Life Is Like Canadian Football and Other Authentic Folk Songs Read online

  131 There were, and there are, no passenger trains to Peterborough.

  132 These travelling musicians tended to take for granted, therefore, the gift-economy principles that ground their folk-musical communities. See Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls (London, UK: Routledge, 1990).

  133 Another way of describing this liminality is that I was stuck between two distinct historical “discourse networks,” which have been defined by Friedrich Kittler as “the network of technologies and institutions that allow a given culture to select, store, and process relevant data.” Friedrich Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, trans. Michael Metteer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 369.

  134 Amateur is meant not in the pejorative sense but as “[o]ne who loves or is fond of; one who has a taste for anything.” Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020).

  135 This category was not to be confused with a separate one, the Multidisciplinary Arts program, mandated to support projects combining multiple disciplines, such that the boundaries between these disciplines were maintained in the work, and, additionally not to support projects involving clowns.

  136 Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, translated by Ben Fowkes (New York, NY: Vintage Books, 1977).

  137 In posing this question I am following the lead of the Frankfurt School. See, for example, my boys Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972).

  138 The last things an industrious folk song collector desires are any data corruption issues. Geoffrey Lidell, “Information Management in the Folkloristic Context,” Song Collector Magazine 476, no. 190 (2010): 27–28.

  139 This admission may compromise my ability to coax songs from future reluctant folksingers without blowing immediately my budget, but I will honestly state that the most I have paid for a single performance is $700. Thankfully, however, the overabundant generosity of the majority of the folk has outweighed the stingier minority.

  140 Within communication studies, if not adjacent fields such as visual art, I was frankly ahead of my time in asking this question. On theory/praxis combinations in visual art, see Natalie S. Loveless, “Practice in the Flesh of Theory: Art, Research and the Fine Arts PhD,” Canadian Journal of Communication 37, no. 1 (2012): 93–108.

  141 Hazel Honour, Writing the World (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 1987).

  142 Paolo Virno, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of Contemporary Forms of Life, trans. Isabella Bertoletti, James Cascaito, Andre Casson (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2004.

  143 There are many different ways to capture sound electrically or electronically, and the flexible folk song collector requires an expansive arsenal of tools, including condenser microphones, shotgun microphones, stereo condenser microphones, and even contact microphones. Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Recording Technology and Ethnomusicological Scholarship,” in Comparative Musicology and Anthropology of Music: Essays on the History of Ethnomusicology, eds. B. Nettl and P. Bohlman (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 277–292. However, in the case of the legendary folksinger Laura Barrett, she simply emailed me her recording.

  144 Scientists know little about the marvelous ice worm. It is unique in the animal kingdom for its ability to derive energy from the cold, which astoundingly violates the second law of thermodynamics. See Michael J. Napolitano and Daniel H. Shain, “Four Kingdoms on Glacier Ice: Convergent Energetic Processes Boost Energy Levels as Temperatures Fall,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B: Biological Sciences 271, no. 5 (2004): S273–S276. Mitchell’s concise lament, which clearly describes the organism but also points to numerous possible technological applications, demonstrates the rich potential of folk song as a medium of techno-scientific knowledge production.

  145 The standing of femme fatale “Nellie” has varied greatly throughout the history of Canadian folk song scholarship. Kom’s variation is wholly unique, in my view. See, for example, Fran Gamble, Nellie the Nomad (Waterloo, ON: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1991); Raymond Horbinek, Murder and Blood in the Music and Tales of Regular People (Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press, 1982); Peter Warner, Canadian Folk Legends and Heroes (Winnipeg, MB: ARP Books, 2010); Bertie Zork, “Reconsidering Nellie,” Mosaic 22, no. 2 (1989): 230–247.

  146 I recorded Mathias with his merry band of Newfoundlanders on a rocky cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I later learned that, no mere vagabond, Mathias Kom was in fact studying toward his PhD degree in ethnomusicology. Mathias Kom, “Cosmopolitan Intimacy: Antifolk in Berlin and New York.” PhD diss., Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2017.

  147 Mainstream versions of the ballad of Maggie Howie had already been collected by Newbell Niles Puckett and Edith Fowke by the time I put my Shure SM58 microphone in front of Olenka Krakus in a Richmond Street loft apartment on one muggy, Southwestern Ontario summer night. One striking difference is that Krakus’s version focalizes the action through a bystander or friend, rather than the murderer, thereby offering much more detail than is generally found in variations of the song regarding the tragic folk hero’s short life. Cf. Edith Fowke, ed., Folk Songs of Ontario (New York, NY: Folkways, 1958).

  148 The woods in question are, according to my informant via discussion after his performance, in Muskoka. I encountered Vincent in a cottage town in the Kawarthas, however, and we had a fun night together.

