Gary Cristall

Gary Cristall was the co-founder of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival in 1978; from 1994 he spent six years at Canada Council. Since 2000 he has worked as an artist’s manager and consultant and teacher of arts administration at Capilano University. He is researching and writing a history of folk music in English Canada. Visit Gary at his website and learn more about his book on the history of folk music in Canada.
Photo credit: Brian Nation

Music, Music Mondays

Taiko: Indigenous Asian-Canadian Music

May 14, 2012, By Gary Cristall

Asia is big! Technically it begins in Turkey and ends not far from Alaska in the north west or Singapore in the south west. That’s a lot of turf and hundreds of cultures. Many of them are represented by significant communities in Canada, from Koreans to Armenians to Lebanese to Punjabis to Tamils to Vietnamese to Chinese and Japanese.

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In the News, Music, Music Mondays

Celebrating Police Week

May 11, 2012, By Gary Cristall
Police week music

A man sits at Queen and John Sts. in front front of a line of riot police during G20 protests in Toronto on June 26, 2010. (Image: Steve Russell, Toronto Star)

When I discovered that there is a National Police Week that runs from May 7 through 15 in Canada, I was delighted. There are so many songs that deal with the bad behavior of the police over many years, and this gives me the opportunity to share a few. It is probable that the first song about the unjust behavior of the police was written within days, if not hours, of the establishment of the first police force.

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Music, Music Mondays

Music Mondays: May Day

April 30, 2012, By Gary Cristall
may day vancouver

In Vancouver, in 1935, as many as 30,000 demonstrators paraded from the Cambie Street Grounds to a rally in Stanley Park. Vancouver Public Library, via Lorne Brown, When Freedom was Lost (Black Rose Books, 1987)

While May Day is celebrated widely just about everywhere except North America, its roots are firmly in the United States, in Chicago to be precise. It is also a product of the struggle of workers for the eight-hour day, one of the key demands of workers during the late nienteenth century and much of the twentieth. While May Day is known as the day of international workers’ solidarity, there is no one song associated with it. “Solidarity Forever”, “Joe Hill, Hold The Fort” and “The Internationale” are all widely sung in Canada as is “Bread and Roses”.

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History, Music, Music Mondays

Classic Shipwreck Songs

April 11, 2012, By Gary Cristall

To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, I thought it was appropriate to revist some classic shipwreck songs, from the Jack-Johnson-inspired “Fare Thee Well Titanic” to a vibrant toast about escaping the Titanic’s sinking, and a popular Stan Rogers’ song about the fictional wreck and rebuilding of the the Mary Ellen Carter.

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History, Music, Music Mondays

St. Patrick’s Day: Irish Music in Canada

March 12, 2012, By Gary Cristall
Saint_Patrick

Saint Patrick stained glass window from Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, California.

St. Patrick’s Day is March 17, the date of Patrick’s death. While it has come to be a secular celebration of Irish culture and, perhaps, more identified with nationalist and Republican sentiment, it began as a religious feast day. It was an official Protestant holiday in Ireland beginning in 1783. Probably by no coincidence it came during Lent where an exception to the prohibition on celebratory eating and drinking alcohol was welcomed and led to the embrace of St. Patrick’s Day by all. Four Christian denominations observe the holiday: Anglican, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Lutheran.

St. Patrick himself, the patron saint of Ireland, goes back to AD 387-461 and the arrival of Roman Catholic Christianity in Ireland. Then there’s the thing about the snakes but we won’t go there.

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Music, Music Mondays

International Women’s Day

March 5, 2012, By Gary Cristall
women_workers_strike

Women's Worker's Strike in 1912.

International Women’s Day is one of the few celebrations observed in Canada that is the product of dissident or reform movements. Its origins go back to 1909 when the American Socialist Party held an event honouring the 1908 garment worker’s strike in New York, where women protested against gruelling working conditions in the city’s factories. The following year there was a women’s conference in Copenhagen, preceding a meeting of the Socialist International. From a motion by two German socialist women, International Women’s Day (IWD) was declared. The year 1910 and Clara Zetkin, the seconder of the motion, are most associated with the beginning of IWD.

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Music, Music Mondays

Follow The Drinking Gourd: Songs and Legacies of the Underground Railroad

February 13, 2012, By Gary Cristall
undergroundrailroad

Running to Catch the Underground Railroad. Credit: UGRR

The Underground Railroad was a network of conspirators working to help slaves escape the United States to find refuge in the British Empire and other places where slavery was illegal. In 1850, the United States Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, which helped slave owners recapture their escaped human “property.” The act put escaped or free Blacks living in non-slave states in danger. Freedom was found through the underground railroad. 

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History, Music, Music Mondays

Black History Month: Sonic Memories of Africville

February 5, 2012, By Gary Cristall
africville

Young boy with Ralph Jones' house in background, Africville, Boarded Prior to Demolition, Nova Scotia Archives

February is Black History month. We’ll help celebrate it with two entries dealing with music inspired and produced by two very different Afro-Canadian communities. The first is from Nova Scotia. You can get directly involved in this one by going to your post office where two stamps issued for Black History Month are on sale. The one I bought features the face of Viola Desmond. If you buy a booklet of ten you get her story. Stranded in New Glasgow in 1946 and waiting for her car to be repaired, Viola went to the movies to pass the time but found that the theatre was segregated. Blacks sat in the balcony. She refused to move from her orchestra seat and was jailed and fined. She appealed and finally, after a decade, won and destroyed Nova Scotia’s segregation laws. Buy the stamps and read the story.
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Music for the Lunar New Year

January 22, 2012, By Gary Cristall
chinese-new-year-music

Music is a big part of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

For some of us, today marks the new year; for others it has already been the new year for some time. For Jews, the year 5772 began on September 28. For Thais, Cambodians and Laotians the new year will be celebrated in April. The Islamic new year was Friday, November 25. The lunar new year is today, Monday, January 23.

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Music, Music Mondays

Robert Service With A Smile

January 16, 2012, By Gary Cristall

It’s January and the depths of winter most places in the country. I was thinking about winter songs. I was going to mention a few contenders but then I figured I’d cut to the chase as they say. My hands down favourite winter song is a kind of extended groaner of a joke by one of Canada’s iconic poets, Robert W. Service.

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