Canadian songwriters have always struggled to create work that
reflects their specific environment, while simultaneously connecting
with a mass audience. For most of the 20th century, that audience lay
outside Canada, making the challenge that much greater. While nearly
every songwriter who successfully crossed this divide did so by
immersing themselves in the American and British forms of blues, folk,
country, and their bastard offspring, rock and roll, traces of Canadian
sensibilities were never far beneath the surface of the eventual end
product.
What were these sensibilities, and why did they
translate so well outside Canada? With each passing decade, a clear
picture eventually emerged of what Canadian songwriters were
contributing to popular music, and subsequently passing on to fellow
artists, both within Canada and around the world. Just as Hank Snow
became a giant in country music, Ian & Sylvia and Gordon Lightfoot
became crucial components of the folk revival. In the folk-rock boom
that followed in the late ’60s, songs by The Band and Leonard Cohen
became instant standards, and, during the ’70s singer-songwriter
movement, few artists were more revered than Neil Young and Joni
Mitchell.
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