The Ending
Leaving Moncton, and driving the Trans Canada hiway on the way back to my home in Ontario, I listened to some of the music I had heard, and thought about the conversations I had had, and the friends I had made.. and about my hopes for the journey and what I would find out.
I deliberately did not set out with a preconceived idea of what I hoped to find, and that's just as well: the Acadian people and their music defy categorization.
But I do know now that I have a question which I only have a notion about the answer: what has caused and enabled a group of people to maintain a distinct cultural identity which they fiercely live, despite the fact that for most of their existance, they have been dispersed and diluted across vast geographies, without the help of telelphone, mail or the Internet to enable them to remain distinctly "Acadian"?
More importantly, I suppose, is "why"?
Why not just melt into the surounding culture? At the very least, become Quebecois? Many Acadans live in Quebec, but still regard themselves as being distinct, in a society of people who themselves maintain their distinctiveness from the greater North American culture.
I thought that I would find anger and resentment at the root of the distinctiveness, and perhaps it once was, and in small pockets still is, but this is not what is publicly expressed. I thought that perhaps the Acadian notion would be dominated by the older generation, determined to hang onto some notion that they inherited from their ancestors, but the vast majority of Acadian music I heard was performed by the younger generation, people in their teens, twenties and thirties.
I dd encounter a solid, you could almost call it proud, sense of knowing who one is, and was, and who ones brothers and sisters are, a bond that runs deeper than the kind of proximity effect many of us call "community".
Acadians consider themselves Canadian, but perhaps the reason they have maintainted their identiy is because they realize that they have found a smaller cell group within that broader definition that they can identify with. 30 million Canadians, 71,590 (according to 2001 census) Acadians.
If you share a culture with a smaller group of people, there is a better chance of uniting on a close level of relationship.
Or, maybe it's just that these folks like to party, and people of like mind, hang together through thick and thin!
For now, my Acadian adventure is finished, but the experience will live on in the music that I heard and brought back with me, and hopefully will encounter again soon.
I deliberately did not set out with a preconceived idea of what I hoped to find, and that's just as well: the Acadian people and their music defy categorization.
But I do know now that I have a question which I only have a notion about the answer: what has caused and enabled a group of people to maintain a distinct cultural identity which they fiercely live, despite the fact that for most of their existance, they have been dispersed and diluted across vast geographies, without the help of telelphone, mail or the Internet to enable them to remain distinctly "Acadian"?
More importantly, I suppose, is "why"?
Why not just melt into the surounding culture? At the very least, become Quebecois? Many Acadans live in Quebec, but still regard themselves as being distinct, in a society of people who themselves maintain their distinctiveness from the greater North American culture.
I thought that I would find anger and resentment at the root of the distinctiveness, and perhaps it once was, and in small pockets still is, but this is not what is publicly expressed. I thought that perhaps the Acadian notion would be dominated by the older generation, determined to hang onto some notion that they inherited from their ancestors, but the vast majority of Acadian music I heard was performed by the younger generation, people in their teens, twenties and thirties.
I dd encounter a solid, you could almost call it proud, sense of knowing who one is, and was, and who ones brothers and sisters are, a bond that runs deeper than the kind of proximity effect many of us call "community".
Acadians consider themselves Canadian, but perhaps the reason they have maintainted their identiy is because they realize that they have found a smaller cell group within that broader definition that they can identify with. 30 million Canadians, 71,590 (according to 2001 census) Acadians.
If you share a culture with a smaller group of people, there is a better chance of uniting on a close level of relationship.
Or, maybe it's just that these folks like to party, and people of like mind, hang together through thick and thin!
For now, my Acadian adventure is finished, but the experience will live on in the music that I heard and brought back with me, and hopefully will encounter again soon.
posted by Chestnut Hall Music at 5:07 PM
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