There’s a long tradition of artists leaving home to explore the wider world. Some bring back a lifetime’s worth of experiences that enrich their work for years to come. Then there are others who need to stay in exile for a while. Being away from home seems to set them free from whatever’s been holding things back and gives them the courage to jump to a new level. It’s a bit like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon.
This Saturday night we’ll be putting the new CD by Gonzales into High Rotation. It’s called Soft Power. He lived in Paris for years and that great city has long been a magnet for artists seeking out creative inspiration. Feist, Buck 65 and Sarah Slean have also spent time there, and the American sister group CocoRosie have set up shop in the Eiffel tower city too. We’ll play their Rainbow Warriors on Friday night.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City. While, I’m not much for the news, the controversy surrounding Michaëlle Jean’s visit to France has certainly reminded us about the link that still exists between Canada and France. A tour there is often the first big step for Quebec artists as they start to make their mark beyond our borders. That’s how it worked for Jorane, who’s gone on to break down lots of musical barriers. On Friday and Saturday night we’ll be playing her music. For me, she is one of the most interesting artists around. Jorane takes her classical training and fearlessly explores the feast of sound possibilities that are available to a musician in our time. Look down this page a bit to find a video of her performing with Bobby McFerrin at the Montreal Jazz Festival.
Friday night, we also have a concert set from Ghislain Poirier. He played Paris last month as part of a European tour. His dance floor DJ style is another example of a multi-stylistic fusion.
Maybe we live too close to the supposedly mono-lingual US, but we often seem to be afraid of a multi-lingual future. I spent my exile years in New York City and I can tell you that the ads in the subway are often in Spanish (that was actually the first time that I realized the word cucaracha meant cockroach – listen to Jorane’s song Cucaracha on Friday night around 11:45).
From my experience Canada’s multi-cultural foundation is really valued in the broader world. We’re seen as a place where people aren’t just free to express themselves, but that conformity to some approved style isn’t possible – because we don’t have one. So what does it mean to be Canadian – other than being nice and polite? Perhaps it means really finding your own voice.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
JUNE 6,7,8
The Signal with Pat Carrabré- Friday JUNE 6, 2008
Tonight on The Signal expect the crackle of electricity when Pat heads to Ottawa for live electronica and heavy beats at a Ghislain Poirier concert. Then chill out in Pat’s happy place- the music of Montreal cellist and singer-songwriter Jorane. There will be a ticket giveaway to Calgary’s Sled Island festival and new music from James, Panda Bear, and Tycho. In the last hour suit up, ‘cause a hard rain is a gonna fall.
Friday Grab bag question: What river runs through Calgary
(send answers and contact info to: thesignal@cbc.ca)
The Signal with Pat Carrabré - Saturday, JUNE 7, 2008
Tonight our Jorane positive weekend continues here on The Signal. Pat will dip in and out of an extraordinary Jorane concert, recorded live in Montreal, throughout the evening. The bar remains high all night long as Pat puts Canadian ex-pat Gonzales’ new CD into high rotation. But wait there is more: you will even have a chance to win that Gonzales CD and new music will be spun from The Tiny, Sea Wolf, Alex& Sam and a track inspired by the Tate Modern’s Rothko collection.
Saturday Grab bag question: What city does Gonzales live in?
(send answers and contact info to: thesignal@cbc.ca)
The Signal with Pat Carrabré - Sunday, JUNE 8, 2008
Tonight Pat features a concert by Pulitzer Prize winning composer George Crumb including the stunning piece Black Angels. Inspired by the beat poetry of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Pat has dug up a wide range of pieces that riff on the spoken word. Stepping up to the mic will be Montreal’s D. Kimm, Laurie Anderson, Winnipeg’s Poor Tree and Halifax’s Buck 65 to name a few. The evening will also include a work inspired by the poetry of Leonard Cohen by composer Kelly- Marie Murphy. Basically it is an evening of talk radio.
Tonight on The Signal expect the crackle of electricity when Pat heads to Ottawa for live electronica and heavy beats at a Ghislain Poirier concert. Then chill out in Pat’s happy place- the music of Montreal cellist and singer-songwriter Jorane. There will be a ticket giveaway to Calgary’s Sled Island festival and new music from James, Panda Bear, and Tycho. In the last hour suit up, ‘cause a hard rain is a gonna fall.
