Music of Quebec

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Music of Quebec" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (September 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article contains wording that promotes the subject in a subjective manner without imparting real information. Please remove or replace such wording and instead of making proclamations about a subject's importance, use facts and attribution to demonstrate that importance. (January 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Music of Quebec
Timeline Samples
Genres
Classical Country Folk Hip hop Jazz Pop Rock
Specific forms
Native American Inuit
Media and performance
Music awards Juno Polaris Music Prize Hall of Fame Western Canadian Music Awards East Coast Music Awards CASBY Awards Music charts Jam! Chart Music festivals Canadian Music Week NXNE Music media Canadian Musician Magazine Chart Exclaim!
Nationalistic and patriotic songs
National anthem O Canada
Regional music
Related areas Music of Canada Maritime Provinces (Acadia) and St Pierre and Miquelon Prairie Provinces Other regions French music Martinique and Guadeloupe French Guiana Louisiana
v t e

As a cosmopolitan province,

The

music.

The song

are respectively

Traditional music

Québec was referred to as Le Canada during the time when it was under French control. It was also the most advanced colony out of all the New France settlements. After some generations of French settlers being born in Canada, the colonists began to identify with their home country and call themselves les Canadiens (the Canadians) as distinct from les Français (the French), those native to France. The Canadiens brought with them a rich tradition of songs and dances from northern France, namely the regions of

Maritimes.^[8]

As time went by, the French Canadians began to develop their own music, and also incorporated and transformed the styles of music played by the settlers from Great Britain, in particular the Scots, after the

Conquest.^[9] (One hundred of these songs were collected by Ernest Gagnon

for an 1865 compilation, one of the first such collections to be published in Canada.)

Traditional music is imbued with many dances, such as the

Quebec National Holiday

and many local festivals.

Popular music

Perhaps the most remarkable phenomenon in the popular music of that century was the career of

turlutte

.

By the 1960s, radio and television had begun to help disseminate French folk songs, especially after the 1967 foundation of the Centennial Collection of Canadian Folk Songs, including recordings of Quebec performers like Yves Albert and Jacques Labrecque, as well as

.

The most popular songwriters and singers of this period were

.

In the 1960s, the French Canadians of Quebec were beginning to self-identify as Québécois (Quebecers). See the

Michel Rivard

.

Country music, in both French and English (primarily the former), is prevalent in Quebec. An aspect of the overall Canadian country scene, it is the chief source of francophone country, inclusive of artists such as Renée Martel, Gildor Roy, Patrick Norman, Willie Lamothe, and Georges Hamel.

fusions. In 1976, multi-instrumentalist sisters Kate & Anna McGarrigle emerged on the international music scene with their blend of folk-rock and vocal harmonies added to self-penned songs in English and French, many of the latter co-written with Swiss-born poet Philippe Tatartcheff. The 1970s also saw roots performers like La Bottine Souriante gain critical and commercial acclaim within Quebec. Jim Corcoran and Bertrand Gosselin released La tête en gigue, an influential album that helped bring Quebec roots to crossover audiences across Canada, the United States and Europe. In addition to his musical career, Corcoran currently hosts a weekly show on CBC Radio One, which airs Francophone music from Quebec for English audiences across Canada. The early 1980s saw the formation of francophone

More recent Quebec performers include

are also recognized elsewhere in Canada and internationally.

A hip-hop scene is also present in the Montreal area with groups like Loco Locass, Sans Pression, Dionysos, Criollo, Atach Tatuq, Manu Militari, KCLMNOP, Imposs, Muzion and Dubmatique.

The metal scene is represented primarily by Sword, Voivod and death metal bands Cryptopsy, Kataklysm, Martyr, Neuraxis, Gorguts, Quo Vadis, Despised Icon, Ex Deo, Blackguard, Beneath the Massacre, Augury and many others. The Quebec black metal scene has also gotten some attention in recent years, including bands like Akitsa, Spirit of the Forest, Forteresse, Chasse-Galerie, Monarque and Nefastus Dies.

In 2003,

became well-known music artists after their passage in the reality show.

The tensions between Quebec and English Canada have, at times, played out on Quebec's music scene as well. In 1991,

Félix

award for Best Anglophone Artist for her English-language debut, Unison, but refused it as she did not view herself as an Anglophone artist.

Quebec has also produced a number of significant Anglophone artists, including

Grimskunk

, who have frequently recorded both English and French material.

