Canadian Journal for Traditional Music (1989)

Editorial Notes

Edith Fowke

As the Canadian Folk Music Society/Societe Canadienne de Musique Folkiorique is bilingual, in this Journal we try to present a fair proportion of French articles. Also, as the society is national, we try to cover some of the folk music research on Canada's ethnic groups other than English and French. In recent issues there has been a rather heavy preponderance of articles in English, although some of those dealt with French material. It is some time since we had articles dealing with any groups except the English and French.

This time the balance is much better. We have two French articles from Quebec, and they deal with the music of two of our ethnic groups:

the Afro-Montrealais and the Ukrainiens-Montrealais. Robert Viilefranche and Yves Bernard discuss the contributions made to the Montreal community by those who came to Montreal from the West Indies, South America, and Africa. Claudette Berthiaume-Zavada describes a collection of Ukrainian-Canadian music and shows how certain of its musical elements have been preserved and adapted in the Montreal community.

Jay Rahn. our associate editor, contributes the main article on music from English Canada. He has been making an extensive study of an Ontario singer, LaRena Clark, and he uses her songs to illustrate the characteristics of traditional music. In this issue he discusses metre, phrasing, rhythm, and form; a second article will cover tonality, modality, and harmony.

Douglas Gifford. who received his M.A. degree in music from York University in 1987, contributes another article dealing with an English-Canadian singer and one of his songs that has many relatives.

Gordon Smith presents material on the important French collector and composer Ernest Gagnon, describing his contribution to Canadian nationalism and showing how he used both folk and native music in his compositions. Another French item is the review of Helen Creighton's recent book of the Acadian songs she collected.

We have never before published an index to the issues of the Journal, but now a Calgary member, George W. Lyon, assisted by Mark B. deLeeuw, has prepared an index to the first sixteen issues, listing articles by titles and by authors, with supplementary lists of songs and reviews.

Again we owe thanks and gratitude to the Ontario Arts Council for its support of our Journal.