Friday Grab bag question: What river runs through Calgary
(send answers and contact info to: thesignal@cbc.ca)
The Signal with Pat Carrabré - Saturday, JUNE 7, 2008
Tonight our Jorane positive weekend continues here on The Signal. Pat will dip in and out of an extraordinary Jorane concert, recorded live in Montreal, throughout the evening. The bar remains high all night long as Pat puts Canadian ex-pat Gonzales’ new CD into high rotation. But wait there is more: you will even have a chance to win that Gonzales CD and new music will be spun from The Tiny, Sea Wolf, Alex& Sam and a track inspired by the Tate Modern’s Rothko collection.
Saturday Grab bag question: What city does Gonzales live in?
(send answers and contact info to: thesignal@cbc.ca)
The Signal with Pat Carrabré - Sunday, JUNE 8, 2008
Tonight Pat features a concert by Pulitzer Prize winning composer George Crumb including the stunning piece Black Angels. Inspired by the beat poetry of Ginsberg and Kerouac, Pat has dug up a wide range of pieces that riff on the spoken word. Stepping up to the mic will be Montreal’s D. Kimm, Laurie Anderson, Winnipeg’s Poor Tree and Halifax’s Buck 65 to name a few. The evening will also include a work inspired by the poetry of Leonard Cohen by composer Kelly- Marie Murphy. Basically it is an evening of talk radio.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Thursday, May 29, 2008
To Study or not to Study?
Should indie pop musicians go to University and study music or not? This week, that, is the question. I’m still reverberating from that “one-man band” article in the New York Times a week or so back. When that paper calls a musician “unabashedly articulate” you wouldn’t normally think they were writing about an indie pop sensation like Final Fantasy. The roots of modern pop music are more on the iconoclastic and anti-establishment side (never mind “sex, drugs and rock and roll”). After all, the Beatles were still learning how to play their instruments when they were already an international sensation.
When I was a student in music school most of the young composers were coming in with a stronger background in rock than in classical. Some had gotten bored with formula driven pop music and were looking for something more substantial. They wanted to create music that would be more complex. New classical was just the thing. It could be as intellectual and intense as you wanted. Studying the classical tradition, usually at a university school of music, was the normal road to follow.
On Sunday I’ve lined up a crop of tracks from musicians who have solid training in classical music, but who’ve turned their talents and creativity to alternative pop music. Alexandre Désilet, Son Lux, Julia Kent, Ólöf Arnalds, and Patrick Wolf all fit this profile, and every week I seem to come across more.
Are they running away from classical music? That seems unlikely. You don’t have to do a lot of research to know that there are pop musicians who get ideas from listening to classical music. PJ Harvey and Elvis Costello are just two who are happy to acknowledge that they listen to new classical music.
What good does it do a would-be pop star to study how Beethoven planned the modulations in his piano sonatas or how Stravinsky used the octatonic scale? I teach in a school of music and I’m not sure of the answer to that question. We seem to be going through one of those major shifts in musical history. They do happen every once in a few hundred years, like when European musicians discovered the joys of writing music for more than one part (that happened during the move from Gregorian Chant to polyphony in the Medieval period). The same kind of shift happened in the Baroque period when classical tonality caught on. In our time we’re moving through the “post-everything” period to the “what the hell do we do now” phase. Our university music schools are mostly stuck in the past, with curricula that haven’t changed much in a hundred years. Yeah, some have added jazz programs, but they’re still mostly butting heads with the required classical courses.
A few years back universities started giving out honorary doctorates to aging pop stars. Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bono, The Guess Who, Nick Cave and Tom Cochrane are just a few who can now be called Dr. So now that university senates have legitimized pop, how can we continue to indoctrinate our students that classical music is “better” than any other kind of music? Outside my office at Brandon University I have a blurb taken from Parmela Attariwala’s website. We’ve played Parmela’s music on The Signal many times. She’s working on a doctorate in music and her dissertation will be about “the impact of globalization and post-colonialism on contemporary music-making.” She’s asking some pretty tough questions about how our programs should be structured and who should be welcome in the hallways.
