Playing Second Fiddle
Traditional Newfoundland Music Lies beyond the Adventure Tours

ewfoundland and Labrador is not only a land of unspoiled beauty and centuries of history, it is a land with a deep culture. A land with a blossoming arts community that offers generous helpings of original theatre, art, and more music than you can shake your fiddle at. In recent years, the tourism industry in this province has been growing in leaps and bounds. People come here for many reasons: icebergs, whale watching, sea kayaking, hiking and a multitude of other adventures sure to satisfy the most discerning outdoor excursionist. But once they get here, travellers tend notice other things-things that are not so easily portrayed by a tourism brochure. Like the friendly greetings of the people, enhanced by Irish flavoured dialects as varied as the jagged shoreline. Or the magnificent coastal scenery staged against a sparkling blue ocean and decorated with hundreds of tiny fishing villages - scanty little towns full of brightly coloured dwellings clinging to seaside cliffs. And then they hear the music.

Music, that has developed over the centuries and is woven into the very fabric of the culture. Ballads, shanties, jigs and reels fill the local the pubs, grace the stages of numerous folk festivals and accompany every kitchen party. Newfoundlanders have always found something to sing about. About days gone past, friendships, heartaches and of times to come, not much different from anywhere else really, but what is different is the shear multitude of songs, musicians and culture found within the coves and tickles that make up rural Newfoundland.

Originating from Western Europe, the majority of Newfoundlanders owe their heritage to the Irish, English and French immigrants who moved here over the past five hundred years.

They came to fish for cod, and with them, they brought their music, dialect and architecture. Settling in the countless bays and harbours, they formed hundreds of small communities dotted along the along the coast. Outport life was difficult and isolated. Our forefathers learned to fend for themselves, making them a hardy but innovative people.

One way of coping with the never ending workdays of summer and the long cold winter nights was through self-entertainment. They sang shanties to the beat of manual labour, played fast tempo fiddle music for dancing and recited ballads both with and without music to teach a lesson learned or deliver a quip.

For many years the music steeped in tradition as the songs from the old country blended with the new tunes of self-taught fiddlers in music that was passed on from father to son and mother to daughter. Owing to a lack of outside influences, the music developed its own unique flavour-and though its original 'Celtic' slant is still prominent, the music is distinctly Newfoundland.

In more recent history, with the advent of radio and television, outports were no longer quite so isolated, and the younger generations were swept up in rock and roll and the British invasion. But this did not shatter centuries of culture it only redirected the energy. Today's modern bands still play some of the original tunes, only now, the fiddles and accordions are accompanied by electric guitars and synthesisers.