Ethnomusicology Forum

ISSN: 1741-1912 (Print) 1741-1920 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/remf20

From stride to regional pride? Cape Breton piano

accompaniment as musical and cultural process

Chris McDonald

To cite this article: Chris McDonald (2017): From stride to regional pride? Cape Breton
piano accompaniment as musical and cultural process, Ethnomusicology Forum, DOI:
10.1080/17411912.2017.1336735

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Published online: 26 Jun 2017.

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ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2017.1336735

From stride to regional pride? Cape Breton piano

accompaniment as musical and cultural process
Chris McDonald
School of Arts and Social Sciences, Cape Breton University, Sydney, NS, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

During the twentieth century, piano accompaniment was Received 10 January 2017
introduced into the Scottish-based Canadian style of fiddling on Revised 23 May 2017
Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. This dynamic and fast-evolving Accepted 26 May 2017
form of extemporised accompaniment developed a distinct style
KEYWORDS
and has influenced fiddle accompaniment elsewhere in North Cape Breton; fiddling;
America. This article offers a brief history and stylistic analysis of Canadian fiddling;
Cape Breton piano accompaniment, and locates it within the accompaniment; piano;
tradition–innovation dialectic which remains important in Cape glocalisation; traditional
Breton’s fiddle scene. Through ethnographic interviews and music
archival work, I theorise the style as an outcome of ‘glocalisation’,
where endogenous and exogenous elements are mixed and
balanced both in the piano style itself and the discourse around it.

Introduction
It is 5 April 2012, at Rollie’s Wharf in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, on the island of Cape
Breton, just off the east coast of Canada. Although Cape Breton fiddling is not known for
its ‘session culture’—its association with local dance traditions has been much more
important for its survival—Rollie’s Traditional Music Night has run since 2000, and
attracts the best musicians on the island. It is known internationally as the place to see
and play with some of the biggest names in Cape Breton fiddling, and attracts participants
and spectators from all over Canada, the United States, Ireland, Britain and other
countries. I started attending these Thursday-night sessions as a guitarist in 2009, and con-
tinued until the venue closed in autumn 2013.
The musicians sit in a long oval shape that radiates from either end of the session’s only
permanent fixture in this venue: an acoustic piano. There are as many as 16 fiddlers, a few
guitarists and an assortment of other instruments like an accordion or flute, but only one
pianist plays at a time, and it is striking what a difference each makes to the feel and the
drive of the music. Doug MacPhee of New Waterford plays for about 40 minutes, at times
accompanying and at times leading the medley. Few local pianists can lead a medley with
the knowledge, authority and idiomatic command of repertoire as MacPhee, whose
powerful left hand strides vigorously as he plays out the tunes with his right. Then
Hilda Chiasson of Cheticamp takes over, and brings the syncopated bounce and energy

CONTACT Chris McDonald chris_mcdonald@cbu.ca School of Arts and Social Sciences, Cape Breton University, PO
Box 5300, 1250 Grand Lake Road, Sydney, NS B1P 6L2, Canada
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 C. MCDONALD

for which she is known on her classic recordings with fiddle legend Jerry Holland. Later,
Jean MacNeil, matriarch of the Celtic fusion family group the Barra MacNeils, confidently
marshals the many fiddlers to a steady rhythm, negotiating tempo changes from a slow
march, to moderate strathspeys, to fast reels. Throughout the evening, the session’s
‘house pianist’, Mario Colosimo of Dominion, alternates between his roles as a solid
accompanist and as a generous host, encouraging a steady rotation of pianists at the key-
board. While each keyboardist has a distinct style, all share some basic stylistic approaches.
The texture is busy, the bass lines move around elaborately and the chords are often placed
in unpredictable, syncopated rhythms.
While Cape Breton fiddling has taken its place as one of the most feted and recognisable
of North American fiddle styles in its own right, its piano accompaniment style has like-
wise attracted attention from musicians and scholars. Irish fiddle scholar Elizabeth
Doherty notes that piano accompaniment has become so important to contemporary
Cape Breton fiddle performance that the instrument has virtually attained ‘equal status
with the fiddle’ and ‘has arguably been the greatest contributing factor in creating a dis-
tinct Cape Breton sound in [the twentieth] century’ (1996: 318). She echoes the esteemed
pianist Marie MacLellan, who once noted: ‘To me, the violin is a beautiful instrument, but
without a piano, it is like a bell without a tongue. They were made for each other’ (Mac-
Gillivray 1988: 191).
The piano has been used to accompany the fiddle in a number of traditions. It was a
dominant instrument in Scottish fiddling during the late 1800s and early 1900s, but has
been superseded by the guitar in recent decades. The piano was used on early Irish-Amer-
ican fiddle recordings dating from the 1910s, and it was present in the Canadian old-time
or ‘Downeast’ fiddle scene made famous by fiddler and television star Don Messer. But
Cape Breton’s piano style grew and developed to the point where it became a recognised
and influential style in its own right, and its importance to the fiddle tradition is, at this
point, unquestioned. While the guitar is also found in Cape Breton fiddling, the piano
remains the preferred accompanying instrument.
This article explores the style, history and development of Cape Breton piano accom-
paniment, taking stock of the musical, social and historical processes that have shaped the
style. I am particularly interested in the ways in which this recent, innovative and dynamic
style of accompaniment has been negotiated and shaped within a Canadian fiddle tra-
dition that is broadly understood as being quite conservative, and viewed by some as an
important retention of eighteenth-century Scottish fiddling (Dembling 2005; Feintuch
2004; Herdman 2008). While Cape Breton fiddling values careful reproduction of reper-
toire and style, with perhaps less variation than is allowable in other North American
fiddle styles, its piano accompaniment has emerged as a complex, improvisatory practice
that seems to have drawn heavily from an eclectic body of mass-mediated North American
popular culture. Its contextualisation as a regional style, emerging in recent history and
fully incorporated into the fiddle tradition, calls out for analysis. I will discuss the piano
style as a ‘glocal’ phenomenon, following from Roland Robertson’s (1995) theory, and
look at how discourses around it situate this new style within an old tradition. I also
use this case study to suggest that ‘accompaniment studies’ has the potential to become
a fruitful area of future inquiry.
Fieldwork for this study was carried out between 2011 and 2015, including interviews
with 17 pianists (two of whom are also noted professional fiddlers), a fiddler, a guitarist/
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 3

local music historian and a family member of a deceased pianist. Sixty musical transcrip-
tions of piano accompaniments were made from recordings that span 77 years (1934–
2011). Extensive archival work was done through the Beaton Institute Archives, held at
Cape Breton University and the Celtic Music Interpretive Centre in Judique, Nova Scotia;
I uncovered news items, correspondence, rare recordings and film footage, as well as recorded
radio broadcasts. Weekly participant-observation was conducted at sessions in the greater
Sydney area, including the Rollie’s Wharf session in North Sydney (which was relocated
twice after the venue closed down, and is now at the Blue Mist Tavern in Little Bras d’Or)
and the Wednesday-night session at Governors Pub in Sydney. At Rollie’s, I typically partici-
pated as a guitarist, and observed and interacted with pianists, because there were often
several accomplished players present on any given night. At Governors, I primarily partici-
pated as a guitarist, but due to the more intimate venue, and the more uneven rate of attend-
ance by musicians, I sometimes accompanied fiddlers at the keyboard as my facility as a Cape
Breton-style pianist developed.

