Can a province's music scene change your life?
Sask.-made music significantly impacts several of its citizens
Songs move us. Albums move us. But can the music from an entire province change our lives?
The song Old Wood Bridge by Regina's Local Onlyz changed mine.
Ten years ago, I was tasked with creating an all-Sask. soundtrack for a skating rink in Downtown Regina. As I gathered hundreds of local folk, country and rock songs, hearing their song was an awakening. It opened my eyes to the vastness of music being made right here in my own backyard. An awakening that would soon lead to a decade of dedication within our local music industry.
Get this: I'm not alone.
From Cape Breton with Love
Wendy Bergfeldt, host and producer of CBC Cape Breton's Mainstreet, says music mattered in Mozart, Sask., the community where she grew up. On top of the hamlet being named after a famous composer, there were bands everywhere, a local fiddle-maker and an inspiring trumpet-playing mayor in a nearby town.
"When you grew up in Mozart, you knew that music was important. You knew that that was the root of the community. There was a hall there, there was a stage, there were dances all the time," Wendy said.
The neighbouring town of Wynyard, Sask., was also very musically inclined, she said.
"There were little dance combos everywhere. There was a Mr. [Jim] Bjornson who made and played fiddles. There were saxophone led bands and accordion led bands. Forrest Pederson was the mayor of Wynyard. He also played in a band."
She said the mayor played trumpet, which made her want to do the same.
"So that's what I did, just like Forrest."
That community would forever shape the way Wendy thought about music.
Understanding media's importance
Wendy was later inspired to get into media by a Swift Current radio DJ.
"The very first professional gig I ever had was at a radio station where Art Wallman was the big figure. He was the host of the show and his love of country music, and people who live in Southwest Saskatchewan will know this, was unparalleled," she said.
Art's impact on Wendy's career would be life-changing.
Today, after two decades of heavy involvement in media, music and her community, Wendy has a bio like no other.
An East Coast Music Awards lifetime achievement recipient, this radio host will be co-presenting a paper with Mi'Kmaq tradition bearers at the Society for Ethnomusicology conference in Ottawa about the creative burst of energy in Unama'Ki, Cape Breton.
The Saskatchewan song that reminds Wendy most of home? 1967's Lure of the Arctic by Wroxton's Smilin Johnnie and Eleanor Dahl.
Keeping local music history on record
For Kaley Evans, a Saskatoon-based freelance local music historian, one lucky find — a Prince Albert-created album called Roving Saskatchewan by Jim Munro — changed his whole life. It wasn't just Jim's music that inspired Kaley. He soon learned about what Munro meant to other artists in the area.
"I kind of got lucky stumbling on him first because he's to me, the top of the pyramid," Evans said.
Munro recorded himself and other artists in his basement.
"This was in the late 1960s and 70s and he's doing this stuff totally on his own. There's zero infrastructure in the province for music at that point apart from a couple really driven people that sort of figured it out on their own," Evans said. "That's kind of the mentality I like. The best is these people that were driven and just totally did it themselves."
Evans would go on to create his own archival Sask-focused online and on air show Prairie to Pine.
So why has Evans decided to dedicate so much of his time and talents to preserving Sask-made music?
"A lot of it is really fantastic stuff, so it's quite original to my ears. I've listened to a ton of music in my life and and the very best of this Saskatchewan stuff is one-of-a-kind to me," he said..
Meet the Gardipy's
The Saskatchewan song Evans cherishes the most came courtesy of a First Nation duo who wrote a quintessential country song on a topic we all love to talk about — the weather.
The artists were Henry and Dolores Gardipy, from the Prince Albert area, and the record was Meet the Gardipy's, released in the early 1980s.
"On the front cover, you can see the two of them wearing these ribbon shirt country outfits and posing behind an acoustic guitar and wagon wheel," Evans said. "You see that and just know that it's going to be one heck of a record."
He says the album has a classic country sound from that era, with good songs and great singing.
"This one track Our Love is Like the Weather just kind of defies its era. An absolutely perfect little love country love song. One of those stormy love songs that people like so much, no pun intended," Evans said.
Saskatchewan-made music has had quite a significant impact on so many lives through the decades. Culturally diverse and historically significant, where we came from helps define where our music industry will go for years to come.
Listen | Two Saskatchewan citizens describe how Sask-made music changed their lives
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