the title of Canadian champion for the third year in a row. He plays the typical contest set of a waltz, jig, and reel, structured to fit within the three-minute time limit. “Marion Waltz” is one of his own compositions. He was a popular composer of tunes and esteemed for his composition and playing of waltzes. “Caledonian Jig” is also known as “Jolly’s Jig.” “Trip to Windsor” was written by Cape Breton fiddler Dan R. MacDonald and is a common tune in the Downeast or old-time repertoire. This performance is typical of Johnny Mooring. The waltz is smooth and sweet, which makes the abrupt lift in the B part even more dramatic. The classical trill played in the second part of the jig may sound unusual to contemporary ears; however, it was not atypical of fiddlers at Shelburne from

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Nova Scotian playing in dance halls, doing stage shows, and making radio appearances across Nova Scotia. By the late 1940s, Winston was performing regularly on CJCB Radio in Sydney as part of The Radio Entertainers. With Beattie Wallace on piano and Estwood

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able on Winston’s Classic Cuts CD)99 were originally recorded by Winston’s longtime friend and musical influence, Angus Chisholm. “Welcome to Your Feet Again” is a strathspey found in the Braemar Collection,100 followed by a pair of reels, “The Bonny Lass of Fisherrow” (by Daniel Dow) and “The Bird’s Nest.” [DM]

CD1 TRACK 13

Calum Crùbach (Crippled Malcolm) / Alex Currie’s Reel / Am Muileann Dubh (The Black Snuffmill) / Sandy Duff’s Alex Currie Collection of Paul McDonald, 1993. Courtesy of the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI. 

PHOTO BY RONALD CAPLAN; COURTESY OF CAPE BRETON'S MAGAZINE, WRECK COVE, NS

Davidson on guitar, the group played together for almost thirty years. Winston was a fisherman in his earlier days but spent many years working as a labourer in Sydney. Throughout that time he performed regularly across Cape Breton and beyond. In later years, Winston performed with Cape Breton folksinger and guitarist John Allan Cameron, making a trip to Ireland that was chronicled by Canada’s National Film Board.98 Later, Winston became one of the house fiddlers for the John Allan Cameron television show on CTV (1975–1976), which led to touring and recording as part of the Cape Breton Symphony, a group that initially included fiddlers Jerry Holland, John Donald Cameron, and Wilfred Gillis. Winston’s playing was considered by many to be perfect: his timing was precise, with a lift and drive to his music that inspired dancing. His ability to combine tunes into established sets was so successful that many of these sets, made famous through his recordings (a series of 78s and LPs on Bernie MacIsaac’s Antigonish-based Celtic Music label), are still played the same way today. In the 1960s,Winston joined forces with Lloyd MacInnis to create the Mac label, one of the first efforts by a local performer to release and distribute his own work.The tunes on this CD set (recorded and still avail-

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Born into a Cape Breton family where pipe music, fiddle music, and step dancing were a way of life, piper Alex Currie (1910–1997) was descended from Curries, MacMullins and MacIntyres who had arrived in Cape

Breton from South Uist in the early nineteenth century. His father’s grandfather, Lachlann mac Iain ’ic Dhonnchaidh ’ic Sheumais (Lachlan the son of John the son of Duncan the son of James) arrived in 1808.101 Referred to in Uist as ceòl cluaiseadh (literally “ear-music”), the Uist style of piping once played an important role in the social fabric of both Scottish and Cape Breton communities. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, this piping tradition in both Uist and Cape Breton yielded to standardized and literate forms of piping for competition. The pipes were supplanted by other musical instruments for social dancing, including, in Cape Breton Island, the fiddle.The fiddle style retained a strong piping influence, which still may be heard from some players such as Joe Peter Maclean of MacAdam’s Lake. Alex grew up in a household where his parents spoke to one another in Gaelic; his mother sang pipe tunes as his father accompanied them with step dancing. Alex acquired many of these tunes from his mother’s Gaelic singing, as he recalled: Here’s the way I learned: My mother would jig the tune as it was written in the olden days…. She jigged in words—in Gaelic.… She couldn’t play the pipes, though. But if I wouldn’t hit a note right, she’d

say,‘That’s not right!You gotta put a little more stir to it—a little livelier.’ In that way I had the tunes more accurate than the ones in the books! But she had no books; it was all in her head! … I know that when I was in my early twenties I could play the pipes all night and a different tune each time, and I got a lot of those tunes from her.102

The play between language and music in Alex’s piping is evident in the names of several of the tunes on this track that have Scottish Gaelic words connected with the melody, known in Gaelic as puirt-à-beul (literally, “tunes from a mouth”). The first part of the tune noted here as “Alex Currie’s Reel” shares a melodic relationship with the second section of a port-à-beul once popular in Inverness County, Cape Breton, “Ma dh’eugas Dòmhnall Mac ’ic Iain” (If Donald son of the son of John dies). It is also similar to the better-known “Ruidhle na Coilich Dubha” (“The Reel of Blackcock”), as noted by John Shaw, a scholar of Cape Breton’s Gaelic traditions. Until the early part of the twentieth century, Cape Breton pipers often played for square sets. They usually played sitting down, which allowed them to keep time with their feet, adding both an accompaniment and an extra “lift” to the playing. Alex was

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That’s the main thing about them reels or strathspeys—the time, eh? There are very few pipers who can play a strathspey with the right time today.You’ve got to have that nice time, you know? That’s the best for dancing—getting on the floor that dancer has got to have that little push, eh?103 [PM, TF]

CD1 TRACK 14

The Athole Highlanders' Farewell to Loch Katrine / A Trip to Mabou Ridge Theresa MacLellan (Marie MacLellan, piano; Blanche Sophocleous, guitar)

A Trip To Mabou Ridge: Scottish Music From Cape Breton Island. Rounder Records 7006, 1976. Courtesy of New Rounder LLC. Used by arrangement with Concord Music Group, Inc.   PHOTO BY RONALD CAPLAN COURTESY OF CAPE BRETON’S MAGAZINE

a master of this rhythmic accompaniment, but he could be just as comfortable marching in pipe bands, a result of his time in the Canadian Army during World War Two. Alex played for more than seventy-five years and passed away at the age of eighty-four, only a few weeks after his last performance. It was in a concert dedicated in his honour at the 1997 Celtic Colours International Festival. Very little of Alex’s music was ever recorded, but this group of tunes can give the listener an idea of his skill in strathspeys and reels. According to Paul McDonald, who recorded these tunes in Alex’s kitchen at MacAdam’s Lake, Cape Breton in 1993, this was Alex’s favourite strathspey, followed by two classic reels. Alex’s playing on these tracks showcases his distinctive use of ornamentation as well as subtle melodic variations. As Alex noted in a conversation with Paul McDonald and Hamish Moore after playing the tunes on this track:

Music runs in the MacLellan family of Riverside, including “Big” Ronald MacLellan, his wife Mary Anne, and their children “Baby” Joe, Donald, Theresa and Marie. Ronald was a blacksmith, large in stature, and a powerful fiddler. Mary Anne supplied the accompaniment on piano or organ. Joe, Donald, and Theresa became equally skilled as fiddlers, while Marie became the master of the keyboard. Sadly, both Ronald and young Joe died only a few months apart in 1935, the former already a legend

and the latter on his way to becoming one. The remaining siblings (Donald, Theresa, and Marie) continued to perform as the MacLellan Trio, and became renowned for their powerful style and distinctive tone. One of the fiddlers often led on the tune while the other embellished it with intricately woven instrumental harmonies. Although they recorded as a trio in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, their public appearances together became rarer as Donald settled in Toronto and both Theresa and Marie remained in Cape Breton. As a solo fiddler, Theresa was in demand and her talent took her to the Montreal Olympics, regular appearances in Ontario and New England, and a spot on CBC TV’s Ceilidh series (hosted by John Allan Cameron). But it was in Cape Breton where she built her strongest audience. Usually together with Marie, she played for dances and concerts across the island for many years. She was a favourite with step and square dancers because of the lift and drive in her playing. Over the years, Theresa became a role model for many younger fiddlers, particularly young women, as they emulated her style and her tunes. While women such as Tina Campbell, Mary (Beaton) MacDonald, and Theresa (MacLean) Morrison had been per-

forming in public since the 1930s, Theresa was one of the few women to play regularly on stages and in the dancehalls. Marie MacLellan learned to play on the family’s foot-pumped parlour reed organ. Her father taught her to chord by calling out the changes as they played together. Many dancehalls had no piano or organ, however, so she would accompany fiddlers on the guitar, “tuned in the Hawaiian styling and played with a bar.”104 Marie made the switch to piano when she moved to Sydney after World War Two, where she became one of the most popular piano accompanists. Early in her career, Theresa displayed a fondness for pipe marches, a tune type for which she is now known. This track by Theresa consists of two 2/4 marches in the key of A. It starts with “The Athole Highlanders’ Farewell to Loch Katrine,” a popular bagpipe march composed by William Rose in the late nineteenth century (called the “King of Pipe Marches” by Scottish composer J. Scott Skinner). This tune is followed by the title cut from her 1976 Rounder recording, A Trip To Mabou Ridge, composed by Queensville fiddler Dan Hughie MacEachern. Written in 1938, it is still one of the most popular marches from any of the Cape Breton composers. [DM]

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CD1 TRACK 15

Princess Reel Stephen Toole (Jacques Arsenault, guitar) Island Folk Festival. Institute of Island Studies, University of Prince Edward Island, 1985. Used by permission.

PHOTO BY EARTHWATCH TEAM, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND FIDDLING PROJECT COURTESY OF CANADIAN MUSEUM OF CIVILIZATION: KEN PERLMAN, CULTURAL STUDIES, B809, F5 AND F6, 1991-1992

 

Born in Green Road, ���������������� an Irish settlement in south-central Queens County where he lived all his life, Stephen Toole (1926–1995) came from a large fiddling family. His father and several brothers all fiddled, played piano, organ, guitar and step danced, and his sister also played organ, piano, and guitar. After starting at age ten, Stephen was playing for local dances and house parties by age fourteen, and remained an active dance fiddler in southwest Queens County for most of his life. He joined the P.E.I. Fiddlers Society in 1976, which took his playing around the island. During his last years he played for a weekly dance in

Charlottetown, and began adopting a Cape Breton style.105 The “Princess Reel” is one of the most widely played tunes on P.E.I., having arrived from New Brunswick in the 1920s. It is also known as the “Silver Wedding Reel” and “Charlie’s Reel” in southern Kings County.106 This track was recorded live on November 6, 1982 at the Island Folk Festival, which featured traditional musicians and local songmakers. A noteworthy aspect of this performance is the bass line played by Jacques Arsenault on guitar, particularly in the second half of the tune. [SJ]

the Rollo Bay Fiddle Instruction program. The Chaisson house was famous for its music. Neighbours would gather there when a big storm was brewing, hoping for a “stormstay” and the accompanying long night of great music-making.

CD1 TRACK 16

We hear two of Joe Pete’s sons, Kenny and Kevin, on this track. Kenny (b.1947), known as Kenny Joe Pete, is famous for his strong, powerful style and rhythmic steadiness. Kevin (b.1950) detoured the family tradition of fiddling and at age fifteen began playing the piano instead. He is in high demand as an accompanist throughout the province. Influenced by Cape Breton pianists, Kevin has a smooth, “rolling” style of playing, created in part by lots of arpeggiation. He also incorporates a lot of bass and rhythmic elements, a style he developed when he played in a country band that did not have a bass player, and he had to fill in those parts with his piano. In fact, Kevin’s

Lad O’Beirne / Dublin Porter Kenny Chaisson (Kevin Chaisson, piano) Collection of Roy Johnstone and Beverley Diamond, 1993. Used by permission.

Ken Perlman identifies the Chaisson family, from the Northeast Kings region, as “the strongest exponents of Scottish-oriented Cape Breton-style fiddling” on Prince Edward Island;107 ironically, they are of Acadian French origin. There are at least five generations of fiddling Chaissons, starting with Simon (b. ca.1880). His grandson, Joe Pete (1912–1981) helped found the P.E.I. Fiddlers Society, the Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival, and

COURTESY OF ANNE M. MCPHEE

Prince Edward Island

earliest influence was country music, especially the piano playing of Floyd Kramer. Only later was Kevin interested in the traditional music played by his father. At age twenty-nine, Kevin took up the fiddle; he also plays guitar. Kevin’s own children are all accomplished musicians. Both Kenny and Kevin are well-known composers; their tunes are part of the standard repertoire of the Island. This track was recorded in the “tuning room” (a space used by fiddlers to tune and warm up before their performances) at the Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival. In an effort to promote traditional Island music, the festival began with one concert on a Sunday afternoon in July 1976 with the combined efforts of Bishop Faber MacDonald, Joe Pete Chaisson, and the Eastern Kings Fiddlers Association (a concert sponsor to this day).108 The money gathered was (and still is) used to provide free fiddle lessons for music students in the area. The Chaisson family bought the Rollo Bay Festival grounds when the land went up for sale in 1993 in order to keep the festival running. It is the oldest festival of its kind on the Island, bringing together local fiddlers (mainly from the eastern end of P.E.I.) and Cape Breton fiddlers for three days of concerts, old-time dances, and a tune-writing circle.

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CD1 TRACK 17

Money Musk Delphine Arsenault (Zélie-Anne Gaudet, harmonium) Georges Arsenault Collection, Centre d’études acadiennes, 1973. Used by permission.

Born in Abram-Village, Prince County, P.E.I., Delphine (1912– 1983) was a well known fiddler and a member of one of the Island’s largest and most musical families, the “Jos Bibienne” family: all fourteen children played the fiddle. Delphine and her sisters pioneered as female fiddlers at community dances and parties, becoming known for their lively fiddling and tapping feet. Delphine was also a

This track is a P.E.I. Acadian variant of the tune “Money Musk,” which was composed circa 1776 by Scottish composer Daniel Dow (1732–1783). (It is also known as “Sir Archibald Grant of Moneymusk’s Reel.”) This recording features an addition, in the form of a fast march, to the original tune. The third section may have its origins in an old French song, but it is not played with the rest of the tune today. The harmonium provides a more sustained sound than the piano that would eventually replace it. This recording was made by Acadian historian and folklorist Georges Arsenault from P.E.I. [MFo]

CD1 TRACK 18

La Marmotteuse Eddy Arsenault Luc Lacourcière Collection, Archives de folklore et d’ethnologie de l’Université Laval, 1958. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF LA VOIX ACADIENNE

fine step dancer, singer, harmonium and harmonica player. Her music inspired the internationally acclaimed Acadian group Barachois (1995–2003). Accompanying Delphine on this track is her sister, Zélie-Anne (b.1922), also a well-known fiddler.

COURTESY OF GEORGES ARSENAULT

Both of the tunes making up this medley, “Lad O’Beirne” and “Dublin Porter,” are Irish in origin. Kenny’s fiddling is characterized by strong accents and short bow strokes. Kevin’s piano accompaniment is characteristic of a contemporary Cape Breton piano style. He uses considerable syncopation, a wide range of the keyboard, and a walking bass line in the left hand. Above the cheers and shouts of encouragement from the crowd, we can hear the caller giving directions to the dancers. [SJ, MFo]

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Eddy (Alfred à Arcade à Joe Mocauque) Arsenault (b.1921) is a retired lobster fisherman who resides in Saint-Chrysostome, Prince County. He is widely regarded as the most influential fiddler in la région Évangéline. Eddy has performed on several commercial recordings, including Eddy Arsenault—Egmont Baie (1981), Piling on the bois sec (1993), and with his family on Party Acadien (1995). Eddy was strongly influenced by the playing of Cape Breton fiddlers Winston “Scotty” Fitzgerald and Angus Chisholm, whom he heard on the radio and on records. Eddy’s repertoire of Scottish strathspeys and jigs, smooth bowing style (created by long bows and slurs) and use of

ornamentation set him apart from other Acadian fiddlers in la région Évangéline, who tend to favour reels and marches. Like that of many older Acadian fiddlers, Eddy’s rhythmic, driving fiddling pulls step dancers to the floor; this style is affectionately referred to as “piling on the bois sec” (dry wood). Eddy has received numerous awards for his music, including the East Coast Music Association’s Stompin’ Tom Award in 1999 and the inaugural Atlantic Fiddlers’ Jamboree Golden Fiddle Award in 2003 for his contribution to preserving Acadian culture. This recording was made on August 14, 1958, in the parish of Baie Egmont, when Eddy was thirty-seven years old. Although he performs solo on this track, Eddy is often accompanied on guitar by his younger brother, Amand. “La Marmotteuse,” also known as “La Disputeuse” and “The Growling Old Man and Cackling Old Woman,” is likely an old Québécois reel (see CD 2, Track 11 for a version by Métis fiddler, Wilf Laderoute) and it is a favourite among Acadian fiddlers on the Island. [MFo]

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CD1 TRACK 19

La tune à grand-père Éloi Leblanc (Laura Boudreau, piano) Jean Péronnet Collection, Centre d’études

COURTESY OF CENTRE D’ÉTUDES ACADIENNES

acadiennes, 1968. Used by permission.

Éloi Leblanc (1918–1978) was born in Saint-Joseph, in the Memramcook Valley, into a musical family in which both his grandfather and uncle, Théotime à Six-pouces, were wellknown fiddlers; Éloi picked up the fiddle when he was eight years old. He played with Bob White and The Canadian Plough Boys for two years, on the radio show Maritime Farmers for four years, with Kidd Baker and The Pine Ridge Mountain Boys in Kitchener, Ontario for twelve years, and with Jerry Myers from Moncton. Éloi often played for events in his community, earning the nickname “Fiddlin’ Cy.” He composed several reels and jigs, including the “Anne Marie Reel,”

which was often played by Don Messer, and other favourites such as the “Beaumont Reel” and “Winter Reel.” In 1977, he recorded his only album, Éloi and His Fiddle (Acadian Productions LPA-101), and in 2002, he was inducted into the New Brunswick Country Music Hall of Fame. Éloi was posthumously awarded the East Coast Music Association’s Stompin’ Tom Award in 1997. 109 This recording was made by Jean Péronnet at Éloi’s home in 1968. Éloi learned “La tune à grand-père” from his maternal grandfather, a fiddler named Narcisse à John. On this track Éloi is accompanied by his sister, Laura Boudreau, who frequently accompanied him on piano. We ���������������� hear his frequent use of double stops (particularly in part B), and the smooth, rhythmic style for which he was known, created by the regular use of two-note slurs and up-bow accents. [MFo]   CD1 TRACK 20

La parenté Yvon Babin (Delphis Richard, guitar) Robert Richard Collection, Centre d’études acadiennes, 1992. Used by permission.

This version of “La parenté” features Acadian accordionist Yvon Babin (b.1949) of Rosaireville, who pres-

ently lives in Saint-Ignace, a small community in New Brunswick. The accordion is the second most popular instrument in the region, behind the fiddle. Yvon is a self-taught accordionist from a musical family; his father, Placide, was an accordionist and his grandfather, Honoré, played the fiddle. They were major influences for Yvon, as were older local fiddlers such as Dollard Thébeau (whose influences included Don Messer, Winston ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald, and Ned Landry). Yvon also plays acoustic guitar, mouth organ, wooden spoons, and “feet” (seated foot-tapping). He started playing accordion in his early adolescence, and first played for square dances when he was about twelve years old. From 1965 to 1972, off and on, Yvon played guitar in the rock band The Hawks, covering music from such well-known groups as Creedence Clearwater Revival and Three Dog Night.Yvon also played with the traditional French band Calumet Acadien (originally Calumet) from 1985 to 1997, performing at the Pays de la Sagouine, the 1994 Congrès mondial acadien (World Acadian Congress), and in many other festivals, television shows, and concerts throughout the Maritimes. Yvon played the guitar, drums and accordion in the house band of the Richibucto bar-restaurant La Coquille from 1972 to 1976 and

through the 1980s he organized many “soirées amateurs” (amateur musical evenings) and “frolics” (gatherings) in Saint-Ignace. COURTESY OF CENTRE D’ÉTUDES ACADIENNES

New Brunswick

This recording was made by Robert Richard at a square dance at the Saint-Ignace Club de l’âge d’or (Senior Citizens’ Club) in January 1992. As part of a rotation of musicians who played for square dances, Yvon and Delphis accompanied each other from the mid-to-late 1970s until 2002 or 2003. The tune “La parenté” was written by J.P. Fillion and was recorded by the well-known Quebec group La Bottine Souriante for their 1989 album Tout comme au jour de l’An. Since its founding in 1976, La Bottine Souriante has been a source of inspiration for Yvon. In this recording, he has interpreted the tune to suit the regional Acadian style, using fewer notes than le style double accordion technique that is used by some Québécois musicians, which doubles notes to create a constant eighth note rhythm. [MFo]

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Loggieville Two-step Matilda Murdoch (Marg Scott, piano; Owen Murdoch, acoustic guitar; Ed Carbonell, acoustic bass fiddle; Buster Brown, drums) Matilda Murdoch Plays Some of her Own, Volume 1. WRC1-743, ca. 1970. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF MARY JANE KINGSTON

 

Matilda Murdoch was born in 1920 in Loggieville, New Brunswick where she has lived her entire life. When she was nine years old, her father brought home a fiddle, hoping that one of his children would learn how to play. Matilda took up the challenge. Although her father could only tune the fiddle, Matilda soon picked up her first tune, “Little Brown Jug,” by ear. Matilda continued to learn through formal lessons, which enabled her to read music; she picked up new tunes from notation and by listening to old cylinder recordings. It was uncommon for women to play

the fiddle at that time; she says that girls were more likely to play the piano or harp. Matilda and her four siblings formed “Kelly’s Orchestra,” playing at concerts, old time square dances, and “home style” kitchen parties. Quadrilles, lancers, polkas, and waltzes are among the “ordinary tunes” that Matilda remembers playing for dancers at the time.110  Matilda recorded two LPs of step dancing medleys for Ottawa Valley step dance teacher, Buster Brown. She remembers that it was a challenge to learn to move from one tune type into another at the correct time and tempo since she was used to playing straight reels or straight jigs for step dancers in New Brunswick. Ottawa Valley step dancers commonly dance thirty-two bars of a clog (4/4), forty-eight bars of a jig (6/8), and ninetysix bars of a reel (2/4), moving smoothly from one tune to the next without stopping. Taken from the first of her two LPs, “Loggieville Two-step” is a popular Downeast dance tune for couples in Eastern Canada. (Ottawa Valley step dancers also dance to two-steps [2/4] and waltz clogs [3/4], although less commonly than the clog, jig, and reel medley.) This tune is one of over two hundred that Matilda has composed. [AI, SJ]

CD1 TRACK 22

Zip Coon Curtis Hicks (Bessie Hicks, Hawaiian guitar; Ivan Hicks, mandolin) Curtis Hicks:  Portrait of an Old-time Fiddler. WRCI-1869, 1981. Used by permission.  