The Cape Breton context

Cape Breton Island, traditional Mi’kmaw land, was settled by the French in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, and by Gaelic-speaking Scots, Irish and English from
the late 1700s. The Scots became the dominant population on the island during the nine-
teenth century, and their fiddle, bagpipe and dance traditions became a key feature of the
island’s rural cultural life. Inverness County, on the island’s west side, became a particu-
larly important centre for fiddling, as well as for the Gaelic language and other aspects of
highland Scottish culture. Although the language declined after the 1930s, fiddling, piping
and dancing remained popular pastimes, and a number of cultural, economic and commu-
nity-based factors contributed to its continued life on the island (see Feintuch 2004). Cape
Breton has been associated at times with a history of isolation and insularity; some believe
that Cape Breton retains old forms of Gaelic-style fiddling and dancing that have been lost
in Scotland (Dembling 2005: 180). Cape Breton’s step dancing, in particular, is thought to
preserve Scottish practices that disappeared completely in the old country by the early
1900s (Sparling 2014: 195).
Cape Breton’s fiddling and piping practices are marked by conservative attitudes
towards tune transmission and a slow pace of stylistic change. However, Cape Breton
was never sealed off from outside influence, as evidenced in the rise of square dancing
at the end of the nineteenth century, introduced from the American northeast (Sparling
2014: 192). As I will argue, the rise of piano accompaniment also suggests that the
culture absorbed more exogenous influence than is sometimes acknowledged. This is
not surprising, given that the industrialisation and urbanisation of the northeastern part
of the island drew workers from rural parts of the island, from other parts of Atlantic
Canada, as well as from Eastern Europe and the Caribbean, beginning in the 1890s. A
long history of out-migration to the New England states and central Canada established
diasporic communities of Cape Bretoners (often in enclaves with other Atlantic Cana-
dians), which maintained some level of contact with the island. A number of important
fiddlers and pianists, for example, spent much of their working lives in Boston, but
returned to the island for summer vacations (Gedutis 2004: 49). Moreover, in Cape
Breton itself, different local ethnic populations shared some cultural practices. The
4 C. MCDONALD

Scots were eventually joined by Acadian French, Irish and some Mi’kmaw fiddlers to
produce a general repertoire and stylistic approach which is Scottish in base, but is now
broadly considered the ‘Cape Breton style’.
This Scottish base is well evidenced by the tune and dance types which predominate:
slow marches, strathspeys (a characteristic Scottish dance and tune type) with their
highly dotted and uneven rhythms, and reels are all very common. As they are in Scotland,
the three types are often strung together in accelerating medleys (Garner 2016: 57). Some
marches and strathspeys derive from the bagpipe repertoire. However, not all of the tunes
are of Scottish origin: jigs are also very popular, and are used extensively in square dance
figures. Many of these were adapted from Irish sources, because the Scottish jig repertoire
was fairly sparse (MacDonald 1999: 120–1). Hornpipes, clogs and waltzes are also part of
the Cape Breton repertoire, in part because of past vogues for these dance types, and
because some Cape Breton fiddlers performed for dances in other parts of Maritime
Canada, where such dance types were preferred (Caplan 2006: 63; Graham 2006: 95).
The strong, unbroken connection between social dancing, step dancing and fiddling
differentiates Cape Breton’s instrumental music to some degree from similar traditions
in Scotland, where it is more often a concert or presentational form of music, and in
Ireland, where a culture of session playing is dominant. Cape Breton fiddling benefited
from an early embrace of recording and radio technology, which helped to promote key
practitioners of the style and establish a documented canon of local repertoire. A
number of minor ‘stars’ in Cape Breton music emerged after World War II, including
the fiddlers Winston ‘Scotty’ Fitzgerald, Bill Lamey, Dan R. MacDonald, Angus Chisholm,
Buddy MacMaster, Lee Cremo, Sandy MacIntyre, Carl MacKenzie and Theresa MacLel-
lan, all of whom appeared on commercially released recordings marketed mainly to audi-
ences within Cape Breton and its expat communities (McKinnon 1989: 79–80 and 113–
14).
During the late 1960s, outmigration, a decline in the number of square dances and a
disappointingly low number of young Cape Bretoners taking up the fiddle led to
anxiety about the tradition falling into decline. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC) produced a television documentary in 1972, The Vanishing Cape Breton Fiddler,
charting this apparent decline. There was a significant response to the film: a Festival of
Scottish Fiddling was established in 1973 in Glendale, and the Cape Breton Fiddlers’
Association was founded the same year, offering mentorship and opportunities for fiddlers
of all ages and abilities (Thompson 2006: 6). By the 1980s, a resurgence of Cape Breton
fiddling was in full swing; and by the time Celtic music experienced its boom in the
‘world music’ market of the 1990s (see Hennessy 2015), the island’s music community
was primed with young solo fiddlers (Ashley MacIsaac, Natalie MacMaster) and family
groups (the Rankins, the Barra MacNeils, the Beatons of Mabou) ready to emerge as pro-
fessional-grade performers capable of building international profiles. Alongside them were
pianists playing in a well-developed Cape Breton accompaniment style, which had evolved
considerably from the earliest Cape Breton fiddle recordings some 60 years before.

