Irish Music or Pure Laine? The (Un)Quiet Revolution of Ti-Jean Carignan

Abstract

Honoured as “the greatest fiddler in North America” when he was welcomed into the Order of Canada in 1974, Jean Carignan was a gifted and controversial figure in Francophone Québec – where his music was accepted and rejected in his own lifetime. A street musician who grew up in a poor family, Carignan rose to become one of the most celebrated virtuosos of traditional fiddling in the world, drawing his repertoire and style from Québécois, Irish and Scottish masters Joseph Allard, Michael Coleman and James Scott Skinner, as well as a host of classical violinists. He was the face of Canadian fiddling in North America and in Western Europe during the middle decades of the 20th century. Yet, by the time he died in 1988, he had become a fiddling bête noire ruffling the campaign to create a sovereignist Québec with its own pure laine culture. This article examines Carignan’s “trilingual” soundscape and the maverick “third space” he occupied in the changing zeitgeist of Québécois lifeworlds in the 1970s.