KPU history department introduces new special topics course on Canadian music

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Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s history department will offer a new fourth-year special topics course next semester about music in Canada.

“Music in Histories of Canada and Beyond” will examine the diversity of Canadian musical expressions and the country’s connection to the global music networks.

“I think music is really effective, in particular, for learning more about Canadian history,” says KPU history instructor Maddie Knickerbocker, who will be teaching the course in the spring.

“When you think about studying what Canadian music is, that opens up a bunch of other very cool questions about what makes certain types of music Canadian, and … it goes to the roots of the question of what even is Canadian identity.”

Knickerbocker developed the course because since the pandemic started, she has been trying to find more joy in her life, and music offers that to her.

Besides the course being a topic she likes to discuss and thinks is fun, Knickerbocker has an academic background in Canadian cultural history and loves using songs as primary sources in her classes.

Some examples of music Knickerbocker is interested in discussing for the course include Inuit throat singing from Northern Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador’s Great Big Sea, which is a band that reimagines old sea shanties into rock-pop songs, and the music traditions of the New France territory in North America and Quebec. She says the course will also cover the Prairies and the West Coast.

“[I’m] trying to think about music as a way of understanding how Canada is so deeply connected to the rest of the world …. There’s a really great article that we’re going to read in this class about Chinese opera in Victoria in the late 1800s, early 1900s,” Knickerbocker says.

“So [I’m] trying to think about Canada in a transnational way because you can’t really talk about trends in music, like even the development of jazz, swing, blues, rap, and hip hop. You can’t just talk about that within Canada because a lot of that is coming from outside of Canada, and Canadian musicians are hopping on board.”

Some topics the course will cover include how several Canadian musicians did not become big until they toured in the United States and internationally, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeting at singer Taylor Swift for snubbing Canada from her ongoing Eras Tour, the anti-Blackness of how rap music is marketed in some ways in Canada, and the Bollywood and hip-hop music in Toronto’s South Asian club scene.

Knickerbocker adds that she is “prefacing the whole course with a focus on looking at music from a decolonial lens.”

Students can expect to read an article or two and listen to a few songs before meeting each class to discuss them together, she says.

Knickerbocker hopes the students who take this course understand Canadian history cannot be defined by one thing but several different strands that “each have their own aspects and facets, [which] are woven together into what we might consider Canada today.”

She says she also recently talked with Gordon Cobb, chair of the music department, about the possibilities of having practical, real-world learning activities in her course.

“My plan for the big project in the class is not to just ask students to write an essay but to give people the [creative] opportunity,” Knickerbocker says.

“I’m calling it ‘the project assignment.’ If you want to write an essay, you can, but if you want to do a different creative project, then pitch it to me, propose it, and then we’ll see if that’s feasible.”

Registration begins on Nov. 14. For more information about the course, students can connect with an academic advisor at advisorconnect@kpu.ca.