Cape Breton piano style: musical features

An alternating bass-chord figure underlies Cape Breton’s piano accompaniment. All
recordings made before 1950 feature pianists accompanying in this style, and entry-
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 5

level piano instruction at Cape Breton’s Gaelic College (which offers intensive courses in
fiddle, piping, piano, guitar, step dance, Gaelic song and Gaelic language) begins with this
basic pattern. This is not distinctive to Cape Breton: alternating bass-chord accompani-
ment for fiddling was practiced on the piano and other instruments in many parts of
Canada, the United States, Ireland and Scotland (see, e.g., Wicklund and Walser 2008).
The way Cape Breton pianists elaborate on this basic figure is what distinguishes the
island’s piano accompaniment from other styles.
There is a great deal of emphasis on the left hand in the Cape Breton style, because the
bass line is expected to move frequently. In jigs and reels, many pianists aim to change
note on each strong beat, creating a walking bass. In slower tune types, like marches
and strathspeys, bass lines move less frequently, but melodic bass runs commonly lead
into cadences. It is important not to overstate the constancy of bass motion, as it is not
imperative to maintain such motion at all times. Some pianists emphasised to me that
bass motion should serve a purpose, and should not be done just for its own sake, lest
the accompaniment might become cluttered and detract from the fiddle melody. As
Mario Colosimo cautioned, ‘You don’t always have to be pounding on the bass [notes]’
(interview with the author, 6 January 2012); and Allan Dewar remarked that ‘bass lines
that don’t end where they should, or don’t have a purpose’, are often a sign of an accom-
panist’s inexperience (interview with the author, 12 August 2014). Sticking to chord roots
is quite acceptable in some circumstances, and some younger pianists today are experi-
menting with sustaining pedal tones at strategic moments to build tension. Nevertheless,
well-used bass motion adds a sense of momentum, and can create interest through sym-
pathetic motion or counterpoint to the fiddle melody’s direction.
Chording is generally done with the right hand, although some pianists will voice
chords with both hands between bass notes. The underlying bass-chord pattern places
chords on beats two and four in 4/4 time, or in 6/8 jigs on beats three and six, but
Cape Breton piano has evolved towards more flexible, varied syncopated figures. A par-
ticularly common figure in 4/4—including a chord on beat two, and chords on the off-
beats of beats three and/or four—has emerged as a ‘basic’ syncopated pattern, but
advanced accompanists aim for a variety of chording figures (Dares-MacNeil 1997). It
has also become common for Cape Breton pianists to vary the range of their chording,
using register changes to add accents, build or release tension, or vary the texture as a
tune moves from one section to the next. Another common role for the right hand is to
play the melody, in whole or in part, with the fiddler. Some pianists, like Marie MacLellan,
made extensive use of this practice in the 1950s, and it may have helped to amplify the
fiddle melody at times when electric sound reinforcement was not always available or
reliable. This practice fell out of use by the 1970s, but it remains common for pianists
to play bits of melody in episodic ways to vary the texture and offer melodic support.
Unlike jazz piano accompaniment, however, it is uncommon for Cape Breton pianists
to echo the melody or ‘comment’ upon it extemporaneously in the right hand.
The following transcriptions illustrate the style for each of the three most common tune
types. These are condensed and combined versions of transcriptions of piano excerpts by
Maybelle Chisholm McQueen, John Morris Rankin, Betty Lou Beaton and Tracey Dares-
MacNeil, all pianists with numerous recording credits and long performing experience.
These examples were edited to illustrate as many idiomatic figures as possible in a short
space. The first is an accompaniment for the strathspey ‘King George IV’ (Figure 1).
6 C. MCDONALD

Figure 1. ‘King George IV’ strathspey, melody and piano accompaniment.

The basic bass-chord pattern is apparent in the first four bars, although broken in the
second bar by a bass run, a typical left-hand episode in a strathspey. Chromatic passing
tones are sparingly used and, as in bar four, may clash with the chord; this is not uncom-
mon, and suggests that the bass line’s melodic force may take precedence over the
harmony at times. In the second four bars, the right hand drops to a lower register (a
common way to create contrast), and syncopates against the left hand, increasing the
rhythmic tension.
The second example is an accompaniment to the reel ‘The Bridge of Bamore’. In reels,
the fiddle rhythm mostly contains running eighth notes, played in cut time, in contrast to
the uneven durations of a strathspey (Figure 2).
The left hand maintains a steady crotchet pulse, sometimes breaking up the octave and
sometimes playing conjoined octaves as the bass runs melodically, as in the strathspey.
The right hand is noticeably more syncopated and flexible in its figures. Chords may be
played in block form or broken. The harmonisation is fairly simple, although an
applied dominant (V/IV) is implied at the end of the first bar, and ii is substituted for
IV in bar six, as compared with the same figure in bar two.
The final example is an accompaniment for ‘The Pattern Day Jig’ (Figure 3). The
pattern of crotchet followed by quaver in the left hand is set against pairs of quavers on
the weak beats of each triplet. This is the favoured pattern in jig accompaniment, although
it is not slavishly applied. In this example, the pattern is broken in bars three and four to
emphasise the descending bass part. In bars five and six a common cross-rhythm is used,
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 7

Figure 2. ‘The Bridge of Bamore’ reel, melody and piano accompaniment.

Figure 3. ‘The Pattern Day’ jig, melody with piano accompaniment.

8 C. MCDONALD

an accented, two-beat pattern set against the rolling triplet feel. This adds excitement and
tension, and is resolved when the pianist briefly joins the fiddle melody in bar seven.
While Cape Breton fiddling is performed with a conservative aesthetic, with only minor
variations in tune ornamentation, and a great deal of emphasis placed on maintaining con-
tinuity with tune versions rendered by players from the past, the same cannot be said of
the piano style. Pianists are expected to adhere to acceptable chord choices and provide
rhythmic support in sympathy with a fiddler’s style, but the accompaniment is expected
to be spontaneous, and pianists are expected to vary the accompaniment imaginatively
with the repetition of each fiddle tune. As is apparent in the earlier examples, pianists
often have a stock of bass runs that work over the same progression or the same tune
phrase, and will deploy a different one during each repetition. Some pianists also spoke
to me of experimenting with accompaniment figures when performing in informal and
comfortable circumstances, and relishing the improvisational process even if not every
figure works out.
The piano style is valued for its capacity to add to the vital drive of Cape Breton dance
music. The intensity of the groove in this music is one factor that differentiates it from the
prevailing style in Scotland, its country of origin, where an expressive flexibility of tempo is
often preferred. The driving groove of Cape Breton fiddling reflects the continued link
between fiddling and percussive dance, an association that was lost in Scotland more
than a century ago. A favourite colloquial interjection in Cape Breton associated with
lively socialising, music and dance—‘Drive ‘er!’—and the whoops and hollers with
which dancing audiences greet accelerations in the typical Cape Breton tune group
(marking the transition from march to strathspey and strathspey to reel) speak to the plea-
sure taken in the build-up of rhythmic energy in this music (see Garner 2016: 58–9 and
73). Jeff Hennessy’s study of groove in Cape Breton fiddle music highlights the piano
accompaniment as a key part of its energy and momentum, and Hennessy (2008: 267–
8) sees Cape Breton’s accompaniment as part of a stylistic dialogue with other groove-
oriented musics. As the earlier notated examples show, the Cape Breton piano style
both articulates the metre and creates a layer of rhythmic play against the metre,
setting up and relieving rhythmic tension. Fiddler Colin Grant commented on the circular
relationship that can exist between fiddling, dancing and accompaniment:
The traditional thinking was that the fiddler is the piano player’s boss. But really, the dancers
are the fiddler’s boss. The fiddler has to acknowledge and respond to the lift created by the
dancers, either in a square dance situation, or where a solo step dancer hops up for a couple of
steps. So, the piano player can contribute to the lift that the step dancer feels, by maybe sus-
taining less. (Interview with the author, 9 May 2014)

