Cape Breton Music in Boston, Massachusetts

Please see the Introduction to this volume for biographical information on Burt Feintuch.

The Boston area is home to many immigrants from Cape Breton, an island separated from the mainland of Nova Scotia, Canada, by the Strait of Canso. By road, Cape Breton is about 750 miles from Boston. Thinly populated by aboriginal Mi'kmaq people, the island had become an outpost of French settlers involved in salt cod production and trade by the start of the nineteenth century. During the first half of the nineteenth century, a large influx of displaced Scots who had left their homeland (the Highlands and Western Islands) because of the clearances of agricultural land and the decline in kelp production supplanted the sparse Acadian population. From a population of 3,000 in 1801, the island grew to 55,000 in 1851; by 1871, 50,000 of 75,000 Cape Bretoners were of Scottish ethnicity, and a Gaelic-speaking culture grew to larger proportions there than in some of the Gaelic regions of Scotland (Hornsby 1992).

The island's economic base, which has relied on fishing, mining, steel, and agriculture, has never been strong enough to sustain its population. Beginning with a potato famine from 1845–1849 and continuing to the present, many Cape Bretoners—some Acadians and many Scots—left the island seeking better prospects.

Easily accessible by sea and land, Boston is one of the main sites of Cape Breton emigration, along with Detroit, Michigan; Toronto and Windsor, Ontario; and western Canada. Cape Breton out-migration is part of a larger population movement from the Canadian maritime provinces, although the strong Scottish component of Cape Breton identity and the island's isolation allow Cape Bretoners to distinguish themselves from other Maritimers, many of whom also settled around Boston.

Arriving in Boston in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Cape Bretoners tended to become carpenters, laborers, factory workers, and domestics, generally settling

near each other. Demographic data is largely nonexistent; the United States census does not separate Cape Bretoners from other Nova Scotians. But by 1880 the Boston area housed more Nova Scotians than Sydney (Cape Breton's largest city), Yarmouth, and Pictou (both sizable towns on the Nova Scotia mainland) combined (Burrill 1992, pp. 4–5). Today, Watertown and Waltham, cities just west of Boston, are home to many Cape Bretoners, and other parts of the Boston metropolitan area—Brookline and Brighton among them—have had significant Cape Breton populations. In recent years, perhaps because of changing job markets here and in Canada, along with changes in U.S. immigration policies, fewer Cape Bretoners are moving to Boston, tending instead to go to Toronto and western Canada. These emigrants are generally better educated than those of past generations.

THE MUSIC

Cape Breton music is strongly Scottish in derivation, rooted in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish violin repertoire and many of its performance traditions. Because of the ease of communication and travel to Cape Breton and the tight networks linking immigrants and people on the island, the music in the Boston area is nearly indistinguishable from its forms and practices in Cape Breton. It is a violin-based, danceoriented music, often called "Cape Breton Scottish violin music" or "fiddle music." The dance music consists of tunes, most of which have two parts, each part being either eight or sixteen measures. Musicians generally play medleys of tunes organized around the same tonal center. Thus, a medley played "on A" might include tunes in A major and in the corresponding mixolydian and dorian modes. Some tunes use more than one mode (Dunlay and Greenberg 1996, p. 6). In accordance with modem practice in Cape Breton, fiddlers tend to repeat a tune once or twice and then move on to another tune of the same genre. Reels, notated in 4/4 and 2/4, and jigs, in 6/8, are most common. Strathspeys (4/4, sometimes called "slow reels" but played with every beat emphasized, giving them a propulsive quality), marches (2/4, 4/4, rarely 6/8), hornpipes (2/4, 4/4, usually played as reels), clogs (2/4, 4/4, played with tempos and "lift" associated with hornpipes in Scottish and Irish tradition), and various slower listening pieces—airs and slow strathspeys—are also typical. Musicians enhance melodies with a complex range of bowed and fingered ornamentations. They generally use a flat left-hand, resting their instruments in the palm of the hand (wrist toward the violin body), and they usually keep time by tapping their feet strongly and audibly. Bowing involves little slurring. Typically, one fiddler performs, accompanied by a pianist playing in a distinctive, syncopated, chordally-based style, and perhaps a rhythm guitarist. Unlike other fiddle-based traditions, Cape Breton music has only a minor precedent of fiddlers playing in ensembles. Identified as Scottish, the music actually transcends ethnic distinctions: these days, Cape Breton Scottish and Acadian immigrants play a mostly shared repertoire and style. Indeed, in Cape Breton, a number of native Mi'kmaqs have distinguished themselves as performers of the same music.

