To my taste, a lot of great Americana music comes from Canadian musicians.
Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.
Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.
There are geographical similarities but I think it is more cultural.
Culturally, Canada and the USA are extremely similar. What a lot of people who don't live in Canada often fail to realize is that the vast, overwhelming majority of our population is concentrated in southern Canada... and that these areas are often even SOUTH OF PARTS OF THE USA in terms of latitude.
For example, Seattle WA lies on roughly the same latitude as Ottawa, ON which is quite north of Toronto. Detroit Michigan borders Windsor, ON (my home town) and Windsor is to the south of Detroit.
When broadcast television and radio were in their prime, we all watched American TV and listened to American radio (and the northern USA got Canadian channels etc).
In border towns like Vancouver and Windsor, it's not uncommon for people to have family on both sides of the border or to even live in one country and hold a day job in another.
A lot of Canadians have winter homes in southern states. Florida is a popular destination for east-coast Canadians and, while I don't know if it has changed, a typical visitor visa for Canadians let us stay for up to 6 months before we have to go back. And a lot of people even hold dual-citizenship.
Dual citizen here living on the Canadian side. It will be interesting to see how the political unraveling in the U.S. will force Canadians to regard and reinforce aspects of our culture that are distinct.
It is also interesting that you mention Canadian snowbirds. That too, at least anecdotally seems to be changing. In the last few weeks I ran into two individuals who are both working on unloading their homes in Florida on account all of this xenophobic sentiment.
https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/luxury-homes/canadians-sell-...
Maybe, some day, Canada could (peacefully and consensually) acquire itself some Caribbean provinces
E.g. proximity to the US is why US broadcast TV was a normal experience for many Canadians.
Born and raised in SOUTH Detroit!
Howdy from the East Side of Windsor.
Near the border, the people on either side talk the same. You go north/south the accents vary on a spectrum.
Oh yahh, dem yoopers are almost canucks!
Sounds just like the situation here in the US!
And there are three times as many people in Mexico as in Canada and as many Spanish speakers in the US as Canadians in Canada.
Of course Nashville is not a hothouse of radical music, but we are talking about Americana right?
In the 1970’s, the Grateful Dead weren’t played on country radio. Indeed they were barely on radio at all anywhere until Touch of Gray in the mid 1980’s.
And then only because of MTV…which in the early days refused to air videos by black musicians.
Nashville was no different from the rest of US pop culture industry then. And is no different today. Americana still fares much better there than EDM, Punk, and Rap.
They were criticized for not having enough black acts. That's a reasonable criticism, but let's not make it sound like some kind of apartheid. They made a commercial decision about what genres to focused on, rather than something racially motivated. They didn't air many videos by country singers or classical violinists either.
https://youtu.be/XZGiVzIr8Qg?si=T1RmgwQiqOP_GiNE
Wikipedia’s article whitewashes the actual history. We were watching MTV and smoking weed in those Reagan’s America days.
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In fairness the US music industry had the race music chart which became the R&B chart to keep black musicians off the pop chart and Elvis’s controversy was singing black music…and consequently being played on white radio stations to white kids.
Also maybe some aspects of geography, like knowing in which continent Canada is.
The average non‐American is from outside the Anglosphere, and so may be from a culture that considers North America and South America to be a single continent. But continents don’t have an objective definition, only a cultural one, and in the language and culture of the Anglosphere the Americas are distinct continents, America is a country, and Americans are that country’s people.
I’ve never met a Canadian who clamored to be called an American. (Except naturalized citizens!)
I usually try to use US-ian instead of American, but it looks really stupid and so I get why it is pretty widespread to call us Americans.
Steppenwolf being the quintessential example.
1) Developing its own domestic artists/musicians, to a much greater degree than the US (eg https://www.factor.ca/)
2) Greatly restricting smaller foreign acts (especially from the US) from performing in Canada for commercial purposes
Yes, point #2 also applies to the US, but it's not enforced. But if you cross into Canada with musical instruments, they'll put the fear of God into you.
This is largely why the phenomena you describe exists: artists can develop within their domestic cocoon, without being crowded-out by Americans, and then tour their larger, wealthier neighbor to greatly expand their profile virtually risk-free.
2) Greatly restricting smaller
foreign acts (especially from
the US) from performing in
Canada for commercial purposes
Yes, point #2 also applies to
the US, but it's not enforced.
But if you cross into Canada
with musical instruments,
they'll put the fear of God into
you.
Lots of countries have this quota system where they try to artificially force feed homegrown music, tv shows and movies and it never works.
People always gravitate to the larger American sphere because it doesnt have such restrictions in place. They dont work anyway.
When I first saw Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah (2008) it was so fresh and un-Hollywood like in the presentation of the raw violence and vice, that it stunned me. I still cant stand most PG-fied and Disney-fied American films.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film)
Gomorra (2008) Official HD Trailer [1080p]
IIRC you need to hit 3/4 to be considered Canadian content.
At that time J Biebs was big, but since his music and lyrics were written by Americans and he performed/recorded in the States, his music was not CanCon despite him being Canadian. So, at the radio station I volunteered at, his music would count towards the 30% quota of not-CanCon music.