Colin StetsonHandout | Keith Klenowski
The deciding round of this year's $30,000 Polaris Music Prize is at hand, and as usual the jurors are pledged to base their deliberations "solely on artistic merit." A few other non-artistic filters have already been applied: Each album must have been released during a certain period, and its makers must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents.
Stetson, who wrote and recorded one of the 10 nominated albums, was born in Michigan and moved to Montreal four years ago. His New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is a tour de force of solo instrumental pieces for bass saxophone. It deserves some kind of prize, but the Polaris? Maybe not.
The album came out in February. Stetson, a permanent resident, told a Globe interviewer he was "still writing" the songs in 2009, suggesting the process had begun even earlier. At best, he may have lived in Canada for not much more than a year when he started on the music that now stands to be feted as the best Canadian album of the year.
That doesn't seem to me like time enough for anything about Canada to have permeated Stetson's artistic practice. I'm glad he made the record, it's nice that he did it here, but there must be more to being a Canadian musician than having a piece of paper from Ottawa.
I raised this issue with some of my colleagues on the big Polaris jury – the 200-odd critics, broadcasters and bloggers who vote for the long and short lists. A few of them thought it was a worthwhile question, but many said that Stetson was clearly eligible, and we're all ultimately immigrants anyway, so why discuss it?
I think that would be a common reaction in Canada these days. Somehow we've all tacitly agreed that Canadian-ness, as a cultural quality, is too vexing and exclusionary to define when the ethnic diversity of the country is increasing every day.
Compare that to the prevailing attitude when Margaret Atwood published her landmark CanLit study, Survival, which is coming up for its 40th anniversary next year. For Atwood, defining Canadian-ness was the central question of our cultural criticism. She wasn't alone in thinking so, and her best-selling book became a flashpoint in a somewhat obsessional debate about Canadian identity.
Survival told us we had a national literature full of pervasive themes and shared outlooks, most of them pretty grim. The book assumed a population that was either assimilated to this country and its ways, or struggling to become so. For Atwood, Canadian culture wasn't just a pale copy of imported models – the pervasive worry of that time – but a distinctive endeavour that we sweated out in this place and no other.
The music community and its prize-giving organs have often paid tribute to this home-front view, by snubbing eminent Canadians who don't stick around. Neil Young didn't win a single Juno Award till 1994. Joni Mitchell got one in 1976, and then nothing for another 25 years. The Juno jurors just couldn't bring themselves to hand the trophies out to permanent residents of California. The Polaris juries haven't yet put a Young album on the short list.
Conversely, I asked some of my fellow jurors if they'd vote for a disc by Elvis Costello, who married a Canadian, lives in Vancouver and could have become a permanent resident (but hasn't). The consensus seemed to be that Costello's already too famous as a foreign musician to become one of ours, even if he did the paperwork.
But in other ways, our ideas of what Canadian music is and who makes it could hardly be more elastic. It's hard to imagine anyone trying to define a "Canadian sound," as some critics did in the sixties and seventies. In this postmodern, multicultural Canada, there's little place for a cultural discussion that grants some things a natural place in the centre and confines others to the margins. And so we take refuge in the deputy-ministerial point of view: If your papers are in order, then whatever you're doing must be Canadian.
Stetson's Polaris nomination is a logical but unfortunate outcome. A very good album is being celebrated in the wrong forum. I can't point to a passage on the record and say, "Hear that? That's not Canadian music" (though I have to wonder about the title of the first track: Awake on Foreign Shores). I will say that having your work recognized as the best Canadian album of the year ought to mean something, and that the meaning of a Stetson victory would be ambiguous, to say the least.
The Polaris nominees: A handicapper's guide
Call it the Run for the Noses. Polaris Prize jurists, the tastemakers who traditionally turn their snouts up at mainstream music, gather on Sept. 19 at Toronto's Masonic Temple to select this year's winner of the annual Canadian music award, worth $30,000 to the first-place finisher. We offer a betting guide to the eclectic short list of contenders, just one major-label nominee (Ron Sexsmith) among the field.
The Suburbs, by Arcade Fire (3-2): You'd think the conceptual rock album that nabbed a Grammy would be too big to fail, but Polaris traditionally shuns the overdog. So, no sure thing.
Feel It Break, by Austra (5-2): Led by a sexy lesbian former opera singer in Katie Stelmanis, the Toronto electro-popsters are weird enough to win.
Kaputt, by Destroyer (7-2): The Al Stewart-loving effort from the Vancouver oddball Dan Bejar likely will have both haters and championing ironists in the jury room. Remember who won in 2009? Polarizing discs are valid contenders.
Native Speaker, by Braids (9-2): Dreamy indie music from Calgary. Likely no one's absolute favourite album, but it'll score high across the board and possibly squeak away with the prize while no one's looking.
New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, by Colin Stetson (5-1): While there are those who think the man's avant-garde bass-saxophone music is out of this world, some argue the Montreal-based reed-man is doing nothing groundbreaking. A wild card.
House of Balloons, by the Weeknd (7-1): An Ethiopian-Canadian who gives his music away for free? The intriguing Toronto R&B artist will have support, but will likely fall just short of finishing in the money.
Long Player Late Bloomer, by Ron Sexsmith (8-1): Everybody loves the underdog, but sentimentality doesn't get you cross the finish line first. Also, a singer-songwriter has never won in Polaris's five years of existence.
Tigre et Diesel, by Galaxie (10-1): Garage-dance magnifique. Nice energy to the disc, and the Montrealers will dazzle on stage at the gala, but just can't see it happening for them in the voting.
Seeds, by Hey Rosetta! (15-1): A step up from Into Your Lungs (short-listed in 2009), but the St. John's six-piece has a breathless earnestness about them that just won't fly with the jury.
Creep On Creepin' On, by Timber Timbre (22-1): Graveyard indie-rock hasn't a ghost of a chance.
The sixth annual Polaris gala, on Sept. 19 at 8 p.m., will be broadcast live in Canada by SiriusXM Canada on Sirius channel 152 and internationally on CBC Radio 3. It will be webcast live on MuchMusic.com.
– Brad Wheeler