COURTESY OF IVAN HICKS

CD1 TRACK 21

Born in Midgic, New Brunswick, Curtis Hicks (1915–1982) heard his first fiddle at the age of five when his parents took him to a nearby house dance. After trying unsuccessfully to make his own instrument out of a shingle and rabbit wire, he had to wait until he was seventeen before he was able to buy his first fiddle for five dollars. He attended as many house parties and dances as he could to learn how to play. Within a couple of years he was playing at local house dances and in the lumber camps after a long day’s work. He continued to play at community events during his thirty-seven years as a locomotive engineer for the Canadian National

Railway. Curtis met his wife Bessie at a house dance in 1934. In the fall of 1937, the same year they were married, Curtis bought Bessie a Hawaiian guitar, which she taught herself to play, and soon she was accompanying her husband. Their son Ivan (b.1940) learned to play guitar, mandolin and fiddle at an early age and began playing with his parents at parties and dances. Ivan and his wife Vivian, who plays piano and guitar, have travelled throughout North America performing, teaching, and judging fiddle contests. On this track Bessie plays the distinctive sliding accompaniment of the Hawaiian guitar with Curtis’s rendition of “Zip Coon.”  According to Vivian Hicks, although a few people played Hawaiian guitar in the area at the time, it was not a common accompanying instrument for old-time fiddle music. “Zip Coon” is the name of a popular minstrel tune sung to the melody of “Turkey in the Straw” and first performed in New York City in 1834.111 The relationship between the minstrel tune and the fiddle tune played by Curtis is unknown. Ivan says that his father would have learned the tune locally, as it was a popular square dance tune in New Brunswick in the early to mid-twentieth century. The track begins with a conversation between Curtis and Ivan Hicks. [SJ]

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CD1 TRACK 23

Sussex Avenue Fiddlers Two-step The Sussex Avenue Fiddlers (Vivian Hicks, piano; Tom Johnson, bass; Del Wheaton, guitar) Sussex Avenue Fiddlers 20th Anniversary. SAF 20, 1998. Used by permission.

One of the first fiddle groups in New Brunswick, the Sussex Avenue Fiddlers originated in 1978 when a few fiddlers started meeting at the home of Ivan and Vivian Hicks in Riverview. The group began to grow after being asked to play at community events, and although they have toured in the United States and Eastern Canada,

their focus remains on local community service. The group was originally for adult fiddlers, but a decision to include younger fiddlers made it an important context for the development of many of New Brunswick’s top young fiddlers.112 Many members of the group have written original tunes, twenty-five of which were published in a tunebook entitled Sussex Avenue Fiddlers Original Compositions (1995). The “Sussex Avenue Fiddlers Twostep,” a lively and popular dance tune in the Downeast repertoire, was written by Ivan Hicks. It was recorded live by the group at a concert marking their twentieth anniversary. A 2008 double CD marked their thirtieth. [SJ]

Sussex Avenue Fiddlers in 2008. (Courtesy of Ivan Hicks)

Quebec The history of traditional music in Quebec is entwined with its history of dance. French settlement took place at the same time that the violin was emerging as western Europe’s pre-eminent dance music instrument from countryside to city and from tavern to court. From the very first, the violin was the roi de la danse in Quebec, with the jew’s harp filling in when no fiddle was available. Dancing to fiddles occurred as early as 1645, but little is known about the music or dances themselves; the most important documentary sources for seventeenth century New France are accounts of Jesuit missionaries, and their terse reports on dancing and music are more disapproving than descriptive. By the early 1700s, social dancing in New France had become an integral feature of festive gatherings in country and city alike. Dances and dance music reflected the trends in Parisian society, where contredanses imported from England alternated with French cotillons and minuets. Despite being at each other’s geopolitical throats, eighteenth century England and France maintained a free-trade zone for music and dance, exchanging and borrowing steps, figures, and tunes. Dancing and music continued to flourish when the British conquered New France in 1759. Like their predecessors, the new British administrators held balls and entertainments for the elite, where familiar dances mingled with new cotillons and country dances, including Scottish progressive longways forms like “La Belle Catherine” and the “Spandy.” Other dances such as the Scotch reel and solo English hornpipe were also performed.The British regimental bands, which often provided music for these assemblies, introduced the jigs, reels, and hornpipes from England, Ireland, and Scotland. In the early 1800s, urban Quebec society was introduced to the quadrille, which originated in France and became all the rage in England following the end

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brought new influences; for example, step dancing was brought to Quebec by British immigrants where it gradually transformed throughout the nineteenth century into what is now known in Quebec as la gigue.113 The musicians absorbed some, but not all, of the then-popular British Isles dance music genres; reels and hornpipes were most readily integrated, 6/8 jigs ran a distant second, and 9/8 slip jigs barely gained a toe-hold (strathspeys did not register at all). Quebec fiddlers gradually reworked these tunes into more culturally consonant settings, resulting in a distinctly French Canadian style of playing. By the mid1800s, many fiddlers had begun to use percussive foot-tapping when playing duple-meter dance music, a trait which quickly spread and is now emblematic of French Canadian dance Lumbermen, 1943. “In the scalers’ bunk-house at Camp Pensive men music. relax at night amongst their boots, socks and mitts hung up to dry. In the latRomeo Clement of Farley, Que. plays for them until 10 o’clock ‘lights ter half of the out.’” (Photo by Ronny Jaques. Courtesy of the National Film Board of the Napoleonic wars. Quadrilles became a durable part of the community dance repertoire in the St. Lawrence Valley, and over time the figures and related tunes took on a distinctly regional character. In the Quebec City and Montreal regions, fiddlers adopted some of the European opera and musical theatre melodies originally associated with these dances; rural fiddlers tended to recycle familiar tunes to fit the needs of the dance.   Thousands of immigrants from England, Ireland, and Scotland also

Quebec.

of Canada, Library and Archives Canada, PA-204120)

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grams). In the 1970s, traditional music and dance in Quebec experienced resurgence as a symbol of cultural pride and separatist political aspirations. The bubble of enthusiasm burst after the 1980 “sovereignty association” referendum (the first referendum held in Quebec regarding Quebec’s possible secession from Canada), but the music played on. The 1980s saw the blossoming of the diatonic button accordion, heralded by an increase in fine instrument building and in numbers of talented composers and virtuoso players. Traditional singing, story-telling, music, and dancing now thrive in Quebec with many new players, audiences, and venues.114 [LO]    

factory while moonlighting with several musical ensembles. Relocating to Cornwall, Ontario in 1924, he visited Quebec regularly, where he recorded some sixty tunes on the Victor label. In this recording he is heard with an unidentified pianist and a jew’s harp player who may be Henri Lacroix, better known for his skillful harmonica playing.

CD1 TRACK 24

“La Ronfleuse” (“The Snoring Woman”), also called “La Grondeuse” (“The Scolding Woman”), is a step dance tune played in many settings in Quebec, Franco-American New England, and western French Canadian settlements. Like the betterknown “Grande gigue simple,” “La Ronfleuse” is most often played in D major with A D A E tuning and consists of short sections in duple and/ or triple meter. Its descriptive titles refer to the extensive use of the open A-string drone in the lowest part. In addition to the commonly-played first two sections of Mr. Boulay’s three-part

La Ronfleuse Arthur-Joseph Boulay (accompanying musicians unknown) Victor 264648, 1929. Used by permission.  

Arthur-Joseph Boulay (1883–1948) is credited with Quebec’s earliest commercial fiddle recording, on the Victor label in 1922. He spent his first thirty years in New Hampshire, taking up the fiddle when he was ten years old and, after several years of lessons, joining a local dance band. After immigrating to Saint-Stanislas, Quebec in 1913, he worked at a bakery and a cheese

setting, some fiddlers add one or two “high” sections, ending with a “bridge” which returns the melody to the lower octave. There are no known European antecedents. [LO]   CD1 TRACK 25

Reel de Sherbrooke Les Montagnards Laurentiens Personal Collection of Éric Favreau, ca. 1940s. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF THÉRÈSE LABBÉ

1800s, couple dances (such as waltzes, galops, and polkas) were popular on both sides of the Atlantic. Quebec’s Catholic clergy vigorously opposed couple dances and those who played for them, one reason why so few of these tunes appear in the repertories of fiddlers from this period. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, two new melody instruments appeared: diatonic accordions and harmonicas. Pump organs and pianos also began to be used occasionally as back-up. For the most part, however, solo fiddle reigned at dances. Tunes were learned by ear with no reference to printed settings, contributing to the development of highly individualized, formally unconventional tune settings. Dances were generally done without prompting, with dancers listening to the beat rather than the phrase. Commercial recording in Quebec began in the 1920s. Around the same time, the fiddle began to lose its place as Quebec’s pre-eminent dance music instrument. Fiddlers simply could not adapt to the increasingly different music and orchestrations of the new popular dances. Older dance forms persisted in many communities, however, and fiddlers were in demand for the set carré (a square dance with called instructions brought to Quebec in the early 1900s by Franco-Americans and popularized on radio “barn dance” pro-

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Radio “barn dance” bands were immensely popular in Quebec from the mid-1920s through the late 1950s, offering “down home” entertainment in a variety show or vaudeville format. Best known of these bands was the Montagnards Laurentiens, who broadcast from Quebec City every Saturday night from 1931 to 1962, reaching huge audiences throughout eastern Quebec as well as in the Montreal region in later years. Starting as a fourpiece cowboy music/fiddle band, they progressively incorporated instrumentation and harmonizations from swing-band music of the day. By the 1940s they had developed a distinctive sound which included piano, acoustic bass, and accordion, with hot licks on clarinet or saxophone from musical director Jean-Paul Beaulieu. Although they made no commercial recordings, the Montagnards profoundly influ-

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enced both the orchestration and style of many traditional Quebec musicians. On this track, taken from a radio broadcast, we hear them play a tune known variously as “Reel de Sherbrooke,” “Reel de St-Denis,” and “Reel de Vaudreuil.”  Now considered to be “French Canadian,” this tune appears to be a pairing of the first strain of the hornpipe “The Navvie on the Line” and the second strain of “Blue Bell Polka,” both popular nineteenthcentury British Isles dance melodies. We pick up the recording at the end of some standard radio patter: “Jouons donc les gars, ça va changer les idées de tout l’monde.” [LO]

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CD1 TRACK 26

Le Brandy des Vaillaincourt Louis “Pitou” Boudreault Louis ‘Pitou’ Boudreault, violoneux. Portrait du vieux Kébec series, vol. 2. Le Tamanoir OP-219, 1974.  

Louis “Pitou” Boudreault (1905–1988) spent most of his life in Chicoutimi where he was a carpenter by trade. An immensely gifted fiddler, he was heir to a rich legacy of family music, social dance, and related customs dating back at least to the latter 1800s. That music formed the core of his repertoire; he also learned regional tunes and a dozen or so melodies from

radio, recordings, and sheet music. In addition, he was a skillful composer. Although the family dances and musical gatherings of his youth ended by the time he reached adulthood, Mr. Boudreault cherished those experiences and for some forty years he played his family tunes at home by himself as a way to evoke the world of his childhood. In the 1970s, he became an important figure in Quebec’s folk music revival.Taking to the stage and recording studio in his late sixties, he proved to be not just a great player but an extraordinary raconteur whose storytelling put each tune into context and reconnected a younger generation to an all but forgotten cultural past.

in England as “Drops of Brandy” and in Scotland as “Strip the Willow.” “Le Brandy” is widely played in Quebec as well as in Métis communities of central-Western Canada (see notes for Reg Bouvette in Manitoba). Mr. Boudreault’s rendition is distinguished by its percussive energy, rock-steady tempo, the addition of several variations, and a finely wrought bowing style which overlays the melody with complex cross-rhythms. This track begins just as Mr. Boudreault finishes explaining the set of variations that have been passed on through his family: “J’vais vous donner une idée de ce que c’était l’brandy des Vaillancourt.” [LO]

COURTESY OF PHIL & VIVIAN WILLIAMS, VOYAGER RECORDINGS

CD1 TRACK 27

Le Quadrille des Lanciers, 1e partie: “La Rencontre des Dames.” Jules Verret (Lise Verret, piano) La famille Verret, Volume 1. Philo 2007, 1974. Courtesy of New Rounder LLC. Used by arrangement with Concord Music Group,

Les Montagnards Lauretiens. (Courtesy of Adélard Thomassin)

“Le Brandy” is a 3/2 metre reworking of the British Isles 9/8 metre tune “Drops of Brandy,” part of a large family of loosely related melodies whose earliest printed settings appeared in London in the early 1700s. In Quebec, “Le Brandy” is associated with a longways dance known

Inc.

Fiddler Jules Verret (1916–1984) of Lac St-Charles grew up hearing his father, accordionist Jean-Baptiste, and family friend, fiddler Pierre Verret, play a huge repertory of dance music, primarily nineteenth-century

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quadrille tunes, many of which Pierre got from Charlesbourg fiddler Charles Parent. Jules dedicated himself to mastering this legacy of some five hundred melodies. As a young man, he played for local dances, often with his equally talented brother, accordionist Yves Verret. From his midthirties on, Jules played only at home; a construction worker by trade with thirteen children to support, he couldn’t afford to miss a single day’s employment. His mastery of a huge repertoire of distinctively regional, technically challenging, highly ornamented tunes earned him universal admiration among his peers, and inspired both his son and grandson to perpetuate the family dynasty.

potpourris of late eighteenth-century French contredanses and cotillons set to melodies from French and English popular standards of the day. In Lac St-Charles, the traditional dance repertoire includes a six-part French quadrille as well as English forms such as the Lancers and Caledonia. Here Jules plays a two-part variant of “La Dorset,” an early nineteenthcentury three-part melody by Paolo Spagnoletti (1773–1834), which appears in early British Isles sheet music settings. [LO]

CD1 TRACK 28

La belle époque Marcel Messervier (Marcel Messervier, Jr., piano) Accordéons diatoniques, musiciens

Quadrilles arrived in Quebec around 1810 and were integrated into community dance repertories from Portneuf to the mouth of the Saguenay and on the St. Lawrence’s south shore from Lotbinière to Gaspésie. These multi-part group dances were simply

patrimoine vivant. TB-002-CD, 1995. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF THE MESSERVIER FAMILY

COURTESY OF JEAN-MARIE VERRET

du Québec. Centre de valorisation du

Marcel Messervier (b.1934) of Montmagny is a living legend in

Quebec for his skills as a diatonic accordion builder, player, and composer. Following his father Joseph’s example, he took up accordion at the age of five and three years later made his first instrument. At ten, he was already a sought-after accordionist and on his way to becoming an accomplished drummer, saxophonist, guitarist, and fiddler. At the family-operated music store which he runs with his brother Raymond, Marcel produces handmade one- and two-row accordions, for which there is always a long waiting list. He also performs locally with a family band, l’Orchestre Messervier. Although Marcel has never made a solo album, his many compositions, inspired by the playing of Gérard Lajoie, Les Montagnards Laurentiens, Alfred Montmarquette, Jos Bouchard, Don Messer,Théodore Duguay, and Edmond Pariseau, are widely played in Quebec. Here he plays one of his compositions, accompanied by his son Marcel Jr., a talented pianist and composer. Marcel’s energetic accordion playing, with its dense ornamentation, lively syncopated rhythms, and rock-steady tempo, is greatly admired by accordionists across the province. [LO]

CD1 TRACK 29

Tautirut performance Cariola Canadian Museum of Civilization, IVB-46T, Asen Balikci Collection, 1958. Identified in CMC catalogue as “Violon Esquimau.” Used by permission.

Since at least 1894,115 visitors to Baffin Island and Nunavik (Northern Quebec) Inuit communities have described an Inuit-made violin that they assumed was an imitation of instruments introduced by European whalers. Unlike the western violin, however, the tautirut (also called the tautik in some Nunavik communities) is a slightly tapered, rectangular box ranging from twenty to twenty-six inches in length, about five inches at its widest end, and two to five inches in depth.116 Stretched lengthwise over an arched bridge, atop the instrument’s body, are between one and three strings117 of twisted sinew or trade twine.118  The tautirut is set across the lap of the seated performers or, in some instances, on a table. The accompanying bow is made of a slim piece of wood, pulled into a D-shape by a strand of whale baleen fixed to each end.119 The Moravian missionary, Matthias Warmow, wrote that one tautirut maker used strands of his wife’s hair to string the bow.120  

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In their essay “Whence and When the ‘Eskimo Fiddle’?” Eugene Arima and Magnús Einarsson conclude that the tautirut was most likely an outcome of encounters between Inuit and Orcadians from the north of Scotland who held posts for the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fur trade along the east side of Hudson Bay during the late eighteenth century.121  They speculated that being of

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Norwegian descent, the Orcadians probably had knowledge of the Norse fidla, or some similar stringed instrument, which resembles the tautirut in its box-like design and minimal number of strings.122  In fact there are several horizontally positioned, box-like string instruments in Scandinavia. Among the bowed relatives, a close resemblance is the Finnish virsikantele, an instru-

This tautirut, played by the Nunavik Inuit, consists of a box made of driftwood, to which is attached a wooden bridge, bone pegs, and three twisted sinew strings. It is held across the lap. The bow has a willow root string rather than the more common whalebone strip. This instrument was made by Peterussi and collected by Asen Balikci in Purvirnituq (Povungnituk), Quebec in 1958. (Courtesy of Canadian Museum of Civilization: IV-B-648 a-c, S2001-2980)

ment that was used only in northern Finland to accompany psalms.123 The recording on this CD set was made by anthropologist and documentary film maker Asen Balikci in 1958 in Povungnituk [sic] in Northern Quebec (Nunavik). The performer is named as “Cariola, the spouse of Tuluak, aged 38.”  The tune is not identified. Cariola plays the lowest of the three strings as a drone note but stops the highest one

while also crossing the middle one to produce the tune. The tempo is very fast and the timbre of the thick sinew strings is rough. While the tautirut seems to be rare in the late twentieth century, a recording of a song entitled “Now go and clean the seal skin” performed by Sarah Airo was made by University of Montreal researchers in the 1970s and issued on UNESCO’s Musical Sources series.124 [BD, MFi]

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Ontario

  Fiddling in Ontario, as characterized by style, practice, and venue, is highly diverse. It includes the Scottish-derived repertoire of the James Bay Cree;125 the unique arrangements of traditional tunes by Métis fiddlers in Northern Ontario;126 culturally distinct regions such as the Ottawa Valley;127 sessions in urban centres for Irish, Cape Breton, French Canadian, and old-time styles; fiddle clubs featuring old-time tunes and dancing in rural communities;128 and the Ontario fiddle and step dancing contest circuit that draws competitors from throughout southern Ontario.129 In some cases, such as fiddle clubs and fiddle contests, the musicians and audiences overlap; in others, there is little communication between participants. Fiddling in Ontario is unique in Canada, at least since the latter half of the twentieth century, because of the proliferation of contests. While many other provinces have or had fiddle contests, there are more contests in Ontario and the number of competitors, and particularly young competitors, is much higher. Ontario is home to the Canadian Open Fiddle Championships, held annually in Shelburne since 1951, and the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddling Championship, held annually in Nepean since 1990, both of which have brought fiddlers together from across the country to socialize and share tunes. Contests cement the strong relationship between fiddling and step dancing in the province. Almost all of them include classes for both fiddling and step dancing, and many competitors perform both. Some repertoire and tempo are no doubt influenced by dancers, while repertoire and ornamentation introduced by fiddlers reciprocally influence the rhythms and composition of steps. The most popular style of step dancing in Ontario is called the Ottawa Valley style.This style emerged from the lumber camps of the OttawaValley as an amal-

Ontario.

gamation of English, Irish, Scottish, French Canadian, and Algonquian styles of percussive dance performed in the camps. Donnie Gilchrist (1925–1984) is credited with ����� popularizing step dancing throughout the Ottawa Valley and beyond, earning the title “Father of Canadian Step Dancing.” Donnie performed as a

tap dancer for Canadian soldiers abroad during World War Two and as a step dancer with the traditional dance troupe from Quebec, Les Feux Follets, during the 1960s. This group, which included Jean Carignan (fiddle), Philippe Bruneau (accordion), Gilles Losier (piano), and sometimes Graham Townsend (fiddle) was fund-

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fill air time with local entertainment during the economic slump of the late 1920s and 1930s, the CKNX Barn Dance began to draw crowds on the street who watched the show through the front window of the studio. By 1938, the show was being broadcast from locations throughout westcentral Ontario, and became known as “Canada’s Largest Travelling Barn Dance.” It went off the air in 1963, but has been revived several times as a live show. For fiddlers such as Mel Lavigne, Al Cherny, and Lucky Ambeault, appearing on the show was a big step in building their musical careers. [SJ]

CD1 TRACK 30

Ridin' the Fiddle Mel Lavigne (Jack Kingston, guitar; other accompanying musicians unknown)

twelve days. Twelve dollars was a lot of money in 1929, but he managed to scratch together the money and scratch out some tunes within the twelve-day period. Mel had his fiddle. He won his first fiddle contest at the Midland Fall Fair just a couple of months later. During World War Two, Mel served overseas as a musical entertainer to the troops, playing fiddle, saxophone and piano. He joined the CKNX Barn Dance Gang in August 1950, had his own radio show on which he played with his band, the Blue Water Boys, and his own television show called Country Junction which ran for seven years. Mel gained fame as the first winner of the Canadian Open Fiddle Championship in 1951 and 1952; he also played at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and at the Kentucky State Fair in Louisville in 1952. 

the recording session in Montreal where he was nicknamed “King” (see notes about King Ganam of Saskatchewan). Mel Lavigne recorded this tune in the 1950s on acetate disc, although it was never released. (“Acetates were recordings that were cut directly to a disc live, on the spot. They are truly one-of-akind items and were used extensively before the widespread acceptance There is lots of opof audiotape.”133) �������������������� portunity for melodic and bowing variations in this three-part tune, making it good for shows. Typical of show tune renditions in this era, Mel plays through the tune—A B C A— at moderate tempo, and then after a short guitar break, plays it again at a faster tempo. The exaggerated slow ending adds humour to the performance. [SJ]  

Collection of Lynn Russwurm, ca. 1950. Used by permission.

