John Arcand and Andy Dejarlis Crossing Over

studying culture in context Two models in the world of Métis fiddling: John Arcand and Andy DeJarlis Sarah Quick Excerpted from: Crossing Over Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 3 Edited by Ian Russell and Anna Kearney Guigné First published in 2010 by The Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, MacRobert Building, King’s College, Aberdeen, AB24 5UA ISBN 0-9545682-6-5 About the author: Sarah Quick currently teaches at Winthrop University. She holds a PhD in Social-Cultural Anthropology (Indiana University, 2009) and received fellowships from the Canadian Studies Grant Program and Skomp fund (Indiana University). Research interests include Métis and First Nations music/dance, culture and history; the heritage industry, and, recently, food movements. Copyright © 2010 the Elphinstone Institute and the contributors While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in the Elphinstone Institute, copyright in individual contributions remains with the contributors. The moral rights of the contributors to be identiﬁed as the authors of their work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. 10 Two models in the world of Métis fiddling: John Arcand and Andy DeJarlis SARAH QUICK ndy DeJarlis and John Arcand are two fiddle-composers well known in Western ACanada in part because of their influence on Métis fiddling practice. Previous scholarship has tended to focus on traditional tunes and traditional stylistics in relation to Métis fiddling; while recent compositions and commercial fiddling have largely been conceived as negatively influencing the unique qualities that define traditional Métis fiddling as a genre. This paper, however, suggests that commercial compositions are also worthy of study for their insight into the musical worlds that fiddler-composers reaffirm in their tunes and tune titles. Métis identity and Métis fiddle music Métis translates from French as a person of mixed heritage, and in this case the term (among others) first referred to the progeny of European and Aboriginal unions during the fur trading days in North America. Métis currently refers to a collective group recognized by the Canadian government, although exactly what Métis means in terms of Aboriginal rights and who then qualifies for these rights is contested and negotiated at national and provincial levels. While Métis are not recognized as a separate group in the USA, historically, Métis from the Red River region of Manitoba and North Dakota were the prototypical models for Métis national identity; and all three Prairie Provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) in Canada have been seen as the eventual homes to scattered Métis communities after the Red River Métis’ late nineteenth-century dispersals. Métis is now seen as a cultural identifier in much broader terms with overlapping affiliations to First Nations communities in many locales across northern Canada. Furthermore, the lines between First Nations and Métis communities (and French communities in some places) are often difficult to draw because of the historical, familial, and political interrelationships between these communities. Several references to Native fiddle dances appeared in accounts of nineteenth- century life on the Canadian prairies (and beyond),1 but Roy Gibbons’ research appears to be the first in the scholarly record to have used the term ‘Métis’ to describe the fiddle performance style practised by Native peoples in the Prairie Provinces. In 114 QUICK Two models of Métis fiddling: John Arcand and Andy DeJarlis the late 1970s, Gibbons recorded Métis and First Nations fiddlers in Saskatchewan and Alberta; he referred to these fiddlers generally as Métis, but since he included reserve locations for some recordings, I include First Nations as a descriptor.2 In general, although this genre is identified with Métis culture, First Nations people are also active participants in fiddle dance performance. Anne Lederman is the scholar most often cited regarding Métis fiddling’s formal qualities, due to her seminal research in the mid-1980s when she worked with Métis and First Nations reserve communities north of Winnipeg, Manitoba. In her scholarly and popular publications she has asserted that the fiddle music she sought out and recorded exhibited a syncretism of Native and European musical structures. Lederman argued that although localized (non-Native) stigmas existed toward these fiddlers’ renditions of tunes often in ‘crooked’ or asymmetric phrases, these musical-structural features were indicative of Native musical influence from Ojibwa singing. Lederman also contended that this syncretic tradition had largely been ignored because of the assumptions of past scholars viewing European and Native musical forms as very different. Lederman, instead, pointed to the similarities between vocal/drum performance and rhythmic fiddling, the fiddle’s range mimicking the human voice and its