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I have to write 12 pages on the Arts in Canada. It's a pretty broad topic and I have already amassed quite a bit of good information. But thus far, it has all been through Google. And while I probably have enough information to finish this beast, I wanted to get some perspective from people who actually live in Canada.
I'm not looking here for someone to do my homework for me.As I say, I have enough to do the report, but I really want to do the subject some justice and get a real outlook on it.
In short, I am in search of information (sites) that is actually embraced by Canadian artists. I want to get the real feel of it from real Canadians, not Americanized [mis]information. I want to properly represent this topic. The more I search the more I find sites that are fluffy, convenient and easy to buy but they seem as transparent as all the American information. This is what I am trying to avoid. I don't want this to be a viewpoint that is easy to feed to the average American. I want a viewpoint that Canadians can relate to.
If anyone has any useful sites on Canadian arts I would be grateful
You seem to have a pretty good head on your shoulders.
As a former art history student who has studied the arts in Canada and experienced the arts in Canada, "the arts in Canada" is as broad a topic as "the arts in the USA". I know you know that.
But my question to you is this: How would you begin to summarize the arts in the USA? How would you represent it? By NYC Broadway? By grunge music in Seattle? By Navajo artists in the west? By totem pole carvers in Alaska? By folk musicians from the past? Folk musicians trying to revive old traditions?
Is there one source where you can get everything on the arts in the USA?
Is there one website that caters to the arts all over the USA?
No, not really.
It's the same in Canada. Canada's arts scene is huge and diverse and is represented differently throughout its different regions.
So realistically, you have to break it down by region or by province, and even then, by city. Each city has its own arts scene going on.
Atlantic Canada and the Maritimes (our east coast provinces), have their own arts and traditions which are more Celtic and rich with history. Look into Newfoundland's music/culture for some ideas on that part of Canada. Bands like Great Big Sea and the Rankin Family. A totally unique take on Canadian arts.
Are you looking for First Nations (what you'd call "Native American") artists? If so, that's a massive topic unto itself... and that doesn't even include the Inuit (eskimo) communities of Canada's arctic. Look at the Museum of Anthropology's website (located in Vancouver at UBC campus) for some initial ideas. Look up Bill Reid and then look up Emily Carr. Look up Tanya Tagaq. Lawrence Paul Yuxwelupton. Pauline Johnson.
Some other random ideas:
Look up Jeff Wall.
Look up Douglas Coupland.
Margaret Atwood.
David Suzuki.
Jian Gomeshi.
Al Purdy.
Are you looking for contemporary arts? My favourite blog, Vancouver Is Awesome, showcases the arts and culture in Vancouver from a Vancouver perspective. Seriously, you'll get a sense of the diversity and activity of the arts scene at a city level.
If you're looking for a national perspective (where each region is somewhat represented, but not equally across the country), the CBC would be your best bet, both radio and TV. Listen to the radio stations, watch the TV clips.
The National Film Board of Canada would give you insight into documentaries and films created and produced in Canada for a predomiantly Canadian audience. Definitely go to that site. Then maybe look up some Canadian city film festivals, like the Vancouver Int'l Film Festival (VIFF) or the Toronto In't Film Festival (TIFF).
The City of Ottawa is home to a lot of Canada's national museums - the National Gallery of Canada, the National War Museum, the Museum of Civilization, etc.
Are you going to go into music at all? You have a lot of Canadian musicians who are folk heros in Canada but lesser known outside of Canada. You have a diversity of older musicians/singers songwriters like Buffy St Marie, Joni Mitchell, Stomin' Tom Connors, Gordon Lightfoot and Leonard Cohen. But you also have newer contemporary music from bands like Broken Social Scene, Feist, Arcade Fire, Bedouin Soundclash, Blue Rodeo, Metric, Final Fantasy, The Dears, Peaches, Patrick Watson, Death From Above 1979, etc. You also have local radio stations promoting such bands because in Canada, radio stations must play a certain percentage of Canadian music (look up the CRTC! - a can of worms!)
I don't know if you want to include Much Music at all.
Then you have festivals all over Canada... Edmonton has festivals galore, Vancouver has its festivals - the annual Folk Fest, the Victory Square Block Party, Pride Week, the Writer's Festival, etc. Plug in festivals and then every Canadian city's name to see the diversity of festivals which promote the arts.
We haven't even touched on the francophone Quebecois arts, which is another scene entirely, as it caters to a French-speaking audience which is really just found in the province of Quebec. Look up bands like Malajube and Mes Aieux. And listen to Radio-Canada. I'll let Acajack contribute.