According to his son-in-law, Bill Waters, Mel Lavigne (1917–1994) fell in love with his neighbour’s fiddle when he was twelve years old. Only after much persuasion, Mel convinced the neighbour to sell his fiddle on two conditions. First, Mel had to come up with twelve dollars to pay for it, and second, he had to learn to play the fiddle in just

CD1 TRACK 31 COURTESY OF THE LAVIGNE FAMILY

ed by the Canadian Department of the Secretary of State and performed all over North America and Europe as cultural ambassadors for Canada.130 Today’s Ottawa Valley step dancing, evolving at a fast pace through competitions, is quite different from the earlier styles. Fiddling and dancing have a close relationship in other communities within the province as well, including old time social dancing at fiddle clubs, contra dancing in urban centres, and step dancing and square sets at Cape Breton “sessions,” where fiddlers and audience from that Maritime island find a home away from home in Ontario. Ontario fiddling was also influenced by the CKNX Barn Dance, a radio show broadcast on Saturday nights between 1937 and 1963 from CKNX in Wingham. It was one of the earliest radio stations in southwestern Ontario, founded in February 1926 by W.T. “Doc” Cruikshank.131 There were a number of similar radio and television “barn dance” shows across Canada, for example, Cross Canada Barndance, a compilation of various country music acts taped in different parts of Canada that was broadcast on CTV’s first season, 1961–1962.132 These were all modelled on barn dances broadcast in the United States during the 1920s. CKNX Barn Dance was the longest-lived of all of them. Originally designed to

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Tico-tico Matt de Florio (Ron Sherman, piano; Al Harris, guitar; Donnie Johnson, trumpet; John Weine, guitar; Percy Curtis, bass fiddle; Cliff McKay, clarinet) CBC Video Archive, 1953. Courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

 “Ridin' the Fiddle” is a popular show tune written by King Ganam. It was first recorded by Ganam at

Matt de Florio (1922–2004) began taking accordion lessons in his early

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CD1 TRACK 32

Grand Valley Breakdown Al Cherny, Clifford “Lucky” Ambeault, and Earl Mitton (Phyllis McDowell, piano; Russ McDowell, guitar) Home recording by Harry Parker, in possession of Doug McNaughton, 1957.

COURTESY OF THE DE FLORIO FAMILY

Used by permission.

This performance of “Ticotico” is taken from the first Holiday Ranch episode, broadcast on July 20, 1953. The tune is a Brazilian choro (a Brazilian popular music

“House parties” featuring fiddling and dancing are most often associated with the east coast, but they were (and still are) popular throughout Canada. This track was recorded at a house party in Shelburne, Ontario the evening before the Canadian Old-time Fiddle Contest in 1957, and features three competitors at that year’s contest:  Al Cherny, Earl Mitton, and Clifford “Lucky” Ambeault. The tape was recorded by Harry Parker,

a fiddle enthusiast who owned a music store in Owen Sound, on one of the first tape machines available. Harry introduces the musicians and adds commentary on some of the tracks.

Although originally from Medicine Hat, Alberta where he studied classical violin for four and a half years and played with the cowboy band, Sons of the Saddle, Al Cherny (1932–1989) moved to Ontario in 1952 to become the house fiddler for the CKNX Barn Dance, where he played for seven years. He played on CBC’s Country Hoedown from 1963 to 1965, and on the Tommy Hunter Show from 1965 until his death in 1989. Al was a regular competitor in the early years of the Canadian Open Fiddle Contest, winning the Novelty class (a class where contestants could play show tunes, such as “Mockingbird” and “Orange Blossom Special” or demonstrate trick fiddling, such as

playing behind the back or while turning summersaults) in 1959, 1960 and 1961, and the Open class (before age categories were introduced in 1959—the first being 21 and under—everyone played in the Open class) in 1960 and 1961. EARL MITTON, COURTESY OF PHYLLIS MITTON

genre originating in nineteenthcentury Rio de Janeiro) written in 1917 by Zequinha de Abreu, and made popular by Carmen Miranda in Copacabana in 1947. Although it may seem far removed from the usual Canadian fiddle and accordion fare, it is not uncommon to hear this tune played by old-time fiddlers in shows and on recordings as a popular “novelty” tune. [SJ]

AL CHERNY, COURTESY OF LYNN RUSSWURM

teens, but it wasn’t until a trip to New York in the early 1940s, where he had the opportunity to meet two accordion greats, Pietro Diero and Charles Magnante, that he was inspired to pursue a career in music. Matt had regular engagements in Toronto at the Old Mill restaurant, the Imperial Room at the Royal York Hotel, and the Horseshoe Tavern. He also played on many CBC Radio shows���������������� , and was a regular on the CBC Television series, Holiday Ranch. As well as accompanying guest musicians on the show, Matt played solos and wrote all his own arrangements. In 1958, Matt started his own accordion business in Toronto, a business now owned and operated by his son and grandson.

Earl Mitton (1926–1991) started fiddling at the age of ten in his hometown of Moncton, New Brunswick. Largely self-taught, Earl learned to read music by taking clarinet lessons. He placed in the top three in Shelburne in 1957 and 1958. He also appeared as a guest on Don Messer’s TV and radio shows in the late 1950s. Earl had his own TV show on CHSJ-TV in Saint John for three years and broadcast live on Saturday evenings on CFNB Radio in Fredericton for ten years. He composed a number of tunes, including the still popular “Mitton’s Breakdown” and “Carleton County Hornpipe.”134 Clifford “Lucky” Ambeault

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“Grand Valley Breakdown” was composed by Cec McEachern, a fiddler and guitarist who played with Don Messer for a number of years. Grand Valley is a small community just south of Shelburne. Although not so familiar to younger fiddlers now, this tune was popular in the old-time repertoire in Ontario during the 1950s and 1960s. [SJ]

Buck Fever Rag Reg Hill and the Melodiers (Mac Beattie, washboard; other accompanying musicians unknown) Ottawa Valley Hoedown. Banff SBS-5190, ca. 1964. Used by permission.

Reg Hill (1927–1979) is one of the best-known fiddlers coming out of the Ottawa Valley. He learned to fiddle from his mother (making him one of the musicians on this CD set who learned to play from an older female member of the family). He also played drums, saxophone and piano. Reg played for his first square dance at age fifteen. Soon afterwards, he formed his own big band, called Reg Hill and the Swingsters, who were kept busy playing in local dance venues. In 1954 he started playing with Mac Beattie (1916–1982) and the Melodiers. This group played regularly on CHOV Radio in Pembroke and CFRA and then CKOY stations in Ottawa, as well as

numerous guest appearances on Don Messer’s Jublilee. The lyrics of their songs and locally-composed repertoire created a strong sense of Ottawa Valley identity through their live and radio performances. “Buck Fever Rag,” written by Reg, is a well-known tune from the Ottawa Valley. In this recording, Reg begins with what most fiddlers now use as the B part of the tune. The tune is a popular choice for group step dancing in the Ottawa Valley tradition because of the “breaks” in the B part that provide dancers with an opportunity to create interesting percussive rhythms with their feet. (Although Ottawa Valley step dancing is primarily performed as a solo dance, three to five dancers can perform together, using complex choreography, in the group category of the fiddle and step dancing contests that are so popular in this province; group step dancing—sometimes with up to sixteen dancers—is also popular as entertainment.) On this recording we hear the distinctive sound of Mac Beattie’s washboard filling in the breaks with appealing rhythms. Other interesting features include the double stopping on the A parts of the tune (not commonly heard in modern renditions), as well as many variations, particularly in the B parts. [SJ] 

CD1 TRACK 34

Faded Love Eleanor and Graham Townsend (accompanying musicians unknown) CBC Radio Archive, 1982. Courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  

PHOTO BY JACK UMPLEBY COURTESY OF HERITAGE MUSIC

CD1 TRACK 33

COURTESY OF THE HILL FAMILY

“LUCKY” AMBEAULT, COURTESY OF LYNN RUSSWURM

(1929–1984), known by his stage name as “Lucky Ambos,” was born in Bathurst, New Brunswick to a musical family. He made his living as a professional musician, touring the country and western circuit for many years. He played on the CBC’s Dominion Barn Dance and Country Hoedown and won the 1955 Dominion Fiddle Championship. He was a master of fiddle, mandolin, guitar and bass fiddle, and was featured as a comedian on the CKNX Barn Dance for many years.

Hailed as “North America’s only championship fiddling team,”135 Graham and Eleanor Townsend toured the world promoting Canadian fiddling. Although he was born in Toronto, Ontario, Graham Townsend (1942–1998) grew up in the heart of the Ottawa Valley, in Buckingham, Quebec. He was surrounded by old-time fiddling and dancing from an early age. His father, Fred (1900–1981), called square dances for Don Messer for many years. Graham started to play the fiddle at age six. By age nine, he had toured with Don Messer and won the 30 and under class at the Canadian National Exhibition Fiddle Contest. He later took lessons with Irish fiddlers Tommy

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McQuestion and Billy Crawford. Graham toured with Wilf Carter, performed on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville and won the Shelburne fiddle contest in 1963, 1968, 1969, and 1970. Graham was a prolific composer and recorded many albums (over forty by 1991) for the Point, Banff, Caprice, Marathon, Rounder, Audat, Condor and Goodtime labels.136 Eleanor Townsend (1944–1998) was born in Goderich, Ontario. She studied classical violin from age eight to eighteen, but turned to fiddling at the encouragement of Al Cherny and her brother.137  Eleanor won the Ladies class at Shelburne in 1967, 1969, 1970 and 1974. At this point, she began competing in the Open class, which she won in 1979, the first woman to win the class in its almost thirty-year history. Eleanor taught fiddling, published a fiddle method book,138 made several recordings, and wrote a number of tunes. Although Graham Townsend retired from competition after winning the Shelburne competition three years in a row (1968–1970), he returned to the contest many times as a guest entertainer, often with his wife, Eleanor. They are heard on this track playing the foxtrot, “Faded Love,” at the 1982 Shelburne fiddle

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contest. It is an old fiddle tune made famous in 1950 by western swing fiddler, Bob Wills, and The Texas Playboys. The Townsends play the tune through once in unison, then take solos. Eleanor plays the A part with a number of melodic variations, using the long, smooth bow strokes that are a hallmark of her style. Graham solos on the B part of the tune, again varying the melody, using some jazz-oriented licks. On the final time through, they play in harmony. [SJ]   CD1 TRACK 35

Three Górale Tunes from Podhale, Poland: Ordinary One (zwykła) / Striking in Four (krzesana po s´tyry/ cztery) / Green (zielona).

western Ontario in the late 1970s with the formation of their own fraternal organization and cultural activities. Most of those active during this time arrived in Canada in the 1960s and 1970s, though Górale no doubt also contributed to earlier waves of Polish immigration. In addition to a distinctive dialect and material culture, Górale are distinguished by their polyphonic singing and strong fiddling traditions. Their characteristic ensemble consists of a lead first fiddler (prym), second fiddlers (sekund) of varying number, and basy (a cello-like instrument with three strings, DAD'). The prym is played here by Franek Mrowca (1922–2004), a talented fiddler from the Polish village of Stare Bystre who arrived in Toronto

in 1984 at a time when there were relatively few Górale musicians in the area. The opportunity to record this track occurred unexpectedly while Mrowca was sitting at a table with friends at a Christmas party (Opłatek) in Toronto in January 1985 waiting to play in the Górale organization’s song and dance ensemble later in the evening; it captures the spontaneity of such musical occasions. Unfortunately, it reveals less of Mrowca’s playing than that of his accompanists, thus rather distorting a balance between the parts and foregrounding the less experienced players. The basy is played by Józef Ratułowski, who normally played sekund but here took up the essential basy in the absence of its regular player. Franek Mrowca said that

(Franek Mrowca, prym; Józef Podczerwinski and others, sekund; Józef Ratułowski, basy) Collection of Louise Wrazen, 1985. Used by permission.

This track represents the musical activities of Polish Górale immigrants in Canada. Originally from the Podhale region of the Tatra Mountains of southern Poland, Górale (Highlanders, or literally, people of the hills) consolidated their growing presence in south-

Józef Podczerwinski, Józef Ratułowski, and Franek Mrowca, 1985. (Courtesy of Louise Wrazen)

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advancing age kept his fingers from playing as well as they once did, yet nonetheless took every opportunity to play in Canada “because,” as he stated, “it makes me happy.”  Since the time of this recording, a number of proficient fiddlers have arrived (in particular from the Zakopane area), bringing a more technically agile and harmonically diversified playing style that includes a wider variety of tunes and styles from related regions.  The three tunes heard on this track would normally accompany a dance for a single couple (góralski) that is characteristic of the region, and which was always featured

in performances by the Górale ensemble accompanied by these musicians. These are commonly identified by their tune type. The opening wierchowa (peak) melody is built on a ten-beat chord pattern that characterizes this body of tunes; Franek Mrowca typically referred to such a tune as zwykła (the ordinary one). The second tune is a krzesana po s´tyry/cztery (striking in four), named to reflect both its accompanying dance steps and chord pattern. This leads without break into a tune known as zielona (green), which is always played to mark the end of the dance set. [LW] 

The Prairies

  The story of fiddling in the Prairie Provinces—Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta—follows the history of early exploration, the fur trade, and cultural exchange. As a centre of early fur trade activity, and a cradle of Prairie Métis culture, it was in Manitoba that much of the blending of French, Scottish and Aboriginal music took shape into a distinctive style that spread to the rest of the Northwest, added to at every stop along the way. There are historical descriptions of dances at fur trade posts with fiddles, moccasins and drums, such as this one from York Factory in 1843: The sound of a fiddle struck upon our ears. . . On a chair, in a corner near the stove, sat a young, good-looking Indian, with a fiddle of his own making beside him. This was our Paganini, and beside him sat an Indian boy with a kettle drum, on which he tapped occasionally, as if anxious that the ball should begin.139

Peter Erasmus, a Métis interpreter and guide, describes a dance at Fort Edmonton on Christmas Day, 1856:  There was very little rest for the musicians between dances and there were plenty of fiddlers among the French Métis people from Lac Ste. Anne [located about 70 km northwest of Fort Edmonton]. Having too good a time dancing I did not offer my services that night, but later on I happened to mention to Bill that I liked playing the fiddle, and thereafter on Borwick’s insistence I had to do my share.140

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The maternal family of the Anderson brothers (featured on CD 2, Track 12), the Callihoos, were almost certainly among those early French Métis fiddlers from Lac St. Anne. Their maternal great grandfather, Michel Callihoo, was the first Chief of the Michel Band who moved to Lac St. Anne from Jasper around 1850, selecting their reserve in 1886 or 1887. They provided dried fish and wild meat (and music) to the inhabitants of Fort Edmonton. The construction of the railway brought more immigration and more fiddle styles and repertoire. The Canadian Pacific Transcontinental Railway arrived in Calgary in 1883

The Prairies.

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and the track from Calgary to Edmonton was completed in 1891. Amongst other “goods,” fiddle music and dances were shared along the rail lines. The earliest Ukrainian, Eastern European and Scandinavian immigrants began to arrive in the early to mid-1890s with their musical traditions. New forms of music took shape, unique to the Prairies, as European styles blended with popular commercial styles. Immigrants from established Eastern Canadian and American communities also brought with them their own distinct fiddle styles.  An “Old Timer’s Ball” described in the Edmonton Bulletin (Feb. 3, 1893) included an interesting

mix of dances with French, English, Scottish and Métis origins: strathspeys, cotillions, lancers, gallops [sic], waltzes, polkas, the Highland Schottische, the Duck Dance, the Red River Jig, the Reel of Eight, and the Reel of Four.141 The fiddle and fiddle dance music moved from the fur trade post, to the house party, the school house party, the barn dance, the community hall party and finally to the dance hall party. Many talented fiddlers, whose names are now forgotten, played at dances on Friday and Saturday nights, but also worked at regular jobs within the community. For some, like Andy DeJarlis (1914–1975), old-time dances were a stepping stone to professional careers on radio and television, recording and touring. Andy DeJarlis (born Andy Desjarlais) of Woodridge, Manitoba (now part of Winnipeg) was of French Métis ancestry, and was a significant composer of Canadian old-time fiddle music as well as the originator of a new commercial style. He released some thirty-three LPs between 1956 and his death in 1975. The early recordings were largely traditional tunes, many of which he learned from older Manitoba players, while the later ones were mostly original tunes. His style was a unique mixture of French, Scottish, Downeast and American influences. Much of the older Aboriginal

fiddling of the Prairies had these elements, but Andy’s smoother version of this mixture, and more regular forms, became known as the Red River style. Many tunes that he first recorded have become classics throughout Canada, widely recorded and performed; even Don Messer recorded a tribute album to him. Many important players, like Manitoba’s Reg Bouvette and Marcel Meilleur, carried on his style, and many other Métis and Aboriginal players were encouraged by his example to record, including Mel Bedard (the first to call himself “Métis” on a recording), Emile Spence, Lawrence “Teddy Boy” Houle and Cliff Maytwayashing. New technologies, like the wax cylinder record player, the gramophone, the radio, the juke box, and the television, all played a role in the development of fiddle and dance music in the west. The Missionary Oblates, who owned at least one record cutting machine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, were recording pioneers in the Edmonton area. Sunshine Records is the largest of the local record companies that grew up in the Prairies, amass������ ing an impressive catalogue of Métis, Ukrainian and country music. Some companies flourished for a time, only to fade as vinyl gave way to CDs and tastes changed. O����������������������������� ld-time dance music on accordion also has a strong presence in the

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Prairies, established through local radio and television broadcasts of live performances and favourite recordings of the audience. The broadcasts were usually of eastern European, Scottish, German and Scandinavian music, helping the accordion become the lead instrument for today’s polka band and polka party circuit in Western Canada. Many young fiddlers in northern Alberta grew up with the country opry-style stage show, modelled on the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee. The Barrhead Opry was the first, in 1983; there are now more than twenty opry-style shows within a one hundred kilometre radius of Barrhead. Although they began (like their model) for a listening audience, the opries in northern Alberta have,

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not without some controversy, begun to include dancing. At first dancers were required to be at the back of the hall; after some discussion, dancers were provided space at the front of the hall, closer to the musicians on the stage.142 A week-long�������������������� summer fiddle workshop, initiated by the Saskatchewan Cultural Exchange Society became known as the Emma Lake Fiddle Camp (1988–2005). It was a model for numerous other fiddle camps throughout Canada and the United States, providing an opportunity for fiddlers and accompanists from across the country (and beyond) to gather and share their musics in a non-competitive environment. [AL, RO, SJ, TB]

Evening concert at the Tuffnell Fiddle Camp in Saskatchewan, 2007. (Courtesy of Trent Bruner)

Manitoba CD2 TRACK 1

Red River Jig Frederick Genthon Drops of Brandy and Other Traditional Métis Tunes. Gabriel Dumont Institute, 1940. Canadian Museum of Civilization, CCFCS, Disc #346. Used by permission.

 

Frederick Genthon (1857–1941) was born in the Red River Settlement in Manitoba. For many years, he worked as a fur trader for the Hudson’s Bay Company, posted at Moose Lake. His post was particularly successful because of his fiddling skills.143 The “Red River Jig” has been called the “unofficial anthem of the Métis.”144 This track is the first known recorded version of the tune, made at CJRC Radio, Winnipeg, in 1940. Frederick was eighty-two at the time, and, according to the radio host, learned the tune from his father. His father learned it around 1842 from a Mr. Latourelle from Quebec, who called it “La Gigue du Bas-Canada.” Still well known in Quebec where it is associated with step dancing, it is generally a more regular 6/4 tune in that province.145  It has not been traced back to any Scottish source so far, although 6/4 tunes do exist

in older Scottish repertoire and the dance steps have definite Scottish connections.146  Not a “jig” at all, it takes its English name from the French, where “gigue” refers to step dancing.147   “Jigging” is the term for the percussive dance of Métis and Aboriginal cultures of the western Prairies; it includes both solo performance and stepping during group dances. Jigging in Manitoba can be divided roughly into two larger stylistic areas: the south and the north. In the south, dancers, who usually wear hard-soled shoes, perform with an erect posture and little movement in the upper body, including arms. When dancing (particularly to the “Red River Jig”) dancers alternate between a basic step on the A part and fancier steps on the B part of the tune. It is important in the south to have a lot of fancy steps in one’s repertoire, as well as the stamina to perform them. By contrast, dancers in the north wear moccasins, mukluks, running shoes, or socks, and bend more when they dance. The jigging is more free-form and performed to any fast reel. It is not as important in the north for dancers to know a lot of steps; rather, speed and energy are valued.148 Lederman reports that Red River jigging has become “institutional-

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Yak Bu Ne Marusia / Jablushko Victor Pasowisty (accompanying musicians unknown) Ukrainian Festival. Arc 525, n.d.

Ukrainian fiddling had a solid home in Manitoba for most of the twentieth century and enjoyed a huge recording boom in the 1970s with recording companies such as Arc, V Records, K Records, Galaxy, Sunshine and even RCA. Victor Pasowisty (1930–2001) was on the leading edge of that boom, and was one of the first fiddlers to

In this recording, Victor’s clear articulation of the melody is set off by the smooth virtuosity of the accordionist. The fiddle and the accordion begin by playing the melody together, and then take turns performing variations. The musicians have cleverly extended what would otherwise be very small bits of music, the melodic material of strophic song tunes characteristic of a Ukrainian musical heritage, upon which Ukrainian Canadian social dance band music is built.152  This track is actually a medley of social dance band tunes, the melodies and harmonies of which are carefully woven, one into the other. Victor and his band smoothly transition between tunes, and keep the beat lively and constant for dancers. Two titles are shown for this tune, the first of which apparently includes an error in transliteration from the Ukrainian (it should be “Iak By Ne Marusia,” or in English, “If it weren’t for Marusia”). Also featured in this medley are variations on a European polka melody later popularized across North America as “Who Stole the Kishka?” by the American polka king, Frankie Yankovic. Victor’s version is called “Jablushko,” a general title often used for eastern European folk tunes.153 By including this familiar polka tune, Pasowisty and his fellow musicians connect to cultural spheres

beyond Ukrainian-specific markets, and signal their own adaptive musical abilities and breadth of musical knowledge. This recording demonstrates how Ukrainian music and musicians in Canada have connected with other music cultures in Canada, resulting in Ukrainian Canadian repertoire and musical practices that have a general appeal. [AL, MO]

CD2 TRACK 3

Drops of Brandy Reg Bouvette (accompanying musicians unknown) Reg Bouvette: Traditional Old Tyme Fiddle Tunes. Sunshine Records SSBP-436, ca. 1985. Courtesy of Sunshine Records.

