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  • Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present
  • Meghan Forsyth (bio)
Anna Hoefnagels and Gordon E. Smith, editors. Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present. Cambridge Scholars. xiv, 274. US$69.99

The fiftieth anniversary of the Canadian Society for Traditional Music / La Société canadienne pour les traditions musicales (cstm/sctm) in 2006 marked a milestone for the society and for Canadian music scholarship more generally. Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology: Canadian Perspectives, Past and Present features the proceedings of the society’s Fiftieth Annual Conference that took place 3–5 November 2006 in Ottawa at Carleton University and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. This meeting provided a welcome occasion for its members to reflect on the rich history of the society – a history that has seen significant changes in scholarly research, musical practices, emergent technologies, and shifting identity boundaries over the past fifty years. Moreover, members were invited to consider the present shape and future of the society.

Edited by two of Canada’s leading ethnomusicologists, Anna Hoefnagels and Gordon E. Smith, Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology provides a timely update to two previous ethnomusicological studies in Canada: Robert Witmer’s Ethnomusicology in Canada (1990) and Beverley Diamond and Witmer’s Canadian Music: Issues of Hegemony and Identity (1994). Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology showcases the diversity of folk music, traditional music, and ethnomusicological studies being conducted in Canada and/or by Canadian music scholars, and highlights some current theoretical and methodological issues and trends that will appeal to music scholars more broadly. Moreover, this volume begins to address some of the issues highlighted in Diamond’s critical assessment of Canadian ethnomusicology, ‘Canadian Reflections on Palindromes, Inversions, and Other Challenges to Ethnomusicology’s Coherence’ (2006), presented as part of an international roundtable at the fiftieth anniversary conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2005.

This collection comprises twenty-four short papers, methodically organized into five sections according to common themes. Each section is preceded by a short editorial introduction that highlights the section’s theme(s) and the individual papers, as well as a selection of relevant readings to aid in further research. In the first section, “Regional and Historical Perspectives,” the six papers are linked by their focus on particular regions of Canada or examination of particular historical trends and issues in folk and traditional music scholarship in Canada and elsewhere. While each paper is well written and cogently argued, the papers with a regional focus are centred on the Atlantic provinces of Canada. It is unfortunate, but not altogether surprising – given the focus on anglophone [End Page 162] traditions in the Atlantic region that has pervaded Canadian folk music scholarship – that a broader sampling of Canada’s traditional musics are not represented. Nevertheless, the authors tackle issues that can be applied to the study of musical practices more broadly.

The papers in the next section, ‘Ethnomusicological Studies, Issues and Ideas,’ address current issues and research methods in ethnomusicology, including the two interesting papers on the ‘position’ of the fieldworker by Judith Klassen and Kaley Mason. The third section, ‘Performers, Traditions, and Musical Expressions,’ provides a taste of the diversity of musics and current research interests in Canadian music scholarship, with articles on specific music traditions including Ontario old-time fiddling, Sephardic music, Torontonian hip hop, and karaoke. The fourth section is dedicated to First Peoples’ Musical Traditions, with papers on musical communities in Southwestern Ontario, Newfoundland, and Oklahoma; these papers highlight important themes that pervade current ethnomusicological research, including gender politics, tradition, and dia-spora. Lastly, the fifth section, ‘The cstm/sctm: Reflections and Future Directions,’ consists of reflections on the society’s past, present, and future, prepared and presented by society members, including two of the society’s past presidents and other distinguished Canadian music scholars.

This volume is intended as a contribution to published literature on ethnomusicological and folklore research in Canada, creating a new resource of historical, contemporary, and scholarly relevance that will appeal to academics and music enthusiasts alike. Folk Music, Traditional Music, Ethnomusicology is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the current state of ethnomusicological scholarship in Canada, and a good starting point...

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