Music in Newfoundland and Labrador: An Introduction to a Rich Cultural Landscape
Music in Newfoundland and Labrador: An Introduction
The study of music in Newfoundland and Labrador has traveled a considerable distance since the foundational collections of Maud Karpeles, Elisabeth Greenleaf, and Gerald S. Doyle in the initial decades of the twentieth century. Following Confederation, the expansion of folklore and music programs at Memorial University of Newfoundland and the creation of the Centre for Newfoundland Studies have fueled a dramatic increase in research on the province's musical traditions, a development likely to continue with new graduate programs in ethnomusicology and a global fascination with the region's music.
Still, the musical life of Newfoundland and Labrador has only recently started to receive the depth of academic interest that the music traditions of mainland Canada and the United States have long experienced. Historical inquiries by Louise Whiteway, Sister Kathleen Rex, and Paul Woodford rekindled curiosity in the province's established formal music practices, a heritage that received little attention until the late twentieth century. Although many of the region's finest musicians remain without documented biographies, there has been a gradual rise in focused life-writing in recent years—notably the engaging accounts of opera diva Georgina Stirling and fiddling legend Émile Benoit. Even former Canadian Idol contestant Rex Goudie has seen his early life captured in print, a vivid sign of how rapidly intellectual attitudes have shifted in a short timeframe.
First Nations music, sacred repertoires, secular art music, jazz, and popular genres remain insufficiently explored, although the contemporary perspectives on several of these subjects in this collection may warrant cautious optimism. Gradually but unmistakably, previous stereotypes are being discarded, and the musical world is recognizing the extraordinary diversity and creativity of Newfoundland and Labrador's music culture.
As the first volume of Newfoundland and Labrador Studies dedicated entirely to music, one goal of this collection is to emphasize the breadth of this variety while also offering fresh methodologies for studying one of the Western world's richest reserves of traditional music. As Cory Thorne reminds readers, “it’s not all about the jigs and reels,” although, we should add, the jigs and reels themselves are extraordinary.
Scope
Responses to our call for papers brought in articles representing a broad range of scholarly styles and methods. The papers include close, intertextual analyses of musical works (Gordon, Rosenberg, Hewson and Diamond, Smith, Chafe), media studies (Guigné, Klassen, Osborne, Colton, Borlase), oral history (Flynn), performance ethnography (Thorne, Tulk, Gordon, Rosenberg, Osborne, Narváez, Best), and sociocultural analysis (Colton, Thorne, Chafe, Narváez, among others). Most of the research featured here relied at least partially on fieldwork and ethnographic approaches.
We consciously included work expressed in varied writing styles. Most submissions employ the full scholarly apparatus—meticulous source documentation, thematic development, and carefully supported arguments. Others are personal reflections, many involving a degree of auto-ethnography, a useful method for understanding the author's social position.
The essays are grouped loosely by genre but ordered so that the reader will likely identify certain narrative threads. Newfoundland and Labrador identity is the central concern of the opening two papers: Colton's “Imagining Nation: Music and Identity in Pre-Confederation Newfoundland” examines the evolving tradition of patriotic music, while Thorne's “Gone to the Mainland and Back Home Again: A Critical Approach to Region, Politics, and Identity in Contemporary Newfoundland Song” introduces two contrasting diaspora communities.
The next five papers address traditional music: two on song and three on fiddling. Rosenberg's detailed examination of a song he labels an “icon” and Guigné's study of the mutually shaping relationship between two collectors both reveal the interaction of print and oral sources and suggest the ideologies behind song collecting. The three fiddling articles complement each other nicely, diverse in methodology and emphasis. Smith investigates the discourses surrounding asymmetrical tunes. Flynn presents a fiddler whose career bridges genre divides as well as the community and commercial sides of music-making. Osborne likewise shows that tradition is not separate from commoditized practices, as she analyzes the function of recordings in two outport communities. Klassen's “I Am VOWR: Living Radio in Newfoundland” documents the fascinating history of one of the unique broadcasters in Newfoundland and Labrador's media landscape.
