The Juno Awards: Canadian Music and Who Really Cares?

In a week's time, the ultimate night in Canadian music arrives: The Juno Awards on CTV. Countless stars will gather in one of the country's music hotspots (Vancouver, B.C.) and celebrate the greatest our country has to offer musically...and honestly, who gives a fuck? While I offer my sincere congratulations to those nominated and the eventual winners in all categories, who will really watch the Juno Awards? The hilarious Russell Peters will host and the likes of Nickelback, Sam Roberts, Simple Plan and Sarah McLachlan will all be performers, but will anyone really watch for their 3 minute spots throughout a night where 39 awards are handed out? Who will vote for Fan Choice and cheer when their favourite band wins?

What has the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (CARAS) really given Canadian fans to cheer about?

The answer: very little. The reality our country faces musically is that we're 33 million people dispersed over the second biggest single country landmass in the world. While we have produced some immensely talented artists and artisans (Paul Anka, The Guess Who, Oscar Peterson, and many MANY others), our ability to maintain a diverse range of fans spanning countless musical genres is virtually impossible. Canadian artists remaining in Canada need to scrape and claw for even a limited amount of radio play and recognition; more frequently, their talent is exported to the United States, where stars are born and roots are forgotten.

Take a band like Nickelback for example: a home-grown western band from Alberta with a standard, radio-friendly sound and some decent song-writing talent to begin with. Here in Canada, it doesn't take long for a recipe like that to be picked up by radio stations all over the country. From "Leader of Men" to "How You Remind Me", the band dominated charts and sold hundreds of thousands of copies of their reasonable music. However, in 2003, with the band's release of The Long Road, Nickelback went in another direction. They dropped their stoic storytelling for cheapened lyrics and bland riffs. A constant joke of the band became to compare how similar their songs were, as How You Remind Me and Someday were virtually identical in craft and chord progression. While it was their third album on Atlantic subsidiary Roadrunner Records, the once intriguing band became oblivious, lost in their own fame and fortune. The followup in 2005, All the Right Reasons, sold more than 7 million copies in the US (to go with 600,000 in Canada) and brought the band to the top of the world in every sense; gotta love corporate irony. Now, while the band makes many stops in their Canadian tours, their Canadian status has been uprooted and long forgotten. American branding takes our music and gives us nothing back.

Then, there's the greenness of our country: we love recycling. We've become so used to the same pretentious tripe-ridden artists playing on our airwaves, we give way and room to each new record they make. The most prime and easily hateable example: Céline Dion. Ms. Dion was born a songstress and will die one, topping charts and raising Canadians to tears (both of joy and agony) with her shrill performances. We all know the Titanic soundtrack, but her more accessible music stems from her blatantly commercial singles. We hear the distinctively française vocals from Dion, but in a manner that apparently someone, somewhere, is able to enjoy. Titanic was in 1997; twelve years later, guess who's nominated for Single of the Year? And Céline's not the only one. Nickelback frequently finds their way there, Bryan Adams is back (with a Greatest Hits album, no less), k.d. lang, Great Big Sea and Simple Plan are all present in the nominees for top performance honours.

Why do we look to the past? There's a limited future. Our most recent nominees: City & Colour, The Lost Fingers, Hedley and Sam Roberts (who is almost excluded for already winning 4 Junos). Dallas Green is the new face of Canadian songwriting. Draped with tattoos and soft vocals, Green geniously transitioned from the hardcore act Alexisonfire to a more predominant position as an emotive singer/songwriter and excellent guitar player. Armed with stimulating lyrics and intriguing performance values (and Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip, for some reason), expect to see a lot of Dallas in the coming years. The Lost Fingers are the most interesting nominee this year (and, if anything, the musicians to watch at this year's Junos). The Quebecois jazz ensemble covered renowned songs of the 80's (the likes of Michael Jackson, AC DC, Wham! and yes, Celine Dion, were all covered) in a distinct Jazz manouche or gypsy jazz styling, popular in Paris from 1930 to 1950. Lost in the 80's has achieved platinum status in Quebec alone and is up for Album of the Year. There is a bright future in these acts, but is it enough to stimulate a Canadian music revolution? I don't think so.

