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When Americana doesn't mean American
39 tomrod 41 5/2/2025, 12:13:09 AM deeprootsmag.org ↗
For many cultures of the world, the most prominent musical genres are either highly parochial or highly corporatized (the latter also being the case in the USA).
Americana/Roots music still sits in place apart from those other genres, and while this probably limits the possible financial success of its practitioners, it preserves its authenticity and therefore it's broad appeal.
That raises the question, why doesn't every other form of authentic folk music around the world have the same broad appeal? Why aren't musicians all over the world taken up, say, Indian or Chinese folk music in total (vs borrowing themes or instruments)?
Because even Americana/Roots music has been a major source of the waves of US cultural and economic imperialism that have flowed over the world, from at least the early days of jazz and and definitely in the days of blues, rock, r&b, and rap.
Perhaps because Canada has english, a east coast, a west, and the great plains.
There are geographical similarities but I think it is more cultural.
Culturally, Canada and the USA are extremely similar. What a lot of people who don't live in Canada often fail to realize is that the vast, overwhelming majority of our population is concentrated in southern Canada... and that these areas are often even SOUTH OF PARTS OF THE USA in terms of latitude.
For example, Seattle WA lies on roughly the same latitude as Ottawa, ON which is quite north of Toronto. Detroit Michigan borders Windsor, ON (my home town) and Windsor is to the south of Detroit.
When broadcast television and radio were in their prime, we all watched American TV and listened to American radio (and the northern USA got Canadian channels etc).
In border towns like Vancouver and Windsor, it's not uncommon for people to have family on both sides of the border or to even live in one country and hold a day job in another.
A lot of Canadians have winter homes in southern states. Florida is a popular destination for east-coast Canadians and, while I don't know if it has changed, a typical visitor visa for Canadians let us stay for up to 6 months before we have to go back. And a lot of people even hold dual-citizenship.
Dual citizen here living on the Canadian side. It will be interesting to see how the political unraveling in the U.S. will force Canadians to regard and reinforce aspects of our culture that are distinct.
It is also interesting that you mention Canadian snowbirds. That too, at least anecdotally seems to be changing. In the last few weeks I ran into two individuals who are both working on unloading their homes in Florida on account all of this xenophobic sentiment.
E.g. proximity to the US is why US broadcast TV was a normal experience for many Canadians.
Born and raised in SOUTH Detroit!
Howdy from the East Side of Windsor.
Near the border, the people on either side talk the same. You go north/south the accents vary on a spectrum.
Oh yahh, dem yoopers are almost canucks!
Sounds just like the situation here in the US!
Of course Nashville is not a hothouse of radical music, but we are talking about Americana right?
In the 1970’s, the Grateful Dead weren’t played on country radio. Indeed they were barely on radio at all anywhere until Touch of Gray in the mid 1980’s.
And then only because of MTV…which in the early days refused to air videos by black musicians.
Nashville was no different from the rest of US pop culture industry then. And is no different today. Americana still fares much better there than EDM, Punk, and Rap.
Also maybe some aspects of geography, like knowing in which continent Canada is.
I usually try to use US-ian instead of American, but it looks really stupid and so I get why it is pretty widespread to call us Americans.
Steppenwolf being the quintessential example.
1) Developing its own domestic artists/musicians, to a much greater degree than the US (eg https://www.factor.ca/)
2) Greatly restricting smaller foreign acts (especially from the US) from performing in Canada for commercial purposes
Yes, point #2 also applies to the US, but it's not enforced. But if you cross into Canada with musical instruments, they'll put the fear of God into you.
This is largely why the phenomena you describe exists: artists can develop within their domestic cocoon, without being crowded-out by Americans, and then tour their larger, wealthier neighbor to greatly expand their profile virtually risk-free.
IIRC you need to hit 3/4 to be considered Canadian content.
At that time J Biebs was big, but since his music and lyrics were written by Americans and he performed/recorded in the States, his music was not CanCon despite him being Canadian. So, at the radio station I volunteered at, his music would count towards the 30% quota of not-CanCon music.
https://swling.com/blog/2023/08/radio-carpathia-and-rnei-to-...
Bob Catface (https://bsky.app/profile/bobcatface.bsky.social) has a Discord (Mostly Shortwave Discord: discord.gg/fr4Uuw4z5h) where you can receive notices when these come on the air. If you are a ham radio operator or SWL, you can decode MSFK usually with these shows.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Ivy
First of seven episodes of theirs about Ivy:
https://www.articlesofinterest.co/podcast/episode/338532f2/a...
Fussell's Class and (especially) Birnbach et al's The Official Preppy Handbook also treat extensively of the style.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnetou
It's not just for americana, many staples for european-inspired or gothic fantasy are made by the japanese, even if most of these creators don't speak english. Well in a sense perhaps it's the unique feature of the Western legacy that it's virtually transcended for everyone to use, rather than just a single group.
In the 70's, tons of people bought a-dime novels full of cheap Western like 'pulp' stories written from Spanish authors with English nicknames at the cover.
Later, with the widely spread television, spies and officers/detectives took that role seamlessly, with Charles Bronson et all. Because in the end it's the same story everywhere. Lonely wolf vs the baddies. That stuff sold well everywhere, because every society has its badass hero.
I'm pretty sure tons of French directors set lots of drama/action movies in the US too.
Oh, and not just white officers. The Asian Martial Arts exploitation with Bruce Lee and clones was widely seen from their sons too in late 70's/early 80's.
And these would be surely cloned in the US too.
Ninjas, samurais and exotic Japanese and Chinese fighters were pretty much everywhere too. And, OFC, Dragon Ball in Europe was a huge success in late 80's, even if at the beginning it just was a comedy manga/anime.
Dragon Ball does the same in the end with the Chinese culture being remade from the Japanese as a parody...
The French had Blueberry, Lucky Luke...
Franco-Belgian… Goscinny and Giraud were French, but Morris and Charlier were Belgian. I am not writing this to pick nits, but the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées were very much a synergy, worth more than the separate parts.