The music of my people

I'm not sure if many people know this- but Canada (actually CRTC) requires a certain amount of Canadian music to be played on Canadian radio stations. Thirty-five percent between 6am and 6pm must be Canadian to be exact. They specified the time to prevent stations playing their Canadian content only in the middle of the night when there was less listeners.

You might say, that isn't enough to make a difference- but I'd argue against that. While living in Canada, and visiting the US on various occasions, I clearly remember (and looked forward to) hearing different music that was played while in the US.

And then too- while living in the US, missing hearing the Canadian music that I grew up with. I'm always excited to hear a lesser known (in the US) Canadian artist being played these days here in the US. And, I'm still discovering American music that was popular in the past, but I was unaware of in Canada.

To qualify as Canadian content, the CRTC requires the song to meet at least 2 of the requirements set out in the "MAPL" system. Yes, very clever right, you can look up the definitions behind each letter if you are really interested. They make some special exceptions that set the target down to 20 percent, for certain types of music like classical for example.

Another interesting side note- before the MAPL system was established in 1971, Canadians tended towards British music, or American music. I do feel that as a Canadian I heard and have a better idea of British artists than the Americans (at least those I've encountered) do. Maybe I have an unfair influence of my Dad who studied overseas when he was young, and probably brought some of that influence over to me.

Not to be outdone by the US, Canada had its own Music TV station too- I'm sure not commonly known to Americans, named MuchMusic. I don't recall it having a particularly large amount of Canadian content, but it was broadcast and hosted in Toronto and so naturally had a Canadian focus to it.

Going back to radio- here is another (I think) quirky thing to Canada. FM radio stations sent over coaxial television cable to provinces other than where originally broadcast. It was at one time, a requirement from the CRTC for cable companies to provide cable FM services. To receive these FM stations from outside of your normal radio broadcast area, you would hook up the coaxial cable normally hooked into your TV - to an adapter which brought the signal in to the radio via its FM antenna port(s). The clarity and quality of these stations over cable were excellent, especially when using a digital tuner. This allowed me to listen to a variety and depth of music being played in the big cities like Toronto and Montreal, while I was in small(er) town Ottawa.

I'd love to go into some of who has influenced my musical tastes, but I'll save that for another post!