Additionally, bands no longer see the need to stop in Canada. Realistically, we have 7-10 vast metropolitan centers in this country, and usually 3 or 4 of these venues are hit by major tours. Bands seem to travel to Vancouver (as it's near Seattle) and Montreal (as there's a vast music following in that area) and little else. Why just last summer, Radiohead only hit Montreal and Vancouver; an additional date in Toronto was added by popular demand. Trust me, there are a LOT of Radiohead fans in Canada, myself being one, yet the entire nation seems to be overlooked. It's not that we're invisible on the musical world map, there just aren't enough fans in this country to sell out stadiums on a regular basis. As much as this affects American bands, it affects Canadian bands tenfold. If an aspiring Canadian musician wants to achieve fame of any kind (and wants to avoid selling out on Canadian Idol), they move to either Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal and try and gain credibility in a scene where thousands of other musicians wish the same. While many successful artists have spawned from these venues, the roads are arduous and pay is minimal; it's nothing but heart and music.

That being said, some of the best Canadian music is found underground. You can search for some of the surface scratching Canadian content (City & Colour, Feist), go down to about humus level (ARCADE FIRE, Broken Social Scene), find some fossils among the sediment (Black Mountain, The Most Serene Republic) and then the deepest of the deep, the liquid- hot magma, which I currently have no samples for. But, I digress.

That's the problem the Juno awards face: the industry they celebrate needs access. There is something deeply flawed in the Canadian music industry: be it our willingness to easily conform for press coverage, our difficulty stimulating a more accessable underground music scene or simply just a lack of population, it's hard for Canadian records to see the light of day and be broadcast for our home and native land to take in.

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What's more, Canadian performer Matthew Good has publicly criticized the Juno Awards in a recent interview, citing their sheer commercialism and lack of acknowledgement for talented artists not breaking the platinum record barrier. The interview can be seen on Yahoo! Music, HERE!!!!!!!!!

Canadian Post-Rock

One of the most diverse and least known genres on the scene is post-rock: an extreme minimalist approach to modern progressive rock, using alternative musical methods to create unique sounds. Post-rock encorporates elements of many different genres, as far spread as classical, country and metal. Its origins are found in alternative music, most notably in drone bands such as The Velvet Underground, and in krautrock especially. Bands such as shoegaze pioneers My Bloody Valentine, Public Image Ltd, Slint and Talk Talk have all been identified as the originators of the post-rock movement and are considered influential by most bands associated with it.

Oddly enough, some of the greatest post-rock bands known to listeners come from right here in Canada. Montreal has the most diverse post-rock scene in music, with such bands as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Do Make Say Think, A Silver Mt. Zion and Fly Pan Am, all calling the Paris of Canada home. Each of these bands appear on the Constellation, an influential indie record label that has been noteably anti-establishment for quite some time (on the of GSYBE!'s newest albums, for example, the record lable created a chart linking AOL, Vivendi and Sony-BMG to arms dealers worldwide, thus increasing war with every purchase).

GSYBE! especially has been a founding contributor to the scene in Montreal. The band began with Efrim Menuck, Mauro Pezzente and Mike Moya in 1994 but grew to as many as 20 members as the band began recording, many of whom played live shows and never played again. While the band contains a mostly formulaic rock foundation (guitar, drums, bass), their music is rich with diversity (glockenspiel, French horn, trumpets, a full orchestral string and percussion section, etc). Members of the band are highly anti-political, despise corporate media and rarely give interviews. Members and former members have contributed to albums by A Silver Mt. Zion, Hrsta and Set Fire to Flames; in this sense, they are all considered side projects of GSYBE!.

On the world stage, post-rock has exploded. Bands such as Scotland's Mogwai, Iceland's Sigur Ros, Texas' Explosions in the Sky and Chicago-born Tortoise have all developed post-rock internationally. Sigur Ros especially has put Iceland on the map musically (along with Bjork, of course), developing elaborate soundscapes and enlightening melodies. Conclusively, when it comes to post-rock, you can't get enough minimalism.