COURTESY OF BERYL BOUVETTE

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record Ukrainian music in Canada. He was born in Mountain Road, Manitoba to a family with Ukrainian and Polish ancestry. Victor started to play the fiddle at age nine; since the winter that year was particularly harsh and children could not get to school, his father took the opportunity to teach him how to fiddle.151  His father also wanted him to play the mandolin, but Victor hated practising it so much that he took it out into the woods behind their home and buried it. By the time his father found out and sent him back out to get it, Victor had forgotten where it was buried. Victor moved to Ontario in 1949 where he won the Shelburne competition in 1955, and became widely known as a teacher and performer. He spent the final years of his life in southwestern Ontario where he performed with country bands, taught a generation of younger players, and was honoured with a Pioneer Award from the CKNX Barn Dance Historical Society in 2001.

COURTESY OF GALAXY RECORDS

ized in recent years, with contests and stage performances replacing house parties and social dances”149 as common social contexts. As young dancers, especially from urban centres, are exposed to different kinds of dancing (including regional step dancing styles from across Canada and American clogging), styles of jigging are slowly changing. Young dancers are sometimes criticized for “lifting their legs too far off the floor, using their arms too much, making too much noise with their feet, or taking up too much space.”150 These changes are seen as moving closer to the step dancing found in Central and Eastern Canada. [AL, SJ]

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Reg Bouvette (1923–1992) was from St. Vital, Manitoba (now part of Winnipeg), and of Métis ancestry. His career was kick-started with the 1967 release of an original single, “Reginald’s Waltz,” later recorded by both Don Messer and Andy DeJarlis.

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(Irwin Wall, guitar; Ron Halderson, bass; Joe Mackintosh, piano; Roland Dandeneau, drums)

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Marcel Meilleur at/au Festival du Voyageur. Sunshine Records SSBLP- 417, ca. 1978. Courtesy of Sunshine Records.

  Homecoming Waltz Albert Beaulieu, Lawrence “Teddy Boy” Houle, and

(Danny Flett, guitar) Old Native and Métis Fiddling in Manitoba. Falcon Productions FP 187, 1986. Used by permission.

Albert Beaulieu (1927–1991), Lawrence “Teddy Boy” Houle (b.1938), and Laurence Flett (b.1940) are all from the Ebb and Flow area of Manitoba. Teddy Boy Houle’s stepfather, Walter Flett, and Laurence’s father, Charlie Flett, along with a third brother, Roderick Flett, were three of the most highly respected  players in the community in the mid-twentieth century. It is a community with a rich history of fiddling dating back to the early days of the fur trade, where music was typically passed from father to son.   Lawrence Houle released his own LP recording, performed at Carnegie Hall as part of the hundredth anniversary celebration of Native American Music in 1995, and is still active as a mentor to younger players.

This track is from the first archival compilation of Aboriginal fiddling commercially released in Canada, in 1986, a project that helped gain recognition for the tradition of First Nations, Métis and Inuit fiddling. First Nations and Métis fiddlers in Manitoba usually perform solo, but the practice of “doubling”—adding harmonies, playing the melody in octaves and improvising chords—is part of the old style, and often shared between father and son.  During the recording sessions, some of the players wanted to recapture that sound on the “Homecoming Waltz,” usually the last dance of the evening (based on the nineteenth-century song “Home Sweet Home”). The asymmetry of the phrasing is typical of older Aboriginal fiddling throughout the Northwest, and probably comes from a combination of French and Aboriginal influence, although some may trace back to the Shetland and Orkney Islands from where many of the fur traders came.154 [AL]

LAWRENCE HOULE & LAURENCE FLETT COURTESY OF BILL HENRY

War Bonnet Marcel Meilleur

Here Marcel is featured playing one of his own compositions. The performance is evocative of DeJarlis’s clean and carefully arranged style and is imitated by other Prairie fiddlers who play with stereotypes of Aboriginal culture by imitating powwow drums and using Native themes in the title. [AL]

Laurence Flett

ALBERT BEAULIEU COURTESY OF ANNE LEDERMAN

Marcel Meilleur (1930–2007), from Fisher Branch, Manitoba, played and toured with Andy DeJarlis for fourteen years, even moving to Montreal with him in 1962. A few years later, he began to perform on his own, starting a group called the Red River Echos in 1976. A frequent performer at Le Festival du Voyageur in St. Boniface, Manitoba, Marcel was often the house fiddler for the jigging competition.

COURTESY OF CECILE HINCE

He soon gave up his day job as a trucker and began recording for Sunshine Records, releasing eight LPs before his death. He won the Manitoba Fiddling Championship four times and composed over two hundred original compositions as well as recording older Métis tunes. He is also known for incorporating a bluegrass sound into his band with the addition of a five-string banjo. “Drops of Brandy” is the most widely-known of the old Scots dances that were imported during the fur trade era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The metre of the Canadian version, however, has been changed to 6/4 from the Scottish 9/8. It seems to have first appeared in this form in Quebec (see notes for Louis “Pitou” Boudreault of Quebec), but like the “Red River Jig,” individual versions exist throughout the Northwest; Reg’s is particularly well known. [AL]  

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Ridin’ Old Paint and Leadin’ Old Ball King Ganam (Ralph Fraser, piano; Matt de Florio, accordion; Don McFarlane, Al Harris, guitar; Donnie Johnson, trumpet; Percy Curtis, bass fiddle) CBC Video Archive, 1955. Courtesy of the

COURTESY OF LYNN RUSSWURM

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Born as Ameen Sied Ganam to a Syrian father and an English mother, King Ganam (1914–2004) began learning the fiddle at age five from old-time fiddlers in his hometown of Swift Current, Saskatchewan. By age thirteen, he was playing live on CHWC Radio in Regina. He went on to be taught by the accomplished violinists W. Knight Wilson, Jack Thornicroft and Gregori Garbovitsky. In 1942, Ganam formed the country band, Sons of the West, in Edmonton, Alberta, which performed on CBC

Radio’s Alberta Ranch House. His band won the 1950 World Open Western Band Competition in Vancouver, which led to a recording contract with RCA Victor. At his first session in their Montreal studios, Hugh Joseph, producer of the album, was so impressed by Ganam’s playing that he crowned him “King” Ganam. Believing that his Arabic name “Ameen” confused listeners, Ganam started calling himself “King,” and was soon known as “Canada’s King of the Fiddle.”  After moving to Toronto in 1952, Ganam and his band made regular appearances on CBC TV: Holiday Ranch and later Country Hoedown with emcee Gordie Tapp. The band also starred in its own CBC Radio show and, in 1961, CTV’s The King Ganam Show. Although he moved to California in 1962, Ganam regularly toured Canada and the United States in the 1960s.155  King Ganam wrote a number of tunes, some of which are published in King Ganam’s Jigs and Reels.156 King Ganam attributed the composition of “Ridin’ Old Paint and Leadin’ Old Ball” to Stuart Hamblen (1908–1989), of Texas and California, a singer of cowboy and gospel songs, early radio star, recording artist, and songwriter. A tune called “Ridin’ Ole Paint” is included in a catalogue of songs that Hamblen wrote in the 1930s.157 An earlier tune called “Good-

by, Old Paint” was published in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads.158 This song was given to song collector John Lomax by Boothe Merrill in Cheyenne, Wyoming in 1910, where it was often used as the last dance of the evening.159 Although there are regional variations of lyrics and melody, a 3/4 metre and slow tempo seem to be consistent.The relationship between the songs and the fiddle tune (in 2/4 metre and played at a fast tempo) is unknown. King Ganam uses a number of techniques to make this tune, broadcast on Holiday Ranch on January 29, 1955, a virtuosic show-stopper: shifts out of first position, double stops, double bowing, and sliding into notes. [SJ, TB]

CD2 TRACK 7

Olle’s Waltz Olaf Sveen—Olle and His Playmates (accompanying musicians unknown) Aragon AR-121, ca. 1955. Recording courtesy of Roy Forbes.

COURTESY OF THE SVEEN FAMILY

Saskatchewan

Olaf Sveen (1919–2007) was a noted accordionist, teacher and composer of accordion dance music in the Norwegian gammeldans tradition (Norwegian adaptations of nineteenth-century pan-European social dances, such as waltzes and polkas). The eldest of six children, he was taught to play the accordion by his father, grandfather and other wellknown Norwegian musicians. Olaf later studied accordion in Oslo with Christian Lejbak. He was twenty-one when Germany invaded his country in April 1940.The five years of Nazi rule was a grim period, although daughter Astrid Mitchell said her father continued to play his accordion at weddings:  “Dances weren’t allowed, of course, but small affairs happened in secret, although not often.”160  After doing his obligatory service in the Norwegian army, Olaf moved to Canada in 1949. He settled on a Saskatchewan farm near Estevan, and began touring the province’s dance halls with, in turn, Eddie Mehler’s Southern Playboys, The Western Five Orchestra and, from 1955 to 1962, his own group, Olle and His Playmates (heard often on CHAB Radio, Moose Jaw). Olaf moved to Edmonton in 1962 where he performed for social gatherings and in nightclubs and hosted Scandinavian music programs on radio stations CKUA (1965–1971)

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Kolomeyka in Bb Bill Prokopchuk (Willie Hunchak, tsymbaly; Carl Korrall, accordion; Pete Napody, guitar and drums; Hank Ukrainetz, bass guitar) Fiddlin’ Bill Prokopchuk. Galaxy Records, 1966. Courtesy of Galaxy Records.

COURTESY OF GALAXY RECORDS

and QCFM. He taught at the RobertsTait Music Schools (1962–1967) and privately.161    “Olle’s Waltz” is one of 180 tunes that Olaf composed. It is influenced by older tunes in the Norwegian gammeldans tradition: a lyrical melody that is easy for most people to sing and a simple chord progression (I-V7-I in the A section, IV-I-V7-I in the B section, and I-V7-I-IV-I-V7-I in the C section). It is performed in a quick waltz tempo that is still used by older fiddlers and accordionists at old time dances on the Prairies. Jack Olson of Big River, Saskatchewan suggests one reason for the quick tempo of western Canadian waltzes (often 160 to the quarter note). When he was growing up, he noticed that the floors in the one room schoolhouses were not always sprinkled with dance wax, so the dancers would have to move faster to avoid “getting stuck on the floor.”162 Eric Karolat of Saskatoon confirms that this was also the case in community halls from the 1930s.163 The structure of “Olle’s Waltz” is unusual in that an extra bar is played in transitioning from the C section back to the A section. Both the A and B sections are very active with many eighth notes, contrasting with the longer note values and a change of key from F+ to Bb+ in the C section. [SJ, TB]

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Bill Prokopchuk (1924–2004) was born in Rhein, Saskatchewan and began playing fiddle at eleven years of age. He participated in fiddle contests in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, some of which he won, including the Novelty Class at the 1964 Western Fiddling Championship; he also entertained at many Ukrainian festivals on the Prairies. Bill was best known, however, for playing at Ukrainian Canadian weddings which, in his early days especially, might have been celebrated over two or three days. Bill released many albums during his musical career, but the LP Fiddlin’ Bill Prokopchuk (1966) is considered by

musicians, radio hosts and dancers alike to be his signature recording. The album contains Ukrainian music that he believed had not been previously recorded. Bill is remembered by fellow musicians as having a special interest in recording music of his Ukrainian roots for the purposes of preservation as well as enjoyment. “Kolomeyka in Bb” and the other tunes on the album, all of which Bill attributed to the Ukrainian ancestry he ardently claimed, were much loved by listeners and dancers. Kolomeykas were featured on the earliest known commercial recordings of Ukrainian music in North America, recorded by Pavlo Humeniuk in 1925.164 They have a history as song, retained in form from their eastern European existence. Many kolomeyka texts from the earlier era remain, and new ones have been created in Canada that reflect new geographic and social locations. Kolomeykas can be described by folklorists as “ditties” due to the often humourous or silly (and sometimes bawdy) nature of their lyrics.165 The kolomeyka, as a dance, is among several dance forms inherited from the rurally grounded eastern European ancestors of today’s Ukrainian Canadians; other dances include the arkan, heel-toe polka, chaban, verkhovyna and mazurka.166 Most of these

older forms are rarely danced today, but the kolomeyka continues to be performed with great enthusiasm at contemporary Ukrainian Canadian dance band concert parties, or zabavas, and other social dance events, including weddings. The kolomeyka has of course changed somewhat over time,167 most notably in ways that reflect the prominent place of stage performance among Ukrainian communities in Western Canada, which now includes elements of virtuosic dancing. Kolomeyka melodies are also employed in other dance forms, such as the polka. On this kolomeyka recording, the musicians alternate between one melody in a major key and another in a minor mode; the raised fourth in this second melody is not uncommon in Ukrainian music played in Canada, particularly in music representative of western Ukrainian repertoire. Bill leads the tune on fiddle, while the tsymbaly doubles the melody in a lower range. The tsymbaly is a special marker of Ukrainian Canadian Prairie pioneer heritage, and has enjoyed special popularity in Ukrainian music culture in Western Canada. Supporting instruments include the accordion playing harmony and the drums which keep a steady and danceable beat. [MO, TB]  

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Schultz’s Polka The Western Senators (Joe Schultz, Mark Leik, accordions; Brian Sklar, piano; Ron Sluga, banjo; Todd Lueck, Johnny “Six Pack” Gasparic, acoustic guitars; Aaron Sklar, drums; Wayne Kuntz, bass) PolkaRama! Volume One: Strictly for

PHOTO BY BRUCE VASSELIN, DESIGNER DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY, REGINA, SK COURTESY OF THE WESTERN SENATORS

Polkaholics, 2004. Used by permission.

The Western Senators was born when, after a night of jamming with fellow musicians in Calgary in 1976, fiddler Brian Sklar suggested the group travel to Edmonton to record an album. Thirteen albums later, the group is still performing together at dances and in main showrooms of casinos throughout Western Canada and the United States. Since 2002, they have been featured in three television specials about polka greats, Frankie Yankovic and Walter Ostanek, and have starred with Ostanek in their own television series, PolkaRama.

“Schultz’s Polka” is typical of tunes heard at old-time dance and polka parties throughout the West. The Western Senators play the Cleveland style of polka, which has roots in Slovenia, and is the style preferred by most Canadian Prairie polka bands. (The Chicago style, with roots in Poland, is more common in Ontario. It uses more brass instrumentation and is not as fast as the Cleveland style.) According to band leader, Brian Sklar, “We all grew up on Yankovic and most Western Canadian bands played a mix of Cleveland style and country.”168 Frankie Yankovic (1915– 1998), of Slovenian descent, grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and toured often throughout Canada’s western provinces from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. The Cleveland style is characterized by twin accordions, organ (originally the Solovox, the first Hammond organ), piano, bass, drums, and, very importantly, the banjo. According to Sklar, Yankovic had no drummer in the early days, so he used the banjo to provide percussion and add a Dixieland feel. This track is taken from the Western Senators’ live television show, PolkaRama, and is their most popular original tune.169 [SJ, TB]

Alberta CD2 TRACK 10

Little Mottis Schottische Henry Levang (Rick “Brick” Reid, piano) Unreleased recording, 1966. Used by permission.  

COURTESY OF NORMA MARTIN

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Henry Levang (1895–1977) played fiddle for house parties and for dances in the Edberg area, near Camrose, Alberta. His father, Anders Knutson Levang, was born in Perry, Wisconsin, but the family was originally from Levang, Norway. His mother, Betsy Levang, née Evanson, was originally from Trondheim, Norway. The Levang family immigrated to the New Norway, Alberta area in 1900. Henry married Inga Ramm in Mirror, Alberta in 1916 and they moved to the Edberg area in 1927. Henry was largely self taught, although he did receive some musical training at the Camrose Lutheran

College around 1915.   This tune was recorded at Rick “Brick” Reid’s house in Calgary, Alberta on March 7, 1966. Although never commercially released, this is one of the very few early recordings of a Norwegian Albertan fiddler. The origin of this tune is somewhat uncertain. The Levang family considers it to be of Norwegian origin, but Norwegians today do not have schottische dance music; the current Norwegian equivalent is the reinlander. In Sweden, this dance is called the schottis; however, since Norway was part of Sweden until 1905, the line between Norwegian and Swedish music, at least originating before 1905, may be blurry. According to Verna Larson, an active member of the Scandinavian Heritage Society of Edmonton and a Scandinavian folk dancer, the schottische is actually a Bavarian dance that was popularized in other countries including Sweden (but not Norway). It was also called a scottish. In Alberta, the schottische is identified with Scandinavian heritage. Both Verna Larsen and Henry Levang’s daughter, Norma Martin, know this tune as a song, with words, from the gammeldans tradition, called “I’ve Never Had So Much Fun in All My Sinful Life.” [RO, SJ]

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Growling Old Man and Old Woman Wilf Laderoute

The Reel of Eight Pete Anderson

(Gilbert Anderson, guitar)

(Gilbert Anderson, banjo; George Stamp, guitar)

Unreleased recording, 1981.

Missionary Oblates, Grandin Collection

Used by permission.

at the Provincial Archives of Alberta, PR1974.156/987, 1948.

John Wilfrid “Wilf ” Laderoute (1896–1984) was born in Revelstoke, British Columbia and died in Gunn, Alberta. A veteran of the First World War, Wilf brought back at least one tune from Europe, the “B Flat Waltz,” which has been recorded by Gilbert Anderson and other fiddlers. A Métis fiddler with remarkable skill and rhythmic drive,Wilf was still learning new fiddle tunes at age eighty-eight, just before he died.   This tune was recorded by Gilbert Anderson, in Gunn, Alberta in 1981, when Wilf was eighty-five years old. He ably demonstrates the Métis fiddle style of Alberta. Switching easily between three-, four-, and five-beat bars, he creates a metric feel that is almost constantly in flux. The melody in the first section closely resembles the standard version of this tune, but what Wilf plays here as the second section is unique. It could be a version that Wilf made up or a version that is particular to Wilf’s community. [RO, SJ]

Used by permission.  

The Anderson brothers—Pete (1908– 1965), Lawrence (1904–1973), and Gilbert (1934-2011)—grew up in a musical family on the Enoch Cree reserve, near Edmonton, Alberta. With Pete on fiddle, Lawrence on fiddle, guitar, or banjo, and Gilbert on guitar or banjo, the brothers played for many dances in the Enoch area during the 1940s. Through the summer months they would play in barns and the granary for as many as fifty dancers. The granary had a good dance floor because it was sealed well to stop the grain from getting out (and the mice from getting in). Near the end of each summer, the granary would be cleaned out, making it an ideal space for holding dances. Dances, especially during the summer, would often go from 7 p.m. to daylight the next day. During the colder months they played at the Enoch Hall because there was a stove there, or at house dances for twenty-five to thirty people at a time.The brothers packed their instruments in old blankets and travelled

to the dances by horse and wagon. They never charged a fee; they just played. Gilbert Anderson remembers that people living on the Enoch reserve at this time preferred fiddle dances to drum dancing.  The Anderson brothers also played at other halls in the area, off the reserve. This recording, one of the earliest of Métis fiddle music in Alberta, was made on the Enoch reserve in 1948. As Gilbert Anderson, who played banjo on the track, recalls, it was recorded after Mass on a sunny Sunday afternoon:

novel to us. This gentleman out recording, it was actually done by the local [Oblate] priest there. It was actually recorded at the Enoch reserve at what they used to refer to as the “Agency.” See the Agency was the only place that had electricity in and around the reserve in those days, so that’s where we recorded. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and we were doing this in the shade of some maple trees. It was lots of fun and there were a lot of people there you know, just because, as I say, it was quite novel.170

Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, Pete and his brothers moved 175 kilometres west of Edmonton, then to St. Albert and then back to west Edmonton (called Jasper Place at the time). They began to play at a few paid dances, including the Jasper Place Legion, but on many fewer occasions than when they lived at Enoch. Pete and Lawrence both worked at the Charles Camsel Hospital in the 1950s, which at that time was a tuberculosis sanatorium, housing primarily Aboriginal patients. There, the same Oblate recordcutting machine that had reGilbert and Lawrence Anderson with Beatrice Callihoo, corded the Anderson brothIt was actually done on a very primitive machine in about 1948 and I remember that day just like yesterday because it was quite

1959. (Courtesy of Gilbert Anderson)

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Wedding March Metro Radomsky (Metro Lawstiwka, tsymbaly; Bob Mason, accordion; Joe Kozak, bass; George Danyluk, drums) Radomsky’s Orchestra: By the Fireside. Heritage Records  HR-35, ca. 1988; rereleased Sunshine Records. Courtesy of Heritage Records.

From 1921 and into the late 1980s, Radomsky played at hundreds of Ukrainian Canadian weddings across the western provinces. According to

Ukrainian Canadian tradition (still practiced on the Prairies today), the band plays a march as the newlywed couple arrives at the wedding reception. This particular “Wedding March,” which is believed to have originated in western Ukraine, was popular in many of Alberta’s Ukrainian Canadian communities. Radomsky’s fiddling is at the fore in this recording, carrying the tune; we also hear the tsymbaly, accordion and a drum kit. The instruments on this track are the standard instruments of Ukrainian social dance band music in Western Canada, particularly of the mid- and later twentieth century.171  The tsymbaly doubles the melody in a lower range here, sometimes embellishing the tune slightly, especially at the ends of phrases. In this recording, the accordion fills out some of the harmony while also doubling the tune of the fiddle. A stand-up bass was another instrument often found in Ukrainian social dance bands in twentieth-century Canada. This march is played at a brisk walking pace until the abrupt cadence (presumably when the newlywed couple has taken their seats at the reception). Radomsky’s fiddling is characterized by occasional slides up to, in and around notes, typical of the performance style of fiddlers of his generation.These pitch variations reinforce the interesting modal quality of the tune. [MO, RO]

CD2 TRACK 14

Rubber Dolly Gaby Haas (accompanying musicians unknown) Gaby Haas and the Barn Dance Gang. Originally recorded in 1960s or 1970s. Rereleased by Royalty Records, 2004. Used under license from Royalty Records Inc.

