For Nepean resident Deborah Davis, there was no question of giving up on her dream to teach children about our country’s musical heritage.

Davis, founder of A Musical Taste of Our Canadian Heritage, has come a long way from playing all the female parts of a show that gives a lesson in music from Aboriginal performances to present day pop and rock. Now the show sells out during their three-day run at the Canadian Museum of Civilizations and includes 50 top-notch performers.

Del Andison, a Canadian who returned home after decades working as a Hollywood producer, said the show was as good as anything Broadway.

“I returned to Ottawa and was taken to her matinee,” she said. “It was amazing, I think I learned more about Canada in that one afternoon than I had in my entire life.”

The concept for the show was born in 1998 and aimed to show the history of Canada and its music through an entertaining vehicle that would be educationalbut also appealing, moving, inspirational and memorable.

The idea was boosted by a $9,900-grant from the government of Canada’s Millennium Foundation. “It really didn’t pay for anything though, and we had no money left over for costumes,” Davis said.

That’s when she went to her TD Canada trust branch and talked to then manager Cathy Jowsey about possible funding. She walked away from that meeting with a cheque for $250. “We used that money to buy the bolt of cloth that all the costumes were made of,” Davis said.

In the ensuing years, Jowsey, now manager of community relations with TD Canada Trust, would call Davis offering more money from the bank. Last year, the contribution to Odyssey Showcase — the charity set up to maintain the projects led by Davis —received $100,000. The money is used to underwrite the cost of the school children attending the show for $5 or $10 per head and for the creation of a 71-page manual for teachers about the history of Canadian music.

“I have been to the show and it is great how the children relate to it,” Jowesy said. “They are very excited and can’t wait for the next act.”

Jowsey added that the educational element of the show is one of the reasons TD has continued to support it.

Davis began to be interested in children and music when she formed her show Choonga Changa, which was also a labour of love, that grew into a regionally-recognized hit with hundreds of performances. She quit her career as an operational auditor in the government to stay home with her children and tried out a few home-based businesses before she hit the right tune with her musical career.

Her husband Louis — who can be described as Davis’ biggest critic and biggest supporter — said that he has been amazed by the amount of work Davis has put into her musical endeavors.

“At first as she was learning, she had to perform in restaurants and bars and sometimes she was really bad,” he said. “But after practice and hard work, I could tell her that she was really good. I think it meant that much more because I had been honest before.”

Louis supported his wife through the lean years where the bills kept coming and the sources of funding were few and far between because he believed in her dream.

He put up with basement performances, costumes in the living room and late nights going over scores and scripts because he believes just as much as Davis.

“I bet if you look back there are very few organizations that survived after receiving the money from the Millenium Foundation,” he said. “But we are still here and thriving.”

The performances will run from June 1 to 3, with a reception after the close hosted by Max Keeping to honour the shows milestone anniversary.

For information on showtimes and ticket prices visit http://cmod.ca.

From Inuit throat-singing to modern rock hits, the songs in "A Musical Taste of our Canadian Heritage" tell the story of Canada's diverse history and culture in a packed, high-energy 90-minute show. "Canadians love history. I believe this is the only project in the country that is a comprehensive, retrospective of the history of Canada through music," says the show's creator and producer Deborah Davis. The show includes 75 samples of songs including Native, Quebecois, Celtic, Acadian, country, folk, jazz, pop, rock and Canada's contribution to film and television. "It's like a buffet - a little taste of this, a little taste of that" says Marie-Christine Lemire, publicist for the show. Fifty performers contribute to the multi-lingual show that includes dance, solos, instrumental pieces and group vocals.

