For the heck of it...

[Jeffrey Miller/Burden of Proof Research <jefmil...>]

>For the heck of it,  what percentage of your music library is by US artists vs.
>Canadian ones?
>You reading library?
>How many US- made movies do you see in any given year vs. Canadian ones?
>What about the "brand names" in your fridge, pantry  and medicine cabinet?
>TV programs?  Magazines?  Car?  Clothing?

Absolutely, I got the Campbell's (I used to write their ads and jingles), I
got the Benalyn, I got the Canadian-made Toyota...

American culture dominates, which is why other cultures (including France
with their cinema, e.g.) are so nervous about it.  It is also partly why
this list exists.  When we speak of American culture, we mean pre-packaged,
homogenized, consumer goods, not Hankus's band, or your lively CDs, or all
of Henry's hard, hard work.  A lot of your (and my occasional) compatriots
don't seem to have recognized yet that we (Americans) are living in this
so-called global village. (Some of the U.S. people on this list announce
events without even bothering to post the city they're talking about, let
alone the country!) They (we) don't have to, because the U.S. invented mass
culture, and controls it.  In many ways, we have not come that far from the
scenario portrayed in that book both of us are old enough to recall, _The
Ugly American_.  (John Updike reinvented it in the coup, demonstrating that
it could be all the more malignant because well-intended.)

(This is about music, Ari, honest -- at least partly.)  As you know, Wolf,
when we're right at the border, with 1/10the the population, we tend to get
even more nervous.  (Apparently there was a very dismissive piece in your
Boston Globe about a Canadian beer ad that's sweeping this country, an ad
for Molson Canadian which goes on and on about U.S. prejudices about Canada
-- how we all live in igloos and wear lumberjack shirts, etc.)  My U.S.
friends are sometimes shocked by anti-American feeling they perceive when
they visit here, as I was when I arrived here at the end of the Viet Nam
war.  I was constantly explaining that I was not a baby-killer -- not a lot
different than the prejudice I suffered as a kid for other reasons we all
know about.  The only Bruce Cockburn or Stan Rogers or Bourbon Tabernacle
Choir, or, come to that, Finjan or Flying Bulgar Klezmer (Canadian bands,
folks) my Amurrican family and friends have is what I give them as gifts
(not to mention Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, etc.)  And I think you'll
agree, they're missing out!

I will end my passion-of-the-converted (I'm speaking of nationality here,
folks, not religion) rant with the following question: Hands up, how many on
the list know where Oscar Peterson was born and where he lives?  Glenn
Gould?  I was gonna add Saul Bellow, but I don't think he can play clarinet,
and he's been down there with the Wrigleys so long, he's as Canadian as Joni
Mitchell...


Best,
J.

---------------------- jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org ---------------------+