Musicians perform for dancing done in quadrille formation—"square sets"—for step dancing (a percussive form of primarily solo dance), and for listening. Square sets require either reels or jigs; for step dancing, a fiddler will generally begin with strathspeys and then increase the tempo by switching to reels. Much of the repertoire may be found in nineteenth-century books of fiddle tunes first published in Scotland. Other tunes, often simply noted as "traditional," include local Cape Breton compositions as well as tunes in aural tradition from Scotland. There is also a vigorous contemporary practice of tune composition as well as a strong presence of tunes from other sources, especially Irish music and tune books published in the northeastern United States. Musicians learn by ear (including from recordings) and from printed sources. Commercial recordings of Cape Breton violin music began in the 1930s, and many musicians, including some from Boston, make commercial recordings today.

Although Gaelic singing would almost certainly have been part of domestic life, there is virtually no trace of such music in the Boston area these days. With the spoken language, Gaelic singing has declined precipitously in Cape Breton as well, although early collections and recordings document its presence on the island. One Boston-area exception to this general trend is a Gaelic choir associated, at least through the 1980s, with a Presbyterian church in Needham, Massachusetts (Dunlay 1987–88, pp. 6–7). However, the large majority of Cape Bretoners are Catholic, not Presbyterian. Although some Boston residents may speak Gaelic, it is not a living language in Massachusetts.

The exuberant square dancing, done in sets of four couples, is a localized form of Cape Breton square dancing, sometimes called "Boston sets." On the island, the dance forms tend to be localized as well, but in many Cape Breton communities the old four-couple set has been superseded by sets of various numbers of couples, generally more than four. Many Cape Breton community dances no longer use a caller or prompter, whereas in Boston it is more common to have a caller who directs the dancers through the patterned movements. Step dancers will do solo spots during evenings of square sets.

Beginning as early as the 1920s and lasting through the 1960s, musicians played in dance halls, especially in the area around Dudley Square, Roxbury, in Boston, but also elsewhere in the city, including the Orange Hall in Brookline (Burrill 1992, pp. 41–56; Muise 1997). At such dances, and at taverns in the same neighborhoods, the music catered to Cape Bretoners and other Maritimers as well as Scottish, Irish, and French Canadian immigrants. These days, two ethnic clubs, the Canadian American Club in

Watertown and the French American Victory Club in Waltham, are primary sites for the music, along with occasional house parties, weddings, and other private events. The clubs feature regular square dances, frequently presenting local musicians. At such dances, the fiddler often alternates with a band that plays country music or sentimental popular Irish music. On occasion, a musician visiting from Cape Breton will play for a special dance, sometimes a benefit. These tend to be especially well attended, and they may not include alternating with a band. The Canadian American Club also is the site of organized Friday-night music sessions, and once a month the Gaelic Club, the Boston branch of the Cape Breton Island Gaelic Foundation (Dunlay 1987–88, p. 8), meets at the Canadian American Club. Meetings feature fiddling, step dancing, and socializing. In years past, the Gaelic club program included Gaelic singing. With a burgeoning popular interest in music popularly termed "Celtic" and the growing international popularity of a number of fiddlers from Cape Breton, the Boston Cape Breton community is beginning to receive attention from enthusiasts outside the formerly tight ethnic networks. The music has also enjoyed a minor radio presence in Boston; today it may be heard on a weekly program that presents music from maritime Canada.