GETTING STARTED
In 1998, the federal government put out a call for ideas to promote the country under the Millennium Fund. Davis submitted an application to create a musical show on the history of Canada. When she started, she thought it would be 10 songs and a small teacher's manual. She began researching with Peter Beaudoin, who is the current associate producer and musical director. "We happened on thousands of great Canadian musicians and music" Davis says. "We realized we don't have to create new tunes - we could put together a show that celebrates our Canadian musical heritage." Davis set out to compile the music focusing on the past, present and future of Canadian music. As she began to write a script to tell the history, Davis' husband Louis (the executive director of the show) gave her some good advice. "He said a show on the history of music in Canada will tell the history of Canada" Davis says. So she took out almost all the dialogue and let the songs tell their own story. Next, Davis worked with Mark Ferguson, the original music director, to put the initial show together. Davis also developed a teacher's manual and a series of videos to help students learn more about Canada's history through music. The first series of shows were held at the Adult High School and were completely sold out. Davis got feedback from teachers saying the show made them want to be better educators and it made them more proud to be Canadian. "The schools loved the production" Davis says, adding that they were asking her to perform it again. Shannon Donahue was part of the original audience at the Adult High School, when she was still in elementary school. Now she is working for Odyssey Showcase, promoting the show.

"It was really incredible," Shannon says, adding that it's different now that she better understands everything that goes into the production. Davis staged the production again in 2001 and 2003 at Centrepointe Theatre for schools. Then the government approached her to bring the production to a conference for international economists. "Even though it was an international audience, they were getting the magic. When the Hockey Night in Canada theme song played, they cheered" Davis says. In 2001, the National Capital Commission and the federal government approached Davis to perform the show on Parliament Hill for Canada Day. In 2003, the show had its big turning point when they performed a show to potential corporate partners. After those shows, Davis was asked to consider making the show into a permanent cultural landmark, such as Green Gables in Prince Edward Island. In 2004, Davis began to seriously seek funding to turn the show into a tourist attraction by consulting business, government and the tourism industry.

OPENING TO THE PUBLIC
The show, which has been seen by more than 125,000 school children, opens to the public for the first time on Sept. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at Centrepointe Theatre in Nepean. "You will learn about your culture and you will love what you learned about it," Davis says. The two school shows at Centrepointe Theatre (on Sept. 21 and 22) have long been sold out, with a waiting list of 900 students and more calls coming all the time from schools across the country. The cast features Davis as the lead female vocalist and Sylvain Landry as the narrator and male lead. Davis is well-known for her previous production, Satin Dolls, which she performed to excellent reviews at the National Arts Centre. Leslie Anne Barrett directs the show and several staff members at the National Arts Centre have lent their talents to the production. "You can tell this is a very professional production," Lemire says. She explains that she is battling the stereotype that Canadian-made is second rate. "Nothing about this show is second rate." Lemire is hoping to hear people being surprised that a show of this calibre was produced in Ottawa. Davis attributes the popularity of the show in part to the universality of music. "Music is very embracing - it's emotional - it's passionate. It's like living art," Davis says. "You may not know about an artist, but you might like the rhythm."

"History is neither easy to teach or easy to love immediately,
as noted in one of our provinces (New Brunswick),
where only seventy-five students out of thousands
chose to follow a history course in school as part of their studies."
Gerry Cammy, Professor of Sociology and History, Heritage College, Gatineau, Qc.

For many people, especially the young, history has little relevance to their lives. History is often perceived as old people doing old things, yet listen to the music from the past and it quickly becomes apparent that our ancestors faced many of the same feelings and desires that we do now, in fact much of our history was enacted by teenagers, with as much passion and hope for the future as those of our youth today.

When I was in grade seven, I had the good fortune of having a great history teacher who actually inspired us to want to learn about history.

I remember creating a radio show as a project about WW1. The project required me to present twenty key points about the war in a radio broadcast format. Your imagination was to be your guide. The only condition was that the facts had to be accurate and well documented. So there I was sitting in front of my peers presenting this live radio broadcast from seven different countries on WW1. It was educational, it was fun and it was exciting. I think it was easy to teach and to learn history this way and the memory from so many years ago has stayed alive.

"While a few observers have perceived a declining interest in history, others have been hard at work to respond to a growing demand for imaginative and innovative ways to learn about Canada's past. The most successful of these efforts have gone well beyond the traditional focus on textbooks where students were expected to passively memorize information about certain events and individuals. In the new approach, students are invited to become active learners by engaging diverse topics designed to enhance their understanding of the complexity and richness of Canadian history. In creative and compelling ways, innovative efforts are being made to support the study of Canada's past." (Excerpt from forward written for teacher's manual that accompanies live production of A Musical Taste of Our Canadian Heritage by Professor Chad Gaffield, Professor of History and Founding Director, Institute of Canadian Studies, University of Ottawa).

My own efforts have been directed at showing how live musical presentations can stimulate, inspire and inform students about key social and cultural transformations in the making of modern Canada. I have personally seen the excitement and engagement of students experiencing Canada's musical heritage and I am very enthusiastic about the possibilities. I saw students who were obviously seeing Canadian history in new ways. They were, indeed, becoming active learners who were connecting with the past through their appreciation and wonder at the sounds and sights of our musical heritage.

The aboriginal peoples refer to music as "the invisible force" and consider it a connecting force between different elements of the universe. Drawing loosely on this analogy, through a live musical production we can explore the instrumentation of our social fabric, the highs and lows of our political history and convey how music is rooted in our geography from birth to celebrations of death.

Railroad songs, logging tunes, paddling ditties are all examples of songs that evoke instant recognition and emotion, songs that clearly tell the story of a nation sharing high notes, low notes, crescendos, beginnings and endings.

Music and songs are part of the fabric of our times and the developments of any period. Songs like Oh What a Difference Since the Hydro Came, popularized at the turn of the century, is an excellent example of a tune that spoke about changes in innovation and conveyed changes in our day-to-day lives.

For most of us, music allows us to create an immediate association to an event and a time period. Music and lyrics also relate to broader themes and stories, including a sense of self and identity, and can provide a special sense of one's own country, roots, ancestors and a different way of understanding how current events are the culmination of seeds that were planted at different times in history.

Aside from official National Anthems, there are Anthems associated with every aspect of a country's history and existence. Examples include the Hockey Night in Canada theme song, the theme song from the movie Titanic, the Railway trilogy - words and music that capture a time, a place or an event more powerfully than books. Generational anthems like Born to be Wild, Allouette and Mon Pays reflect periods in time so powerfully that the audience senses through the songs the feelings that unite groups of people through their shared cultural and social milieu.

The key to the success of this approach is that it not only emphasizes the important role of music in Canadian history but also uses music as a point of entry to related discussions about the full sweep of social, economic, cultural and political change. This approach is in keeping with the current thrust of interdisciplinary teaching and research in education as well as with efforts to link schools and the larger community. This approach is a splendid way to connect the past with the imagination of today's students and appeals to all ages.

Canada's music history is so rich and vast that it is impossible to give a comprehensive account of it without writing a multi-volume encyclopaedia. I have produced a teacher's manual to accompany the live stage production of "A Musical Taste of Our Canadian Heritage". Even on its own, it offers valuable, introductory educational information on Canada's musical heritage for teachers. It also includes suggestions for classroom activities that are adaptable for most grade levels.

Fourteen years ago, I created Choonga Changa Productions to create and produce live theatrical musical productions for children. This evolved into the creation of unique productions for schools that blended historical themes with different musical genres.

The first major new production of this type was "What is This Thing Called Jazz?", a historical retrospective of the evolution of jazz. For this show, I also produced a 10-page teacher's manual. Aside from many school productions, this show highlighted the Ottawa International Jazz Festival's newly created family day for three years.

The detailed research necessary to create that production was an enriching personal learning experience. I became increasingly aware of, and fascinated by, the important interrelated influences of jazz on American history (e.g. its influence on the breaking down of the colour barrier) and of the influences of historical, cultural, social and technological events on the development, progress and popularity of the music.

With these things very much in mind, in 1998 I undertook the creation and production of a show entitled "A Musical Taste of Our Canadian Heritage". My aim was to show the history of music in Canada and the history of Canada through music in an entertaining way that students would find not only educational, but also appealing, moving, memorable and inspirational. Most of all, I wanted to do justice to the subject in light of our tremendous heritage both on the musical and historical side and I wanted the students to feel a deep sense of pride in their Canadian heritage with its multicultural origins.

The project grew and the outcome was a fast paced, dynamic, and highly acclaimed, bilingual (and indeed multilingual), eighty minute production that includes 35 performers, (including representation from the Aboriginal and Inuit communities), over 75 pieces of music (mostly in overture, medley and excerpt style presentations), with almost as many costume changes for the vocalists, dancers, actors and musicians, and a 65 page teachers' manual.

The show begins where it all began...more than 10,000 years ago with the drumbeats and voices of the First Nations and Inuit throat singing. It goes on to the development of opera, from traditional Québecois, Celtic, Acadian, Jazz, Country, and Folk to the last one hundred years of pop and rock. The fast paced musical odyssey pays tribute to and celebrates the development and history of Canadian music.

Both the show and the manual are the culmination of many years of development and networking. I have been supported in these efforts by the Federal Government (The Millennium Foundation and Canadian Heritage), The University of Ottawa's Institute of Canadian Studies, The Canadian Musical Heritage Society at Carleton University, The City of Ottawa, SOCAN, TD-Canada Trust, Scholastic Canada, Yamaha Music, The Hudson's Bay Foundation, The Musicians Association of Ottawa Hull, The Ottawa Carleton District School Board, Enviro Copies, e-PALS, A.K.A. Artists Management Ltd., Turtle Island Tourism Company and CARFAC.

Teachers - and students - have always appreciated field trips… the chance to leave behind for a short time the relatively abstract theorizing of the classroom for the immediate experience of some practical activity. Such outings were bridges to the real world: here were activities performed by professionals - whether it be musicians giving a matinee concert, politicians asking and answering questions in the House of Commons, or a judge presiding at a court of justice - the value of which students were being taught to appreciate.

"Deborah Davis'company, Canadian Musical Odyssey, is much more than the opportunity for a field trip. Her live stage production A Musical Taste of our Canadian Heritage is not only a professionally performed, entertaining and engaging survey of music in Canada from Aboriginal Drummers and Inuit Throat Singers to contemporary rock; it is also a performance that has been specially crafted to meet the audience as students. It is a field trip in reverse!

Pedagogic concerns combine but never interfere with artistic concerns. The modular structure of the production - its division along historical and regional lines, and musical genres - makes for interesting juxtapositions that call for further exploration: "why do I like this kind of music more than that (when both were performed by the same versatile artists)?" or "how did these regional differences evolve?" To help frame each musical number and, as it were, carry it back into the classroom, a narrator provides a short and lively introduction, recalling key changes that occurred at that time in Canadian society. These become the reference points outlining the historical structure within which the show unfolds - and Canada is made.

To further assist in bringing the experience back into the classroom, Deborah Davis has also prepared a teacher's manual to accompany the stage production. The manual provides:
1. an introduction to each musical genre practiced in Canada: indigenous, folk, classical, country, pop, rock, and jazz;
2. suggestions as to projects and activities adapted for students of all ages and musical knowledge; and
3. a list of web-sites, recordings and films that teachers and students can turn to for additional material.

To appreciate fully the entertainment and learning values of Deborah's eighty-minute survey, one has to experience it 'live' amidst an audience of young people. What a force of development are human sensations and emotions when orchestrated to showcase the best of our musical heritage! Although one wishes that all Canadians may get the chance to taste this sample offering directly, digital video recordings make the next-best-thing a real possibility.

As Professors Lawrence Harrison and Samuel Huntington have pointed out in the introduction to Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress (Basic Books, 2000), a growing number of scholars, policy advisors, and development practitioners are rediscovering the importance that cultural expression plays in strengthening the bonds of social cohesion. The aesthetic and emotional ties of music are as important for understanding a country's past, present and future as its economic, political and legal arrangements." Dr. Paul Benoit, Government Relation Consultant and former university lecturer (in political science)

As of December, 2003, A Musical Taste has been presented to more than 12,000 students, educators and parents at the Adult High School and at Centrepointe Theatre in Ottawa. The show was also presented at an international conference entitled "Learning As A Lifelong Tool" convened by HRDC and the OECD at the Chateau Laurier Hotel in Ottawa in December of 2000. Its combined cultural, educational and entertainment qualities, also made it the featured evening presentation for more than 100,000 people on Parliament Hill for Canada Day July 1, 2001. Based on the success of this initiative, I am now working towards developing a video series on the history of music in Canada for schools. I am also seeking assistance to produce a French version of the manual and funding for future productions.