Conférence de la Société de musique américaine
Le panel VMQ sera présenté lors du colloque de la Society for American Music.
https://www.american-music.org/page/MI2023GeneralInfo
« La Vie Musicale au Québec: Towards an Inclusive History of Musical Life in Quebec, 1919-1952 »
This panel presents preliminary findings from an ongoing inter-university research project that has as its goal the writing of an inclusive history of musical life in Quebec in the first half of the 20th century. Our team has collected data on over 600 musical events that took place in Montreal during eight 24-hour periods between 1919-1952. Presenter 1 will give an overview of the project methodology and offer a conceptual framing for “musical life.” Presenters 2, 3 and 4 will present findings from three 24-hour periods from the 1920s.
« Rethinking Musical Life: From Concept to Methodology », Virginie Laliberté-Bouchard, University of Toronto :
This paper introduces the Vie Musicale au Québec project, gives an overview of the project methodology, and offers a theoretical framing for “musical life.” Our critical research methodology is anchored in an understanding of “musical life” as necessarily indissociable from the power systems it participates in and is articulated through, and implies a systematic and critical review of all accessible music-related events occurring within narrowly-defined time intervals. This approach has allowed us to move beyond the usual historiographical frameworks for the study of music in Quebec to offer a more inclusive and relevant account of musical life in the province.
« December 6, 1921 : 24 hours of gendered musical life on a day to act on one’s rights », Vanessa Blais-Tremblay, Université du Québec à Montréal :
This paper takes Tuesday, December 6, 1921—the day the polls opened for the first federal election post-suffrage in Canada—as a case study on gendered musical life in Quebec. I present a virtual map detailing women’s participation in more than one hundred Montreal-based music-related “events” that can be attributed to this 24-hour period. After briefly comparing my 1921 findings to two other key dates in the history of women’s rights in Canada, I reflect on the limits of such an “extractivist” approach to the archive in the context of VMQ’s larger quest for inclusive historiography.
« July 31, 1924: Illuminating encounters between musical and social worlds », Sandria P. Bouliane, Université Laval :
On July 31, 1924, a striking mix of artists came together at the Compo studios in Montréal. Among the musical talents on hand were Anglo-Canadians, French-Canadians, including a woman singer, and an orchestra of African-American musicians. Was this gathering typical for its time or an exception? This presentation surveys 75 musical events that we have documented for this 24-hour period and interrogates the role of music in enabling encounters between people and practices from different linguistic, ethnic, economic, and stylistic contexts.
« July 1, 1928, or A Parade of Songs: Celebrating Quebec on Dominion Day », Laura Risk, University of Toronto Scarborough :
Saint-Jean-Baptiste is the national day of Quebec. In the 1920s, it was an occasion to reinforce a conservative vision of francophone Canada as an embattled nation struggling to retain its religion, language, and tradition while trapped in an unwanted union with anglophone Canada. In 1928, however, the Saint-Jean-Baptiste parade, featuring tableaux vivants of French-Canadian songs, was delayed by rain to Dominion Day: the national day of Canada. This paper uses this unexpected convergence to interrogate the use of traditional song as a metonym for French-Canadian national identity and then locates the parade within the musical effervescence of late-1920s Montreal.