![]() ![]() In Canadian fishing villages, rural hamlets, and pioneer farming communities folk music provided the principal source of entertainment and a sense of continuity with the past. In certain genres one can observe that cross-fertilization between art music and folksong occurred at various times in the mother countries. Whatever its cultural origin, traditional folk music has its roots in the common people. Finally, more than a hundred or so cultures brought their unique musical traditions, thus adding immensely to Canada's long-established musical heritage of French, English, Gaelic, and Irish folk music. Jewish communities, whose presence in Canada dates back to the end of the 18th century, take an active part in the cultural and economic life of both urban and rural milieux. ![]() The 1970s and 1980s were marked by the massive arrivals of refugees fleeing from certain countries of Southeast Asia and Latin America. Many European groups, especially the Finns, joined the new mining, pulp-and-paper, and agrarian communities of northern Ontario and the urban centres in the south.Īfter World War II a new wave of immigration to urban centres occurred, especially from southern Italy, the Baltic states, Hungary, Portugal, and the Caribbean. A group of Okinawan-Japanese farmers settled in the Lethbridge area of Alberta, bringing with them a musical tradition quite different from that of Japan. During the same period in British Columbia, Chinese, Japanese, Sikhs, and, again, Doukhobors and other immigrants of European origin arrived in increasing numbers to complement the established Anglo-Canadian colonial population. ![]() Ukrainians, Poles, Hungarians, Doukhobors, English, French, and other peoples broke the prairie sod for agricultural use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mennonite and Icelandic settlements established 1874-5 in Manitoba heralded the new era of mass immigration to western Canada of peoples from eastern and western Europe and Asia. Completing this mosaic of musical folklore is the Gaelic music of Scottish settlements, particularly in Cape Breton, and the hundreds of Irish songs whose presence in eastern Canada dates from the Irish famine of the 1840s which forced the large migrations of Irish to North America. A rich source of Anglo-Canadian folk music can be found in the Atlantic region, especially Newfoundland. ![]() Populous Acadian communities in the Atlantic provinces contributed their song variants to the huge corpus of folk music of French origin centred in the province of Quebec. In the north of Ontario, a large Franco-Ontarian population kept folk music of French origin alive. Despite massive industrialization, folk music traditions have persisted in many areas until today. The mingling of some of these men with various aboriginal tribes produced a population of non-Treaty Indians, known as Métis (eg, Pierre Falcon).Īgrarian settlement in eastern and southern Ontario and western Quebec in the early 19th century established a favorable milieu for the survival of many Anglo-Canadian folksongs and broadside ballads from Great Britain and the USA. Men of the fur trade (and, later, the lumbering operations) brought much of this music further west and north into the forested areas of central Canada. They fished the coastal waters and farmed the shores of what became Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and the St Lawrence River valley of Quebec. Traditional folk music of European origin has been present in Canada since the arrival of the first French and British settlers in the 16th and 17th centuries (see Folk Music, Anglo-Canadian Folk music, Franco-Canadian). Few countries possess a folk music as rich and culturally varied as Canada's. ![]()
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