The Folk Music of Anglophone New Brunswick: Old-Time and Country Music in the Twentieth Century
Abstract
This article, which calls for a flexible and broad understanding of folk music, examines the role of old-time and country music in twentieth-century New Brunswick. Old-time music was primarily for dancing and its chief instrument was the fiddle. In the 1920s and 1930s hillbilly and cowboy music, with an emphasis on songs, began to dovetail with old-time music. Old-time and country music became closely embedded in rural and small-town New Brunswick. This paper argues that these musical forms, despite their commercial origins and dissemination via technology such as recordings, radio, and motion pictures, constituted a de facto folk music for the anglophone populations of the province.
RésuméCet article, qui nécessite une connaissance souple et élargie de la musique folklorique, passe en revue la musique d’antan et country dans le Nouveau-Brunswick du 20e siècle. La musique d’antan en était une principalement pour la danse, et son principal instrument était le violon. Dans les années 1920 et 1930, la musique genre western, centrée sur les chansons, a commencé à s’imbriquer avec la musique d’antan. Ces deux musiques sont devenues étroitement liées dans la campagne et les petites villes du Nouveau-Brunswick. Cet article souligne que ces formes musicales, malgré leur origine commerciale et leur diffusion par la technologie, au moyen d’enregistrements, de la radio et du cinéma, constituent une musique folklorique de fait pour la population anglophone de la province.
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