TMU prof shares what music reveals about our roots
TMU music and philosophy professor Peter Johnston, left, at Peggy鈥檚 Cove, Nova Scotia, with Maritime musicians M脿iri Morrison, right, and Alasdair Roberts, centre, who Johnston refers to as 鈥淭he Band.鈥� The land that is now called Nova Scotia is the traditional territory of the . For over 400 years, have lived on the land.
TMU Professor Peter Johnston lives and breathes music鈥攂oth in his everyday life鈥攁nd as an academic researcher.
Music connects us to the world, its people and its history, he argues. This connection drives his teaching at TMU.
As a musician and scholar of ethnomusicology鈥攖he study of music as a social practice and cultural phenomenon鈥擩ohnston spends most of his time studying and producing various genres of music.
In the classroom, he examines the harmonies and dissonances of musical traditions across cultural and national borders.
Music is a cultural bridge
In his course, Music of World Cultures, Johnston immerses his students in forms of traditional, pre-industrial music from around the world.
For many diasporic communities, music serves as a cultural bridge. Their connection to home lives on through musical traditions carried from place to place and generation to generation.
Like people, music changes as it moves. Johnston traces this phenomenon in his teaching and research.
鈥淲herever humans go鈥攅ither in willing or forced migration, we tend to take three things with us: language, religion and music. And wherever these three things take root, they are changed to suit the local conditions.鈥�
Johnston鈥檚 latest project reveals how this musical evolution works in practice. Working with Maritime musicians M脿iri Morrison and Alasdair Roberts, he created an album called .
The album uncovers a time capsule of Scottish culture, music and folklore embedded in Nova Scotia鈥檚 shores. Through generations of preservation, these musical traditions and Gaelic lyrics developed regional variations, sustained by diasporic Scots in Canada.
The project explores how Scottish folkloric tradition survived and changed over time. More broadly, it speaks to how diasporic groups use tradition to keep history alive, and how culture inevitably changes in exile.
Above, "The Bonny House of Airlie" is a track from the Ma虁iri Morrison and Alasdair Roberts LP, "Remembered in Exile: Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia".
Preserving forgotten voices
Remembered in Exile features traditional songs with Scottish roots collected in Maritime Canada by folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989).
鈥淭he songs on Remembered in Exile have their roots in Scotland, but were transformed over the distance and centuries by the people who brought them to Eastern Canada,鈥� remarked Johnston.
His team researched Creighton鈥檚 collection at the Nova Scotia archives to find 10 songs that their Scottish collaborators recognized鈥揵ut had been changed enough to be called 鈥楥anadian鈥� versions.
The album features the delicate interlacing of Gaelic words and lyrics. While many Gaelic words, songs and dances have been preserved in the region, nearly been forgotten in their Scottish homeland, the language remains a linguistic minority in Nova Scotia.
Revitalizing the Gaelic language
Johnston's research reveals the urgent need to preserve endangered languages. He met 90-year-old Annag MacKinnon, who was punished as a child for speaking Gaelic in school.
With few remaining native speakers, . Many Scottish Gaelic scholars travel to Cape Breton to uncover fragments of their lost culture.
鈥淭his was M脿iri鈥檚 experience,鈥� Johnston shared, 鈥渁nd it was fascinating to listen to her talk with a Gaelic elder鈥攊t was truly one of the most beautiful and profound things I have ever experienced.鈥�
"The Band" in the studio.
Universal stories of exile
The title of the album鈥擱emembered in Exile鈥攕peaks to the experience of Gaels who were 鈥渆xiled across the ocean from their home, and then exiled from opportunity in Nova Scotia until they learned English and assimilated,鈥� explained Johnston.
More profoundly, it captures the widespread experience of cultural and linguistic loss.
鈥淚n my Music of World Cultures class, these stories of forced migrations and attempts to maintain or destroy minority cultures are repeated all around the world,鈥� says Johnston. 鈥淭his includes the Roma people in Spain, with roots in India, to the Maroons in Jamaica who preserved African customs and culture in a way no other Black community was able to do in the Americas.鈥�
Johnston's work shows the loss of language and culture by forced displacement, colonization or migration, lasts for generations. In these silences, familiar tunes and old lyrics may reveal fragments of forgotten histories.