Northern Lights

Favorite musical acts — some of them Jewish — are in the forefront
of a Canadian musical renaissance.

It seems that everything's gone wrong, since Canada

came along / Blame Canada! Blame Canada! /

They're not even a real country anyway ...

— From "Blame Canada" (a song from the 1999
film "South Park: Bio-ger, Longer & Uncut')

GEORGE VARGA

Copley News Service

S

atirical lyrics to the contrary Canada has been
a fertile source of pop music since Joni
Mitchell, Neil Young and the Band rose to
prominence in the 1960s.
Now, the country that also produced Rush, Hank
Snow, the recently reunited Guess Who and ja77 piano
legend Oscar Peterson is enjoying a musical renais-
sance.
Our neighbor to the north has become home to such
U.S. favorites as Barenaked Ladies, Nelly Furtado, -
punk-pop upstarts Sum 41, and has spawned such suc-
cessful expatriates as Shania Twain, Alanis Morissette
and k.d. lang, producer David Foster and Late Show
With David Letterman bandleader Paul Shaffer.
Shaffer banters with Dave every year about taking off
for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and k.d. lang,
recently discovered she is Jewish on her mother's side
(through her Jewish maternal great-grandmother) —
despite being raised as a Christian. She played the
Grand Ole Opry in Nashville one recent Yom Kippur,
but "quietly fasted" on her own.
Barenaked Ladies features Jewish member and lead
singer Stephen Page, a member of Temple Sinai in
Toronto, where he lives with wife Carolyn and sons
Isaac and Benjamin. He regularly goes home for Rosh
Hashanah.
"I try to make the effort to do those kinds of things
and stay connected with the home front," he has said.
BNL performs Saturday, Dec. 29, at the Palace of
Auburn Hills.

Ignored By The Media

The wave of new talent has emerged despite only spot-
ty media coverage and a lack of U.S. record deals.
Nevertheless, such promising young acts as the Cash
Brothers, Diane Dufresne and the Weakerthans could
soon join the ranks of such gifted Canadians as Ron
Sexsmith, Lilith Fair founder Sarah McLachlan, Celtic-
music violin star Natalie MacMaster and feminist
singer-songwriter Ferron — as well as Rufus
Wainwright.
"It's amazing how little Americans know about
Canada," said Wainwright, who was born in New York
and has lived in Montreal since he was 3.

12/28
2001

54

"But I like to keep it that way. It's quieter. There's
something good about maintaining the 'Canadian
mystique."'
That mystique contributes to the allure of such
notable Canadian musicians as Loreena McKennitt,
Bruce Cockburn, Leonard Cohen and Giles Vigneault.
Cohen, a favorite of R.E.M. and Nick Cave, once
accepted a Juno Award (his country's equivalent of a
Grammy) by remarking that only in Canada could
someone with his flat, droning baritone voice be hon-
ored as the top male singer of the year.
Cohen, born to a Jewish family in Montreal, is a
practicing Buddhist and an ordained monk. He recent-
ly left a California Zen Buddhist temple, where he'd
been meditating for the past five years, to release his
newest album, Ten New Songs; it reached No. 3 on the
Israeli charts.
"There are a lot of great Canadian musicians," said
jazz star Diana Krall, a Vancouver-area native and a
two-time Grammy Award-winner.
Fellow Canadian Sarah Harmer agreed.
"There is, musically speaking, a broad spectrum of
sounds being created by people born in Canada, who
exist in the Canadian music scene but not beyond,"
said Harmer, a rising singer-songwriter with several
appealing albums to her credit.
"I think that's a beautiful thing, and the fact that
people in America or Armenia won't have access to [all
of] it is what makes the world so wonderful," she con-
tinued. "The fact you have indigenous sounds from
Cape Breton and Newfoundland is a good thing."

A Diverse Group

Canada's current crop of talent is diverse, indeed,
and may be the strongest since Mitchell, Cohen, the
Band and other icons made an international impact
in the '60s.
The same decade also saw the rise of such notable
homegrown artists as Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-
Marie and jazz guitar phenom Lenny Breau, while the
1950s gave birth to such briefly popular doo-wop vocal
groups as the Diamonds, the Four Lads and the Crew
Cuts.
The latest batch of promising Canadian bands
includes Flashing Lights, Royal City, the Philosopher
Kings, Nickelback, Kittie, Treble Charger, Econoline
Crush, Our Lady Peace, Veal, and the Celtic-tinged
Barrage.
The funk-pop Toronto-based Philosopher Kings, fea-
turing brothers Jon (on keyboards) and Jason (on bass)
Levine, owe much to the Motown sound, without
mimicking it.
Equally notable are such arresting singer-songwriters
as Lara Fabian, Maren Ord, Hawksley Workman,

Melanie Doan, Martina Sorbara and Kurt
Swinghammer.
"There's a real tradition of live music here," said
Gordon Downie of the Tragically Hip, a very popular
band that has never duplicated its Canadian success in
this country
"That's the tradition that Canadian bands come out
of, playing live," Downie continued, speaking from
Toronto. "It's not that novel, but you log a lot of miles
before you make that first record."
Non-rock idioms are also thriving in Canada, be it
the teen-pop of the Moffatts and SoulDecision, or the
hip-hop stylings of Choclair, K-OS and Kardinal
Offishall. Then there are such techno artists as Mistress
Barbara and DJ Maus, along with country-pop singers
Terri Clark and Carolyn Dawn Johnson.

Little Exposure

Some of these artists are familiar to American listeners.
Many are not, in part because Canada seems to be a
world away, at least when it comes to radio and TV
exposure in this country for musicians who don't have
U.S. record deals.
Moreover, too many gifted Canadians whose albums
are available here in the U.S. often toil in obscurity, just
as Mitchell and Young did before moving to Los
Angeles in the '60s.
A common reason is that the genre-leaping music
they perform is at odds with most U.S. radio stations,
which favor niche formatting and employ myopic pro-
gram directors to ensure stifling rigidity.
And, heaven forbid, if an artist is from Quebec and
sings - in French, since music performed in any foreign
language (including Spanish, despite the Latin music
surge) is shunned by most U.S. radio programmers.
As a result, many Americans have never heard such
Canadian musical treasures as La Bottine Souriante,
Mary Jane Lamond, the McGarrigle Sisters, Ashley
MacIsaac, Jane Siberry or the Rheostatics, a band that
this year celebrated its 21st anniversary yet is virtually
unknown outside its native country.
To hear a bemused Wainwright tell it, there are other
problems besides the fuzzy knowledge of Canadian
music in this country.
"I have people come up to me [in the United
States]," he said, "who say: 'Oh, I have a friend in
Vancouver. Do you know him?'"
Harmer experienced a similar encounter with a lis-
tener at one of her concerts in this country.
"I remember talking to someone a couple of years
ago about where Canada was," she recalled, speaking
from New York.
"You know, people often ask: 'Where are you from
in Canada?' But it depends where in the U.S. you're