  149 Your average Canadian folklorist (e.g., Dale Ricks) would likely have passed over this song due to the connection in both form and content to rock music—Andrew additionally played an electric guitar—despite the fact that there is a long tradition of radical song collectors taking seriously the folkloristic function and generic features of rock ’n’ roll musics. Alan Lomax, for instance, programmed the group The Cadillacs alongside Pete Seeger, Muddy Waters, and Jimmy Driftwood in his controversial Folksong ’59 concert at Carnegie Hall, long before Bob Dylan even considered plugging in his Stratocaster. Ronald D. Cohen, Rainbow Quest: The Folk Music Revival and American Society, 1940–1970 (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002).

  150 I recorded El Ron Maltan outside of Dooly’s pool hall. After he sang and played for me, Mr. Maltan recounted how both Charles Dickens and Oscar Wilde once gave lectures in the former vaudeville theatre across the street, as stops on their grand North American tours. This marvelous building sadly no longer stands, according to a recent email message from my informant. May this blatant disregard for historical memory be a stain on the consciences of the members of the Edmundston City Council. On which, see Carolyn Hardy, The Politics of Forgetting: Class, Regionalism, Gentrification, and Social Movements in Canada (Montreal, QC: Black Thorns Press, 2012).

  151 “Sublimation” refers to the transferal or translation of frustrated desires into an idea, object, or activity. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (New York, NY: WW Norton, 2010).

  152 John Deere is one of the most respected brands of tractor produced in the world. The machine indicated in this version of “Cruiskeen Lawn,” however, may rather have been a lawnmower. See Dwight Corfu, “Hitching a Ride: Tractors, Trailers, RVs, and Large Vans in Canadian Folk Songs,” Canadian Folkloristics Bulletin 39, no. 1 (1999): 333–339.

  153 ccording to Tina Flusser, the bell, and the ringing of bells, are perhaps the most persistent, rich, and complicated images in the long history of Canadian folk song. Tina Flusser, Ring my Bell: On the Ringing of Bells in Folk Song in Canada (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2001).

  154 Mark that the metaphorical rendering of the storms and the tree, and their relationship to the land and surrounding community, is less an indication of character than a literal description of folkloristic Pentecost. Gale Ledbetter, “Deep Sound, Deep Spirit: Immanence in Balladry in Southwestern Ontario,” Hootenanny 1001, no. 3 (2001):
1–30.

  155 Because, woefully, there were no folklorist-in-residence programs at the Banff Centre.

  156 Friedrich Engels, Anti-Duhring, trans. Emile Burns (Moscow: Co-operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., 1934).

  157 It is perhaps on the question of utopia where the fault lines in my relationship with Bronnley first began to spread. Whereas Dr. Bronnley took a cynical and nihilistic view of social-political transformation in general, but especially with regards to utopianism, I found a pragmatic and radical energy in maps or diagrams of organizational structures that do not yet exist but might yet. I was persuaded, for example, by Ruth Levitas, The Concept of Utopia (Toronto, ON: Philip Allan, 1990).

  158 Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (New York, NY: Routledge, 2013).

  159 See, for example, Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light (New York: Routledge, 1988).

  160 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York, NY: Capricorn Books, 1934).

  161 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, trans. Samuel Moore (Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 1998).

  162 Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, translated by Martin Milligan (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961).

  163 Allison Richardson, ed., Our Tangled Brushes, Our Tangled Limbs: Oral Histories of Excess at the Banff Centre (Manitoba, MB: University of Manitoba Press, 1991).

  164 See, for instance, Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011).

  165 Reviews and features in, for example, Globe and Mail, Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Maclean’s.

  166 At this point, my musical skills were yet in their infancy period. Yet, one of the visual art department technicians lent me her ukulele, among the most forgiving and accessible of folk instruments. See Matthew D. Thibeault and Julianne Evoy, “Building Your Own Musical Community: How YouTube, Miley Cyrus, and the Ukulele Can Create a New Kind of Ensemble,” General Music Today 24, no. 3 (2011): 44–52. Another instance of prognostication: this self-sacrificing technician hailed from Dawson City, Yukon.

  167 “Banff Centre is a catalyst for knowledge and creativity through the power of our unique environment and facilities in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, our rich learning opportunities, cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral interactions, outreach activities, and performances for the public” [emphasis mine]. The Banff Centre, “The Creative Voice: Strategic Plan 2016–2021” (Banff, AB: Banff Centre, 2016).

  168 Talking Heads, “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” track #9 on Speaking in Tongues, Sire, 1983, LP.

  169 Marshall McLuhan incidentally referred to the boomerang effect of such media interactions as “the reversal of the overheated medium.” Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press, 2003), 51–60.

  170 Dick’s lecture consisted of a brilliant analysis of swimming pools in American culture—sites both of cleanliness and comfort, he argued, but also of death and putrefaction. For a published version of at least a portion of Dick’s presentation, I believe, see Daniell Cornell, ed., Backyard Oasis: The Swimming Pool in Southern California Photography, 1945-1982 (Munich: PRESTEL, 2012).