The convergence of identities and the intersection of oral and print traditions are investigated in Hewson and Diamond's “Santu's Song” and Gordon's “Found in Translation: The Inuit Voice in Moravian Music.” A third contribution about First Nations traditions, Tulk's “Cultural Revitalization and Mi’kmaq Music-Making: Three Newfoundland Drum Groups,” provides a glimpse into a scarcely documented musical world.
A cluster of papers on popular music follows. Best explores the rising hip-hop culture in St. John's and Grand Falls, revealing several regionally distinct practices in a genre not normally linked to Newfoundland and Labrador. Chafe unpacks the intertextual references in repertoire that some might argue is central to the province's identity (but whose identity?), drawing out themes of “revolution” and “humour.” Using a folklorist's eye for vernacular narrative, Narváez captures a fascinating moment where music and politics intersected.
Two shorter submissions are also included. Borlase offers the compelling life story of an object: the Labrador song anthology he compiled and published decades ago. His narrative resonates with Guigné's report on earlier collectors and Osborne's examination of recorded media and oral tradition. Finally, Dunsmore assembles a useful catalogue of recent recordings by the province's numerous choirs, many of which have won awards.
The varied contributions in this issue demonstrate that “Newfoundland music” cannot be reduced to a single essence; it is not one thing, one genre, ethnic practice, or style. Still, a single volume cannot encompass every richness of music in Newfoundland and Labrador. Many subjects are not addressed—composition and innovation, country and bluegrass, the music of many non-European immigrant groups, among others. Moreover, while the authors in this volume worked in numerous locations—on the island of Newfoundland, in Labrador, and in “diasporic” mainland communities of Newfoundlanders—many regional traditions receive no attention here.
Major Themes
A number of essays connected thematically in unforeseen and exciting ways. These themes include the concept of “culture as emergent,” the role of music in nationalist projects, the importance of individual agency, the relationships among various media forms, and the place of Newfoundland and Labrador culture in relation to the rest of Canada and the global community.
The phrase “culture as emergent” has appeared across disciplines for at least several decades. It is valuable because it conveys not only how social practices continually develop but also how values are discursively negotiated by individuals. While many traditions often tied to Newfoundland and Labrador may appear to have settled forms—traditional fiddling, narrative songs, Moravian hymns in Inuit communities, the mixture of country and folk styles in outport popular music—the notion of emergent culture is relevant to many of the studies here. For Inuit, Métis, and First Nations peoples, the complex intertribal and international family histories of Aboriginal people in the province are only now being unraveled. Periods of cultural suppression resulting from various forms of systemic racism, plus official narratives of decline or extinction that have often hindered Aboriginal groups in asserting their modernity, are no longer credible. Replacing them are energetic reclamation projects involving traditional knowledge, language, and song. Tulk sensitively documents a moment of this reclamation and cultural revitalization. She moves well beyond the idea that culture is somehow “invented” in modern contexts, instead analyzing how borrowed traditions map onto older local forms and practices. Periods of creative energy like the one Tulk describes are precisely the important moments to examine if we are to understand how culture emerges.
Similarly, when Thorne examines diasporic Newfoundlanders and how they selectively recreate a sense of Newfoundland and Labrador identity in new settings, the value of an approach oriented to emergent culture becomes clear. Crises of identity and enforced changes of context are exactly the moments where the forging of community through music is most valuable. Thorne demonstrates how locally variable attitudes toward what he describes as kitsch can ultimately affect community development among Newfoundlanders who left the province for work or other reasons.
The hip-hop scene studied by Best offers another domain for an emergent-culture perspective. This genre has captured the imagination of youth worldwide. Best explores how Newfoundlanders have adapted the traditions of rap, MCing, and breakdancing through local dialect choices, subject matter, and references to place. A fourth example of emergent culture in action is Narváez’s short piece on the political uses of a song by the popular band Great Big Sea. As a folklorist, he pays attention to both evidence and opinion—opinion being a staple of interpretive work and a significant aspect of research into emergent culture.
