Nationalism and commerce: Canadian folk music in the 1920s

• Published in: Canadian issues (Association for Canadian Studies : 1999) Vol. 20; p. 34
• Main Author: Morey, Carl
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Montreal Association of Canadian Studies 01.01.1998
• Subjects: 1914 1938; Canadian history; Folk music; History & criticism; Music; Music festivals
• ISSN: 0318-8442

Folk music as a national identifier is a well-known phenomenon in nineteenth-century music, but by the end of the twentieth century, folk-related musical styles are most commonly found in popular music. In the 1920s, folk music still had sufficient general recognition that it could be used in Canada as an element in commercial advertising and promotion. Moreover, folk music was seen as a device to define nationalism and even to promote unity. The commercial association of music and nationalism had noteworthy if minor manifestations in companies as diverse as the Hudson's Bay Company and the Dow Brewery, and in a variety of Newfoundland publications. Most notable was a series of folk festivals sponsored in the 1920s across Canada by the Canadian Pacific Railway, a sponsorship that mixed nationalism with corporate enlightenment and business policy, with distinct political overtones. The commercialization of folk music in popular idioms in the later twentieth century, while it may be seen to be a dilution of legitimate folk music, shows the continuing force of such music in projecting regional identities. The use of folk music as a national identifier is a well-known device in nineteenth-century music where national traits were used to develop a musical style that was representative of a particular country or ethnic group. Among the best known examples are Smetana and his Bohemian music and Dvorak with his Czech music, but similar references inform particular works of such composers as Chopin in his mazurkas and polonaises, and Liszt in his Hungarian rhapsodies. Folk idioms could also be appropriated by composers to create nationally identifiably music that was not of their own nation; for example, the Russian Glinka's Capriccio brilliante and the French Chabrier's Capriccio espagnol are both based on distinctive Spanish idioms. Somewhat different, although not unrelated, were the trans-national settings of British folk songs by Haydn and by Beethoven. Probably the last composers to derive a personal style, not just occasional pieces, from the study and absorption of the folk music of their native countries were Bela Bartok in Hungary and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England, both in the early part of the twentieth century. The serious study of folk music, and the collecting and cataloguing of folk repertoire is also a nineteenth-century phenomenon, one that had particular impetus from the invention of mechanical recording machines. The collecting of folk songs began in Canada in the mid-nineteenth century, the most notable early result of which was Ernest Gagnon's publication in 1865 of Chansons populaires du Canada, a collection which has seldom been out of print since its first appearance.(f.1) The vigorous activity of study and publication has continued unabated in Canada up to the present day. While folk motifs have been used by some Canadian composers in developing art music, and to a large extent in popular music, it is not folk music in this context as a Canadian musical identifier that is the subject of this paper, but rather the phenomenon of folk music as a Canadian element in commercial promotions in the 1920s. There were other festivals in western Canada, all of them grounded in folk music whatever their varying local characteristics. The first Highland Gathering and Scottish Music Festival took place at Banff in the summer of 1927, to which an Indian Week was added in 1928 that included ceremonial songs and dances. Through the late fall of 1928 and into 1929 there was a Sea Music Festival in Vancouver. At Christmas in 1928 and again in 1929 there was a Yuletide Festival at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, and another Sea Music Festival at the Empress early in 1930. An English Music Festival was held in Toronto in 1929 to mark the opening of the Royal York Hotel, with its large concert hall. In Toronto the programmes were somewhat more sophisticated than had been the case generally, but they still retained a strong association with folk music. The Hart House Quartet, for example, performed only pieces based on folk songs, and the vocal soloists sang folk song arrangements. Among the guests were members of the English Folk Dance Society which had been established by the great collector and reviver of English folk dance, Cecil Sharpe, and which was now directed by his daughter. The main event was the North American premiere of British composer Ralph Vaughan William's opera Hugh the Drover, conducted by [Ernest MacMillan] with designs by [Arthur Lismer]. The opera was a sort of newly composed ballad opera and its style richly reflects Vaughan Williams' folk songs studies.