COURTESY OF ROYALTY RECORDS

Metro Radomsky (1910–1995) grew up in northeast central Alberta, where he played at his first Ukrainian wedding at the age of eleven. With some sacrifice, his parents were able to send him to school in Edmonton where he received violin lessons from Ambrose Holowach. Metro continued to perform as a musician until his death, though he also worked as a professional grain buyer for the Pioneer Grain Company for nearly forty years. He played mostly in and around Edmonton, Alberta, though sometimes as far east as Thompson, Manitoba. Metro recorded several albums with Heritage Records that were initially funded by Edmonton’s Ukrainian Bookstore. Metro was paid in records, the idea being that he would sell them; however, family members recall that he often gave them away to friends.

COURTESY OF KEN RADOMSKY

ers in 1948 was used to record them and others at the hospital for a weekly radio broadcast: Aboriginal patients were able to send messages to their families, and in between the messages, Pete, Lawrence, Gilbert and others played music. After the deaths of his much older brothers, Gilbert went on to become an influential fiddler in the Edmonton area.   Although this tune is known as “Whiskey Before Breakfast” in many fiddle communities, it was called “The Reel of Eight” in the Anderson brothers’ circles because it was performed to accompany a circle dance of the same name. Typical of much Métis fiddling, Pete plays this tune with lots of open string droning as well as asymmetrical phrasing; the A section is eight bars long, while the B section consists of nine bars. Pete’s short bow strokes and strong accents make this a highly rhythmic performance. [RO, SJ]

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Gabriel “Gaby” Haas (1920–1987) was born in Frantiskowy, Czechoslovakia. Because Gaby’s mother was Jewish and the family was in danger from the rise of the Nazis, they fled to Loon Lake, Saskatchewan in 1938. Gaby began playing his piano accordion at local dances and on CFQC Radio. His broadcasts from Edmonton on CFRN (1940–1958) and CKUA (after 1944) were carried on CBC’s national networks, establishing him as a popular old-time and country music performer. Concurrently, he had starring television roles on Chuckwagon (CFRN, 1955–1969), The Noon Show (later known as Eye-Opener) (CFRN-

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Curly Hair Fred Lang and the Calgary Range Riders (Tony Stolz, accordion; Curly Koochin, guitar; Norm Towne, bass; Dixie Bill Hilton, guitar) Fiddlin’ Favorites featuring Red Crawford. Aragon AR-205, ca. 1952. Recording courtesy of Roy Forbes.  

COURTESY OF FRED LANG

Edmonton, 1956–1971), and Country Music (1969–1974). The multilingual musician was also host for more than forty years of CKUA’s Continental Musicale as well as other ethnically oriented radio and television programs. Gaby once operated an Edmonton record store called the European Music Shop, and was part-owner of several Edmonton restaurants (where he also performed). Often called “Canada’s Mr. Polka” (a title later shared with Walter Ostanek), Gaby began recording in 1950 with his band The Barndance Gang. He made over fifty albums and sixty singles, mostly of polkas and waltzes (many his own compositions) for the Apex, Point, London, Quality, and Royalty companies. Several folios of his old-time compositions were published by Empire (Sharrell Music Publishers) and Canadian Music Sales.172  The arrangement on this track is typical of old-time dance band arrangements of the 1950s and 1960s. The fiddle and accordion double the melody on the first time through the tune, followed by solos on accordion, guitar, accordion again and fiddle. Although individual variations in ornamentation and melody are minor, the solos maintain interest throughout and showcase each musician’s ability to make the tune his or her own. [RO, SJ]

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Fred Lang (1926–2007) was born in Carman, Manitoba and died in Merritt, British Columbia, but lived almost twenty years of his life, from 1977 to 1996, in Alberta. He performed and composed fiddle tunes for well over fifty years. In August 1950 he was named the “World Champion Fiddler” at the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver, B.C., winning the vote of all nine judges. He describes the experience in conversation with Alberta fiddler, Rod Olstad:  So we were [working in Prince

George] from May, and finally one day I got a letter from the wife. I’d played with Cliff [Merriott, a guitarist] on the radio station, and they figured that I was a pretty good fiddle player, see. But I’d just been taught off the farm. I really couldn’t play, I thought. She said that the radio station had heard about this big fiddle contest in Vancouver, World Champion Fiddle Player, see. And it was a first. The Pacific National Exhibition was putting it on.

And Wilf Carter was honourary judge in that. They had people from RCA Victor Records, Columbia Records, and MGM Records, all for judging there. They had about nine big shots from the States come up and judge. But, anyway, they entered me in two, two places, in the North West Contest and in the World Champion. Well [laughs], I won the World Champion and five hundred dollars!  I couldn’t believe it. In 1950, in August. Yes, that five hundred dollars.

Calgary Range Riders, ca. 1952. From left to right, back row: Freddy Lang (fiddle), ?, Buddie Reynolds (bass), ?, Tony Stolz (accordion). From left to right, front row: Don Thompson (steel guitar), Dixie-Bill Hilton (guitar). (Courtesy of Fred Lang)

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Man!  That’s just like ten thousand dollars today, you know. It paid bills and looked after things.173

Fred, with the Calgary Range Riders, released a number of 78 records through the Aragon recording label of Vancouver. During the early 1950s, he toured nationally with the Range Riders, Papa Joe Brown and the Hillbilly Jewels and Canadian country star, Wilf Carter. During this time, Fred recorded on the Biltmore label of Montreal and was a staff fiddler with Toronto’s Quality Records.

“Curly Hair” was one of the first tunes Fred ever composed; he dedicated it to his first daughter. Showcasing a variety of playing techniques such as pizzicato (plucking the strings with the fingers of his left hand) in the A section, an accordion solo in the B section, and doublestopped double bowing (also called shuffle bowing or back bowing) in the C section, there is no doubt that this tune would have been a crowdpleaser at shows across the country. [SJ, RO]

British Columbia No single style identifies British Columbian fiddle music, but it would be inaccurate to say that there is no distinctive fiddle culture in British Columbia. Today, fiddling in the province is characterized by stylistic diversity and a high degree of original composition. It is increasingly popular among young people through the mentorship of idiosyncratic musicians born from the 1950s through the 1970s, such as Daniel Lapp, Zavellenah Rokeby Thomas, Calvin Cairns, and Oliver Schroer. At well-attended fiddle camps in Roberts Creek, Smithers, Gavin Lake, and Saltpsring Island many styles of fiddling are taught, including Irish, Québécois, Métis, western swing, Highland Scottish and Cape Breton. The eclectic camp scene intersects with an established fiddle competition circuit, linking fiddling in the province to the Canadian old-time fiddle style, and a burgeoning bluegrass culture in urban centres. British Columbia’s current fiddle culture is best understood within the broad context of its relatively late Euro-American settlement, and its subsequently rapid cultural and economic development. As in the similarly diverse American upper Midwest,174 its history fostered a cultural eclecticism that has not favoured a single or dominant folk music practice. Following the completion of the national railway in 1885, forestry, mining and agriculture developed in the interior, along with fishing (and its associated cannery operations) on the Pacific coast. These industries provided employment for workers of mixed ethnic origins, including indigenous peoples, Finns, Swedes, Japanese, Scots, South Asians, and groups from other parts of Canada. Such heterogeneity has meant that there is little translocal continuity of folk traditions, especially as communities are geographically diffuse

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British Columbia.

which focused on Arthur Lindstrom (born in Vilna, Alberta), Llewellyn McPherson (Max) Sexsmith (originally from Maymont, Saskatchewan), and Frank Lowery (from Ranger, Saskatchewan). All of these fiddlers learned much of their repertoire from recordings, and demonstrate the influence of other fiddlers from the Prairies and Central and Eastern Canada, particularly Don Messer, Andy DeJarlis and Graham Townsend. 175 While fiddling in British Columbia does not exhibit a high

degree of regional stylistic distinctiveness, it is nonetheless remarkable for the strength of the central fiddling organization, the British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers Association (BCOTFA), the earliest and probably the biggest provincial fiddle association in Canada. The organization began in 1969 in Prince George, which was one of the province’s strongest fiddle communities (due in part to the influence of fiddlers such as Sexsmith and Lowery). Nine years later, fiddlers from other areas wanted to form a provincial organization, so they asked the Prince George group if they could use the name for a province-wide group. The existing group agreed, and so Prince George became Branch #1 of the provincial organization. Other branches were formed and by 2008 there were eleven active branches. The total membership of the group is over seven hundred. Most branches hold annual fiddle contests or jamborees; members also play at local community events. The provincial championship rotates between branches with the BCOTFA setting rules and criteria for all contests.176 While organization is strong, the case of Frankie Rodgers exemplifies the individualism that characterizes fiddling in the province today. Frankie’s musical influences were

diverse and include popular music, particularly country and western music. His musical affinities were shaped as much by what was available on recordings, and the visits of touring acts, as they were by his immediate community. His famous “Ookpik Waltz” is one of any number of original compositions by B.C. fiddlers—Daniel Lapp has compiled over one thousand—some of which have become popular across Canada and abroad. [AH]   CD2 TRACK 16

Cheslatta Lake Rag Max Sexsmith (accompanying musicians unknown) Old Time Fiddlin by Max Sexsmith. Maple Haze MH 7846, early 1980s.  

COURTESY OF DORIS SEXSMITH

in this large province. Thus recordings and emigration have been the most important factors in the transmission and diffusion of fiddling in British Columbia. The relatively late European settlement of British Columbia also meant that local styles had little time to develop, and many of the historically influential fiddlers (including those represented in this collection) emigrated to British Columbia from other provinces. This fact is confirmed by Roy Gibbons’ study of fiddling in Prince George from 1982,

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Born in Maymont, Saskatchewan, Max Sexsmith (1917–1993) started playing fiddle at age six on a threequarter-size violin. Music was a family affair; his father and uncle

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CD2 TRACK 17

Woodlake Waltz Bob Montgomery (Joyce Montgomery, piano; Arts McMartin, acoustic guitar; Clayton Kirkness, electric guitar) Canadian Museum of Civilization, GIB-B-1, Roy Gibbons Collection, XV-G-48, 1978. Used by permission.

Bob Montgomery (b.1920) was born in Minnedosa, Manitoba and playing violin by the age of ten. He found his first fiddle in a grain elevator in Franklin, Manitoba. Using banjo strings, he set about teaching himself how to play. His older brother, Ernie, was teaching himself guitar at the same time.When a traveling Rawleigh

sales man visited their farm, he tuned the instruments properly, and they had to start learning all over again. They later took some lessons from a Rawleigh and Watkins salesman who visited the family home every few months. As teenagers they would travel to Normandy Hall in Winnipeg to listen to Andy DeJarlis; they also learned repertoire from listening to commercial recordings.180 During World War Two, Bob enlisted in the RCAF and his fiddling was temporarily abandoned. He picked it up again when he moved to Haney, B.C. where he became a charter member of the British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers’ Association. Among his many honours, Bob has won the B.C. Old Time Fiddlers’ Championship class seven times and the Western Canadian Fiddle Championship twice. He has been a frequent judge at fiddle contests in Western Canada and the United States. With its AABB structure, I-IVV-I chord structure, and double stops restricted to the ends of phrases, “Woodlake Waltz” would be an example of what fellow B.C. fiddler Keith Wilson would call a “good old time waltz.”181 This performance was recorded by Roy Gibbons on June 11, 1978 in Oyama, B.C. [SJ]

CD2 TRACK 18

Barkerville Connection Frank Lowery (Daniel Lapp, guitar) Personal Collection of Daniel Lapp, mid1990s. Used by permission.  

COURTESY OF PAIGE GARNETT

ment is no doubt a favourite with dancers as well. Written during 1963 and 1964, the tune is modeled on early twentieth-century dance tunes that have become an accepted part of the old-time fiddle repertoire.179 [SJ]

JOYCE & BOB MONTGOMERY COURTESY OF THE BCOTFA

were both fiddlers and all seven of Max’s siblings played the fiddle and/ or guitar. He learned most of his oldtime repertoire by ear from recordings, radio, and other musicians.177  By age fourteen, he was playing dances in the Peace River area for about a dollar per night. Max took some lessons in 1934 from Professor Tennessee Hudson in northern Alberta, but at seven dollars per month, the lessons soon became too expensive. He spent the rest of the 1930s riding freight trains, looking for work, always with his fiddle in hand. Max moved to Prince George, British Columbia in 1947. There he played weekend dances with his group, The Rhythm Ranch Hands, for ten years. They also had a half hour show every Friday night on CKPC Radio. Max was a charter member and the first president of the British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers’ Association. He has played in many competitions; his most prized trophy is the one he won for placing first in the senior division of the Grand National North American Fiddling contest in Edmonton in 1987.178 According to his wife, Doris, who often accompanied him on the piano, “Cheslatta Lake Rag” was one of Max’s favourite compositions. With the upbeat tempo, running bass line and syncopated rhythm, this arrange-

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Frank Lowery (1932–2007), originally from Ranger, Saskatchewan, started to fiddle at age six on a halfsize fiddle given to him by his oldest brother. But long before that, at the age of two and a half, Frank used to keep time to the tunes played by his father by beating a set of knitting needles against the fingerboard of his father’s fiddle as he played. Frank had some instruction from his father, who played both fiddle and guitar, but he was largely self-taught, as were his brothers, one of whom played fiddle and the other guitar. They also learned tunes from other fiddlers, radio, and commercial recordings. Frank didn’t always own a fiddle; when money was tight he would have to sell his own fiddle and

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then borrow one from the neighbours in order to practice. After he moved to Prince George, B.C. in 1980, he stopped playing for about fifteen years while he worked as a welder and gas fitter and raised a family.182 “Barkerville Connection” is just one of Frank’s many compositions. His daughter, Paige Garnett, writes, “When my father wrote ‘Barkerville Connection’ he was living in the Caribou area, just a few hours from Barkerville. That piece was written with the travelers riding in horse-drawn carriages in mind, hoping to make their connection with the other carriage, to get them to Barkerville from all points. It has another meaning, the connection of old-time fiddling music from the eighteenth century, still being enjoyed today. And he wrote it to get people dancing, which it did.”183  Barkerville is a revitalized historical heritage site in British Columbia. It grew from the Gold Rush in 1861 and is a busy ghost town visited yearly by thousands of tourists. This tune was recorded by well-known fiddler, Daniel Lapp, in his family home in Prince George in the mid1990s. Daniel accompanies Frank on the guitar, while his family plays a game of cards in the background. [SJ]

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CD2 TRACK 19

Ookpik Waltz Frankie Rodgers (Hank Rodgers, lead guitar; Rusty Campbell, bass; Shirley Rodgers, rhythm guitar) Maple Sugar, Fiddle Favorites by Canada’s Old Time Fiddle King Frankie Rodgers of the Rodgers Brothers Band. Point P-250 LP, 1965.

Frankie Rodgers (1936–2010), born in Egremont, Alberta, originally wanted to play the guitar and wasn’t happy when his father gave him a fiddle instead. Then, at age twelve, he saw a young boy, about the same age as himself, playing with a band at the radio station in New Westminster, B.C. (That young boy turned out to be Roy Warhurst, now a well-known fiddler from Alberta.) That changed his mind. He was further inspired by fiddlers like Americans Dale Potter and Tommy Jackson, who toured with the Grand Ole Opry

shows that came to Canada. Frankie himself later toured with the Grand Ole Opry across Canada, playing with fiddlers such as Chubby Wise and Buddy Spicher. It is no wonder that Rodgers is known for his “American” fiddling flavour, evident in his compositions, “Skiffle Fiddle,” “Lover’s Waltz,” and “Ookpik Waltz.”  Frankie later toured across Canada four times with the Wilf Carter show. He recorded many LPs on Compo and MCA labels.184 “Ookpik Waltz” is a popular tune in the Western U.S. fiddle contest scene. It was first heard at the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest in Weiser, Idaho in the early 1970s. It has since been recorded by such diverse groups as the Irish band, Altan, the David Bromberg Quartet, and a number of fiddlers from many

different traditions. Frankie wrote the tune in 1965; his recording of it the same year is included on this CD set. He named the tune using the Inuktitut word for snowy or Arctic owl. It is also sometimes mistakenly called the “Eskimo Waltz” or said to be an Inuit funeral dirge from the Pacific northwest.185 In fact, Frankie wrote the tune after watching a television special on the Arctic, inspired by images of the cold miles of snow and the little ookpik (owl). He started out to write a song with lyrics but didn’t get very far, and decided to play the melody as a fiddle tune instead. He acknowledges that the extra bar before the return of the A section is unusual. He says the tune felt rushed without the bar, and he decided that since it was his tune, he could do what he wanted with it.186 [SJ]

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The North Fiddling and accordion playing in the north date back to the early days of the European whaling industry. Because of its reputation as a safe and profitable whaling ground, the Cumberland Sound area of Baffin Island was an important centre of whaling activity and a wintering ground for vessels throughout the nineteenth century. Contact between British and American whalers and the local Inuit population became even more frequent with the opening of yearround whaling stations, following a number of ship disasters in the 1830s due to poor weather and dangerous conditions.187 Whalers hired the Inuit to work at the stations as well as to provide them with meat. Along with the introduction of new material goods, including musical instruments (�������������������������� each employee of the whaling station received, in addition to food and tobacco, a gun and a harmonium, “or something else of that nature”),188 came the opportunity for regular and prolonged socializing between whaling crews and the Inuit, which included dances accompanied by tunes played on the fiddle, and later the concertina and button accordion.The fiddler was an important member of the whaling crew. His music helped the crews through exhausting and monotonous work, as well as kept them out of trouble during their free time. Crews danced to the music both for exercise and entertainment.189 Fiddles, and later accordions and concertinas, were sold through the Hudson’s Bay stores and the Inuit were soon playing music themselves. Reports from whaling and exploring ships indicate that by mid-nineteenth century Inuit women were quite experienced in European-style dancing, and that fiddles and concertinas were played equally well by whalers and the Inuit, who shared a common repertoire.190 The speed of the transition from traditional music and dancing (drum dancing) to European jigs and reels is notable.When English mis-

sionary Edmund James Peck arrived at the mission station on Blacklead Island in 1894, Aboriginal religious and social traditions were still practiced amongst the Inuit.191 By the beginning of the twentieth century, European music and dancing were more prevalent than traditional Inuit music in the Cumberland Sound area.192 Square dances, accompanied by fiddle, were held every Saturday evening on Blacklead Island.193 Because music played such an important role in Inuit culture before contact, it is not surprising that the Inuit would be inter-

The North.

ested in the music introduced by the whalers. They were encouraged by the missionaries, who objected to traditional Inuit music and dance with its connection to native spirituality.194 The voyageurs and trading post agents were also a strong influence on the musical traditions of Aboriginal communities in the north, introducing French and Scottish fiddle and accordion playing and square dancing.195 In more isolated Aboriginal communities, the tunes tend to maintain irregular structures and older dance styles, while the Métis fiddling

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in the Great Slave area is more allied to Prairie traditions, connected by historical water routes. Currently, fiddling as a community dance tradition seems to be strongest among the Gwich’in peoples of the Mackenzie Delta area, which crosses both territories and goes into Alaska. Several Gwich’in fiddlers, especially those from Old Crow, Yukon Territory, have made recordings over the years, but few are widely available. The older repertoire consists of fur trade tunes such as “Red River Jig,” “Drops of Brandy,” “Duck Dance,” “Soldier’s Joy,” “Fairy Reel,” “MacDonald’s Reel,” and the “Handkerchief Dance,” often with changing metres or rhythmic groupings. These have been supplemented by more recent old-time tunes such as “Crooked Stovepipe,” “Whisky Before Breakfast,” “Big John MacNeill,” “Buffalo Gals,” “Miller’s Reel” and “Arkansas Traveler,” often also played asymmetrically. These tunes are used for old “square” dances which are performed by many couples in a large circle. This tradition, however, is giving way in many places to a newer repertoire of two-steps and foxtrots largely adapted from popular and country songs, such as “Honky-Tonk Angel,” “Blackboard of My Heart,” and even “You Are My Sunshine.” These tunes, as well as waltzes, which are generally from the Canadian old-time reper-

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toire, are becoming the most popular dance music in many communities. Accordion playing is popular in the eastern Arctic. Most communities in the eastern Arctic have at least one accordion player, and many have several.196 Ethnologist Maija Lutz’s research in Pangnirtung in the 1970s revealed that although the music and dance introduced to the Inuit by whalers and explorers were still important in that community, they were being replaced by more contemporary music and dancing. Rock dances, called qadlunaaq (“white man”), were held every Friday night, with music supplied by a local band consisting of three guitarists and a drummer. The dance was attended primarily by teenagers and young adults, although older adults were interested as well; it was considered a community event.197 By this time, the European music and dancing introduced by the whalers, called “Eskimo dancing” (identified by the word mumiqtut,198 which is simply the generic word for dancing), was performed only on special occasions, such as Christmas, birthdays, or to celebrate a visitor from out of town.These dances were held in either private homes or the community hall and were always accompanied by accordion. Maija describes the “Eskimo dancing” that she witnessed in the 1970s as a combination of the reel, the

country dance, and the square dance, as they are described by dance historian Tom Flett.199 Originally, each of these dances was unique and had its own specific movements, but the Inuit of Pangnirtung combined them into a single dance. Common dance formations included parallel lines and concentric circles, with lots of swinging and partner switching. Occasionally the dancers formed a square of four couples; however, this configuration was used less frequently, perhaps because it seemed to be important to have as many people on the dance floor as possible. The footwork consisted of a traveling step, which looked like a fast walking step, and a stationary step, which was only vaguely described.