The role of music in articulating nationalist feeling and in nation-building is central to the papers by Colton, Chafe, and Thorne. These three researchers consider different historical eras. Colton explores nineteenth-century and pre-Confederation popular music of the early twentieth century; Chafe examines “narratives” of national identity that implicate music; and Thorne investigates recent diaspora communities formed when Newfoundlanders relocated for work or with American partners. Each approaches the study of nationalism from a distinct angle: Colton by reviewing historical discourses, including decisions about the provincial anthem, among other repertoire; Chafe by focusing on song texts and media to uncover how narratives of “music as revolution” and “music as goofy” are constructed and applied; and Thorne by collecting identity markers like music that expatriates use to create a sense of place away from home. The papers on traditional song also relate to these themes. Just as Colton demonstrates that “The Banks of Newfoundland” serves as a national icon for many residents, Rosenberg treats “She’s Like the Swallow” as an icon, implicitly supporting the argument that we have songs regarded as identity icons and that the various versions of those songs teach us why and how icons take shape. That analysis leads us to ask “for whom” a specific song becomes an icon. Similarly, Guigné explores the dialogue between Kenneth Peacock and Gerald S. Doyle, showing how an insider and a mainlander jointly created a musical canon that arguably represents Newfoundland. This unpacks the process by which “icons” are produced.
Guigné’s study also highlights the significance of individual agency, another important subject in this issue. Many of the individuals featured here are, in some sense, not the usual subjects. Rather than focusing on celebrated fiddlers like Émile Benoit or Rufus Guinchard, Flynn examines the steady contributions of sideman Don Randell, while Smith and Osborne each look at various locally known fiddlers in small communities. Similarly, Gordon details the work of little-known Inuit organists on the Labrador coast alongside the Moravian missionaries, and Hewson and Diamond revisit the legacy of the Beothuk woman Santu Toney, whose claim to fame was a single recording made by prominent American anthropologist Frank Speck. Narváez almost satirizes a major politician's misuse of a musical reference. And though he would hardly say so, Borlase himself is the central agent in the story of the Labrador songbook that has been so widely used and appreciated. One might argue that this group of music scholars shows an anti-heroic inclination while simultaneously affirming the importance of individuals.
As a whole, the contributions in this issue address the distinctions and relationships among various media that affect music transmission in the province. Radio is a central concern for Klassen but also appears in papers by Chafe, Best, and Thorne. Osborne evaluates audio recordings. Print mediation is vital to Colton, Rosenberg, Chafe, and Guigné. Gordon explores handwritten manuscripts; Smith and Hewson/Diamond reflect on the ideologies behind transcription, another form of visualizing sound. Visual iconography on objects ranging from posters to T-shirts is examined by Thorne and Chafe. The diversity of media raises questions about the unique social implications of each. An image draws viewers to one place; an audio source can fill a space and move through barriers. The intersensory modalities that both represent sound—whether published scores, manuscripts, or transcriptions—each have distinct biases, particular ways of steering attention toward one aspect or another, and a limited ability to capture live aural performance. The tension between the oral/aural world and what we could call sound objects—print, recordings, artifacts—remains a challenging dimension of all music scholarship.
A final theme is the relationship between music in Newfoundland and Labrador and other parts of Canada and beyond, a topic anticipated by Rosenberg some years ago. In some papers, such as Thorne’s, this forms a central concern. In other cases (Guigné, Narváez, Hewson and Diamond), the interplay between Newfoundland-based individuals and mainlanders plays a major role. However, a full investigation of how Newfoundland and Labrador connects with the rest of Canada and the wider world remains underexplored and would make an excellent topic for a future collection.
The aim is that the range of topics, research methods, and interdisciplinary format of this volume could inspire further discovery and rediscovery of music as a living expression of Newfoundland and Labrador culture.