This isn’t the first time that this has happened. Sixty years ago classical music performers weren’t welcome in the university. They were trained at independent conservatories. As North American universities grew after the Second World War, classical performers and composers edged their way in and seem to have forgotten that not long ago they were outsiders. Creating us and them camps is mostly destructive. After ten years of studying classical music at university, I had drawn a pretty narrow circle around myself. I thought I knew what music was worth considering and what wasn’t. Then I met Leonard Bernstein and he pretty much trashed my little world. For him, there were only two kinds of music – good and bad. He was just as excited about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the Kronos Quartet’s arrangement of Jimi Hendrix as he was about the Rite of Spring he was conducting that week.
I can’t help but think that if we look at all the music being made in the world, that we’ll find a crazy amount that’s good, if not great. The mix tape we create at The Signal each week is just a window into the world of “new” music that’s being made outside the boundaries. I think that university music professors need to learn from their students on this one. We’ve fallen too far behind the curve. It’s time to get with the program!
When I was a student in music school most of the young composers were coming in with a stronger background in rock than in classical. Some had gotten bored with formula driven pop music and were looking for something more substantial. They wanted to create music that would be more complex. New classical was just the thing. It could be as intellectual and intense as you wanted. Studying the classical tradition, usually at a university school of music, was the normal road to follow.
On Sunday I’ve lined up a crop of tracks from musicians who have solid training in classical music, but who’ve turned their talents and creativity to alternative pop music. Alexandre Désilet, Son Lux, Julia Kent, Ólöf Arnalds, and Patrick Wolf all fit this profile, and every week I seem to come across more.
Are they running away from classical music? That seems unlikely. You don’t have to do a lot of research to know that there are pop musicians who get ideas from listening to classical music. PJ Harvey and Elvis Costello are just two who are happy to acknowledge that they listen to new classical music.
What good does it do a would-be pop star to study how Beethoven planned the modulations in his piano sonatas or how Stravinsky used the octatonic scale? I teach in a school of music and I’m not sure of the answer to that question. We seem to be going through one of those major shifts in musical history. They do happen every once in a few hundred years, like when European musicians discovered the joys of writing music for more than one part (that happened during the move from Gregorian Chant to polyphony in the Medieval period). The same kind of shift happened in the Baroque period when classical tonality caught on. In our time we’re moving through the “post-everything” period to the “what the hell do we do now” phase. Our university music schools are mostly stuck in the past, with curricula that haven’t changed much in a hundred years. Yeah, some have added jazz programs, but they’re still mostly butting heads with the required classical courses.
A few years back universities started giving out honorary doctorates to aging pop stars. Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Bono, The Guess Who, Nick Cave and Tom Cochrane are just a few who can now be called Dr. So now that university senates have legitimized pop, how can we continue to indoctrinate our students that classical music is “better” than any other kind of music? Outside my office at Brandon University I have a blurb taken from Parmela Attariwala’s website. We’ve played Parmela’s music on The Signal many times. She’s working on a doctorate in music and her dissertation will be about “the impact of globalization and post-colonialism on contemporary music-making.” She’s asking some pretty tough questions about how our programs should be structured and who should be welcome in the hallways.
This isn’t the first time that this has happened. Sixty years ago classical music performers weren’t welcome in the university. They were trained at independent conservatories. As North American universities grew after the Second World War, classical performers and composers edged their way in and seem to have forgotten that not long ago they were outsiders. Creating us and them camps is mostly destructive. After ten years of studying classical music at university, I had drawn a pretty narrow circle around myself. I thought I knew what music was worth considering and what wasn’t. Then I met Leonard Bernstein and he pretty much trashed my little world. For him, there were only two kinds of music – good and bad. He was just as excited about Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the Kronos Quartet’s arrangement of Jimi Hendrix as he was about the Rite of Spring he was conducting that week.
I can’t help but think that if we look at all the music being made in the world, that we’ll find a crazy amount that’s good, if not great. The mix tape we create at The Signal each week is just a window into the world of “new” music that’s being made outside the boundaries. I think that university music professors need to learn from their students on this one. We’ve fallen too far behind the curve. It’s time to get with the program!
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