There were many versions and variations of the traveling step, each dancer seeming to make it his or her own.The stationary step was also used when two or three solo dancers took to the floor and danced facing each other.200 While Maija saw “Eskimo dancing” accompanied only by solo accordion, she believes that, since most of the accordion tunes she recorded were more idiomatic to the fiddle, the fiddle would have formerly been more popular than the accordion. Maija Lutz describes mumiqtut as an important link to the past and a reminder of an Inuit former way of life.201 (According to visitors from some other communities such as Pond Inlet and Cape Dorset, “Eskimo dancing” played a more important role

Meeka Angnakak, Pangnirtung, Nunavut, February 1974. (Courtesy of Maija Lutz)

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documented non-Aboriginal performances in the north.206 By the early twentieth century, settlers were playing fiddle, mandolin, button accordion, and guitar for home entertainment and local dances. It was not uncommon for mining compounds to employ musicians to entertain the workers and their families; for example, in the 1930s the Wernecke Camp Orchestra performed with two banjos, two fiddlers, two saxophones and a bass drum.207 The commercial recording industry in the north is quite recent. Many musicians, such as Kole Crook, Charlie Peter Charlie, Johnny Beaulieu and Morris Lafferty, made only home and unreleased recordings. CBC North has played a significant role, not only in recording since the 1970s, but also in staging such events as theYukon Fiddle Contest (1978–1994) and the True North Concerts (1982–present) which always featured fiddling. More recently, high-quality digital technologies and the Internet have made both the recording and marketing of performers in the north more economically feasible.208 Local recording studios (notably Old Crow inWhitehorse, Spiritwalker in Yellowknife, and Inukshuk in Inukjuak) and radio and television networks are actively promoting local music to local, national and international audiences. [AL, SJ]

Yukon  

CD2 TRACK 20

Devil’s Dream Charlie Peter Charlie (guitar player unknown) Home recording in the possession of Ben Charlie, n.d. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF BEN CHARLIE

in Pangnirtung among a wider age group than in other Inuit communities ����������������������� the Inuit butthey knew.)202 Although ton accordion tradition went through a period of decline, accordion player Andrew Atagotaluk believes that interest in the instrument amongst younger Inuit is on the rise in the early twentyfirst century. In contrast to the older male-dominated fiddle tradition, elderly women accordion players are not uncommon. Simeonie Keenainak and Andrew Atagotaluk, two of the accordion players featured on this recording, remember many adult women playing the accordion when they were young.203 Maija Lutz recorded only women accordion players during her fieldwork in Pangnirtung in the 1970s and says that she rarely saw a man playing the accordion.204 Simeonie Keenainak, the first man in his community to learn to play the accordion, explains that men were often away from their homes on extended hunting trips. They were too busy trying to feed their family to learn to play the accordion. Women were also busy, but closer to home, and so it was easier for them to find time to practice their music.205 There are also many excellent nonAboriginal musicians in the north, although most have moved there from other places. Vaudeville acts of the 1890s Yukon gold rushes are the first

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Charlie Peter Charlie (1919–2008) was the elected chief of the Old Crow Band from 1956 to 1968, and a wellknown Gwich’in fiddler, admired for his “relentless hard driving style.”209 Charlie Peter did not start playing until he was given a fiddle by his brother-in-law at age eighteen: “Well right there I just want to learn. I just took that fiddle home and started to work on it—that’s in October, but I know all the songs already, and I still use those songs.”210 He learned to play by attending dances, listening to old timers, and singing: “All the time when I do something, I just sing, sing, sing, all the time… and pretty soon I’m trapping, and daytime I travel

with dog and all that and just always sing.”211 Singing was the traditional way for young men to learn the established repertoire of fiddle melodies. He also learned by playing back-up guitar before he picked up the fiddle.212 Charlie Peter’s favourite fiddlers were John Firth and Firth’s son, William. “[William] really could play, and I learned lots out of him. So he was the best fiddler I ever see.”213 (Born in Stromness, Orkney in 1854, John Firth arrived in Fort McPherson in 1871 where he married a Gwich’in woman; his son, William, was one of the couple’s twelve children. Beginning as a dog sled driver, John worked his way up to a position as chief factor at trading posts in Fort McPherson, La Pierre’s House, and Rampart House. He retired in 1921 and died in Fort McPherson in 1939.)214 Charlie would often play for twelve-hour stretches, sometimes with his son Douglas accompanying him on guitar. For him, fiddling created its own euphoria: “Sometimes at a really big dance you sweat all night. Play hard and make you sweat. Next morning when you get up you just feel good.”215 Charlie Peter called “Devil’s Dream” his signature tune.216 His performance on this undated recording showcases the use of drone strings and sliding into notes, played by short

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(Herbie Bowman, piano) Yukon Archives CD 47(318) 1, CBC Yukon Old Time Fiddle Contest 1985, Part 1, 1985. Courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Originally from Manitoba, Joe Loutchan (b.1938) became interested in fiddling at age fourteen.

The Yukon Fiddle Contest was sponsored by CBC as part of the Sourdough Rendezvous, a four-day event of Northern culture held in Whitehorse since 1964. In this performance, from 1985, Peter and Joe opened the event with this medley of well-known reels, “St. Anne’s Reel” and “Angus Campbell.” The two play in harmony, a common practice in the Duet class of oldtime fiddle contests. [SJ]

CD2 TRACK 22

Eight Couple Ben Charlie (Jimmy Linklater, guitar; Jimmy Salt, drums) Ben Chuck: Old Crow Fiddler. HTA 12336, ca. 2004. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF BEN CHARLIE

St. Anne’s Reel / Angus Campbell Joe Loutchan and Peter Dawson

Joe’s favourite fiddling memories are of the barn dances he played in small rural communities throughout the province starting at around age seventeen. He also enjoyed the Ukrainian weddings he played for in northern Manitoba. After moving to the Yukon in 1962, the venues changed. He still played for dances and bonspiels in communities, like Inuvik, with a large Native population, but interest in fiddle music in Whitehorse, where he lives, has been sporadic. The Yukon Fiddle Contest lasted only sixteen years (1978–1994). More constant has been his weekly gig at

a Native-owned bar in the city. Joe has also played in CBC-sponsored concerts across Canada, and travelled throughout North America promoting tourism in the Yukon with his fiddle. Peter Dawson (b.1936) was born in Dauphin, Manitoba, but grew up in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. He began studying violin at age five, though with a father and grandfather both playing fiddle, he preferred to play fiddle and country music.219  As a teenager, Peter played regularly on radio stations and for dances throughout southern British Columbia. He started playing professionally in 1954 on cross-Canada tours. He was the staff fiddler for the radio station WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia, 1956–1960, and a back-up musician on the Grand Ole Opry. Peter makes and repairs fiddles and has operated Peter Dawson Violins in Ottawa since the mid-60s until his recent retirement.220 PETER DAWSON, COURTESY OF PETER DAWSON

CD2 TRACK 21

Although his family loved and played music, none of them played the fiddle. Joe learned by listening to and watching fiddlers who played live every Saturday afternoon on radio station CKSB in St. Boniface, Manitoba; he was particularly drawn to the fiddling of Andy DeJarlis. JOE LOUTCHAN, COURTESY OF THE CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION

bow strokes and a heavy bow pressure that results in a strong, rough tone; these are all trademarks of a Gwich’in fiddle style.217 Mishler credits the unique tone to “a conscious attempt to replicate the traditional sound of elder fiddlers, a sound aesthetically marked as being Indian.”218 He cautions non-Gwich’in listeners not to dismiss this tone as inexperienced “squeaking and scraping.” Like many Aboriginal fiddle styles, the phrase lengths of this performance are asymmetric. The A phrase is usually eight and a half beats long; the B phrase is usually ten beats long. “Devil’s Dream” is a popular tune in many fiddle traditions; in the British Isles it is often called “The Devil Among the Tailors.” [SJ]

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Ben Charlie (b.1941) is from a well-known family of Gwich’in fiddlers from Old Crow, including his father Charlie Peter Charlie and his brother Doug Charlie. Ben taught

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choreographed for eight couples, in common practice it is danced by as many couples as wish to take to the dance floor. The dance is a direct descendent of a Scottish and Orcadian dance called variously “The Scotch Reel,” “The Highland Reel,” “The Reel of Four,” or “The Foursome Reel,” although it has a different opening pattern.222 Craig Mishler writes that although there was some French Canadian influence by fiddlers such as Antoine Houle, Baptiste Boucher, and Moses Mercier, the strongest influence on the Gwich’in fiddle and dance tradition is that of Scotland, and specifically, Orkney.223 By 1848, over three quarters of all Hudson’s Bay Company employees in Northern Canada were Scots and Orkneymen.224 Mishler writes that although Orcadian and Scottish music and dance have changed considerably since this time, Gwich’in music and dance has remained relatively unchanged. New dances and tunes have been added to Gwich’in repertoire throughout the twentieth century, but not replaced it.225 [AL, SJ]  

Northwest Territories  

CD2 TRACK 23

Devil’s Reel Johnny Beaulieu Home recording, ca. 1962. Used by permission.  

COURTESY OF THE BEAULIEU FAMILY

himself to play the fiddle in his late teens by listening to his elders play. He has played in many music festivals in the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Alaska. He is an announcer for Gwich’in Gingik NeeKaii, a current affairs program broadcast in the Gwich’in language on CHON in Whitehorse. He also plays fiddle regularly on the station. This tune, known in Old Crow as “Eight Couple” or in Gwich’in as “Nihk’iidqq” (translating to “two fours”), is a Métis adaptation of the Scottish tune “Lord MacDonald’s Reel.”  Like his father and other Gwich’in fiddlers, Ben slides between notes, uses frequent drones and double stops and short bow strokes. His bow pressure is heavier than is common in many fiddle traditions, although not as heavy as his father’s. This tune is associated with a dance, also called “Eight Couple,” throughout Aboriginal communities in the Northwest and south into North Dakota. The dancers move through various figures, including two and four parallel lines and elaborate figure eights. The couples jig or “set” in one spot, facing each other, during the lower section of the tune, and travel during the second or higher part of the melody.221 Although the dance is

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Johnny Beaulieu (1907–1981), a Deninu Métis fiddler, lived all his life in Fort Resolution, Northwest Territories. According to his nephew Angus, Johnny probably learned to fiddle by listening to his uncle George Norn (1878–1949), who was a popular fiddler in the area. Angus remembers attending dances in his youth at which his two older relatives, Johnny and George, were playing. They played without accompaniment and without amplification. They often played simultaneously to augment their volume, either in unison or with the second fiddler playing chords to accompany the lead fiddle’s melody. Angus also remembers seeing the men take turns hitting the strings of

the fiddle over the bottom end of the fingerboard with two sticks (known as “beating straws” in some traditions—knitting needles were also used to hit the strings) to sound an accompanying chord. “Devil’s Reel” is a popular tune in the north, used for both square dancing and solo percussive dancing. Although square dancing is becoming less popular and solo percussive dancing has all but disappeared in southern communities of the Northwest Territories, such as Fort Resolution, Angus Beaulieu says that these dance traditions are still popular in more northern communities, such as Déline and Tulita, where he is often asked to play.226 Johnny changes the tuning of his fiddle (called “cross-tuning”)—A E A E—in order to facilitate the use of droning notes. According to Angus Beaulieu, there are several tunes in the local repertoire for which fiddlers retune, including “Devil’s Dream” and “Red River Jig.” “Devil’s Reel” is reminiscent of American folk styles, where cross-tuning is still common, and old Scottish and Shetland Island music. Johnny begins the tune by playing the A section three times, and the remainder of the performance follows a conventional AABB structure. Each section is eight and a half bars long. [AL, SJ]

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(Leandre Beaulieu, guitar) 

COURTESY OF ANGUS BEAULIEU

Home recording, 1974. Used by permission.

As a young child, Angus Beaulieu (b.1934) was taken by his grandfather to community dances in Fort Resolution where his grandmother’s brother, George Norn, was fiddling. Although there was always a fiddle in the house, he wasn’t allowed to touch it. Then one day, after his grandmother had passed away, and his grandfather was out of the house, thirteenyear-old Angus took the fiddle down and tried to scratch out a tune. When his grandfather came in unexpectedly and caught him at it, Angus quickly put the fiddle away and nothing was said. The next time his grandfather was out of the house, Angus tried the fiddle again. Again, he was caught and nothing was said, so Angus took it as tacit approval. His first tune was “Rubber Dolly,” which he played with

of two and three. Using this changing metre, the A part could have seven bars, with the following beats per bar: 2, 3, 2, 2, 3, 2, 2. [SJ]

CD2 TRACK 25

Amazing Grace Kole Crook (Helen Edgar, piano) Unreleased recording, 1997. Used by permission.

Born in Hay River, Northwest Territories, Kole Crook (1974–2001) started to play on his grandfather’s fiddle at age thirteen. He was helped by Richard Lafferty from Hay River as well as Angus Beaulieu from Fort Resolution. In his early twenties, Kole travelled throughout the North teaching young people to fiddle with Andrea Hansen, co-founder of Strings Across the Sky. Kole died tragically in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve, 2001. The Kole Crook Fiddle Association carries on Kole’s legacy by preserving and

promoting fiddling in the North, especially amongst First Nations youth.227  In 1997, Kole recorded some tracks for a CD, to be called The Bush Fiddler, at the home of Helen Edgar in New Brunswick. It is unusually eclectic, even containing tunes from Eastern European traditions. “Amazing Grace” is a favourite tune in the North where it is often the first tune taught to young students. This track demonstrates Kole’s skill at creating a unique arrangement of a familiar tune through melodic and rhythmic variations and techniques such as pizzicato and double-stopping. [AL, SJ]  

Nunavut  

CD2 TRACK 26

Tune for square dancing Kudloo Pitsiulak Maija Lutz Collection, 1973. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF MAIJA LUTZ

Crooked Stovepipe Angus Beaulieu

one finger, sliding it up and down the string to find the right pitch. On his next tune he added a second noting finger, then a third. He learned primarily from watching and listening to his uncle Johnny Beaulieu and greatuncle George Norn. Angus was soon playing for dances and events all over the north, often traveling to gigs on dogsled. He has played with the same band, Native Cousins, for over forty years. He was also the leader of the house band for the Sourdough Rendezvous in Yellowknife for twenty-two years, from 1970 to 1992. In 2006, Angus had a stroke and doctors told him he would never play again. He credits the constant care and encouragement of his wife, Dorothy, for the fact that less than a year later he was playing again. Angus says that “Crooked Stovepipe” is a favourite tune in the north and often used for the first or second change of a square dance. This performance is an example of a wellknown tune made unique by Angus. Although the B part, with its regular eight-bar phrasing, will be familiar to most fiddlers, the irregular phrasing in the A part of the tune is perhaps an influence from his Deninu Métis heritage. Counted strictly with two beats to a bar, the A part also consists of eight bars; however, Angus phrases it differently, switching between bars

COURTESY OF JENNIFER SKEARD

CD2 TRACK 24

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plays the B section straight, as two phrases of four beats in length, but she extends the A sections by holding the pick up and ending notes of the phrases for extra beats. The two B phrases have four and a half and five beats respectively. This track and the following one were recorded in Pangnirtung, Nunavut in the fall and winter of 1973. [ML, SJ]

CD2 TRACK 27

Ilavaliak Niviaqsiaq Nowdlak

This track was recorded during a dance held in the Pangnirtung Community Hall as part of a conference attended by delegates from various communities. Several women took turns providing accordion accompaniment for the dancing. Niviaqsiaq plays most of the tune in the standard AABB structure. Occasionally, she plays only one B section at a time. While the B sections are always nine beats long, the A sections vary between eight and nine beats. [ML, SJ]

Maija Lutz Collection, 1973. Used by permission.

CD2 TRACK 28

Liverpool Hornpipe Andrew Ataguttaaluk Jim Hiscott Collection/CBC, 1998. Courtesy

Currently living in Pangnirtung, Niviaqsiaq Nowdlak was born in 1942 in Nunataaq, an outpost camp on Cumberland Sound, east Baffin Island. She learned to play accordion from a relative when she was about ten years old. She enjoyed playing for community dances, as well as at home for her family.

COURTESY OF ANDREW ATAGOTALUK

of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. COURTESY OF LOOEE ARREAK

This dance tune is played on the accordion by Kudloo Pitsiulak (b. ca.1900—d. ca.1980s), who was in her seventies when it was recorded by ethnologist Maija Lutz. Kudloo was born on Blacklead Island, the site of one of the most important Cumberland Sound whaling stations and the first mission station to be established on Baffin Island. Kudloo remembered some traditional songs even though she had been discouraged by a relative from learning them after the missionaries came. She had never seen singing and dancing done to the traditional frame drum. “Eskimo dancing,” now called “square dancing,” however, was a weekly occurrence on Blacklead Island, and she learned to play accordion for dances as a young girl. A much younger accordion player from Pangnirtung, Simeonie Keenainak, remembers hearing that when she sat to play, her head barely showed above the instrument.228 All of the tunes Kudloo played for the recording session with Maija were tunes used to accompany square dancing. Simeonie says that Kudloo had a style different from any other accordion player he knew (including himself, though she was his model) because she added extra notes or beats in between the lines. We hear her unique style on this track; she

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Born along the coast of Boothia Peninsula, north of Thom Bay, Nunavut in 1950, Andrew Ataguttaaluk started playing the accordion when he was a young boy. He

learned primarily from his father and remembers that his family always had an accordion with them, whether they were living in an igloo or a sod house. When he became a young adult, he got his own instrument. His wife also plays accordion, and they raised a musical family. Today Andrew is busy as the Bishop of Nunavut for the Anglican Church of Canada, but he continues to play music, primarily at Christmas dances and other celebrations. Andrew recalls the igloos that were built for Christmas dances in his childhood which would hold fifty to sixty people. It would get so warm inside that the dancers would have to go outside to cool off. Dances were also held between the summer and winter months when thin ice made hunting dangerous. They would last for hours and involve the entire community. In between dance sets, Inuit games were played.229 Each dance can be quite long, typically about thirty minutes, and Andrew remembers playing one tune non-stop for two hours. Andrew is pleased that the accordion is becoming a popular instrument in Inuit communities again after years of silence. “Liverpool Hornpipe” was recorded by Jim Hiscott in St. Thomas’ Anglican Church, Inukjuak for a series he produced for CBC Radio Two in 1998/99 called “Highway One.”

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  CD2 TRACK 29

Iqsaakik / Sialaanqujaqsiut Simeonie Keenainak (Tim Eviq, guitar; George Qaqasik, bass; Juilee Veevee, drums) Jim Hiscott Collection/CBC, 1996. Courtesy of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

PHOTO BY GENE RAMSBOTTOM COURTESY OF JIM HISCOTT

 

Simeonie Keenainak (b.1948), of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, is probably the best known of contemporary Inuit button accordion players.230 He learned to play the accordion from the elders in his community

who, he says, learned from the whalers on whaling ships. Since they had no way of listening to tapes or recording music at that time, everything they learned was from listening first hand to other musicians. Kudloo Pitsulak, featured earlier on the CD set, was Simeonie’s role model as a musician. Because the two were living in different camps and Simeonie could not hear her play as often as he would have liked, when the technology became available, she made a tape for him so that he could learn her tunes. As a teenager, Simeonie loved square dances. When, at age twenty-four, he realized that accordion music was dying out, he started to play more seriously in order to keep the tradition alive. Simeonie began playing on a piano accordion, but found it hard to play fast tunes, so quickly switched to a button accordion. He enjoys playing fast square dances and is renowned for his stamina, often playing for hours until his thumbs are blistered. Simeonie says, “The only thing I know is when the people dancing are happy, they keep your energy up. If they get bored… then you get bored too. When they’re having fun, you’re having fun.”231 Simeonie is a retired RCMP officer and avid hunter and wildlife photographer.

He is often featured in regional and national media for his musicianship and cultural community efforts. Simeonie learned this set of square dance tunes from the elders in his community, but plays the tunes in his own distinctive style. Although in some Inuit communities the dancers prefer the musicians not to change tunes in the middle of a set,232 Simeonie likes to change tunes to add musical interest and give the dancers a boost of energy, especially since one square dance might last two hours, depending on how many dancers are involved. While Simeonie knows the names of the tunes only in Inuktitut, both are familiar in other fiddle traditions. The A part of “Iqsaakik” is very similar to the B part of the southern American version of song and fiddle tune “Bonaparte’s Retreat.” The A and B parts of “Sialaanqujaqsiut” are the same as the Scottish pipe tune “The Barren Rocks of Aden”; a third part is taken from the Scottish tune, “My Love is But a Lassie Yet.”233 This set of tunes is a good example of how the Inuit made European tunes their own. Simeonie plays at a fast tempo with lots of energy, and concludes the set with a “shave and a hair cut” ending, to the delight of the audience. This set of tunes was

recorded by producer Jim Hiscott and technician Marc Demers for the CBC Sixtieth Anniversary Inuit Accordion Festival. The fivehour concert, which took place on Saturday, June 29, 1996 in the Anglican Parish hall of Iqaluit, was attended by over three hundred people and followed by a community dance.234 [SJ]   CD2 TRACK 30

Beluga Waters Colin Adjun (Pat Braden, bass; Norman Glowach, acoustic guitar, drums; Darryl Heinzig, piano; Eric Fuglsang, electric guitar) Beluga Waters. Spiritwalker SWP 398, 1997. Used by permission.

