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Probably my most ambitious solo project. Airing in 2014 on the weekend Maritime Magazine Show, although it was played in three parts on CBC stations in New Brunswick earlier. (Sickness delayed the project.) Long-form doc about New Brunswick’s lack of signature song, owing to its bi-cultural nature. And how the fiddle tune Ste. Anne’s Reel has come to be a place-holder anthem until a real one comes along. Voices: 1) Jac Gautreau, culture presenter, 2) David Hawkins, brander, 3) Samantha Robichaud, fiddler, 4) Jocelyne Bourque, fiddle teacher, 5) Norm Young, fiddler, 6) Connie Pangburn, fiddler, 7) Ivan Hicks, fiddler, 8) Ronald Labelle, folklorist, McCain Research Chair in Acadian Ethnology, UdeM. (Now Associate Professor of French at Cape Breton University), 9) Martha Pitre, fiddler, 10) Jeanine Despres, fiddler 11) Stanislaus Paulin, folklorist and priest north of Miramichi. Documents song’s first appearance in recorded history, by Joseph Allard in 1929. Labelle gives the musicologist’s best guess as to how Allard put the tune together from old elements. Paulin talks about NB’s connection with Anne, the grand-mother of Jesus, how she was a great figure amongst both Acadians and Mi’kmaq and Maliseets.
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The Arts,
track released December 30, 2018
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