Quebec artists have dominated the long and short lists of the

have all won the coveted award.

Jazz music

Some famous jazz musicians from Quebec are

.

The Montreal International Jazz Festival has been hosted by the city since 1980 and is now the largest jazz festival in the world, attracting huge crowds of visitors each summer, half of which come from outside the country. For the rest of the year, there is an Off festival that organizes jazz shows in bars all over Montreal.

Classical music

The early part of the 20th century saw growth in opera, and the foundation of the

in 1910, and opera singers became popular.

André Gagnon, Angèle Dubeau, Michael Laucke, Louis Lortie, Alain Lefèvre, Alain Trudel, Alexandre Da Costa, Marc-André Hamelin, Nathalie Choquette and Richard Verreau are top classical musicians from Québec at the present. ^{[citation needed]}

, among others.

Quebec and France

Both nations have influenced each other in terms of music styles.[15] In the last few years, Quebec singers have been taking the French stage quite extensively. Quebec singers that have performed in France included: Céline Dion, Garou, Anthony Kavanagh (a stand-up comedian), Isabelle Boulay, Bruno Pelletier, Lynda Lemay, Cœur de pirate and many others.

Roch Voisine and Natasha St-Pier are two artists who also perform in France and are often mistaken for Quebecers. They are actually from New Brunswick and are of Acadian heritage, like Daniel Lavoie who is from Manitoba.

Musicals

Few musicals were made or adapted by Quebec artists. Among them, Luc Plamondon has had the brightest career as a songwriter, writing for the big ones (Céline Dion, Garou). The main musicals 'made in Quebec' : Starmania, La Légende de Jimmy, Notre-Dame-de-Paris, Chicago (adapted into French), "Demain matin, Montréal m'attend", Dracula.

Le Cirque du Soleil

Cirque du Soleil has always developed its own musical pieces to go along with various acrobatic tricks. The music aspect of the show is essential as it sets a mood for every single performance and links one number to another.

See also

• Culture of Quebec
• French-Canadian music
• Gogo (Quebec music)
• List of Quebec musicians
• List of Quebec record labels

References

Further reading

• Brouillard, Marcel. Images de la chanson: un siècle chanté. [S.l.]: Éditions l'Essentiel; Ville Montréal, Qué.: Distr. Novalis, 2000.
  ISBN 2-921970-06-6
• Défossé, Félix. L'Évolution du métal québécois, vol. [1], No Speed Limit, 1964–1989. Rouyn-Noranda, Qué.: Éditions du Quartz, 2014. N.B.: Two more vols. are projected to complete this 3 vol. history of heavy metal music of Québec.
  ISBN 978-2-924031-16-2
• Duguay, Raoul. Musiciens du Québec. Montréal: Éditions du Jour, 1971. N.B.: The emphasis is on "classical" then contemporary composers and on those of "musique actuelle".
• Lasalle-Leduc, Annette. La Vie musicale au Canada français. Québec, Qué.: Ministère des Affaires culturelles, 1964.
• Lefebvre, Marie-Thérèse. La Création musicale des femmes du Québec. Montréal: Éditions du Remue-ménage, 1991. N.B.: Concerns women composers of Québec.
• Rodrigue, Patrick. "Rouyn-Noranda, la Mecque du rock 'n' roll" & "Un Musée du rock 'n' roll pourrait naître à Rouyn-Noranda", Abitibi-Express, vol. 1, no 44 (31 mai 2011), p. 4. N.B.: Paired ill. articles, each individually titled and separately accessible also on the newspaper's Internet site, describing Rouyn-Noranda as one of the two contrasting poles, the other being Montréal, of popular music in Québec.
• Sévigny, Jean-Pierre. Sierra Norteña: the Influence of Latin Music on the French-Canadian Popular Song and Dance Scene, Especially as Reflected in the Career of Alys Robi and the Pedagogy of Maurice Lacasse-Morenoff. Montréal: Productions Juke-Box, 1994. 13 p. N.B. Published text of a paper prepared for, and presented on, on 12 March 1994, the conference, Popular Music Music & Identity (Montréal, Qué., 12–13 March 1994), under the auspices of the Canadian Branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music.

External links

• Instrumental Folk Music of Quebec
• Québec Pop
• Bande à Part (CBC/Radio-Canada)
• The Cirque du Soleil official website = music
• Les Violons du Roy