The piano’s harmonic support is important, but it is a secondary consideration to

rhythm. In her instructional video for piano accompaniment, A-Chording to the Tunes,
Tracey Dares-MacNeil (1997) gives elaborate instruction on appropriate rhythmic
figures for Cape Breton piano, as well as ways of constructing bass lines to effectively
connect chords. However, she demurs from recommending particular chord progressions,
substitutions or strategies for harmonisation, leaving this to the accompanist to figure out
through trial and error. It is, however, possible to trace changes in harmonic practices
through the style’s history. Cape Breton dance tunes tend to be in either major, Mixolydian
or Dorian modes, or anhemitonic pentatonic modes on C, D and A. In early Cape Breton
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 9

recordings, a simple palette of chords (I, IV and V for major-key tunes, and I and VII for
modal tunes) was used with few exceptions. By the 1970s and 1980s, chord substitutions,
sevenths and other tensions as well as suspended chords appeared in the vocabulary of
more progressive pianists. Tunes in D pentatonic, or ‘gapped scale’, lack a third scale
degree to determine a major or minor quality to the scale; some pianists choose a
major or minor tonic chord in such cases, while others play open fifths to help the tune
retain its unique ‘thirdless’ quality (see Cranford 2007: v). At present, some degree of har-
monic variation and imaginative colouring is generally expected of pianists.
These comments suggest a linear narrative of rising complexity and expanding vocabu-
lary in Cape Breton pianists’ harmonic practices; nevertheless, this may obscure nuanced
and tacit negotiation concerning appropriate chording. While the rhythm generated by the
piano can acceptably be quite busy at times, too much deviation from the primary triads
can lead to charges of pianists changing or subverting the traditional flavour of Cape
Breton fiddling. Not all innovations are welcomed by everyone: one pianist confided to
me that he has ‘gotten the eye’ disapprovingly from fiddlers on more than one occasion
for trying certain chord qualities (major sevenths, suspended chords) and substitutions,
even though they sounded fine to him. I have observed that the range of harmonic flexi-
bility varies depending on performing context, the age of the fiddlers and pianists, and the
personalities involved. I will explore this issue further in the following.

The origins and development of the piano style

It is difficult to say with certainty when keyboard-based accompaniment began for fiddling
in Cape Breton. No aural evidence survives from before the first appearance of commercial
Cape Breton fiddle recordings in 1928. Allister MacGillivray makes the case that the impo-
verished pioneer context of Scottish settlement in Cape Breton meant that fiddling was
unaccompanied until the late nineteenth century.1 The earliest accompaniments were
probably percussive, including spoons and a practice of tapping knitting needles on the
open strings of a fiddle by a second performer to create a rhythmic drone (MacGillivray
1988: 168). Richard MacKinnon (2009: 38) found advertisements for pianos and pump
organs in a Cape Breton newspaper as early as 1873, and the pump organ was the instru-
ment of choice in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Canadian piano industry underwent
significant development starting in the 1870s and peaking in the 1920s. By the 1890s, new
‘dry-kiln’ techniques for treating the wooden bodies of pianos made them able to with-
stand Canada’s dry, cold winters and humid summers without severe cracking and
tuning problems (Kelly 1991: 24). These dates for Canadian piano industry development,
combined with the rapid industrialisation of Cape Breton between the 1890s and 1910s,
explain why this period allowed significant piano and organ markets to emerge on the
island. The peak of piano sales in Canada in the 1920s supports the general claim that
it took until the 1930s for the piano to fully supplant the pump organ as the main instru-
ment of fiddle accompaniment (Graham 2006: 73). In any case, The Sydney Daily Post
newspaper regularly reported on violin–piano duets being common in homes in Cape
Breton’s urban region from as early as 1901, although it is not clear from the social
columns what kind of music was being played.
In seeking the stylistic origins of the Cape Breton piano style, one is tempted to look to
Scotland for nascent models. Scottish musicologist David McGuinness researches
10 C. MCDONALD

eighteenth-century accompaniments for Scottish fiddling, focusing particularly on the

practice of providing notated bass lines for tunes, which were often played on the cello.
Bass lines in different collections interpret the same tune in very different ways harmoni-
cally, and seem to presage aspects of the Cape Breton pianist’s left hand. These lines could
be very simple, implying the roots of the primary chords, but others offer more melodic
interest (McGuinness 2015).
However, I doubt that there was substantial influence from Scotland on Cape Breton
piano: rather, I argue that Cape Breton’s piano style is a North American musical devel-
opment with influence stemming primarily from popular culture and the movement of
Cape Breton’s mobile working population to and from the island. The style seems to orig-
inate in a bass-chord or stride style, not the pulsing crotchet chord vamping recommended
in Scottish fiddle collections. We might connect Cape Breton keyboarding to the North
American norms of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in a few ways. In
the first place, popular pump organ arrangements, especially for popular songs, often
used bass-chord or bass-chord–chord patterns in their accompaniments, so the pattern
may have come with the instrument as it became popular on the island (see Rollinson
1881). In my 2014 interview with Gordon MacLean, one of the few living pianists who
grew up playing the pump organ in Cape Breton, he demonstrated the hand-rocking
bass-chord technique he picked up from his elders on this instrument.
The second connection can be found in the earliest Celtic fiddle recordings made by
American record companies in the US northeast. Irish-American fiddler Michael
Coleman started making his very influential 78-rpm records in 1921, featuring session pia-
nists who accompanied with a vigorous bass-chord pattern. This became standard practice
on American Irish ‘ethnic’ recordings, with no precedent in Irish traditional music. The
accompaniments on these early recordings were of questionable aesthetic quality, but
they seemed to establish the pattern of using ragtime or stride-influenced piano figures
on subsequent Irish-American fiddle recordings. Cape Breton fiddle recordings from
the 1930s and 1940s show pianists playing in the same style. Susan Gedutis (2004: 115)
notes that bass-chord piano figures were used heavily in Boston in both the Irish and
Cape Breton diasporas in the 1920s and 1930s, and that dance bands in both diasporas
almost always used pianos for accompaniment. This Boston scene probably influenced
accompaniment practices in Cape Breton itself, given the back-and-forth movement of
Cape Breton families between the island and New England—known in local parlance as
‘the Boston States’—during this time.
A third connection concerns the bass-chord accompaniments common in other fid-
dling styles. Recordings from Ontario’s Ottawa Valley fiddle and dance tradition from
the 1950s clearly show a bass-chord pattern on the piano, supported by guitar and
other instruments. Wicklund and Walser (2008: 4) describe a bass-chord vamping
approach on piano which could be found in American old-time music as well. Canada’s
most popular fiddler prior to 1970, Don Messer, hosted CBC radio shows dating from
the late 1930s and a television show that ran from 1959 to 1969. Messer’s style was
called Canadian old-time or ‘Downeast’, faster and less ornamented than that of Cape
Breton, and was transmitted throughout Canada through his show (Rosenberg 1994:
24). His pianist, Waldo Munro, came from Pictou County, Nova Scotia, across the
strait from Cape Breton, and his grandstanding solo renditions of fiddle tunes, such as
the Scottish reel ‘Money Musk’, feature left-hand striding that bears close resemblance
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 11

