Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What quirky radio rule changed Canada's music industry?
This is 99% Invisible. I'm Chris Berube, sitting in for Roman Mars. Back in January, about 10 million people tuned into the hockey romance series Heated Rivalry. Even I watched it because the show is made in Canada by Canadians and I'm Canadian. And the Canadian-ness, it's kind of everywhere. The main characters in the show go to a cottage at one point, not a cabin.
One of the hockey studs has an interview with a journalist in pretty passable high school French. Winnipeg is mentioned. Look, it's all there in the text. But if you ask me, the most Canadian part of the series is the music. That's producer and fellow Canuck, Max Collins. The soundtrack is loaded with artists from Canada.
There's needle drops of songs by Feist and the Soul Jazz Orchestra and Dilly Dally. To me, this was delightful. But the Canadian music wasn't obvious to everyone watching. I found this out when I threw on the show with my roommate, Keith.
Can I ask if you've ever been with another guy?
He knew and loved a lot of the songs on Heated Rivalry, like this power ballad by the band Wolf Parade. The song plays during the emotional climax of an episode when a closeted hockey player invites his boyfriend out to center ice for the first time, and they kiss.
Give me your eyes, I need sunshine.
But Key isn't originally from Canada, and they weren't aware that Wolf Parade is from Montreal. Actually, Key was shocked to hear that a lot of the big musicians they know are Canadians. Finger Eleven.
Oh, did not know that.
Yeah, yeah. Deadmau5.
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Chapter 2: How did Canadian music gain international recognition?
Canada didn't have a strong sense of national pride in the 50s and 60s. The music industry was a prime example of this. Musicians had to hide their Canadian-ness or move away just to find success in Canadian markets. But near the end of the 1960s, Canada had a big surge in national pride. In 1967, the country turned 100, and the government of Canada was determined to celebrate in style.
It was a wild year. There were new festivals launching, there was a months-long cross-country canoe race, and undoubtedly the biggest celebration, the one that captured the attention of the whole world, was Expo 67.
Expo 67, the greatest show on earth.
Expo 67 was a world's fair held in Montreal over six months. The fair saw 50 million people come through its gates. That's more than twice the entire population of Canada at the time. It was one of the most successful world exhibitions, and it helped shine an international spotlight on the country at large.
Suddenly, though, Montreal and Canada have found an identity and reputation that owes nothing to the past.
I think of 1967 as being a bit of a watershed moment. Erin McLeod is a music journalist and educator. Like all of these things sort of come together as a means of attempting to push forth a notion of what it means to be Canadian. You know, in the face of like the increasing ability of the United States to spread its cultural dominance quite literally everywhere.
Coming out of its centennial year, Canada's national pride had pulled a 180. Canadians had just experienced 12 months of intense patriotism. And it felt good. But that sense of pride didn't match up with the state of Canada's cultural landscape. The music sector was still in rough shape. Enter our unlikely hero of arts and culture, the feds.
On February 12, 1970, Canada's cultural regulator, the CRTC, proposed some changes to the licensing requirements for all broadcasters. The goal was to support Canadian musicians and to prop up the industry. And to accomplish this, the CRTC made it mandatory for every Canadian radio station to broadcast a certain amount of Canadian music every week.
This was such a big deal, the CBC, Canada's public broadcaster, cancelled their regular programming that night to talk about it at length.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the CanCon policy?
Basically, if you collaborated with a non-Canadian, your music could be disqualified. The Kingston, Ontario pop rocker Brian Adams found this out the hard way when he released his album Waking Up the Neighbors in 1991. Adams recorded the album in the UK, and he co-wrote the music and lyrics with a South African music producer, Mutt Lang. So none of the songs on that album qualified as CanCon.
Brian Adams, born in Kingston, raised in Vancouver, huge star in the 1980s. I mean, there's nobody more Canadian than Brian Adams. Canadian radio station says, Brian Adams, of course it's CanCon.
So we started playing it, and then the CRTC said, not so fast. Ever since his album got disqualified, Brian Adams has been really vocal about hating CanCon laws. Here he is in the 90s speaking to the press and just trashing the system.
I think it's a disgrace, and I think it's really a shame that we have to deal with this kind of stupidity all the time. Why can't we just deal with artists and musicians the way every other country deals with them, which is just with some respect, you know? And I just think it inhibits people. Who wants to have an international record and then be called un-Canadian or un-British?
I mean, you just never hear it. You'd never hear Elton John being declared un-British. You just wouldn't. It's just a disgrace.
Yeah, and it just underscores our point how stupid this is.
Maple system is terribly, terribly flawed.
So in the early years, CanCon was not well received. Radio DJs hated it. And the regulator had some kinks to iron out on the whole who is Canadian front. But over time, something strange and surprising happened. The CanCon system started to work. It was a basic matter of supply and demand. CanCon laws created an instant need for music that could pass the maple test.
Once this artificial demand was created, you had to come up with something that would feed that quota. If we were going to play a lot of this music on the radio, well, then we needed an infrastructure, an industry to supply that music.
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