World Music Exploration 2010/11 Week 10 - Canadian Folk Songs

The Inuit Throat Singing video garnered the most comments last week from my students, from "Cool!" to "Weird" and everything in between. This week, we're exploring early Canadian folk music. I've selected two clips again this week (French and English).The first clip is the French Canadian song Dondaine la ridaine. It's a call-and-response song, commonly used as a working song. The song is about a man who met a beautiful girl and his conversation with her. He asks if she's willing to marry, to which she replies, "Not to a shoemaker." This performance is by EclecTrip, which is comprised of Daniel Gervais and Clinton Pelletier of Western Canada. Check out the group's music here.

The second clip is of one of my favorite childhood songs - St. Anne's Reel. I remember stepdancing to this as a kid. Featured in the video are Canadian fiddle greats Don Messer and His Islanders.

Note that the style of dancing shown here is Canadian stepdancing (not to be confused with Irish dancing, Highland dancing or Riverdance). Pianists - look at band configuration and think of other styles of music that are similar.

Don Messer is considered one of the the greats in Canadian fiddle music.

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