to the Harlem stride approach (Dorey 2006). This piano texture appears to have been quite
common for fiddling around the middle of the twentieth century, around which time the
Cape Breton style began to develop.
Finally, given that Cape Breton fiddling aims aesthetically at an energetic groove, it
makes sense that the most driving piano accompaniments in fashion in popular culture
—ragtime, and later, Harlem stride—might be emulated by early Cape Breton pianists.
The evidence suggests that the Cape Breton piano style’s basic pattern does not have a
Scottish or endogenous origin, but is a product of musicians using resources from
popular culture to forge a style, both on the island and in its diasporic communities.
A number of questions remain, however. Most of the older pianists to whom I spoke, as
well as many of the senior pianists interviewed by Allister MacGillivray (1988) for his book
A Cape Breton Ceilidh, describe early keyboard training being provided by Catholic clergy,
who were important educators on the island. Instruction on the organ or piano used
method books leading towards classical training. Did this leave any traces on the piano
style as it developed, or was it just a means of acquiring keyboard skills? Those who I inter-
viewed generally regarded their lessons as being quite separate from the style they culti-
vated when they accompanied the fiddle. Mildred Leadbeater, the most senior pianist I
interviewed, remembered that both she and her parents became frustrated when the
nuns who taught her refused to teach any Scottish music at all (interview with the
author, 25 May 2012). There were also a number of early pianists who acquired their
skills almost entirely on their own, especially in the most isolated communities. How
did they arrive at their vamping styles?
The evolution of the Cape Breton piano style is documented by almost 80 years of com-
mercial recordings. Mac Morin, a long-time accompanist for internationally famous
fiddler Natalie MacMaster, believes that recordings were, in fact, a key medium for the
style’s development:
Any [pianist] off the early records broke ground. They were the pioneers of the style … I
think [they] were extremely influential, because they actually took the style and placed it
somewhere where people could hear it—it was a documented style at that point, and
people could re-listen to it and figure out what [the pianists] were doing. (Interview with
the author, 2 June 2014)

The earliest recordings of Cape Breton fiddlers date from 1928, with Charlie MacKinnon
and Big Dan Hugh MacEachern performing with Irish-American pianist Danny Sullivan
as ‘The Columbia Scotch Band’, a group that performed in the Roxbury district of Boston,
an ethnic community where many Irish-American and Maritime-Canadian expatriates
settled. Sullivan was also the leader of Boston’s popular Shamrock Band, an Irish-Amer-
ican vaudeville and dance orchestra which influenced the style of Celtic dance musicians
in the northeastern United States (Vallely 2011: 543). Sullivan, by reputation, was a driving
and sophisticated pianist, with a wide chord vocabulary, a rhythmic approach that owed
much to the Harlem stride style that was being used in jazz at the time; he frequently
played the melody along with the fiddlers in the right hand (Gedutis 2004: 22). This ener-
getic simple stride approach may have been influential on the pianists that accompanied
Cape Breton fiddlers on commercial recordings in the 1930s, including Betty Maillet and
Bess Siddall MacDonald, whose recordings remain the earliest evidence of the emerging
style.
12 C. MCDONALD

The generation that came of age in the 1950s began to elaborate the Cape Breton piano
style. Mary Jessie MacDonald is widely credited with liberating the Cape Breton pianist’s
left hand. MacDonald was born in New Waterford to the highly respected fiddler ‘Little’
Mary MacDonald, and grew up chording to her mother’s fiddling. A very well-known
story about Mary Jessie credits her breakthrough with developing a walking bass style
while watching the Gib Whitney Jazz Orchestra perform at a local movie theatre. MacDo-
nald’s bass lines used distinctive chromatic and diatonic patterns; few Cape Breton pianists
took the practice as far as she did, yet she had some influence and most discussions of
Cape Breton piano accord her an important place in the narrative.
Maybelle Chisholm McQueen, who grew up in the Margaree area in the western part of
the island, was a pivotal figure in the style’s development. The niece of fiddlers and Gaelic
tradition-bearers Angus and Archie Neil Chisholm, Maybelle broke the pattern of keeping
the chording in the middle range of the piano. Syncopation, glissandi, frequent changes of
register, arpeggios and portamento added excitement to the accompaniment, and her style
is regarded by some as the root of the contemporary piano style (see Dunlay 2008). May-
belle, in her own words, was aiming to use the whole piano:
I did that when I was just an early teenager, 14 or 15 years old. I saw that there were 88 keys
and we were only using the middle of the piano. I started using the other keys … running the
bass from bottom to top, and using the treble part. It was very gratifying to me, because you
could do a lot of things … you could improvise. (Interview with the author, 7 September
2014)

Doug MacPhee of New Waterford came of age in the 1960s. As the son of pianist Mar-
garet MacPhee, he grew up hearing his mother accompany ‘Little’ Mary MacDonald
and other fiddlers in eastern Cape Breton. MacPhee was not the first pianist to
perform piano solos, but he developed innovative piano techniques to imitate fiddle
ornaments and embellishments as closely as possible. His command of the Cape
Breton repertoire equalled that of the major fiddlers, and because of his frequent per-
formances as a soloist he developed a powerful left hand that could stride, play bass
lines and syncopate, essentially realising Cape Breton accompaniment with one hand.
Collectively, MacPhee, McQueen, Mary Jessie MacDonald and others of this generation
created an upward momentum for Cape Breton accompanists in terms of technique and
complexity of texture.
The late 1970s and 1980s saw another generation of pianists come of age, bringing
further changes. Glenn Graham (2006) notes that the style continued to get busier, but
also became more ‘notationally correct’, meaning that harmonies were more precisely
matched to the fiddle tunes than had been common in the past. Jerry Holland’s album
Master Cape Breton Fiddler (1982) was a landmark for Cape Breton fiddling and accom-
paniment. Holland worked with pianist Hilda Chiasson, who based her style heavily on
Maybelle Chisholm, and guitarist Dave MacIsaac, a rare guitarist whose style was influ-
enced by the bass lines of Mary Jessie MacDonald. Holland felt that the texture of Cape
Breton fiddle recordings (with fiddle and piano playing constantly) had become stale
and needed updating. Using contemporary Irish recordings as models, such as those of
the Bothy Band, Holland tried alternative arrangements, having the piano and guitar
enter and exit the texture in various ways, and had his accompanists experiment liberally
with chord substitutions.
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 13

