Movies
Ode à Canada
Ode à Canada Concert à Porche with Bundle & Go The selections in this video album are from a one-hour performance at the home of Laura MacKenzie and Gary Rue on August 29, 2021 in St. Paul, Minnesota, one of a series of Sunday evening neighborhood porch concerts which they hosted during the pandemic summers…
Read MoreMétis Jigs
The Métis (“mixed”) people of the Canadian prairies have created a rich “creole” culture formed by the intermarriage of First Nations women and Scottish and French-Canadian fur traders. Musician and ethnomusicologist Anne Lederman did invaluable field work in Manitoba in the 1980s, collecting hundreds of tunes from a now nearly deceased generation of brilliant and…
Read MorePolly Moore / Trous d’Bas
Polly Moore (trad.) We first encountered this Newfoundland sailor’s song in the charming 2013 film “The Grand Seduction”, performed by The Dardanelles. The song was collected in 1951 from Mr. Jack Myrick (1904-1954) by MacEdward Leach, a pioneer of folklore studies who founded the folklore department at the University of Pennsylvania. Myrick lived in St.…
Read MoreQuébec Reels
Little Boys Reel Little Boys Reel is from epic fiddler Erskine Morris (1913-1997) who grew up in Douglastown on the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula in Québec and was strongly influenced by Irish fiddlers such as Joe Drody. He moved away around age 30 but sent cassette tapes of his fiddle tunes back to family…
Read MoreQuébec Waltzes
These two lovely waltzes were composed by contemporary Québec musicians to honor children. La Gueussinette La Gueussinette, by Stephen Jones, takes its title from a pre-natal nickname for Steve’s son Gareth. La Berceuse à Hannah La Berceuse à Hannah is a lullaby for a young girl from Owen Sound, Ontario that was composed by not…
Read MoreTurlutte et Caribou
La Turlutte à Antonio Bazinet A turlutte is a kind of lilting that is popular in Québéc, sometimes accompanied by the uniquely Québécois practice of double foot-tapping (“podorhythmie”). Antonio Bazinet was a farmer who lived near the Laurentian Mountains. He sang and fiddled this tune at a folk festival in Montreal, where it became a…
Read MoreAcadian Tunes
These three tunes offer a taste of the vigorous and distinctive music of the Acadian region of eastern Canada. They were collected and recorded on the revelatory CD Sur l’an premier by Robin LeBlanc of New Brunswick with Nicholas Basque on guitar. A very useful guide to this music is acadianfiddle.com, developed by Louis and…
Read MoreLarade / Barbier Set
Reel de Joseph Larade (trad.) Some of the Acadian families that were expelled by the British in the mid-18th century settled in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Our first tune is an untitled reel from Joseph Larade, whose fine singing and fiddle playing (sometimes combined) were recorded by folklorist Father Anselme Chiasson in the late 1950s.…
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