Oh, and then there are all the local newspapers which focus on the arts. The Mirror in Montreal should be looked at to get a sense of the Montreal arts scene from a Montrealer perspective. The Georgia Straight in Vancouver for Vancouver arts. Or you can look up national newspapers like the Globe and Mail. Or regional newspapers like the Vancouver Sun, etc.
I can go on and on... but that should be a start.
But the key, if it wasn't obvious, isn't to think of Canadian arts from the national level - you'll get nowhere. You have to break it down to a more regional level and focus on the names of cities and provinces instead of the name "Canada".
Last edited by Robynator; 11-27-2009 at 12:09 PM..
Yeah, I guess I could have elaborated. Most of my focus thus far has been on issues with the arts. A lot of my paper so far has been on the controversy of censorship and how censorship affects funding. but I plan on more than that. I also wanted to find some more information on policy that affects the arts. Basically I am on the hunt for the struggles and challenges that the arts face, how to help nourish the arts and what the arts mean to Canadians.
As an American I think I have a pretty skewed outlook on the arts as it seems the only time that American arts receive any attention is when they are commercialized into a money machine (like music). While I don't know for sure, I have a hard time believing that Canadian music has become the same thing that American music has in terms of commercialism. In other words, I have a feeling that Canada doesn't have a Miley Cyrus or a Hillary Duff in their music scene - I think they might take it a little more seriously than how to sell the most albums. I might be wrong, but so far, that is the vibe that I get. This is what I meant by I want to get the feel of the arts through a Canadian perspective.
I remember years ago when I was in Canada watching watching TV I got an immediate sense that Canadian TV wasn't the shallow fluff that American TV is. In other words, I felt like there was a little more "heart and soul" and less brainless spoon feeding. Same with the radio. I came across a great station near Vancouver B.C. where there was just a feeling that the band was still trying to be artists and not celebrities. The whole experience was like that. Again, I may be wrong as I am pretty naive on Canadian life but that's what I left the border with.
So far you have provided a great deal of very useful information. For that I am very thankful.
Robynator was right that the CBC is a good source of information. You will get next to nothing about Canada’s arts scene from private media in Canada, with the possible exception of cultural newspapers like Georgia Straight, which you find in any city.
Now, I am not sure about your statement that Canadian artists may be more into the arts for art’s sake than are Americans. I mean, how different is it to be a sculptor, a ballet dancer or an art house movie producer in Canada as compared to the States? It’s probably quite the same.
Yes, it is true that, at least in English-speaking Canada, there are few people who start out with a movie or TV show project with the intent of making lots of money. The level of popular interest for Canadian TV drama and comedies and feature films is too low to make that a realistic goal.
But one area of success is English Canadian popular music, where there is a bona fide homegrown industry where people can make a good living by being popular *only* in Canada. Canadian popular music, particularly the rock genre, holds its own very well and successfully competes with imports from the US, UK and elsewhere for music fans’ dollars.
As is often the case, Quebec is a little bit different from the rest of the country. Since audiences tend to be very receptive to Quebec-made TV and movies, here you do have a more commercial aspect present in popular culture. Consider that the top-grossing movie in Quebec this summer was De Père en Flic (recently bought by Sony Pictures with a remake in mind), which beat anything out of Hollywood and the latest Harry Potter hands down. Though Hollywood does have a strong presence in Quebec (as it does around the world), it is fairly common for Quebec stuff to be at the top of the cultural scene here. Any given week, something like 18 or 19 of the top 20 TV shows in Quebec are usually Quebec-made.
In Quebec, you can see what I like to call the three levels of culture fully deployed: high-brow, middling and low-brow.
In English-speaking Canada, high-brow culture is actually very well-represented and thriving with classical music, the visual arts, literature, etc. all very vibrant and with a strong Canadian presence.
However, I would say the other two levels are somewhat swamped by imports from the U.S.
So does the absence of Hannah Montana and High School Musical-style commercialism make the arts scene in (English) Canada more “pure”? Well, I am pretty sure it doesn’t make Canadians more likely than Americans to attend a vernissage at an art gallery instead of watching Survivor.
It's also worth remembering that Canada's arts doesn't exist in a bubble. The Canadian arts scene is saturated by American media - it's continually in direct competition with the American arts.
I mean, Hannah Montana isn't Canadian, but her TV shows, her music, and her movies infiltrate the Canadian market, and it's what all 10 year old girls are watching and listening to (when they're not fawning over Zac Effon or Twilight New Moon). All the fluff you get on American TV is also shown in Canada - and Canadians lap that stuff up. We get American stations, and even on our Canadian stations, we get American programs.