The late John Morris Rankin of the internationally famous Celtic fusion group, The
Rankin Family, approached his piano accompaniments similarly. Rankin was a fiddler
and step dancer as well as a pianist, and he could match harmonies and rhythmic
accents to fiddle tunes with remarkable precision. Tracey Dares-MacNeil credits Rankin
with pulling all the stylistic threads together, adding chord substitutions, syncopation
and interesting bass lines, while also keeping the style very cleverly economical and sup-
portive of the fiddler (interview with the author, 24 April 2012). Based on my interviews
and secondary source research, Rankin’s influence seems to be quite prominent, both
within the community and outside, owing in good measure to the Rankin Family’s hit
recordings during the 1990s (Doherty 2015: 304; Feintuch 2004: 92; Hennessy 2008: 225).
During the 1990s and 2000s, there was a growing professionalisation of Cape Breton
fiddling and its accompaniment. The fusion of this music with pop, rock and country,
with full electric rhythm sections comprising bass, electric guitars and drums, was accom-
plished by touring bands and artists like the Rankins, the Barra MacNeils (with Sheumas
MacNeil on piano), Ashley MacIsaac (with Allan Dewar, Joel Chiasson and others),
Natalie MacMaster (Tracey Dares-MacNeil, Mac Morin) and more recent groups such
as Coig and Sprag Session (both with Jason Roach). Some of these younger professionals
have extensive formal training, including undergraduate degrees in classical or jazz per-
formance, while others simply grew up playing traditional music in the community.
Their acts tour and perform at folk and Celtic festivals, mostly away from Cape Breton,
but it is important to note that in most concert, dance and session contexts in Cape
Breton, the musicians do not normally play in these kinds of electric fusion groups, and
the preferred ensemble remains fiddle, piano and an optional acoustic guitar. However,
the mature piano style merges well with contemporary rhythm sections, and is an impor-
tant way in which Cape Breton fiddling has remained fresh and appealing in sound in
recent decades.

Is Cape Breton piano ‘traditional’?

Compared with the lineage of Cape Breton fiddling, which can be traced back to early
eighteenth-century Scotland, the island’s piano accompaniment is a recent addition.
Does it make sense to describe Cape Breton piano playing as a tradition? I will explore
this question as a way to theorise piano accompaniment, to examine the discourse
around it and to look at how it is integrated into the practices, values and aesthetics of
Cape Breton’s fiddle and dance culture. Despite its construction through disparate
popular culture resources, Cape Breton’s musicians feel a strong sense of ownership of
this piano style, and much can be learned from how it is integrated into local culture
and identity.
We have already seen how the piano style’s vigour, busy texture and syncopated
approach relates to the music’s drive, and how this is valued for its contribution to
dancing contexts. From an aesthetic perspective, how deep a relationship do Cape
Breton musicians see between the piano accompaniment and the island’s dancing prac-
tices? Fiddler, pianist and step dancer Kimberley Fraser explains that:
rhythm is what separates [Cape Breton’s] from other piano styles. The rhythm definitely
mimics the step dancing, and all these inherent Gaelic language rhythms. The rhythm is
14 C. MCDONALD

what unites Gaelic music as a whole—you can hear it in the fiddling, the piping, the step
dancing, the language, and you can definitely hear it in the piano style as well. It supports
the music that way, and makes it very danceable. (Interview with the author, 8 May 2014)

Fraser argues for a deeply endogenous core to the piano style, tied to language, rhythm and
dance. Fraser further explains that the piano accompaniment pattern for the jig, which
articulates all six beats of the 6/8 metre in different registers, bears great similarity to
the jig step in step dancing, with its six-beat cycle articulated by different parts of the foot.
Some pianists elaborated on the relationship between accompaniment and dancing.
Joey Beaton notes that the accompanist should listen to dancers’ feet, whether in square
dancing or step dancing, and respond both to the dance rhythms and the fiddling:
When I’m playing the piano, I can hear the sound of the dance. So you’ve got to get into that
groove. It’s important for the dancers to hear the tap of the dance, so the fiddler and pianist
have to go along with that. (Interview with Anita MacDonald, 15 January 2016)

Sheumas MacNeil of the Barra MacNeils recalls how his mother, pianist and step dancer
Jean, taught the style:
She’s a step dance teacher, too, so after we got going we’d integrate the chord pattern to the
step dancing style. It’s your basic hop-step. Mom would have a pile of chords, and I’d exper-
iment with them and mimic the dance patterns. (Interview with the author, 23 August 2013)

However, some pianists doubt that the relationship between dancing and accompanying is
a simple, one-to-one correlation. Tracey Dares-MacNeil thought the jig step and accom-
paniment were similar, but not the 4/4 reel pattern: ‘Those syncopated rhythms in the
right hand, for the reel—I don’t think they really match with the feet at all’ (interview
with the author, 24 April 2012).
Dares-MacNeil’s observations generally align with my own: the correlation between
dance step and piano pattern in the jig is clear, but the strathspey and reel steps are gen-
erally quite different from the accompanying piano figures. Pianists can respond to dance
patterns and set up certain accents in sympathy with dancing, but step dance patterns for
reels generally feature constant eighth notes and are squarely phrased, while the piano
plays more varied and syncopated figures. However, at a more abstract level, Cape
Breton step dancing and piano accompaniment share a general process. While the
fiddle melodies are largely pre-composed and change very little from version to version,
step dancing is an improvised rhythmic sort of play against the fiddle melody. The step
dancer’s skill lies in learning a broad array of patterns that can be arranged spontaneously
in various orders in synchrony with fiddle tunes (Melin 2015: 151). Likewise, the piano
accompanist improvises rhythmic and harmonic lines against the fiddling, drawing
from the accompanist’s skill and experience, in sympathy with the fiddling and
dancing. In this sense, although the pianists are not literally ‘step dancing on the keys’,
they are participating in a way that is homologous in process with the dance tradition.
The timbre of the acoustic piano is another important aspect of accompaniments’ ‘tra-
ditional’ qualities. Acoustic pianos gave way to electric pianos during the late twentieth
century, because dances, concerts and other performance contexts were almost always
amplified, and electric keyboards offered the convenience of easy moving and set up,
and did not require tuning. Acoustic pianos are still valued in some venues, such as the
Rollie’s Wharf session, where the event is not amplified. However, when electric keyboards
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 15