  171 Julián’s art practice throughout his residency at the Banff Centre involved durational performance, with or without audio-visual documentation. One day, for example, he made a video recording of himself checking email for eight hours straight. Yet, he often took his practice beyond the studio walls, regularly attempting, for example, to eat full portions of all the desserts at the buffet table, which took a full dinner plate to transport, and insisting that this was a performance, on which point I tend to agree. Peggy Phelan, “The Ontology of Performance,” in Performance, ed. Philip Auslander (New York, NY: Routledge, 2003), 320–335.

  172 I stumbled upon this ever-fresh tune sung to the melody of “Johnson’s Hotel” on the outskirts of Leamington, the foamy shores of Erie in the distance. Leamington remains a complex site of hybrid folklore generation. I recommend that all aspiring folk song collectors among my readership add the town to their list.

  173 Yet another folk song that Dale Ricks would no doubt simply pass by on account of his misconceived understanding of authenticity. See, for instance, Dale Ricks, “Tradition Matters: A Plea for Discernment in the Field,” Journal of Canadian Folklore 634, no. 3 (2007): 99–101.

  174 Thomas Streeter, The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2011). On the ideological dimensions of the interface, see also Jodi Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009); Alex Galloway, The Interface Effect (Malden, MA: Polity, 2012); Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

  175 Félix Guattari, The Machinic Unconscious: Essays in Schizoanalysis, trans. Taylor Adkins (Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2011).

  176 See also Benjamin Bratton, The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2016); Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (London: Free Association Books, 1996); Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016); Shannon Mattern, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2017); and Alexander G. Weheliye, Phonographies: Grooves in Sonic Afro-Modernity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005).

  177 Friedrich Nietzsche quoted in Friedrich Kittler, Gramophone Film Typewriter, translated by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 200.

  178 Harold Adams Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1930); Harold Adams Innis, The Cod Fisheries: A History of an International Economy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1954).

  179 For a detailed and engaging biographical account of this period, see Alexander John Watson, Marginal Man: The Dark Vision of Harold Innis (Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press, 2006).

  180 Harold Adams Innis, Empire and Communications (Toronto, ON: Dundurn Press, 2007); Harold Adams Innis, The Bias of Communication (Toronto, ON: The University of Toronto Press, 1991).

  181 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (Corte Madera, CA: Ginko Press, 2003), p. 23.

  182 On McLuhan’s reception, see Glen Wilmott, McLuhan, or Modernism in Reverse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

  183 Historica Canada, Heritage Minutes: Marshall McLuhan.

  184 “If you were to take the recordings that Livingston made of CFL players in the 1970s, and if you were to lay these magnetic tape recordings across the ground, and if it were possible to see, on tape, the grain of the music, then you would see nothing but this grain on Livingston’s tapes. It would not be possible to see, there, the lack that is the opposite of the grains of folk song. This means that to listen to the recordings of Staunton R. Livingston is not to hear a singer who is simply passing on a song. When we observe the path that Livingston has laid out for us, we can hear the singer become something other than a mere channel of a message; we can hear the singer reach toward communion, an instrument for itself but longing for others.” Henry Adam Svec, “Dissertation Proposal Defense” (University of Western Ontario, September 12, 2011).

  185 “To write down music, to write about music, even to put a pen into a soundscape in front of which music is happening, is to defile Music, with a capital M.” Staunton R. Livingston quoted in Peter Skellgord, “What I Can Remember,” Globe and Mail, Dec 26, 1992, A4.

  186 See, for example, Kate L. Turabian, A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th Edition (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 200
7).

  187 These gothic tales functioned by bonding their audience together in fellowship, but also by further sanctifying the legitimacy of the rituals themselves. According to communication theorist Ernest Bormann, this phenomenon of group cohesion through shared narratives and images is known as “symbolic convergence.” See Ernest Bormann, “Symbolic Convergence Theory,” in Small Group Communication Theory & Practice: An Anthology, 8th Edition, eds. Randy Hirokawa, Robert Cathcart, Larry Samovar, and Linda Henman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 39–47.

  188 Henry Adam Svec, “Becoming Machinic Virtuosos: Guitar Hero, Rez, and Multitudinous Aesthetics,” Loading… 2, no. 2 (2008); Henry Adam Svec, “‘The Purpose of These Acting Exercises’: The Actors’ Studio and the Labours of Celebrity,” Celebrity Studies 1, no. 3 (2010): 303–318; Henry Adam Svec, “‘Who Don’t Care if the Money’s No Good?’: Authenticity and The Band,” Popular Music and Society 35, no. 3 (2012): 427–445.

  189 See Carl von Clausewitz, Vom Kriege (Berlin: Dümmlers Verlag, 1832).

  190 Tinfoil was the original sound-recording inscription surface used in Edison’s prototype for the phonograph. See Oliver Read and Walter Leslie Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph (Carmel, IN: HW Sams, 1959).