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Music preview: Guitar project brings together our shared cultures
Edmonton guitarists to play made-from-Canadiana instrument
BY TOM MURRAY, EDMONTON JOURNAL FEBRUARY 5, 2014
Jowi Taylor, creator of the Six String Guitar Nation
Photograph by: Doug Nicholson
PREVIEW
Jowi Taylor’s Six String Guitar Nation
With: Bobby Cameron, Mike McDonald and the Command Sisters
When: Thursday, Feb. 6 at 6:30 p.m.
Where: Metro Cinema, 8712 109th St.
Tickets: $21 at the door
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EDMONTON - First, let’s talk about the flashy objects that have gone into making Voyageur, the assembled-from-Canadiana guitar that broadcaster Jowi Taylor is bringing to Edmonton Thursday evening as part of his Six String Nation presentation.
Hockey fans will be excited to discover that a portion of one of Paul Henderson’s hockey sticks from the ’72 Summit series is there, as well as gold from one of Rocket Richard’s Stanley Cup rings. Political junkies will no doubt perk up to hear that an oar belonging to Pierre Trudeau is also part of the project. Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s mission patch is part of the lining for the guitar case.
A strange idea, isn’t it, to take a number of items that make up our national mythology, and put them together as a guitar? That’s exactly what Taylor, an award-winning broadcaster, wanted to do. And yes, people did look at him kind of funny.
“There were a few people who thought I was kind of crazy,” he admits over the phone from his Toronto home. “Some just didn’t get it at all. Once I started to get things like Trudeau’s oar, people actually started to get it a little, though there are still others who don’t quite fathom it. It’s a hard thing to explain in just a few sentences.”
Taylor came up with the idea of Voyageur in 1995, when the Quebec Referendum dominated headlines. It took him a number of years to gather what would turn out to be 64 pieces of bone, metal, wood, stone and fabric, tangible symbols of our shared culture, from every province and territory. He passed them over to Nova Scotia luthier George Riszanyi to build into a playable instrument. Since it was finished in 2006, it has been in the hands of a host of famous (Bruce Cockburn, Stephen Fearing, Ron Sexsmith) and not-so-famous guitarists.
In Edmonton it will be played by Mike McDonald of Jr. Gone Wild, Bobby Cameron and The Command Sisters, and used by Taylor in a presentation that addresses the problems we have with culture in this country, and how such things as “NHL hockey and Tim Hortons have colonized what it means to be Canadian.”
“I’ve done all kinds of events across this country and the guitar ignites something in people. I get stories from them. I think there’s this genuine impulse for Canadians to want to have something that is complicated and nuanced, not jingoistic, that explains their feelings about the country.”
This is where we flip over to the less flashy objects that the guitar contains, the ones that don’t hold marquee name value but go much deeper. Like the Patuanak moose shin that came from Métis artist and songwriter Don Freed of Saskatchewan, or the piece of wood from Nova Scotia’s Home For Coloured Children, which was established in the early 1900s by James Robinson Johnston, the province’s first black lawyer. Mastodon ivory from the Yukon, whale baleen from Nunavut are small but essential reminders of the disparate histories that this country contains.
One of the items most cherished by Taylor is a knife gifted to him by the family of Joe Lebobe, a champion oyster shucker from P.E.I. and a member of the Mi’kmaq First Nation. Taylor said the family was proud of their famous relative, but somewhat bemused at Taylor’s excitement. While it might not seem like the most important part of the guitar, Taylor believes that it has as much significance as Trudeau’s oar or Henderson’s stick.
“This is fundamentally what the project is about,” he insists. “I’m thrilled that I have all of those other things, but they don’t mean anything more than other stories told by people in communities that nobody ever talks about, but who are nonetheless fundamental to the fabric of who we are.”
The guitar has taken up much of Taylor’s time since it first appeared at Canada Day celebrations in 2006. It’s still a bit of a struggle to make people understand what the project is, and the importance of knitting together a shared culture in such a sparsely populated land.
“At the end of this people always come up and want to share their stories. I love to hear them, but more importantly I hope that they tell each other, because it’s something that we need to start doing. We can’t just depend on Tim Hortons and NHL hockey as shorthand for who we are. It’s just not good enough.”
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