Munirul-Haq Raza | Contributor
Featured image courtesy of the David Clayton Thomas website
Through careful song selection, features and musical genres, Canadiana, an album by David Clayton-Thomas, attempts to capture the multicultural nature and musical history of Canada into a single album. The album features a host of Canadian musicians such as Larnell Lewis, Shauna Rolston, Laila Biali, Omar Lunan, Guido Basso and Russ Little.
“Next years is Canada’s 150th birthday so we thought this might be a nice little birthday present for Canada,” says Cayton-Thomas on the inspiration behind his latest jazz album. Canadiana was released on October 13 and is available for purchase on iTunes and Amazon.
Canadiana is also a tribute to Canadian songwriters. “I think songwriting has a special place in the heart of Canadians and I think we love our songwriters. They’re very much, as I say on the album, the poet laureates of Canada,” says Clayton-Thomas.
The album starts off strong with powerful vocals in the leading track “Ophelia”, followed by “Angel.” These strong tracks fade into the slower, laid back “Sonny’s Dream” and “Early Morning Rain.” The beat picks up again in “Early Morning Rain” as a guitar provides a warm country feel to the song. Canadiana moves through different instruments and paces, at times dishing out classic mellow jazz and other times, playing with expectations and genres like in “Heart of Gold,” where the Neil Young tune is reimagined as a reggae tune with Larnell Lewis on the drums.
A concern about the album was not only that it should pay homage to Canadian music, but also that different aspects of Canadian culture should be represented authentically. “We have quite a vibrant Cuban community here in Toronto. Let’s get the best Cuban musicians to play. In songs like Neil Young’s ‘Heart of Gold,’ we just decided to fool around with it and turn it into reggae, which had never done before. Some places we decided to give the songs a different view while still paying respect to the intent of the writer,” says Clayton-Thomas.
At times, the album’s focus on all things Canada can be a hindrance to the composition and flow of the songs. The ordering of the tracks can sometimes disrupt the flow of he smoother mellow tunes when it jumps to more upbeat ones, and sometimes the album loses its momentum and force with back-to-back monologue tracks.
Canadiana features many diverse Canadian artists from many different Canadian communities and their various musical styles, from Afro-Cuban to reggae, though a similar diversity of songwriters’ backgrounds would have been made the album even more exciting.
Though the relation of track to track can be jarring or uncomplimentary at times, this montage speaks to the Canadian identity. Canada is made up of people from diverse backgrounds and cultures who all have the right to inhabit Canada.
Though we may be different from our neighbours, like tracks in this album, that’s part of the beauty that makes Canada and Canadiana.