are used, the choice of an acoustic piano sound is non-negotiable. Fiddles and guitars are
amplified as well, but the sounds coming out of the speakers are expected to sound like
acoustic instruments, suggesting that ‘acousticity’ serves a marker of tradition and auth-
enticity (Narvaez 2001: 29). As Galizio and Hendrick (1972) note, instruments can com-
municate on an affective level, even just by their presence, and the timbre of the piano is
now strongly felt to be an essential part of the sound of Cape Breton fiddling.
Kimberley Fraser’s earlier comments provide an opportunity to think about the dis-
course Cape Breton musicians use when talking about the piano style. How much
emphasis is given to endogenous, or locally derived, aspects of the style and its devel-
opment, and how much emphasis is given to the exogenous influences on it? To what
degree is it understood as a local invention, rather than a product of broadly circulating
cultural material? Fraser emphasised the piano style’s relationship to step dance
rhythms and the Gaelic language, putting emphasis on endogenous origins for the
style’s figures. Some pianists also emphasised the importance of being raised in Cape
Breton music, and that learning from local exemplars was the key to playing the
style well. In Cape Breton, people tend to be conscious of lineage and kinship, and
how families and communities are connected: Cape Bretoners meeting for the first
time will start conversations with ‘where are your people [family] from?’ or ‘who’s
your father?’ as a way of situating themselves or sussing out a family or community
connection. Not surprisingly, pianists sometimes discussed inheriting their styles from
family members, or getting the ‘right basics’ from a relative or neighbour on which
they could build their own styles. Particular families have strong lineages in fiddling,
dancing and/or piping; pianists in these families similarly describe the piano style as
part of the culture with a history and lineage.
Another aspect of the endogenous discourse around Cape Breton piano concerns the
boundaries of the style. If there is a distinctive Cape Breton piano style, its recognisability
depends on the style having certain limits, and if it is ‘traditional’, there must be an at least
somewhat conservative impulse keeping the style centred around a common approach.
Pianists’ opinions about this diverged. Allen Dewar—son of Marion, a well-known
Cape Breton pianist—spent a great deal of his youth travelling up and down Cape
Breton’s Inverness County, attending dances, ceilidhs and concerts, listening and accom-
panying whenever possible. As a professional musician, Dewar toured with Ashley MacI-
saac, a fiddler internationally famous for fusing Cape Breton music with hard rock and
other popular styles, yet he disagreed that this fusion influenced his style:
I know nothing about any other style. Even with [Ashley’s] first band, if you stripped away
the electric guitar and drums it was still ‘trad’ music … Beyond that, I have no other pretence
for other styles. I would say that 95% of the times I have ever played it has always been fiddle
and piano … Even when I was with Ashley or Natalie [MacMaster], I understood I was just
playing Cape Breton piano and the rhythms were built around that and the other parts were
built around that because they wanted that sound and that influence still to be there, even
though it became a ‘band’ atmosphere. (Interview with the author, 12 August 2014)

The notion of Cape Breton piano as an endogenous style, whose integrity withstands the
fusion of the fiddle/piano combination with other instrumental styles, is forcefully argued
here. Likewise, Maybelle Chisholm McQueen described how, despite an eclectic musical
background (Scottish, classical, country, blues and rock and roll), she asserted that the
16 C. MCDONALD

Celtic style in Cape Breton has its own character, and that she keeps the styles quite
separate.
Other pianists were more open to discussing exogenous influences on their playing, and
the piano style at large. Almost everyone I interviewed knew and relayed the story of Mary
Jessie MacDonald beginning the walking bass tradition through her fascination with a
local swing band. Allan Dewar, Troy MacGillivray and Mac Morin all relayed stories
about touring in the United States, and of American audience members surmising that
their styles derived from ragtime and Harlem stride. Sheumas MacNeil noted that
figures from some of his favourite pop pianists, like Bruce Hornsby, find their way into
his own playing from time to time. Both Hilda Chiasson and Tracey Dares-MacNeil
told stories about guitarist Dave MacIsaac, with whom they both worked extensively, lis-
tening to a broad range of jazz, blues and country, and encouraging them to do the same.
Dares-MacNeil recalls:
I know myself, in the early ‘90s and into the mid-90s, I was listening more to, like, Oscar
Peterson and some other blues bands and some rock and roll stuff, too, and jazz music
that Dave MacIsaac would sort of be feeding me, saying, ‘listen to this’, and ‘check this
out’. So, I’d pick up little things like that, too, and incorporate it into what I was playing. I
had a far busier style than, I think, than what I do now. Lots of 7ths, lots of 9ths, major
7ths. (Interview with author, 24 April 2012)

Allan Dewar noted that:

there are [pianists] playing that you would not really call traditionalists. And that’s common
with any kind of generational change. People probably said that about us growing up … The
piano isn’t actually what people might call a traditional instrument. This is only in its infancy
compared to fiddling and piping … so you can’t really peg anything as being right or wrong.
(Interview with author)

This sentiment was strongly echoed by Jason Roach of Cheticamp, a very progressive
pianist who accompanies fiddlers and performs with Cape Breton Celtic fusion groups
like Coig and Sprag Session:
A [Cape Breton] piano player is their own person with their own style. There is no tradition.
It hasn’t been around long enough. Maybelle and Mary Jessie were some of the very first [in
the style], because they brought it away from something so simple. There’s no tradition.
(Interview with the author, 29 November 2013)

Fiddler Colin Grant, who joined my conversation with Jason Roach, concurred:
It’s come to the point where the fiddler is being influenced by the piano player, but in years
past the fiddler didn’t care what the piano player was doing. Things have changed, because
this is a living thing, a living music. As soon as this stuff gets frozen as a ‘tradition,’ it’s dead.
(Interview with author)

Finally, we should consider directly how the words ‘tradition’ and ‘traditional’ are used
with respect to the piano style. Nearly all interviewees stopped short of calling piano
accompaniment a ‘tradition’ in itself, yet many cited ‘traditional’ ways of playing, as
opposed to more progressive approaches. Doug MacPhee and Joey Beaton describe pia-
nists who keep to a more limited chord vocabulary as the more ‘traditional’ players.
These comments illustrate a range of opinions about the piano style’s boundaries, and
different attitudes towards the rate and type of changes the style undergoes. The dialectic
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 17

between a more conservative attitude which emulates older models and a dynamic attitude
which asserts that there is no tradition is a feature of living, evolving culture, and these
comments from the pianists are at least suggestive of an emerging tradition. Richard
MacKinnon locates Cape Breton piano on the dynamic side of folklorist Barre Toelken’s
‘twin laws’ of conservatism and dynamism which operate in any living culture, with the
fiddling itself located on the conservative side (MacKinnon 2009: 31). Toelken states that:
Conservatism and dynamism will probably be the two most prominent characteristics in our
perception of any item tentatively classified as folklore. We will want to know what features
of content and style have been carried through from earlier sources (conservatism). And we
will need to know the extent to which the bearers of the materials … have worked upon these
materials in such a way as to change them (dynamism). (Toelken 1979: 35)

I would extend these two characteristics to the internal dynamic of the piano style itself,
and suggest that the piano style is sustained by players who know its history and are com-
mitted to upholding certain aesthetics and techniques, but the Cape Breton fiddle and
dance tradition also allows some pianists the freedom to develop new ideas, and update
the style.