When Canadian artists get so big that they can't grow any larger in the Canadian market, they take their product to the American market. It's why you have people like Avril Lavigne, Joshua Jackson, Michael Bublé, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, Elisha Cuthbert, Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Gosling - all making it huge in the USA. They're all a product of the Canadian arts, but their fame has grown tenfold in the USA because the market's that much larger.
A lot of it has to do with budget. The Canadian arts simply doesn't have as big as a budget that you'd get in the USA.
Another point about Quebec is that it has its own star system, supported by homegrown fanzines and Entertainment Tonight-type TV shows.
Now, one thing I have noticed is that the Quebec entertainment shows are a bit different from ET and the others from the States (and their Canadian clones: “Omigod! Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stopped to change their kid’s diaper at a Tim Horton’s in Calgary! And ET Canada’s got the pictures!”).
Since Quebec has the proverbial big-fish-in-small-pond thing going on, its entertainment media have to be creative in their search for interesting content. Which means that stuff about books, live (non-musical) theatre, and even on occasion on the visual arts shows up frequently in Quebec’s entertainment media. Stuff from outside North America also appears more often. For example, a Quebec entertainment show (on a commercial station) might run a piece on Brazilian author Paulo (The Alchemist) Coelho’s new book, especially if he came to Montreal to promote it. Or they might feature Swedish movies based on books by author Stieg Larsson.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Entertainment Tonight and its ilk don’t do this.
Quebec artists, even the stars, are also always looking for work, which means many TV and movie stars do live (non-musical*) theatre and tour across the province. I don’t live in Montreal but I can go see most of the people starring in the most popular Quebec TV shows and movies at my local theatre during the course of any given year. The American equivalent would be someone in Indianapolis having their local theatre season featuring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in Glengarry Glen Ross, Julia Roberts and George Clooney in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf, Sarah Jessica Parker in Brighton Beach Memoirs and Morgan Freeman in Othello. And you’d have these and many other plays with stars touring the country with stops in Nashville, Salt Lake City, etc.
But Hollywood stars don’t have to do live theatre (and much less national tours) to supplement their income, and so aside from exceptional cases (usually when they want a change of pace or to have some fun), people never see them live, and certainly not in Omaha or Charlotte.
I do remember Keanu Reeves (who includes Canadian as one of several nationalities) playing Hamlet in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and how big a deal they made out of it since it was so exceptional.
*I say “non-musical” because many musicals like Hairspray and Fiddler on the Roof are mainstream (middling) culture, whereas Shakespeare and Sinclair Lewis are not.
While I don't know for sure, I have a hard time believing that Canadian music has become the same thing that American music has in terms of commercialism. In other words, I have a feeling that Canada doesn't have a Miley Cyrus or a Hillary Duff in their music scene
There's this little Canadian band you may have heard of...Nickleback? Sort of falls right into that category.
It's a tough thing, because generally speaking, US fame/success equals Canadian fame/success, however the reverse is not true. There are multiple artists that are very famous by Canadian standards, and relatively unheardof or obscure elsewhere in the world. Musically, a perfect example would be the Tragically Hip. Huge in Canada, likely would sell out any venue in the country in their prime, and in the US, away from the border, they play club venues.
Like elsewhere, the primary challenge for any of the arts is funding. That really doesn't change regardless of the side of the 49th you're on.
There's this little Canadian band you may have heard of...Nickleback? Sort of falls right into that category.
It's a tough thing, because generally speaking, US fame/success equals Canadian fame/success, however the reverse is not true. There are multiple artists that are very famous by Canadian standards, and relatively unheardof or obscure elsewhere in the world. Musically, a perfect example would be the Tragically Hip. Huge in Canada, likely would sell out any venue in the country in their prime, and in the US, away from the border, they play club venues.
Like elsewhere, the primary challenge for any of the arts is funding. That really doesn't change regardless of the side of the 49th you're on.
Yeah, that's kind of what I have been talking about. When it comes to Canadian pop-culture there is an enormous American influence. A common Canadian perspective (from my understanding) is that the American influence is everywhere from politics to art. This is what I was trying to get around.
But there are a lot of great Canadian music artists out there. Lately I have taken a liking to Matthew Good Band. It's very sad to me that these great bands don't get any american notice.
And the you have the weird phenoms like the Barenaked Ladies, who were hugely popular in Canada but ignored in the States. Then, their popularity dipped in Canada just as they became huge in the States.
I actually ate breakfast this morning as this song played in the background, courtesy of my kids.
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