Crooked as the Road to Branch: Asymmetry in Newfoundland Dance Music

Abstract

WHEN I GLANCE OUT my window in the Outer Battery at dusk, I see, across the har-bour, the lights of St. John’s. Acting as a mirror, the window simultaneously re-flects the inside of my house. I am a trained musician, brought up with a typical North American classical music education. I have, in addition, learned and studied Newfoundland music though the oral tradition — “by ear, ” directly from older mu-sicians — over the past 25 years. I believe this has given me an interesting perspec-tive: my window reveals both inside and outside at once. Since the cultural resurgence that began in St. John’s in the 1970s, Newfound-land dance music has been slowly emerging from the obscurity and neglect it endured for several decades. While this is to be applauded, it is regrettable that so much of this dance music has been lost from the oral tradition. The tunes that have survived in the public consciousness, such as “Mussels in the Corner ” or “I’s the B’y ” are truly the tip of the iceberg. Many lively, unusual, and worthy tunes exist, which most Newfoundlanders and Labradorians under the age of 70 have never heard. The 1950s in Newfoundland and Labrador was a decade of political and cul-tural change. It brought fish plants, and thus the eventual abandonment of the pro-duction methods for saltfish on which many of our traditional social structures and roles had been based.2 Union with Canada in 1949 brought us the baby bonus and, finally, the end of the truck system. It also brought ridicule and condescension from some Canadians, and this continues to this day (Conrad “Mistaken Identities?”). Many pro-confederation Newfoundlanders in the 1950s were only too happy to lose any possession, activity, or attitude that made them appear different from other Canadians, and thereby subject to derision (Taft 16). A government which valued modernization and failed to recognize merit in what already existed, aided and abetted the process of throwing babies out with bathwater. The abrupt change in do-

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