Abstract: How do we listen to archives with new ears? In this talk, I’ll share an ongoing community-engaged music archiving project at U of T Scarborough that is working to digitize, catalogue, and ultimately bring to life audio and video field recordings of traditional dancing, fiddling, and singing from Québec. These recordings were made in the 1960s and 70s and are part of a larger collection housed at the Canadian Museum of History. I’ll discuss the work of our Toronto-based student team and ongoing collaborations with the museum, with other universities, and with a Quebec-based traditional arts NGO. We’ll also look at examples of how other communities in Quebec have used sound archives in recent years to revitalize music and dance traditions.
Laura Risk is Assistant Professor of Music and Culture in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough, with a graduate cross-appointment at the Faculty of Music at the University of Toronto. Her research proactively builds out public archives in order to amplify unheard voices and critically interrogates the notion of tradition, with a focus on traditional music historiography in Quebec. She has published in the Journal of the Society for American Music, Ethnomusicology, MUSICultures, and Critical Studies in Improvisation, as well as The Globe and Mail, The National Post, and Strings Magazine. Dr. Risk is the recipient of the 2014 Prix Mnémo for her co-production of the CD Douglastown: Music and Song from the Gaspé Coast. She is also a fiddler and in 2024 her album Traverse was awarded Québec’s prestigious Prix Opus for Album of the Year in the category Traditional Québécois Music.
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Great Explorations is a series of academic discussions we hope will inspire our communities. We extend special thanks to our engaged, critical thinkers who attend our speaker series. The dialogues that come out of these talks, both in-person and online, are integral to our campus community and Scarborough communities at large. We welcome your input for future topics, as well as a review of previous recorded sessions available on YouTube.
Photo credit: Emmanuelle Roberge.