Track 16 Research notes

Black music in Canada: highlights from EMC

• The first black in Canada was Matthew da (de) Costa, a former Portuguese slave and fisherman
  • sailed to Port Royal in 1605 (or 1606) as a translator for Samuel de Champlain.
• The holding of slaves was legal under French and British law during the colonization of Canada; slaves brought to Canada as early as 1628 (post-dating the first slaves in the southern colonies of the USA by nine years).
• Some 5000 blacks migrated to Canada (specifically Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) during the US War of Independence, 3500 as freemen (who became tenant-farmers) and 1500 as slaves.
• In the late 19th century 1200 blacks sailed from Halifax for Sierra Leone.
• abolition of slavery in Canada by 1833; de facto abolition in Upper Canada as early as 1793
• Canada became a haven for blacks escaping from the southern USA by means of the 'underground railroad': terminal points in southwestern Ontario, along the Detroit and Niagara rivers, in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.
• several thousand, perhaps tens of thousands, of the fugitives stayed and lived in freedom under British law, but a very large percentage returned to the USA after the emancipation of 1865
• in 1871 there were about 21,000 blacks in Canada; by 1890, the number had declined to about 15,000. Not until the mid-20th century did this figure begin to increase substantially.
• the largest concentration in Toronto and the rest in other urban cities, notably Montreal and Halifax. Some blacks still lived in the rural areas of the Maritimes settled by their ancestors 200 years before.
• music in the black communities of Ontario and the Maritimes was largely centred during the 19th century in the church.
• few folk songs known to have survived in the older black communities of Canada.
• Arthur Huff Fauset's Folklore of Nova Scotia (Philadelphia 1931) includes 20 song texts, most either collected from blacks or of black origin.
• Fauset cites a white Nova Scotian, Carrie B. Grover, who had in her repertoire 'songs from slavery days,' all of which she had learned from her father.
• Helen Creighton and Doreen H. Senior's collection, Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia (Toronto 1950) includes some songs of black origin
• Creighton reports (Ethnomusicology, Sep 1972) that she collected at least 81, including some singing games.
• Paul McIntyre, in Black Pentecostal Music in Windsor, notes many African survivals in the music at a Black Pentecostal church attended by descendants of the North Buxton settlers and other blacks in the Windsor area.
• Professional ensembles were in fact active in Canada at the turn of the century, among them the Celebrated Coloured Canadian Concert Co and the Famous Canadian Jubilee Singers
• Montreal's closely-knit black community in the St-Henri neighbourhood gave rise to a concentration of nightclubs that presented black performers for racially-mixed audiences from the 1920s through the 1950s. (see article for important names)
• The singers Eleanor Collins, Isabelle Lucas, and Phyllis Marshall, meanwhile, were pioneering figures for their work on CBC radio and TV during the 1940s and 1950s. They have been followed in the variety field (radio, TV, and/or stage) by singers or singers-actors (many US-born)
• The dissemination on record and radio of black music styles other than jazz from the USA (and later the Caribbean) led to their eventual introduction into Canada, beginning in the 1950s with blues and rhythm and blues, and continuing with calypso in the 1960s, reggae and disco in the 1970s, and rap in the 1980s.
• Most have remained isolated from the Canadian pop mainstream, seldom championed by the burgeoning domestic recording industry.
• In support of their efforts, the Black Music Association of Canada was established in Toronto in 1984 by Daniel Caudeiron and others and 1985-7 presented BMAC Awards in nine pop-music and industry categories.
• Juno awards were established in 1985 for Reggae/Calypso and R&B/Soul.
• Other, largely-mainstream styles of popular music - eg, country and bluegrass, pop, rock, and folk - have had relatively few black exponents in Canada.
• Canadian blacks also have been heard on the concert stage, among them the contralto Portia White, the tenor Garnet Brooks, and the sopranos Burnetta Day (of Chatham, Ont) and Sharon Coste (of Montreal).