COURTESY OF COLIN ADJUN

Andrew changes this well-known tune slightly by adding a beat to the end of each phrase in the A section, and one beat at the end of the B section. There does not seem to be any pattern in the way he structures the A and B parts of the tune; he varies the number of phrase repetitions from once to three times, resulting in the following structure: AA BBB A BB AA B A B A BB AA B AA B A. [SJ]

Colin Adjun (b.1944), known as “the fiddler of the Arctic,” says that when he was born, on the Arctic coast in the small community of Rymer Point on Victoria Island, there was “music in my head,” and “once you

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have the tune in your head, you remember it.”235  Colin learned to play as a young boy living on Reid Island: “My two uncles [Charlie Avakana and John Kuneyuna] played the fiddle, and they taught me when we were living in the outpost camp.”236 He remembers gathering around the radio with his family to listen to the Saturday Night Hoedown out of Edmonton. Colin learned much of his early repertoire from this show, which broadcast only fiddle and square dance music. By the age of twelve he was playing regularly for local square dances in Coppermine (now Kugluktuk) where he attended school; one of the benefits of being the local fiddler is that he got to stay

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up later than the other students because the dancers wouldn’t let him leave.237 Colin has since traveled from coast to coast playing at community celebrations, special events and music festivals. When he is not making music on any of the seven instruments he plays, he is a Wildlife Officer with the Nunavut Territorial Government. “Beluga Waters” is the title track from Colin’s third and latest recording, which consists entirely of his own compositions. This danceable waltz highlights guitar and keyboard solos in addition to Colin’s fiddling. Colin adds a lot of droning and double-stopping, which thicken the texture. [AL, SJ, MV]

Inuit woman Martha plays the concertina for a group of dancing boys, Resolute Bay (Qausuittuq), N.W.T. (now Nunavut), Canada, 1956. (Photo by Gar Lunney. Courtesy of the National Film Board of Canada,Library and Archives Canada, PA-179002)

Endnotes 1. For more on gender and fiddling in Canada, see Beverley Diamond, “The Interpretation of Gender Issues in Musical Life Stories of Prince Edward Islanders,” in Music and Gender: Negotiating ShiftingWorlds, eds. Pirkko Moisala and Beverley Diamond (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 99-139; Sherry Johnson, “’If you want to win you’ve got to play it like a man’:  Music, Gender, and Value in Ontario Fiddle Contests,” Canadian Journal for Traditional Music/Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 27 (2001), 10-19; and Sherry Johnson, “Gender Consciousness Among Women Fiddlers at Ontario Fiddle Contests,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 34, no. 1-2 (2000), 3-6. 2. Collection Archives des Ursulines du Québec [CAUQ], Livre des dépenses, N° 10, 1 avril au 30 novembre 1843. 3. CAUQ, Prospectus, Objets d’enseignement, 1847. 4. Collection Musée des Ursulines de Trois-Rivières, N° 1195-1033. 5. L’Artisan, Québec, vendredi 24 mai 1844. 6. Musée de l’Accordéon. http://accordeon.montmagny.com/carrefour/ index_f.aspx?CategoryId=690, accessed June 18, 2010. 7. For more on the accordion in Canada, see Carmelle Bégin, La musique traditionnelle pour accordeon diatonique: Philippe Bruneau, (Ottawa: Musées nationaux du Canada, 1983), CCECT, dossier 47; Ian Bell, “The Big Squeeze: Button Accordions in Canada,” Canadian Folk Music Society Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 21, no. 3 (1987), 4-7; Ian Bell, “The Big Squeeze Part Two: Accordions in Canada—Styles and Sources,” Canadian Folk Music Society Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 21, no. 4 (1987), 7-14; Yves Le Guével, La musique traditionelle instrumentale Canadienne-Française en milieu urbain: Le cas de Québec (1930–1960), (M.A. thesis, l’Université Laval, 1997); Lisa Ornstein, “Une exposition itinerante sur l’accordeon au Québec,” Canadian Folk Music Society Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 21/3 (1987), 7-8. 8. The contributions of Yves Le Guével have been excerpted with permission from his article “The Implantation of the Accordion in Quebec: From the Origins to the 1950s,” (http://www.mnemo.qc.ca/html2/99(29)a.html, accessed July 7, 2010). It was originally published in French as “L’implantation de l’accordéon au Québec: Des origines aux années 1950,” Bulletin Mnémo 4,

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no. 1 (1999), http://www.mnemo.qc.ca/spip/spip.php?article33, and later translated into English for the website by Juliette Champagne. 9. Anne Lederman, “Fiddling,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 455. The document is available online at Hieroseme Lalamen, “Journal Begun, 1645, November,” The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents:Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610-1791,Vol. XXVII, Hurons, Lower Canada: 1642-1645, ed, Reuben Gold Thwaites (Cleveland, OH: The Burrows Brothers Company, 1898), p. 100, http://puffin.creighton. edu/jesuit/relations/relations_27.html, accessed June 28, 2010. 10. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 455. 11. “Livres de contredanses,” Musée de la civilisation, collection du Séminaire de Trois-Rivières, Collection Montarville Boucher de LaBruère, CL-003201004. 12. “Manuscrit de contredanses,” Musée de la civilisation, collection du Séminaire de Québec, fonds Édouard Bacquet, carton 1, no. 8, 13f. 13. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 455. 14. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 455. See also Maija Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation on Eskimo Music of Cumberland Peninsula (Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1978). 15. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 455. 16. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 455. 17. Ken Perlman, The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island:  Celtic and Acadian Tunes in Living Tradition (Pacific, MO:  Mel Bay Publications, 1996), p. 15. 18. L’Association des Loisirs Folkloriques du Québec was established at the same time; in 1985, the two united to become l’Association Québécoise des Loisirs Folkloriques. See “Historique,” Association Québécoise des Loisirs Folkloriques, http://www.quebecfolklore.qc.ca/02_historique.htm, accessed November 22, 2010. 19. Ron MacInnes, prod., Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler (Canadian Broadcast Corporation, 1972). 20. See Gabriel Labbé, Les Pionniers du disque folklorique québécois 1920-1950 (Montréal: Les Éditions de l’Aurore, 1977) for more on early Quebec fiddle and accordion recordings. 21. The Virtual Gramophone: Canadian Historical Sound Recordings, Library and Archives Canada, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/4/4, accessed June

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28, 2010. 22. Anne Lederman, Fiddling in Canada, http://www.annelederman. com/EMC_article.pdf, accessed July 10, 2010; Sheldon MacInness, Early Cape Breton Fiddle Recordings. Folklore & Ethnomusicology, Cape Breton University, http://culture.cbu.ca/folklore/fiddle/introduction.html, accessed April 1, 2010. For further information on the influence of commercial recordings on the fiddle music of Cape Breton, see Ian McKinnon, Fiddling to Fortune: The Role of Commercial Recordings Made By Cape Breton Fiddlers in the Fiddle Music Tradition of Cape Breton Island (M.A. thesis, Memorial University, 1989). 23. Lederman, Fiddling, 2010. 24. Lederman, Fiddling, 2010. 25. Keith MacMillan, “Broadcasting,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), 162-67. 26. Margaret Daly and Mark Miller, “George Wade and the Cornhuskers,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 1380. 27. Blaine Allan, CBC Television Series, 1952-1982. Queen’s Film and Media, 1996, http://www.film.queensu.ca/CBC/Index.html, accessed Jan. 26, 2009. 28. Richard Green, “Don Messer and his Islanders,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 618. For biographical information on Don Messer see also Johanna Bertin, Don Messer:The Man Behind the Music (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2009). 29. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 456. 30. Johanne Trew, “Conflicting Visions: Don Messer, Liberal Nationalism and the Canadian Unity Debate,” International Journal of Canadian Studies 26 (2002), p. 52. 31. Art Jamison, interview with Sherry Johnson, February 16, 2003. 32. BBC, Take the Floor, interviews with Ken Gamble, Ed Gyurki and Scott Woods, radio broadcast, 1998; Neil Rosenberg, “Don Messer’s Modern Canadian Fiddle Canon,” Canadian Folk Music Journal/Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 22 (1994), p. 26; Johanne Trew, Music, Place and Community:  Culture and Irish heritage in the Ottawa Valley (Ph.D. diss., University of Limerick, 2000), p. 188.

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33. Trew, Music, Place and Community, 2000, p. 188. 34. John Crozman, A Fiddler’s Handbook (London, ON: Arco Music, 1985), p. 6. 35. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 850. 36. See Trew, Music, Place and Community, 2000, p. 188, where she writes that removing ornaments from a tune has been called “Canadianising” the tune. Although some ornamentation is used in the Canadian old-time style, it is minimal in comparison with more ornate styles such as French Canadian, Irish, and Cape Breton. 37. CBC Radio One, Grassroots, Martin Chapman interviewing Graham Townsend, radio broadcast, June 1982. 38. Dawson Girdwood, interview with Sherry Johnson, May 4, 2001. 39. Lederman, “Fiddling,” 1992, p. 456. 40. See James John Hornby, “The Great Fiddling Contests of 1926,” The Island Magazine 7 (1979), 25-30. 41. Diamond, “The Interpretation of Gender Issues,” 2000, p. 130; James John Hornby, The Fiddle on the Island:  Fiddling Tradition on Prince Edward Island (M.A. thesis, Memorial University, 1982), p. 78. 42. Sherry Johnson, Negotiating Tradition in Ontario Fiddle Contests (Ph.D. diss.,York University, 2006). 43. For example, see Virginia Garrison, Traditional and Non-traditional Teaching and Learning Practices in Folk Music: An Ethnographic Field Study of Cape Breton Fiddling (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin—Madison, 1985) on the transmission of fiddling on Cape Breton Island. 44. Craig Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe:  Athapaskan Fiddle Music and Square Dancing in Northeast Alaska and Northwest Canada (Urbana and Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 1993), p. 60. 45. Heather Sparling, Puirt-a-Beul: An Ethnographic Study of Mouth Music in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (M.A. thesis,York University, 2000); Heather Sparling, Song Genres, Cultural Capital and Social Distinctions in Gaelic Cape Breton (PhD diss.,York University, 2006). 46. Leroy Brown, interview with Rod Olstad, March 22, 1995. 47. Alfie Myhre, interview with Rod Olstad, September 4, 1996. For excerpts from this and other interviews as part of the Northern Alberta Fiddle Project, see http://www.fwalive.ualberta.ca/mvtmc/en/html/narratives.php?id=6, accessed July 27, 2010. 48. Bill Guest, “’Down East’ Fiddling,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de

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Musique Folklorique Canadienne 19, no. 3 (1985), 11-12; Ivan Hicks, “Old-time Fiddling in New Brunswick,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 19, no. 3 (1985), 16-17. 49. Lederman, Fiddling, 2010. 50. Kate Dunlay and David Greenburg, eds., Traditional Celtic Violin Music of Cape Breton (Toronto:  DunGreen Music, 1996), p. x. 51. David Reiner and Peter Anick, eds., Mel Bay’s Old-Time Fiddling Across America (Pacific, Missouri:  Mel Bay Publications, 1989). 52. Colin Harding Quigley, Creative Processes in Musical Composition: French-Newfoundland Fiddler Emile Benoit (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1987); Colin Harding Quigley, “A French-Canadian Fiddler’s Musical Worldview: The Violin is ‘Master of the World,’” in Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology: Issues in the Conceptualization of Music 7, eds., James Porter and Ali Jihad Racy (Los Angeles, CA: University of California, 1988), 99-122; Colin Harding Quigley, “Catching Rhymes: Generative Musical Processes in the Compositions of a French-Newfoundland Fiddler,” Ethnomusicology 37, no. 2 (1993), 155-200; Colin Quigley, Music from the Heart: Compositions of a Folk Fiddler (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995). 53. Gerald S. Doyle, Old-Time Songs of Newfoundland (St. John’s, Newfoundland: Gerald S. Doyle Limited, 1955, 1966, 1978) Kenneth Peacock, The Native Songs of Newfoundland (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1960); Kenneth Peacock, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (Ottawa: National Museum of Man, 1965); E.B. Greenleaf and G.Y. Mansfield, Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland (Hatboro, PA: Folklore Associates, 1968 [1933]); Maud Karpeles, Folk Songs from Newfoundland (London: Faber and Faber, 1971); Genevieve Lehr, Come and I Will SingYou: A Newfoundland Songbook (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985). For more on folksong collecting in Newfoundland and Labrador, see Peter Narváez, “Newfoundland Vernacular Song,” in Popular Music: Style and Identity, eds. Will Straw, Stacey Johnson, Rebecca Sullivan and Paul Friedlander (Montreal: Centre for Research on Canadian Cultural Industries and Institutions, 1995), 215-19. 54. Kelly Russell, Rufus Guinchard:The Man and his Music (St. John’s, NL: Harry Cuff Publications. 1982). 55. For example, Kelly Russell, Kelly Russell’s Collection:The Fiddle Music of Newfoundland and Labrador,Volume One, Rufus Guinchard and Emile Benoit (St. John’s, NL: Pigeon Inlet Productions, 2000); Kelly Russell, Kelly Russell’s

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Collection The Fiddle Music of Newfoundland and Labrador: All the Rest (St. John’s, NL: Pigeon Inlet Production, 2003); Christina Smith, The Easiest Dance Tunes From Newfoundland and Labrador (St. John’s, NL: Battery Radio Publications, 2006); Christina Smith, Inshore Fiddling (St. John’s, NL: Inshore Publications, 2008). 56. Colin Quigley, Close to the Floor: Folk Dance in Newfoundland (St. John’s, NL: Memorial University, 1985). 57. Evelyn Osborne, “We didn’t have a bed for a Violin! We Had a Bag!” Exploring Fiddlers and Dance Music in Red Cliff, Bonavista Bay and Bay de Verde, Conception Bay (M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 2003). 58. Paula Flynn, “Don Randell: Mistaken Fiddling Dichotomies,” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 22, no. 1 (2007), 165-186. 59. Evelyn Osborne, “Fiddling with Technology: The Effect of Media on Newfoundland Traditional Musicians,” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 22, no.1 (2007), 187-204. 60. Evelyn Osborne, Fiddling with Style: Negotiating Celticism in the Traditional Instrumental Music of Newfoundland and Labrador (Ph.D. diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, forthcoming). 61 Christina Smith, “Crooked as the Road to Branch: Asymmetry in Newfoundland Dance Music,” Newfoundland and Labrador Studies 22, no. 1 (2007), 139-164. 62. Michael Taft, A Regional Discography of Newfoundland and Labrador 1904-1972 (St. John’s, NL: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1975). 63. Taft, A Regional Discography; Neil V. Rosenberg, “Newfoundland Fiddle Recordings: An Annotated Discography,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 19, no. 3 (1985), 5-6. 64. Taft, A Regional Discography. 65. Emile Benoit, Emile’s Dream (St. John’s, NL: Pigeon Inlet Productions, 1979); Emile Benoit, It Comes From the Heart/CaVient du Tchoeur (St. John’s, NL: Pigeon Inlet Productions, 1982); Emile Benoit, Vive La Rose (St. John’s, NL: Amber Music, 1992). 66. Rufus Guinchard, Rufus Guinchard-Newfoundland Fiddler (St. John’s, NL: Breakwater, 1978); Rufus Guinchard, Step Tunes and Doubles (St. John’s, NL: Pigeon Inlet Productions, 1982); Rufus Guinchard, Humoring the Tunes (St. John’s, NL: SingSong, 1990). 67. Minnie White, The Hills of Home (St. John’s, NL: SingSong, 1994).

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68. Osborne, “We didn’t have a bed for a Violin!”. 69. Christina Smith, “Fiddling Around Newfoundland: Part One - Codroy Valley and Port au Port,” Newfoundland Quarterly 96, no.1 (2003), 21-23; Christina Smith, “Fiddling Around Newfoundland: Part Two - Great Northern Peninsula and East Coast,” Newfoundland Quarterly 96, no.2 (2003), 49-51. 70. See Kelly Russell, All the Rest, for tunes collected from Inuit and Métis fiddlers in Labrador in 1979. 71. Tim Borlase, email communication with Sherry Johnson, January 26, 2010. 72. Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885, The Library of Congress, Sept. 23, 2002, http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/smhtml/ audiodir.html#7901966, accessed August 20, 2009. 73. Maria Uvloriak Lyall, phone conversation with Sherry Johnson, April 1, 2010. 74. For several examples of Mi’kmaq fiddling, see Janice Tulk, prod., Welta’q: “It Sounds Good”: Historic Recordings of the Mi’kmaq (St. John’s, NL: Research Centre for the Study of Music, Media, and Place, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2009). 75. Jean Daigle, ed., The Acadians of the Maritimes (Moncton: Centre d’Etudes Acadiennes, 1982). 76. Guest, “’Down East’ Fiddling”; George A. Proctor, “Fiddle Music as a Manifestation of Canadian Regionalism,” in Explorations in Canadian Folklore, eds. Edith Fowke and Carole Carpenter (Toronto:  McClelland & Stewart, 1985), 225-236. 77. Guest, “’Down East’ Fiddling,” p. 12. 78. Frederick J. Kennedy, “Why Don’t We Stage an Old-time Fiddling Contest?” The Maritime Fiddle Festival, http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/ marfiddlefest/history.htm, accessed December 5, 2005. 79. Jim Delaney, personal communication with Sherry Johnson, December 3, 2004. 80. MacInnes, Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler. For an analysis of the situation that led to the making of the film Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler, see Marie Thompson, “The Myth of the Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler: The Role of a CBC Film in the Cape Breton Fiddle Revival,” Acadiensis 35, no.2, 1-81. 81. Elizabeth Anne Doherty, The Paradox of the Periphery: Evolution of the Cape Breton Fiddle Tradition 1928-1995 (Ph.D. diss., University College of Cape Breton, 1996); Kate E. Dunlay, Traditional Celtic Fiddle Music of

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Cape Breton (M.A. thesis, Indiana University, 1986); Dunlay and Greenberg, Traditional CelticViolin Music; Jacqueline Ann Dunn, Tha Blas na Gaidhlig air a h-uili Fidhleir [The Scottish Accent in the Fiddle] (B.A. thesis, St. Francis Xavier University, 1991); Burt Feintuch, “One Week on the Céilidh Trail,” in Essays in Honor of Edward D. Ives, eds. Pauleena MacDougall and David Taylor (Maine: Maine Folklife Center, 2000), 61-95; Burt Feintuch, “The Conditions for Cape Breton Fiddle Music: The Social and Economic Setting of a Regional Soundscape,” Ethnomusicology 48, no. 1 (2004), 73-104; Garrison, Traditional and Non-traditional; Glenn Graham, Cape Breton Fiddle Music: The Making and Maintenance of a Tradition (M.A. thesis, Saint Mary’s University, 2004); Jeffrey James Hennessey, Fiddle Grooves: Identity, Representation, and the Sound of Cape Breton Fiddle Music in Popular Culture (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2008); Jessica Herdman, The Cape Breton Fiddling Narrative: Innovation, Preservation, Dancing (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia, 2008); Joseph Clifford McGann, Dan R. MacDonald: Individual Creativity in the Cape Breton Fiddle Tradition (M.A. thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2002); McKinnon, Fiddling to Fortune; Marie Thompson, The Fall and Rise of the Cape Breton Fiddler: 1955-1982 (M.A. thesis, Saint Mary’s University, 2003); Thompson, “The Myth of the Vanishing Fiddler.” 82. John G. Gibson, Traditional Gaelic Bagpiping 1745-1945 (Montreal: McGillQueen's University Press, 1998); Barry William Shears, Highland Minstrel to Tourist Icon: The Changing Role of the Highland Piper in Nova Scotia Society, 1773-1973 (M.A. thesis, Saint Mary’s University, 2005). 83. See Dunlay and Greenberg, Traditional Celtic Violin Music for a detailed musical analysis of Cape Breton fiddle style. For other discussions of ScottishCanadian and Cape Breton fiddle style, see David Ennis, Fiddling in Lanark County:  A Medium for the Examination of Acculturation in Canadian Music (M.A. thesis, Carleton University, 1986); Sandy MacIntyre, “Fiddling, Cape Breton Style,” Fiddler Magazine (Summer 1996), 4-8. 84. Dunlay and Greenberg, Traditional Celtic Violin Music, pp. 13-14. 85. Dunlay and Greenberg, Traditional Celtic Violin Music, p. 13. 86. Dunlay and Greenberg, Traditional Celtic Violin Music, p. 12. 87. Mary Jane Lamond, interview with Sherry Johnson, March 8, 1998. 88. Dunlay and Greenberg, Traditional Celtic Violin Music, p. 11. See also Paul Cranford, “Cape Breton,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique

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Folklorique Canadienne 19, no. 3 (1985), 13-15; MacIntyre, “Fiddling.” 89. McKinnon, Fiddling to Fortune, p. 20. 90. For more on the development of the Cape Breton piano style see Richard MacKinnon, “Victorian Parlour Instrument Meets the Celtic Fiddle: The Dynamics of the Cape Breton Piano Style,” in Discovering Cape Breton Folklore, ed. Richard MacKinnon (Sydney, NS: Cape Breton University Press, 2009), 30-43. 91. Joan Flett and Tom Flett, Traditional Step-Dancing in Scotland (Edinburgh: Scottish Cultural Press, 1996), p.187; Frances MacEachen, “Step Dancing in Cape Breton,” in International Encyclopedia of Dance, Vol. 5, ed. Selma Jeanne Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 697. 92. MacEachen, “Step Dancing,” p. 697. 93. Ibid. 94. For more on Cape Breton step dancing, see Sheldon MacInness, “Step Dancing: Gach taobh dhe’n Uisge (Both Sides of the Water),” in The Centre of the World at the Edge of a Continent: Cultural Studies of Cape Breton Island, ed. Carol Corbin and Judith A. Rolls (Sydney, NS: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1996), 111-118. 95. James John Hornby, “A Survey of Fiddling on Prince Edward Island,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 19, no. 3 (1985), p. 7. 96. Bill Guest, Canadian Fiddlers (Hantsport, NS: Lancelot Press, 1985), p.224. 97. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, p. 50. 98. James Littleton, dir., Celtic Spirits, (Toronto: National Film Board of Canada, 1978). 99. Published by Cape Breton Books, www.capebretonbooks.com. 100. Alfred Moffat, arr. Braemar Collection of Highland Music for Piano (Glasgow: Bayley and Ferguson, n.d.). 101. A.J. MacMillan, A West Wind to East Bay: A Short History and a Genealogical Tracing of the Pioneer Families of the East Bay Area of Cape Breton (Sydney, NS: Music Hill Publications, 2001), p. 63. 102. Allister MacGillivray, A Cape Breton Ceilidh (Sydney, NS: Sea-Cape Music, 1988), pp. 208-9. 103. Alex Currie, interview with Paul MacDonald, 1993. 104. MacGillivray, A Cape Breton Ceilidh, p. 190. 105. Perlman, The Fiddle Music of Prince Edward Island, p. 41. 106. Ibid., p. 46.

