Sounds & Scenes
We are exploring the diverse musical cultures of the Niagara region. Our research is documenting the history of popular music in the area in all its diverse forms, from rock n' roll to polka , from country to jazz. In chronicling this rich history, team members will be exploring the contributions of live performance venues, local press and radio, recording studios, local agents and managers, music and record shops, and the culture of collecting. We are conducting our research through traditional methods of scholarly research in archives and libraries, as well as conducting site visits for the purposes of documentation, and interviewing and consulting with local residents who are or were musicians and fans, DJs and journalists, producers and impresarios, record sellers or collectors. In addition to acknowledging Niagara's musical culture in the past and present, we are interested in exploring the relation of music to larger questions of cultural and national identity, including this region's geographical location “on the edge” of Canada and centre of a bi-national, cross-border cultural zone.
Nick Baxter- Moore was raised in Britain , where his chief claim to musical fame was briefly attending the same school as Noel Redding (bass player in the Jimi Hendrix Experience). He played soccer and rhythm guitar on various stages while studying at the University of Manchester and London School of Economics. Following brief stints as school teacher, journalist, civil servant, and college lecturer, he came to Canada in the late 1970s, after the birth of punk rock in Britain but before Maggie Thatcher came to power. He completed his PhD at Carleton University in Ottawa , taught at Carleton and Queen's Universities and has been at Brock since 1985, first in the Department of Political Science, now in Communications, Popular Culture and Film. He is also a past Director of Brock's Canadian Studies Program. He still plays rhythm guitar, sings (in musicals, folk clubs and anywhere else he can) and follows his research interests on relationships between popular culture (especially popular music) and various forms of identity –– class identity, local or regional identity, national identity, among others. His current research interests focus on class and national identities in popular music, on music and local identit,y and on popular culture responses to the events of September 11, 2001. Terrance Cox first came to Brock University, and to the Niagara Region, as an undergraduate in 1968. Following graduate studies at Toronto and after teaching in such exotic locales as Malawi, Central Africa; BirZeit University in the West Bank; and at colleges in North York and Hamilton, he returned to Niagara in the early 1980s. Ever since, he has taught in various humanities departments and interdisciplinary programmes at Brock, with particular attachment to an introductory course in popular music, presenting textual, contextual, generic and auteurist perspectives on blues, jazz, rock and related musics—nice work if you can get it. Publishing both as a journalist and as a poet since the 1970s, Terrance has further extended his abiding interest in music with a CD of “spoken word and music,” Local Scores (Cyclops Press, 2000)—a second CD is a work-in-progress—and with a collection of music-themed poems, Radio & Other Miracles (Signature Editions, 2001). His research into the popular music of Niagara began in the late 1990s with a series of magazine articles based on “oral history” interviews. His recent appointment as associate editor/music editor of the magazine Niagara Current augments his ongoing inquiries into this highly resonant realm. Barry Keith Grant has been teaching film studies and popular culture at Brock University, and a resident of Niagara, since 1975. He grew up in New York City, surrounded by movie theatres, which is where he developed his love of cinema. His love of popular music came from the A.M. radio, whose dial he scouted often. Barry came to Brock upon receiving his doctorate in literature and film from the State University of New York at Buffalo . At Brock he helped develop the undergraduate program in Popular Culture and was the founding director of the Interdisciplinary M.A. Program in Popular Culture. He also founded the Brock University Film Society, which he co-hosts. Barry has served on the editorial boards of five scholarly film journals, and is currently editor of film and television studies books for Wayne State University Press ( Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television ) and editor-in-chief of The Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film . He has published and lectured widely in the areas of popular cinema (science fiction, horror, Westerns, musicals), popular culture, and popular music, and in 2000 was the winner of the annual Brock Award for Distinguished Research and Creative Activity. His weekly column on cinema and culture, “In Camera,” appears every Thursday in the St. Catharines Standard .
The team research on local popular music sounds and scenes by Nick Baxter-Moore, Terrance Cox, and Barry Keith Grant is part of the larger Popular Culture Niagara project (SSHRC file #02-343). We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for this research, of which this website is a part. We also thank the many local people who thus far have participated in interviews and shared their memories, memorabilia and passion for music. We also thank Brock University’s Office of Research Services for their administrative wisdom, the staff of the Department of Communications, Popular Culture and Film for their help and support, and graduate student research assistants Joshua Holt and Sarah Bradley for their contributions to our work. |
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