Canadian Music and American Culture

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-viii

   PDF

2. Introduction: ‘Get Away From Me’: Anglo-Canadian Music and the Globalization of American Culture

   • Tristanne Connolly

   Pages 1-25

3. ‘Something’s Lost but Something’s Gained’: Joni Mitchell and Postcolonial Lyric

   • Steve Clark

   Pages 27-46

4. The View from Outside: The Band Sing America

   • Theodore Goossen

   Pages 47-60

5. Neil Young: Some Complexities in His Songs

   • Hidetoshi Tomiyama

   Pages 61-76

6. ‘The Usual Panic in Red, White and Blue’: Bruce Cockburn’s America

   • Kevin Hutchings

   Pages 77-96

7. ‘Mean, Mean Pride’: Rush’s Critique of American Cool

   • Tristanne Connolly

   Pages 97-120

8. The Max Webster Transfusion: A Little (Canadian) Blood for America’s Veins

   • Mark Spielmacher

   Pages 121-144

9. ‘Outside Looking In’: Saga’s Progressive Protest

   • Dave Taylor

   Pages 145-167

10. Tactical Electronic Bodies: Noise and Mutation in Canadian Industrial Music

    • Jason Whittaker

    Pages 169-184

11. Peace, Order and their Discontents: The Tragically Hip

    • C. E. J. Simons

    Pages 185-215

12. ‘If I Can Make it There…’: Jann Arden’s American Dream

    • Veronica J. Austen

    Pages 217-239

13. ‘Stick it to the Pimp’: Peaches’ Penetration of Postmodern America’s Mainstream

    • Angus Whitehead

    Pages 241-268

14. Back Matter

    Pages 269-297

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This collection explores Canadian music’s commentaries on American culture. ‘American Woman, get away from me!’ - one of the most resonant musical statements to come out of Canada - is a cry of love and hate for its neighbour. Canada’s close, inescapable entanglement with the superpower to the south provides a unique yet representative case study of the benefits and detriments of the global American culture machine. Literature scholars apply textual and cultural analysis to a selection of Anglo-Canadian music – from Joni Mitchell to Peaches, via such artists as Neil Young, Rush, and the Tragically Hip – to explore the generic borrowings and social criticism, the desires and failures of Canada’s musical relationship with the USA. This innovative volume will appeal to those interested in Music, Canadian Studies, and American Studies.

• Canadian Pop Music
• American Culture
• History of Canada
• Culture of Canada
• American history
• American politics
• Cultural hybrids
• Canada and USA relationship
• American music industry

• Department of English, St Jerome's University, Waterloo, Canada

  Tristanne Connolly

• Department of English Literature, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan

  Tomoyuki Iino

Tristanne Connolly is Associate Professor in the English Department at St Jerome's University in the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research specialty is British Romanticism, particularly William Blake. She has edited several essay collections on literature and cultural studies, is a poetry editor for The New Quarterly: Canadian Writers and Writing, and co-organizes the Canada Council-supported visiting writers series at St Jerome’s. 
 
Tomoyuki Iino is Professor in the Department of English Literature at Sophia University, Tokyo. His research areas are American literature and American music. A longtime string instrument player, he has translated Amiri Baraka's Blues People and edited the essay collection on the blues music Trapped in Blues. He also wrote supplementary booklets on Simon & Garfunkel and on Bob Dylan for NHK's radio broadcasts.

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