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107. Ken Perlman, liner notes from The Prince Edward Island Style of Playing:  Fiddlers of Eastern Prince Edward Island, Round CD 7015, 1997. 108. Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival, http://www.rollobayfiddlefest.ca, accessed Aug. 2, 2010. 109. Gary Copeland, Fiddling in New Brunswick:The History and Its People (Moncton, NB: Gary L. Copeland Associates, 2006), pp. 72-3. 110. Matilda Murdoch, personal communication with Amanda Ironside, Jan. 6, 2009. 111. Minstrel Songs, Old and New (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1883). 112. Copeland, Fiddling in New Brunswick, p. 484. 113. Pierre Chartrand, “La Gigue Québécoise dans la marge de celle des Îles Britanniques,” Bulletin Mnémo 12, no. 1 (2009), http://www.mnemo.qc.ca/ spip/spip.php?article150, accessed February 25, 2011 and Pierre Chartrand, “Le Quiproquo de la Gigue au Québec,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 38, no. 4 (2004-5), 1-4; For more on step dancing in Quebec, see Pierre Chartrand, Gigue et Revivalisme au Quebec: L’exemple du Brandy (M.A. thesis. Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, 198990) and Ellen Shifrin, “Folk and Traditional Dance in French Canada,” in International Encyclopedia of Dance, Volume 3, ed. Selma Jean Cohen (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 36. 114. For more on fiddling and accordion playing in Quebec, see Roland Boutot, “La musique traditionnelle au Québec,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/ Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 19, no. 2 (1985), 7-10; Jean-Pierre Joyal, “Le Processus de Composition dans la Musique Instrumentale du Quebec,” Canadian Journal for Traditional Music/Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 8 (1980), 49-54; Gabriel Labbé, Musiciens traditionnels du Québec (1920–1993) (Montréal : VLB Éditeurs, 1995); Lisa Ornstein, “Instrumental Folk Music of Quebec:  An Introduction,” Canadian Journal for Traditional Music/ Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 10 (1982), 3-11. 115. Lucien M. Turner, Indians and Eskimos in the Quebec-Labrador Peninsula: Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory (Quebec: Comeditex, 1979 [1894]), pp. 258-259. 116. Eugene Y. Arima and Magnus Einarsson, “Whence and When the Eskimo Fiddle?” Folk 18 (1976), 26-27. 117. Ernest William Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo (Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1916) in Maija Lutz, Musical Traditions of the Labrador Coast Inuit

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(Ottawa: National Museums of Canada, 1982), p. 12. 118. Arima and Einarsson, “Whence and When,” p. 24. 119. Ibid. 120. Moravian Mission, Periodical Accounts of the Moravian Brethren 21 (18531855) in Lutz, Musical Traditions, p. 13. 121. Arima and Einarsson, “Whence and When,” pp. 36-37. 122. Ibid., pp. 29, 36-37. 123. Information from Pirkko Moisala, former director of the Sibelius Museum (Turku) which houses a large collection of virsikantele. 124. Inuit Games and Songs/Chants et Jeux des Inuit Canada, Philips 6586036 (1978) [sound recording]. 125. Bob Rogers, dir., Fiddlers of James Bay (National Film Board of Canada, Nishnawbe Institute, 1980) [film]. 126. Annette Chrétien, “Mattawa, Where the Waters Meet”: The Question of Identity in Métis Culture (M. A. thesis, University of Ottawa, 1996). 127. Johanne Trew, “Ottawa Valley Fiddling:  Issues of Identity and Style,” British Journal of Canadian Studies 11 (1996), 339-344; Trew, Music, Place and Community. 128. Sherry Johnson, “Changing Age Demographics and Competing Agendas: Challenges for the Future of Ontario Fiddle Clubs,” in Folk Music,Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present, eds. Anna Hoefnagels and Gordon Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars’ Press, 2008), 135-49. 129. Johnson, Negotiating Tradition. 130. Trew, “Ottawa Valley Fiddling,” pp. 156-7. 131. Mark Miller, “CKNX Barn Dance,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 272; A Brief History of the Barn Dance. The Barn Dance Historical Society and Entertainment Museum, http://www.thebarndance.ca/ history.htm, accessed June 20, 2009. 132. Pip Wedge, Cross Canada Barndance. Canadian Communications Foundation: Programming (2002), http://www.broadcasting- history.ca/ programming /television/programming _popup.php?id=4, accessed July 31, 2009. 133. Brock Silversides, “The Don Messer Archival Collection,” in Don Messer: The Man Behind the Music, auth. Johanna Bertin (Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions, 2009), p. 262.

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134. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, pp. 124-5. 135. Mark Miller, “Graham Townsend,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 1308. 136. Ibid. 137. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, pp. 199-200. 138. Eleanor Townsend, The Townsend Old-Time Fiddle Method (Markham, ON: Mayfair Publications, 1996). 139. Harvey Bassett, “Christmas in the Fur Trade,” The Beaver 272 (1941), 20. 140. Peter Erasmus, Buffalo Days and Nights (Calgary, AB: Fifth House, 1999), p. 43. 141. See the newspaper clipping at http://www.fwalive.ualberta.ca/mvtmc/ en/html/metadataResultXML.php?uri= http://www.fwalive.ualberta.ca/vmctm_api/metadata/NAFC_IMG-37.jpg, accessed June 8, 2009. 142. Rod Olstad’s Fiddling Journey, Northern Alberta Fiddle Project, Virtual Museum of Canadian Traditional Music, University of Alberta, 2007, http:// www.fwalive.ualberta.ca/mvtmc/en/html/narratives.php?id=9&sec=2, accessed June 8, 2009. 143. Leah Dorion-Paquin and Lyndon Smith, “The History of Métis Fiddling,” In Drops of Brandy:  An Anthology of Métis Music (Saskatoon, SK:  Gabriel Dumont Institute, 2002), p. 7. 144. Ibid., p. 18. 145. See Roy W. Gibbons, “La Grande Gigue Simple and the Red River Jig: A Comparative Study of Two Regional Styles of a Traditional Fiddle Tune,” Canadian Folk Music Journal 8 (1980), 40-48. 146. See Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe, pp. 65-68 for a discussion of the “Red River Jig” in Gwich’in First Nation culture of the north. 147. Ibid., pp. 18-20. 148. Anne Lederman, Metis Dancing in Southwestern Manitoba, Unpublished Field Report for the Museum of Civilization, 1988. 149. Ibid., p. 35. 150. Ibid., p. 4. 151. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, pp. 153-7. 152. Robert Klymasz, “Folk Music,” In Visible Symbols: Cultural Expression among Canada’s Ukrainians, ed. Monoly R. Lupul (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of

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Ukrainian Studies, 1984), 49-56.  153.Yablochko, Isaac Babel Website at Stanford University, http://www. stanford.edu/group/isaac_babel/gallery/yablochko.htm, accessed January 19, 2009. 154. For more on Western Canadian First Nations and Métis fiddling and dancing, see Byron Dueck, Festival of Nations: First Nations and Métis Music and Dance in Public Performance (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2005); Byron Dueck, “Public and Intimate Sociability in First Nations and Métis Fiddling,” Ethnomusicology 51/1 (2007), 30-63; Anne Lederman, Old Native and Métis Fiddling in Two Manitoba Communities:  Camperville and Ebb and Flow (M.A. thesis,York University, 1986); Anne Lederman, “Old Indian and Métis Fiddling in Manitoba:  Origins, Structure, and Questions of Syncretism,” Canadian Journal for Traditional Music/Revue de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 19 (1991): 40-60. 155. Margaret Daly and Betty Nygaard King, “King Ganam,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 512. 156. King Ganam’s Jigs and Reels (Toronto: BMI Canada, 1956). 157. H. Allen Anderson, “Carl Stuart Hamblen,” The Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, last updated May 30, 2010, http://www. tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/HH/fhafq.html, accessed June 10, 2010. 158. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (New York: MacMillan Company, 1966 [original 1910]). 159. John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, Folk Song USA (American Ballads and Folk Songs) (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1967 [original 1934]), p.198. 160. Don Retson, “Accordionist Olaf Sveen was a celebrity in Alberta, as well as in his native Norway,” The Edmonton Journal, Saturday, December 15, 2007. 161. For more on Olaf Sveen, see Richard Green, “Olaf Sveen,” in Encyclopedia of Music in Canada, 2nd Ed, eds. Helmut Kallman and Gilles Potvin (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1992), p. 1267; Olaf Sveen, “I’m Olle Myself! ,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 28, no.4 (1994), 3-9. 162. Jack Olson, interview with Trent Bruner, April 1996. 163. Eric Karolat, interview with Trent Bruner, July 1992. 164. Brian Cherwick, Polkas on the Prairies: Ukrainian Music and the

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Construction of Identity (Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 1999), p. 70. 165. Jaroslav Bohdan Rudnycky, Ukrainian-Canadian Folklore (Winnipeg: Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences, UVAN, 1960). 166. Andriy Nahachewsky, First Existence Folk Dance Forms Among Ukrainians in Smoky Lake, Alberta and Swan Plains, Saskatchewan (M.A. thesis, University of Alberta, 1985). 167. Andriy Nahachewsky, The Kolomeyka: Change and Diversity in Canadian Ukrainian Folk Dance (Ph.D. diss., University of Alberta, 1991); Marcia Ostashewski, Performing Heritage:  Ukrainian Festival, Dance and Music in Vegreville, Alberta (Ph.D. diss.,York University, 2009). 168. Brian Sklar, email communication with Sherry Johnson, September 3, 2009. 169. Ibid. 170. Gilbert Anderson, interview with Rod Olstad, November 1996. 171. Cherwick, Polkas on the Prairies, pp. 52-57. 172. Pepe Haas, email communication with Rod Olstad, April 2008; Shari Haas, phone communication with Rod Olstad, January 2008; Olaf Sveen, “Canada’s Mr. Polka,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 30, no.1 (1996), 20-22. 173. Rod Olstad, ed., Freddy Lang’s New Time Fiddle Tunes (Edmonton: Fiddler’s Dream Music, 1999), p. 2. 174. James P. Leary, Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 175. Roy Gibbons, As it Comes: Folk Fiddling in Prince George, British Columbia, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies, Mercury Series, Paper No. 43 (Ottawa:  National Museum of Man, 1982). 176. British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers’ Association (Prince George, B.C.:  British Columbia Old Time Fiddlers’ Association., 1990). 177. Ibid., p. 8. 178. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, pp. 188-89. 179. Gibbons, As it Comes, p. 6. 180. Roy Gibbons, Folk Fiddling in Canada:  A Sampling, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies, Mercury Series, Paper No. 35 (Ottawa:  National Museum of Man, 1981), p. 53. 181. Keith Wilson, interview with Sherry Johnson, August 28, 2001. 182. Gibbons, As it Comes, p. 8.

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183. Paige Garnett, email communication with Sherry Johnson, January 13, 2009. 184. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, pp. 178-79. 185. Andrew Kuntz, The Fiddler’s Companion:  A Descriptive Index of North American and British Isles Music for the Folk Violin and Other Instruments, http://www.ibiblio.org/fiddlers, accessed December 23, 2008. 186. Frankie Rodgers, phone communication with Sherry Johnson, August 13, 2009. 187. Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 61. 188. Franz Boas The Central Eskimo (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1964 [1888], p. 59 in Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 68; Franz Boas, “Cumberland Sound and its Eskimos,” The Popular Science Monthly 26 (1885), p. 769 in Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 68. 189. Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 84. 190. David Moore Lindsay, A Voyage to the Arctic in the Whaler Aurora (Boston: Dana Estes and Company, 1911), p. 106 in Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 76. 191. Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 87. 192. Ibid., p. 77. 193. Ibid., p. 88. 194. Ibid., p. 78. 195. Nicole Beaudry, “Subarctic Canada,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 3,The United States and Canada, ed. Ellen Koskoff (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2001), p. 391. 196. Jim Hiscott, “Inuit Accordion Music—A Better Kept Secret,” Canadian Folk Music Bulletin/Bulletin de Musique Folklorique Canadienne 34, no.1-2 (2000), p. 17. 197. Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 85. 198. See Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 87 for a discussion of how the meaning of the term mumiq has changed over time. In the 1820s, it was used by the Inuit to refer to traditional singing and dancing; by the 1970s, Inuit residents of Pangnirtung used the word uniqaqtuak to refer to the traditional songs and dances. The term mumiq, then, would seem to be used to refer to the dominant form of music and dancing at the time. 199. Joan Flett and Tom Flett, Traditional Dancing in Scotland (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1966), pp. 1-2 in Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation,

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p. 90. 200. Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, pp. 90-91. 201. Ibid., p. 119. 202. Maija Lutz, email communication with Sherry Johnson, January 6, 2010. 203. Hiscott, “Inuit Accordion Music,” p. 17. 204. Lutz, The Effects of Acculturation, p. 91. 205. Simeonie Keenainak, phone conversation with Sherry Johnson, February 22, 2010. 206. Ibid., p. 1277. 207. Ibid. 208. Beverley Diamond, “Overview, Northern Canada,” in The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 3,The United States and Canada, ed. Ellen Koskoff (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 2001), p. 1278. 209 Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe, p. 45. 210. Ibid. 211. Ibid., p. 49. 212. Ibid., p. 60. 213. Ibid., p. 20. 214. Ibid. 215. Ibid., p. 45. 216. Ibid., p. 58. 217. Ibid., p. 53. 218. Ibid., p. 54 219. Guest, Canadian Fiddlers, p. 50. 220. Peter Dawson, www.peterdawson.ca, accessed June 11, 2009. 221. For a more detailed description of the dance, see Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe, p. 85. 222. Ibid. 223. Ibid., p. 19. 224. Robert Michael Ballantyne, Hudson’s Bay (Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1972 [1848]) in Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe, p. 19. 225. Mishler, The Crooked Stovepipe, p. 21. 226. Angus Beaulieu, phone conversation with Sherry Johnson, February 23, 2010. 227. The Kole Crook Fiddle Association, Fiddling in the NWT, http:// fiddlingnwt.com/kolecrook_about.html, accessed July 20, 2010.

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228. Simeonie Keenainak, phone conversation with Sherry Johnson, May 15, 2010. 229. Hiscott, “Inuit Accordion Music,” p. 17. 230. Ibid., p. 16. 231. Peter Skinner, prod., Dancing with the Northern Lights: 50 Years of Northern Music and the CBC, Part Four. CBC North, 2009, http://www.cbc. ca/north/features/50, accessed June 23, 2009. 232. Ibid., p. 18. 233. Ian Bell, email communication with Sherry Johnson, October 28, 2009. 234. Hiscott, “Inuit Accordion Music,” p. 16. 235. Nunatsiaq News, January 18, 2002. 236. Ibid. 237. Colin Adjun, phone conversation with Sherry Johnson, October 19, 2009.

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Acknowledgements

  Regional advisors, researchers, and writers: Evelyn Osborne Newfoundland Meghan Forsyth Acadia Sheldon MacInness Cape Breton Lisa Ornstein and Éric Favreau Quebec Sherry Johnson Ontario and the North Anne Lederman Manitoba and the North Trent Bruner Saskatchewan Rod Olstad Alberta   Additional assistance with research and writing: Gilbert Anderson Georges Arsenault Anita Best Émile Blinn Ada Brown Alberta Historical Resources Foundation Calgary Fiddlers Carrefour mondial de l’accordéon Centre d’études acadiennes Anselme-Chiasson, University of Moncton Pierre Chartrand, Centro Mnémo Brian Cherwick Collection Société Saint-Pierre Charlie Conway (maps) Gary Copeland David Descheneau Beverley Diamond Tiber F.M. Falzett Mark Finch FolkwaysAlive Pepe and Shari Haas Kristin Harris Walsh Ivan and Vivian Hicks Andy Hillhouse Jim Hiscott Maureen Houston Amanda Ironside Mathew Johnson

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Ronald Labelle Verna Larson Daniel Lapp Marie Livingstone Maija Lutz Bob Mason Paul McDonald Doug McNaughton Norma Martin Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Folklore and Language Archive (MUNFLA) Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate-Canada Anita O'Keefe Marcia Ostashewski Regula Qureshi Robert Richard Barbara Rieti Charles D. Roach (Les Trois Pignons) Radomsky Family Neil V. Rosenberg Wilma Rothbauer Royalty Records Lynn Russwurm Christina Smith David Stark Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Hank Ukrainetz La Voix Acadienne Phil and Vivian Williams, Voyager Recordings and Publications Louise Wrazen Calvin Vollrath Mila Volpe York University   Thanks also to the musicians, families and collectors who kindly gave their permission to use these tracks. Note: We have made every effort to contact musicians and family members, as well as recording companies. If we have missed you, please contact MMaP, School of Music, Memorial University, St. John’s, NL A1C 5S7. 709-8642058/www.mun.ca/mmap.

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Author Biographies SHERRY JOHNSON grew up traveling across Canada with her five siblings, step dancing and playing the fiddle. She received her Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology in 2006 from York University, writing about issues of tradition within the Ontario fiddle and step dancing contest community in her dissertation. She now teaches in the Music Department at York University, where she tries to squeeze a little bit of fiddling and step dancing into every course she teaches. Sherry remains active in the Ontario fiddle and step dancing community as a performer, teacher, accompanist, and judge. TRENT BRUNER has been active as a house accompanist at fiddle contests throughout Canada and the United States since 1990, including seventeen years as house accompanist for Canada’s national fiddle championship, the Canadian Grand Masters. He has appeared as a piano accompanist on over 175 albums since 1990, released one solo piano album, instructional CDs and books for fiddle accompaniment, and three albums with the fiddle/piano trio The Cleavers (with Canadian Grand Masters finalists Rodney Krip and Tyler Kushneryk).Trent now resides in Valestrand, Norway with his wife and family, but returns to Canada twice yearly for various musical events. PHOTO BY LOIS SIEGEL

comes from a family of traditional musicians and has spent a great deal of time playing with other fiddlers, learning their repertoire and studying their varied styles. He has explored and exploited various sources including archives and personally-made field recordings and has accumulated a rich and fascinating repertoire. As an individual, and in various groups, Éric has played and taught throughout Canada, the United State and Europe. He has recorded two solo albums, one with fiddler and friend Mario Landry, three with his current group Entourloupe, and has appeared on at least twenty others. ÉRIC FAVREAU

is an ethnomusicologist specializing in Acadian instrumental music in eastern Canada. She is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her current projects explore issues of creativity, cultural tourism, and identity in Acadian music and dance of les Îles-de-la-Madeleine (Quebec) and Prince Edward Island; she has also conducted research on fiddling in the Shetland Isles (UK). Meghan holds a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is the recipient of the 2008 Sir Ernest MacMillan Memorial Foundation’s Award for Research in Canadian Music. She balances her academic interests with healthy doses of music-making as a traditional fiddler, classical violinist, and instructor. MEGHAN FORSYTH

Originally from Manitoba, ANNE LEDERMAN is a musician (fiddle, voice, piano, mandolin) composer and researcher. She has performed and recorded with bands MuddyYork, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Njacko Backo, her own group, Fiddlesong, and a new fiddle-based trio, Eh. She has recorded four CDs under her own name, and over fifty with other artists. As a researcher, she is known especially for her work on Aboriginal fiddle traditions. In 1986, she produced a a four-album set (now two discs), Old Native and Metis Fiddling in Manitoba. Anne is also the founding Artistic Director of Worlds of Music Toronto and is on the Faculty of the World Music Centre of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.   is a professional fiddler, teacher and independent scholar from Edmonton.  He collaborated with the University of Alberta’s Centre for Ethnomusicology and the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation between 1994-98 to document fiddlers in Northern Alberta.  This archive later provided the source material for “The Northern Alberta Fiddle Project,” an extensive online display as part of the Virtual Museum of Canadian Traditional Music.  In 2005, Rod collaborated with the Alberta Society of Fiddlers to produce the CD 64 Fiddle Tunes Commonly Played in Alberta and in 2010, the CD and tune book Alberta Original Fiddle Tunes,Vol. 1. ROD OLSTAD

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American fiddler and folklorist LISA ORNSTEIN has the rare gift of being both a highly respected scholar and teacher as well as a virtuoso player. She was an accomplished old-time fiddler when she came to Quebec in 1978. She spent the next 12 years immersing herself in the study, performance and teaching of traditional French Canadian and Acadian fiddling, both in Quebec and internationally. She is a former member of Quebec’s most influential traditional ensemble, La Bottine Souriante, a graduate of Laval University’s Folklore program, and, with, longtime friends André Marchand and Normand Miron, a member of the trio Le Bruit court dans la ville. EVELYN OSBORNE is a Ph.D.candidate in Ethnomusicology

at Memorial University of Newfoundland. She has been researching Newfoundland traditional instrumental music (fiddle and accordion) since 2000. A Newfoundlander herself, Evelyn is proud to help recognize great dance musicians and the diversity of traditional music in her home province. As a fiddler Osborne has given Newfoundland fiddle and dance workshops on four continents and enjoys playing “crooked” tunes in unlikely places. PHOTO BY JANICE ESTHER TULK

Selective Glossary bodhrán: Irish frame drum; one side is covered with goat skin while the other is open so the hand can be inserted to control pitch and timbre Child ballads: collection of ballads of English and Scottish origin collected by American scholar, Francis James Child (1825-1896), in the late nineteenth century concertina: a free-reed instrument, with bellows and buttons on each end; smaller than most accordions and octagonal in shape; developed independently in England (1829) and Germany (1834) double bowing: a bowing pattern using one long bow stroke (or two slurred short bows) followed by two separated short bows; also called shuffle bowing or back bowing; double stop: playing two fingered notes or, literally, stopping two strings, at the same time; also called “double-stringing” by some Métis and Aboriginal fiddlers drone: the fiddler plays a repeated note in addition to the melody note; the drone note is often an adjacent open string; an integral feature of the sound of several fiddle styles including the Scottish style, where it is said to resemble the drone notes of the bagpipes gammeldans: translates literally as “old dance”; Norway’s adaptations of the music of nineteenth-century pan-European social dances, such as waltzes, mazurkas, reinlenders, and polkas gigue: the French word for step dancing; in Quebec, Acadia, and francophone Manitoba it is most often performed to music in duple metre; often mistakenly translated as the English word “jig,” which has developed, since the eighteenth century, the meaning of a dance in 6/8 time harmonium: in North America usually refers to any reed organ with pressure bellows; invented in 1840 in France and used in smaller churches and homes jig: British tune type and folk dance; now generally played and performed in 6/8 metre

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lancers: one of the most popular of late-nineteenth century quadrilles; developed many local variations, including those in Canada longways dance: a type of country dancing with couples facing each other in two long lines pizzicato: a technique for playing stringed instruments in which the string is plucked with the finger instead of bowed quadrille: ballroom dance for four couples that was introduced in France in the mid-eighteenth century and became popular, spreading to England and beyond in the nineteenth century; developed into square dancing in many parts of Canada reel: British tune type and folk dance played and performed in 2/4 or 4/4 metre schottische: slow dance of German origin; developed around mid-19th century scordatura: Italian for “mistuning”; also called “cross-tuning”; the four strings of the fiddle are tuned differently from the standard G-D-A-E tuning; some common alternative tunings include A-E-A-E and A-D-A-E; results in more resonance on some tunes, easier fingering and greater range scotch snap: a rhythmic pattern consisting of an accented sixteenth note, followed by a dotted eighth note; commonly used in the playing of Scottish dance music, particularly strathspeys slip jig: a genre unique to Irish traditional music and dance; 9/8 metre slur: playing two or more notes using one bow stroke; results in a smooth sound strathspey: one of the most popular Scottish and Cape Breton dance tune genres; name derives from strath (valley) and river Spey in Scotland; slow dance in 4/4 metre; characterized by dotted rhythmic patterns tautirut: a bowed zither played by the Inuit of northern Canada tsymbaly: the Ukrainian version of a hammered dulcimer; multiple metal strings are strung over a trapezoidal box and are hit with two beaters turlutting: the singing of fiddle tunes using abstract vocables or nonsense lyrics; also called “jigging” in Cape Breton, “lilting” in Ireland, and “tuning”