If anything, the Boston Cape Breton style is more conservative than the music as performed today in Cape Breton. On the island, a number of younger musicians have begun experimenting, embracing influences from contemporary popular music. So far, however, this has not happened in the Boston area, and the Boston sets seem to reflect older dance practices.

As old ethnic networks change and new emigration from Cape Breton slows, there are virtually no young musicians among the Cape Bretoners of Boston. The two leading Cape Breton fiddlers in Boston—John Campbell (born 1929), who comes originally from Glenora Falls and moved to Watertown in 1963 (Campbell 1997), and Joseph Cormier (born 1927), a Waltham resident who came in 1962 from largely Acadian Chéticamp—are both masters of what enthusiasts consider the old style of playing (MacGillivray 1981). Campbell comes from a family with a long musical history in Cape Breton. A number of the several hundred tunes he has composed have become standards in the repertoire both in Boston and "down home," and he has, for more than thirty years, played a key role in organizing dances and other events in the community. His style and repertoire provided a significant number of examples for a 1996 tune book and study of Cape Breton music (Dunlay and Greenberg), and he is well known both in Cape Breton and in the Boston area.

The close ties between the Boston-area community and the island exert a powerful influence on the music. Boston Cape Bretoners frequently travel to Cape Breton, generally in the summer, sometimes maintaining a house on the island and often visiting family. The Inverness Serenaders, one of the first Cape Breton groups to record, were based in Boston. The first modern collection of Cape Breton fiddle music, compiled and arranged by fiddler Gordon F. MacQuarrie of Inverness County, Cape Breton, was published not in Cape Breton but in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1940 (MacQuarrie). The late Bill Lamey, originally from River Denys, Cape Breton, was a major organizer of Boston-area dances after he moved to the area in 1953; his recordings were popular both in Boston and at home. Buddy Mac-Master, perhaps the most active and best-known Cape Breton dance musician, makes annual visits to Boston to play for dances.

Clearly, the community is changing, and those changes are reflected in the music. Earlier in this century, Cape Bretoners brought their music with them when they moved to Boston, and the music flourished, with two or three generations of musicians finding significant community support. Today, on Cape Breton Island, the music is prospering, but in Boston the people who come to the two clubs are aging. Some second-generation sons and daughters of people who arrived a generation ago follow the music, in Boston and on the island, and enthusiasts from outside the community come to the clubs as well. These days, musicians from Cape Breton arrive only occasionally, visiting and perhaps playing for a dance or two. Ironically, despite growing interest and participation from cultural outsiders, it is very unusual for a second-generation Cape Bretoner in Boston to take up the music.

DOCUMENTARY RECORDINGS

John Campbell's Timeless, a self-produced compact disc, is his latest recording (1999). Full Circle: From Cape Breton to Boston and Back is a recent release (Rounder, 2000) of home recordings of the late influential Boston-area musician Bill Lamey. Joseph Cormier's 1998 Informal Sessions is his most recent recording. It features the late Eddie Irwin on piano along with Boston mainstay guitarist Edmond Boudreau. Jerry Holland reversed the trend: Born in Brocton, near Boston, he moved to Cape Breton, where he has been a very influential musician and composer. His Crystal Clear (2000) is his most recent recording. Boston-area fiddler Frank Ferrel's Boston Fiddle: The Dudley Street Tradition (1996) is inspired by Ferrel's research into the dance-hall traditions—ranging across Cape Breton, other Maritime, Scottish, and Irish musics—of the Dudley Square area of Roxbury from the 1930s through the 1950s. Ferrel is not a Cape Breton-style fiddler. But while it does not focus exclusively on Cape Breton music, the booklet of notes that accompanies the recording is especially informative. Traditional Music from Cape Breton (1993) is a sample of many leading Cape Breton fiddlers from the island, recorded at a festival in Ireland.

CAPE BRETON MUSIC IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

THE MUSIC

DOCUMENTARY RECORDINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY