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April 18, 2006
Music to the ears of Nova Scotia.
A premier who was once a professional fiddler? Rodney
MacDonald says a career in music is great training for
becoming a politician
By Robert Everett-Green
The Globe & Mail
HALIFAX —
Rodney MacDonald really knows how to party, and I can tell
you that without even having seen him do it. He and all his
extended family are well known in Nova Scotia for their
skills at making a festive occasion go, whether by playing a
nimble strathspey on fiddle or piano, or taking the floor
for some real Cape Breton step-dancing.
MacDonald
also knows a lot about that other kind of party, the one
that puts up candidates, jostles for power and tells you to
think twice about what those fellows on the other side are
saying. In February, MacDonald became the premier of Nova
Scotia, a province where he has given many stump speeches
and played innumerable dances in pubs.
He's
probably the most professional musician ever to hold such
high office in Canada. Bob Rae played some piano while
premier of Ontario, as did David Peterson, but neither of
them ever made a living from music, or were nominated for
two East Coast Music Awards, or cut a record for the
Smithsonian Institution's Folkways Recordings label.
MacDonald
has done all that and still had time to become premier at
age 34, which makes him the youngest of any sitting Canadian
premier. He may be the first candidate for any party's
provincial leadership (he succeeded the retiring premier,
fellow Progressive Conservative John Hamm) to while away the
hours between convention ballots by playing fiddle tunes at
a ceilidh, or traditional Gaelic dance.
"The
Saturday of the leadership vote, we had a ceilidh after the
first vote, and the pub was packed," he said. "It didn't
matter what side you were on, it was just come and have fun.
Then we had another party that night, after I won."
Did the
reels and jigs help tip the voting his way? "I hope so," he
said. "They certainly enjoyed it."
Encountered at his Halifax office on a Saturday afternoon,
the quiet-spoken MacDonald seems a man of few airs, except
for those you might hear played on his violin's four
strings. He has been in government for almost seven years,
in a range of cabinet portfolios, and he still considers a
night playing music with family and friends in his Cape
Breton home town of Mabou one of the essential ingredients
of a good life.
"If we get
together at any celebration, there's fiddle music all the
time, step-dancing all the time," he said. "Our family has
tended to be dance players and composers. I'm a composer. I
don't know how many I've composed, maybe 40 or 50."
He learned
to step-dance and play the fiddle as a matter of course,
picking up the latter from his uncle Kinnon Beaton, of the
Beaton clan of traditional Cape Breton musicians. There have
been generations of musical Beatons and MacDonalds, playing
and promoting and publishing the music of Gaelic Nova
Scotia. Two years ago, the Smithsonian documented part of
their influence on a CD called The Beaton Family of Mabou:
Cape Breton Fiddle and Piano Music. Rodney MacDonald played
on the disc.
Just to
see him hold a violin is to know that his music is the kind
that is handed down through the generations, without many
detours into halls of formal training. He props the neck on
his left wrist, wraps his thumb around almost to the
strings, and holds the bow with just his thumb and
forefinger, well up from the frog (the base). It's all wrong
from a classical point of view, but it's just right for a
Cape Breton jig. The music skips and sings, with deft
strokes of his bowing arm, and quick movements on the
fingerboard to flick out the ornaments that grace each line.
That he
and others have been able to keep the tradition healthy is a
minor miracle. There was a time during the seventies when it
looked as if Nova Scotia was forgetting its inherited arts,
along with its Gaelic. In MacDonald's view, the two are
inextricably linked. On that subject, he's a conservative in
every sense.
"What
people often don't realize is that there's a deep connection
between the Gaelic language, the fiddle tunes and the
step-dancing," he said. The rhythms of the language should
be clear in the performance of a good fiddler or
step-dancer, he said, or in the patter of puir a beul -- the
"mouth music" that the Scots invented centuries before hip
hop discovered beat-boxing.
His part
of the province is thick with Rankins and MacMasters, many
of whom are neighbours or relations. He briefly played with
Natalie MacMaster and Ashley MacIsaac, years before the
latter entered his Helter's Celtic phase.
"We had a
group called the Highland Classics," MacDonald said. "We
played ceilidhs together. It wasn't on very long, because we
were all doing our own things... Ashley in those days was
always dressed to the hilt, with a shirt and tie and dress
pants. He's a tremendous musician, I think a lot of him. He
got into a whole other line of music and entertaining after
that," he said with a sly smile.
MacDonald
mainly performed with his cousin Glenn Graham (as Rodney and
Glenn), playing six days a week in the summers during and
after his studies in education at St. Francis Xavier
University. They played festivals, toured eastern Canada,
the United States and Scotland, and made a CD (Traditionally
Rockin') that received two ECMA nominations in 1998.
The
following year MacDonald ran for office for the first time,
and by August, 1999, he was a member of the provincial
cabinet. Given the uncertainty of political life, he didn't
really slow down his musical career till the votes were in
and counted. "During the whole election campaign, I was
going to dances and playing because I didn't know if I'd be
successful," he said. The lessons he learned as a working
musician served him well on the campaign and in the
legislature, not least because music is a precarious trade,
like fishing or carpentry.
"I know
what it's like to have to be entrepreneurial and not
necessarily know where your next job is coming from," he
said. "I've been on a few stages, and that's helped. I know
how to put in the time to practise and be prepared. As a
politician, if you're not prepared when you're going up on
stage, you haven't done your homework and won't perform
well."
But the
competitive side of politics has no counterpart in
MacDonald's musical experience. He must have had to vie for
gigs now and then, but playing the other fellow down isn't
part of Cape Breton's traditional music culture.
"One thing
about Cape Breton fiddling is that you never have
competitions," he said. "The whole idea of it is the joy of
it. We like to feed off each other. It's the same with
step-dancing. I've never gone into a step-dancing
competition in my life, nor would I."
Politics
runs almost as deeply in MacDonald's family as music. His
father Alex Angus was a municipal politician in Mabou for 18
years, and his grandmother was related to Allan MacEachen, a
stalwart in Pierre Trudeau's federal cabinets. The father of
his cousin Glenn Graham was formerly the Liberal MLA for the
same Inverness riding that MacDonald now represents for the
Conservatives. Now that he's premier, he could still see
himself playing a dance now and then.
"It's
important for me not to shy away from who I am," he says.
"When they had a concert for tsunami relief at the Metro
Centre [in Halifax], I got involved and played with some of
the other fiddlers. I was a minister then, but I'd still do
that today. I think that's what the premier should be doing,
getting involved with the people. If I walked into a pub and
there was a fiddler I knew playing a tune, and if he asked
me to give him a break, sure, I'd jump up and play. That's
normal where I'm from."
He remains
sensitive to music and cultural issues, probably more than
most premiers. He once taught in a Mi'kmaq school in Chapel
Island, and led a regional music strategy and Gaelic
initiative program while minister of culture and heritage.
And he won't let the tradition of his forebears fade in his
own household, where his young son has begun to learn
step-dancing, literally following in his father's footsteps.
As the man says, that's normal where he's from.
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Above photo:
Margaree (by Victor Maurice Faubert)
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