Back when CBC Radio One introduced the interview show Q some years back, I was unimpressed. I found the host, Tom Power, irritating in the extreme. Power is a musician and in his numerous interviews with other musicians he always seemed to ask them whether music was a big factor in their childhood homes.
How many electrons were wasted asking such a lame question?
Well, Power and his producers are putting together a superior product these days, one that approaches brilliance. Let's take today's episode as an example of what they can do.
Here in Canada, eminent people are honored by being inducted into the Order of Canada. (This is what chivalric orders of the Middle Ages have evolved into.) Today's interviewee, just inducted into the Order was Deantha Edmunds, advertised as the "first Inuk professional opera singer." She was an intelligent, even profound guest (although the issue of music in the home came up😁which gave me a laugh). She spent much of her time in the chair explaining the Inuk tradition of classical music.
When Edmunds says classical musical, she means what you mean, Mozart, Handel, etc. She is not a throat singer, which is the tradition most familiar to non-Inuk. She is a professional opera singer, and as such may be a first, but she is also working in a centuries-old tradition on the Labrador coast. Two undred years ago missionaries from the tireless Moravian church came to Labrador, bringing among other things classical music and European instruments that made it possible to play the new stuff. The
Inuk have been at it ever since, playing and adapting what once was a purely European (should we say German?) repertoire.
I had no idea.
Go to it Tom! You are doing great!
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