performance, primarily for dancing.3 Other scholars and projects have generated study of and broader attention to this fiddling genre. Folklorist Nicolas Vrooman’s 1983 Folkways recording on the Turtle Mountain Chippewa reservation in North Dakota was re-released as a Smithsonian Folkways CD in 1992. The Gabriel Dumont Institute in Saskatchewan published a collection of Métis music that included a couple of Métis fiddle tunes in 1993, while the Gabriel Dumont Institute recorded, archived, and published a collection in 2002, based on several elder Métis fiddlers from the Prairie Provinces and the Northwest Territories, entitled Drops of Brandy: An Anthology of Métis Music with an accompanying set of four CDs. Byron Dueck has researched fiddle and dance performance on First Nations reserves in the vicinity of and including Winnipeg, Manitoba; I have taken up the study of fiddle and dance performance primarily in Alberta (but also in Saskatchewan settings); and Anne Lederman observed and recorded fiddle dance activities in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories in 2008, continuing Craig Mishler’s earlier research on Gwich’in fiddling.4 Besides the asymmetric phrasing that gives Métis fiddling an ‘out of metre’ feel, as brought to light by Lederman’s research, Métis fiddling is seen as contrasting with more mainstream Canadian fiddling (often described as ‘down east’ style) in a number of other ways. Elder fiddlers generally accompany themselves by clogging their feet in a set rhythmic pattern, similar to that which Québécoise fiddlers do. A number of the old tunes require tuning the fiddle in non-standard tunings, and most fiddlers play open strings or double stops for phrase emphasis. Finally, many fiddlers point to Métis fiddling’s ‘bouncy’ or ‘jumpy’ quality, which can be attributed to bowing techniques as well as the already mentioned use of asymmetric phrases. As Mark Slobin characterised, affect is an analytic tool for recognizing what musicians do to convey a mood so that their audience is moved in a certain way.5 115 Crossing Over: Fiddle and Dance Studies from around the North Atlantic 3 The dance aesthetic emphasized in Métis fiddling obviously ties to its traditional function as dance accompaniment, and the dances, in turn, often accompany celebratory social gatherings. Therefore, this dance aesthetic relates to the affect, or the emotional mood that performers generally convey in the upbeat tunes played to inspire dancing, a mood intertwined with informal fun, the lifting of spirits, and the celebrating of significant events. Nonetheless, affect can also be related to the creation of new tunes, and here I focus especially on the affective qualities of DeJarlis and Arcand’s tunes and tune titles in comprising a dense and evocative terrain of meaning-making. Andy DeJarlis Andy DeJarlis is now recognised as the first major Métis fiddling recording artist, his career extending from the 1930s into the 1970s. He died in 1975 having only reached the age of 60, but during his lifetime he recorded close to forty LPs, composed hundreds of fiddle tunes, and in 1970 received a Gold Record from London Records for sales exceeding 500,000 albums.6 Born near Woodridge in southeastern Manitoba in 1914, DeJarlis started fiddling when he was fifteen or sixteen, learning from his father and other well-known local fiddlers. He moved with his family to Winnipeg in 1933 or 1934, and soon after he began playing for the local radio and dances.7 Beginning in 1935 he had his own radio programme with the ‘Red River Mates’ on CJRC in Winnipeg, and in 1936 he and his band also broadcast over CKSB in St Boniface, Manitoba. In 1938, DeJarlis took violin lessons from Professor Rutherford in Winnipeg for six months; and during the 1930s and 1940s, he toured with his band in many communities in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan; in 1946 and 1947, DeJarlis lived in Vancouver and performed as ‘Andy De Jarlis and His Early Settlers’ for old-time dances. He returned to Winnipeg in 1948, suffered from several bouts of ill health, but still performed regularly at old-time dances.8 In 1956 DeJarlis first recorded with Quality records,9 and in 1959 he began a recording career with London records that lasted fifteen years. He moved to Montreal in 1962 to continue recording with London records and during this time he appeared on Don Messer’s Jubilee and was featured on a television show on CFTM-TV in Montreal. In addition to his many recordings with his ‘Early Settlers’, he published three books of mainly original tunes (1961, 1963, and 1969). DeJarlis returned to Manitoba in 1965, receiving in his later years many awards and accolades for his recording career, compositions, and contributions to Manitoba (his tune titles make extensive use of Manitoba place names).10 DeJarlis’s impact is seen in both the traditional dance repertoire as well as tunes associated with more recent dance forms such waltzes, polkas, two-steps, and fox trots.

Load more