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Cape Breton, Nova Scotia has been a stronghold of active and integrated community traditions of Scotch-Gaelic music and dance since it was settled by large numbers of Scottish emigrants in the nineteenth century. Though these emigrants brought with them an extensive store of tunes common to the Highlands of Scotland, the majority of them were carried in the collective oral memory. Consequently, the traditional Scottish repertoire of Cape Breton fiddlers steadily declined as generations of fiddlers who never learned to read or write music died. In the nearly two centuries that Scots have populated the island, there have been many gifted Cape Breton tune composers. Of these, certainly the most prolific is `old style' fiddler John MacDougall. To date his output numbers over forty thousand tunes. It is not just the staggering quantity of tunes however, that makes MacDougall's composing noteworthy, but his extraordinary claim that he does not write them himself. MacDougall insists that he simply records the tunes whole as they are given to him from the spirits of Cape Bretoners who have long since passed away. This paper examines the connection between MacDougall's tune `making' and the supernatural as an extension and a Christianized revision of a traditional Scottish motif that connects music making with fairylore. It suggests that MacDougall's modernized version of this motif serves to legitimize his large body of tunes to a community of fiddlers that, following in the footsteps of their forbearers, place enormous value on tune authenticity and correctness.

Economic development in the declining Maritime Provinces has proven to be an intractable problem over the last 70 years. Efforts have ranged from capitalist industrial resource extraction to worker-owned producer co-operatives. Yet, throughout its many variations, these initiatives have done little to secure the long-term economic security of Canada’s most marginalized rural communities, such as those on the western coast of Cape Breton Island. Efforts toward this end during the closing decades of the twentieth century, up to present date, have applied market-led development strategies paralleling trends in the increasingly fluid global market economy. This local economic development approach, it is argued, reinforces economic dependency established during the last century’s staples commodity extraction, even as it attempts to reduce it and promote communities’ unique socio-cultural values, through ‘local ownership’ of integration into the market economy. An analysis of conventional approaches to economic development and ‘local ownership’, that focuses on two communities in rural western Cape Breton, demonstrates this point. Several alternatives to conventional economic development are considered, with a particular emphasis on the two Cape Breton communities.

Economic development in the declining Maritime Provinces has proven to be an intractable problem over the last 70 years. Efforts have ranged from capitalist industrial resource extraction to worker-owned producer co-operatives. Yet, throughout its many variations, these initiatives have done little to secure the long-term economic security of Canada’s most marginalized rural communities, such as those on the western coast of Cape Breton Island. Efforts toward this end during the closing decades of the twentieth century, up to present date, have applied market-led development strategies paralleling trends in the increasingly fluid global market economy. This local economic development approach, it is argued, reinforces economic dependency established during the last century’s staples commodity extraction, even as it attempts to reduce it and promote communities’ unique socio-cultural values, through ‘local ownership’ of integration into the market economy. An analysis of conventional approaches to economic development and ‘local ownership’, that focuses on two communities in rural western Cape Breton, demonstrates this point. Several alternatives to conventional economic development are considered, with a particular emphasis on the two Cape Breton communities.

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In 1995, fiddler Ashley MacIsaac released the album Hi, How Are You Today? that featured MacIsaac performing traditional Celtic tunes accompanied by modern rock instruments. The musical genre transformation on the album (notable because people who were not fans of Celtic music bought this album, tracks were released for airplay, and music videos accompanied the singles) can be studied according to the types of genre transformation outlined by Alastair Fowler in Kinds of Literature. If MacIsaac's goal was to offer a popular rock album while playing traditional tunes on the fiddle, critics and members of his audience inevitably questioned his motivation, from which charges of pandering and exploitation followed. Alternate interpretations stressed that MacIsaac was merely adapting traditional music to reflect a changing musical climate. This thesis examines such perspectives, along with the global phenomenon of modernizing folk music amidst the ambiguous boundary between popular and folk musical genres.

Thesis (M.A.) - Carleton University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-97). Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--Saint Mary's University, 1998. / Mode of acces: World Wide Web. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-88).