Volume 26 Issue 7 - May and June 2021

FOR OPENERS | DAVID PERLMAN
Quoth the canaries, ... evermore!
BACK IN THE DAY (almost 20 years ago),
flushed with the success of our annual fall
BLUE PAGES directory of presenters (aimed
at readers looking for music to listen to), we
decided to start an annual spring choral directory
(aimed at readers searching for opportunities
to sing). Calling it our YELLOW PAGES was an
obvious choice – you know, “let your fingers do
the walking … .” But it was pointed out to us that
“Yellow Pages” was already taken as a name, by an
organization with lawyers.
So “Canary Pages” it became instead. Truth
be told, the necessity was a virtue, because not
only did “canary” keep the “yellow pages” allusion
alive, but it also straight out said “songbird,”
which made it an even better fit. It also carried
with it another, somewhat grimly useful undertone:
after all, in society, as in coal mines, as long
as the canaries are still singing, everything is relatively
fine.
The canary underground
As far back as the 1880s, canaries (along with
coffins) had become part of the regular supply lists
for coal mines in Britain, Canada and the United
States. The vast amounts of air the canaries took
in with every breath to fuel their singing made
them highly sensitive to poisonous gases of one kind or another, and
in particular to carbon monoxide, the miner’s most insidious and
dangerous airborne enemy. When the canaries fell silent, or dropped
from their perches, there was just enough time for miners to down
tools and reach for respirators. But as long as the canaries were
singing, it was business as usual, for better and for worse.
To be clear, coal mine canaries were not volunteers the way the vast
majority of choristers are, at least in these parts. And, not your standard
choral practice, the better the canary sang the less likely they
were to get the job, because the birds with the best voices (the males,
according to the usual reliable sources), fetched prices too rich for coal
mine budgets – like aspiring tenors, dreaming of gilded rather than
miners’ cages.
It took a lot longer for the coal mine canary to be rendered redundant
than it did for Paul Bunyan’s ox to be railroaded by technology.
They were only outlawed from British coal mines in 1986, for
example. But slowly and surely “canary in the coal mine” as a phrase
has become almost universally metaphorical and detached from its
origins. Interestingly, the less rooted in particularity it has become, the
more easily it can be used with an equally straight face by doomsayers
across the entire socio-political spectrum, and up and down the scale
from the momentous to the trivial.
Dire seems to be the only requirement. “Are car sales the canary in
the post-pandemic coal mine?” asked one recent headline. “Australia
may be the canary in the climate-change coal mine” said another.
And my most recent favourite: “Is Alberta the coal miner’s canary in
the great Canadian environmental divide?”
Here at The WholeNote, mind you, we have, for almost two decades,
happily, and only slightly manipulatively, stood the metaphor on its
head – pointing to the dozens and dozens of choirs signing up for
our choral canary pages every May as a significant sign of the music
community’s good health.
But this year, since early April when the invitations to join the 19th
annual Canary Pages went out, we have for the first time since we
adopted the Canary Pages name, had to face up to the grim side of the
“canary in the coal mine” metaphor we so cheerfully cocked a snoot at
all these years. We’re holding our breath and hoping for the best while
choirs and choral societies make up their minds again about whether
it might be wiser to hunker down and say nothing at all, rather than
run the risk of getting it wrong. Or, worse, that the silence will be
broken not by song but a series of little thuds as one by one they fall
from their perches.
Full circle
Just over a year ago, choirs were among the first musical collectives
forced by a different kind of noxious air to fall silent. So, rather
than flocking to our directory in droves in early spring, they straggled
in all the way from May to September, determined to to say something
about their upcoming plans, best laid or wishful as the case may be,
but jinxed every time they did, it seemed, by another twist or turn to
the plot.
And a year later, here we are again facing the reality that it’s still
going to take months for a clear picture to emerge of a path forward
for live collective community arts. So we’ve put the Canary Pages
online again, making it possible for choirs to join whenever they are
ready, all the way through to the fall, and, just as important, to be able
to say “oops” when COVID makes liars of us all, and to update the
information they gave us on an ongoing basis.
We all have our dark moments these days. But slowly and steadily
our canaries are finding their way back to us, and what was a trickle
is becoming a steady flow. The stories they are bringing with them,
about their hopes and plans for the coming year, tentative as they
may be, speak to the hard-won resiliency of the past year. And to a
determination to keep collective singing alive, for those of us who
need to hear the singing, and just as important for those of us who
need to sing.
It’s an odd kind of metaphorical full circle to have come when it’s
the canaries that are the “canaries in the coal mine” for the entire live
performing arts sector! But it’s a small ray of hope, at a time when the
air we breathe in common cannot be taken for granted, that they are
still perched and prepared to sing.
publisher@thewholenote.com
thewholenote.com May and June 2021 | 5