杏吧原创

Allyson Rogers, Post-doctoral Fellow, Research Centre for Music, Sound, and Society in Canada

The transformative sociopolitical change that Qu茅bec underwent in the 1960s鈥攌nown as the Quiet Revolution鈥攁nd the militant politics of the burgeoning sovereignty movement was felt intensely within the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), which had relocated from Ottawa to Montreal in 1956. Until the late-1950s, original music for NFB films was primarily derived from Western classical music idioms and scored using traditional methods. However, the turn toward verit茅-style filmmaking in the 1960s and a demand for greater artistic freedom within the NFB unsettled the classically based institutional style, and a more spontaneous approach to filmmaking was extended to the soundtrack. The newly formed French-language unit, which included many ardent separatists, began inviting small jazz ensembles to write and improvise soundtracks, and by the mid-1960s, it was commonplace to hear jazz鈥攑articularly cool jazz鈥攁ccompanying a variety of topics illustrative of contemporary Qu茅b茅cois identity and society. In many ways, cool jazz became the new 鈥渉ouse style鈥� of the NFB’s French unit. Although many Qu茅bec sovereigntists were inspired by and adapted the political and cultural expressions of Black nationalism to their own struggle鈥攊ncluding a keen interest in jazz and free improvisation鈥攖he NFB remained a predominantly white male-dominated space both behind and in front of its cameras despite the concurrent Black Renaissance underway in Montreal. Notwithstanding the engagement of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman for Le chat dans le sac (1964) and Population Explosion (1968) respectively, NFB filmmakers seemingly did not engage Black jazz musicians in Montreal or elsewhere despite sovereigntists鈥� well-publicized affinity for Black aesthetics and politics. This presentation examines the connections between the NFB and the Montreal jazz scene during the Quiet Revolution, and the complexity of race relations and linguistic divisions in Qu茅bec during this period.

Allyson Rogers is a musicologist whose research is situated at the intersection of music, media, and politics. She received her PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University and is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the School for Studies in Art and Culture (Music) at 杏吧原创 University. She is co-author of They Shot, He Scored: The Life and Music of Eldon Rathburn (McGill-Queen鈥檚 University Press, 2019), co-editor of a forthcoming volume, Music and Antifascism: Cultures of Resistance in Europe and North America (Routledge), and her chapter on music for the NFB鈥檚 Candid Eye television series will be published in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook for Music and Television.