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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.
by brudgers 2y ago
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.
- SllX 2y agoThat’s a check
- sandworm101 2y agoArt is a comment on culture. It is often easier for an outsider to comment than it is for someone steeped in that culture. There are no doubt many aspects of American culture that go unnoticed by Americans but are obvious to Canadians.
- pyrale 2y ago> There are no doubt many aspects of American culture that go unnoticed by Americans but are obvious to Canadians. Also maybe some aspects of geography, like knowing in which continent Canada is.
- bee_rider 2y agoAlthough I don’t have much faith in the geographical talents of my countrymen, I think most of us know where Canada is. 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.
- tomrod 2y agoThat works, since the USA is the only current country with America in its name. There was another, but it got split up. We don't call denizens of Mexico the UMSians despite the country's name literally translating to the United Mexican States. Also, for a long time denizens in the US identified by state of birth or locality first before American. Civil War and World Wars changed that.
- bentley 2y agoThe average American knows that Canada is in North America, as does the average Canadian, the average Englishman, and the average Australian. 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!)
- RajT88 2y agoI grew up near Chicago. Detecting someone who grew up in Toronto is kind of like one or more scenes from Inglourious Basterds. "Soory", "aboot".
- moate 2y agoholds up 3 fingers Three Old Stoils, please!
- sandworm101 2y agoThere is only one T in Torono.
- ChoGGi 2y agoSir, I do believe you mean hogtown.
- immibis 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoIt doesn't have Nashville funneling artists into a narrowly defined genre and excluding anyone outside the system from airplay.
- brudgers 2y agoDespite its Grand Ol' Opery fame, on the ground Nashville has a diversity of musicians because of musical infrastructure, cost of living, and a social normality of musicianship. Of course Nashville is not a hothouse of radical music, but we are talking about Americana right?
- kevin_thibedeau 2y agoI speak of the corporate "Nashville" music publishing scene that controls what gets promoted as the latest flavor of "Country", not what happens locally in the city. A lot of what gets classed as Americana would have been played on country radio into the 70s.
- brudgers 2y agoPedal steel is perhaps the most Americana of instruments; there were few pedal steel players better than Jerry Garcia, and few bands with larger repertoires of Americana than the Grateful Dead. 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.
- dmurray 2y agoAccording to Wikipedia they aired music by Black musicians from day 1, with the Specials among others in their first program [0]. 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. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTV
- mikrl 2y agoOne of the cultural touchstones of being a Canadian is the smug yet bleak realization that your tiny (in population) nation has produced so many titans of various creative fields, but everyone thinks they’re American because they had to bugger off down there to get their careers going. Steppenwolf being the quintessential example.
- spamizbad 2y agoNot sure if Canadians are aware of this, but Canada does two things really well: 1) Developing its own domestic artists/musicians, to a much greater degree than the US (eg https://www.factor.ca/ 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.
- wozniacki 2y ago2) 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 almost never has the intended effect of producing world class homegrown musical or cinema acts. Like almost a 100% failure rate especially when theres a shared language. 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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomorrah_(film) Gomorra (2008) Official HD Trailer [1080p] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezYyxBZ7Ee0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezYyxBZ7Ee0
- r14c 2y agoCanada and the US are both part of North America. Maybe Americana transcends borders and political divisions.
- RajT88 2y agoCanada is not terribly different. 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!
- sandworm101 2y agoThe accents actually change more east-west. That's why all the movies filmed in Vancouver using local actors sound just like those filmed in LA. The "neutral" accents of the US midwest are similar to those of the Canadian prairies. Only in the east does the north-south thing become so prominent.
- ZeWaka 2y ago> Only in the east does the north-south thing become so prominent. Sounds just like the situation here in the US!
- brudgers 2y agoSpanish language music generally isn’t considered Americana even though most of the Americas speak Spanish including much of Noth America. 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.
- moate 2y agolooks at the rest of Norte Americana This does not hold water.
- r14c 1y agoNorte America es un territorio enorme. Lo que yo quería decir es que la frontera política entre EEUU y Canadá no es el borde de la cultura que comparten.
- gspencley 2y ago> 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.
- UI_at_80x24 2y ago>Detroit Michigan borders Windsor, ON (my home town) and Windsor is to the south of Detroit. Born and raised in SOUTH Detroit! Howdy from the East Side of Windsor.
- kashunstva 2y ago> I think it is more cultural 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.
- bigiain 2y agoI, for one,welcome the new Canadiana/Polite-Core musical genre.
- thimkerbell 2y agoand mr. young.