The piano style and glocalisation

The process by which the eclectic foundations of the Cape Breton piano style merged into
a recognisable entity and became wedded to a fiddle tradition requires further explanation.
One way of thinking about it is through the process of ‘glocalisation’, a concept that ori-
ginated in the sociological work of Robertson (1995) to describe the tensions and
dynamics of globalisation and localism. Instead of thinking about the effects of globalisa-
tion in culture, media and entertainment as leading simply to homogeneity, Robertson
points out that local cultures adapt transnational media, styles and texts to their own
tastes and needs, fusing them with ‘local colour’. This process may result in hybrid
forms which become associated heavily with a community or group, as the Cape
Breton piano style clearly has. As we have seen, many Cape Breton pianists are quite
aware of the ‘exogenous’ influences on the style, drawn from pop culture, and knew
some of the key stories that led to the style’s formation; yet many of their discussions
equally focused on the style as self-perpetuating, and based on the transfer of knowledge
and stylistic traits among Cape Breton pianists (either on the island, or within expat com-
munities as in Boston). A few even spoke of the importance of being raised in the fiddling
tradition as necessary to mastering the piano style. This is in line with Sara McDowell’s
observation that ‘societies change or alter their pasts because they often need or want
more than they were bequeathed’, and for that reason ‘people may exaggerate the cultural
antiquity of what they do, or conceal its relative recentness’ (2008: 42).
Cape Breton pianists do not exaggerate the age of the piano style, but the sense of build-
ing up and ‘traditionalising’ a new accompaniment style speaks to the need to add more to
the fiddling and dancing tradition than its Scottish, Irish and Acadian heritage provided.
The emphasis on local exemplars, their innovations and the attempt to maintain some
continuity with players of the (recent) past keeps the focus local. Indeed, some pianists
describe digging into the archives of Cape Breton piano accompaniment when accompa-
nying senior fiddlers, and imitating the personal styles of pianists with whom they were
associated in the past. For example, Joey Beaton noted:
18 C. MCDONALD

If I’m sitting behind Theresa MacLellan … I try to put in some of that Marie [MacLellan]
stuff when I play with Theresa. And when I was chording with my father, I’d try to put
some of those chords I remember my mother putting in. That’s the influence of all these
other pianists coming in. (Interview with author)

The internal stylistic history and dynamic of the piano style is highlighted in exchanges
like this. Sociologist Robert Holton discusses this as part of the process of cultural gloca-
lisation, as he notes: ‘Cultural actors may not recognize, or want to recognize, the signifi-
cance of exogenous elements in their cultural repertoire, since it is more reassuring to
indigenize that which has been borrowed’ (2000: 151). Holton’s statement provides an
excellent way to think of the Cape Breton piano style: an amalgam of borrowed material
from Victorian piano accompaniment, ragtime, jazz, rock and other mass-mediated,
transnational styles, but something fully and enthusiastically localised as part of a living
fiddling tradition. Pianist Mac Morin reached this insight when he noted: ‘The style has
become something of a “Heinz 57”, as we’ve borrowed from this, that, and the other
thing. But we’ve created, in the same breath, something that is unique to Cape Breton’
(interview with author, 2 June 2014).
Cape Breton piano accompaniment has become recognisable and well associated with
Canada’s Maritime traditional music scene. Moreover, pianists elsewhere have started to
imitate it. Fiddling in the nearby province of Prince Edward Island uses a style of piano
accompaniment which is now almost indistinguishable from Cape Breton’s, owing in
large part to radio broadcasts from northeastern Nova Scotia, recordings and musicians
travelling between the provinces. In Ontario’s Ottawa Valley fiddling and dance tradition,
pianists had maintained a strict bass-chord accompaniment pattern since World War II,
but many are now adopting traits drawn from the Cape Breton piano style. Abroad, the
piano style is admired for its distinctiveness; for example, Irish scholars Aileen Dillane
and Geraldine Cottar observe:
while Irish piano style’s ‘open’ sound is immediately identifiable, many vampers would feel
that a truly Irish sound has yet to emerge—considering, for instance, the distinctiveness of
the Cape Breton playing style … Through players like Tracey Dares, this is influencing the
Irish style. (Quoted in Vallely 2011: 544)

It is not surprising, then, that an accompaniment practice which probably began as an imi-
tation of American stride and old-time accompaniment became distinct, and has gone on
to broadly impact accompaniment practices abroad and become a source of regional pride
in Cape Breton.

Prospects for accompaniment studies

This case study highlights possibilities in ethnomusicology for treating accompaniment
‘self-consciously’ as a revealing, complex topic in its own right. I say ‘self-consciously’
because western musicology, in some ways, has foregrounded accompaniment for some
time in its emphasis on harmony and harmonisation. Nevertheless, studies of accom-
paniment as such are few. Some studies of jazz comping (Bakkum 2009; Berliner 2009;
Roothaan 1999) and Harlem stride (Scivales 2005) comment on accompaniment pro-
cesses and the uses of the pianists’ left hand. Studies of the Baroque basso continuo are
fairly common in musicology, and the style shares something with Cape Breton piano
 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FORUM 19

in its improvised practice and focus on the bass, although the Baroque continuo musi-
cians used notation more frequently and had a very different conception of rhythm
(see Miles 2011; Nuti 2007). There have been one-off studies of topics like piano
accompaniment to silent films, a practice with a semi-improvised element (Marks
1997). In popular music studies, a variety of studies look at arrangements, figuration
and instrumental elements of popular song (see Brackett 2000; Krims 2000; Walser
1993), but as with western classical musicology the division between lead/accompani-
ment or figure/ground is not very strongly marked; perhaps owing to its focus on meti-
culously produced recordings, rhythm sections are analysed more as orchestrations
essential to a finished product, rather than accompanists executing certain accompani-
ment practices, although some scholars interrogate accompaniment as a process (see
Koozin 2011). Meanwhile, scholars in computational science and artificial intelligence
map accompaniment patterns, encoding accompaniment practices as data through
which software can generate accompaniment (Jordanous and Smaill 2008; Lim et al.
2010; Raphael 2012).
Ethnomusicology is well positioned to contribute substantially to better understanding
how and why styles of accompaniment develop, and what they mean. Analyses by eth-
nomusicologists of musical transculturation (Kartomi 1981) and the adaptation of music
for global markets (Grauer 2014; Taylor 1997) suggest that the addition of accompani-
ment to previously melodic traditions, or the addition of rhythm sections to unaccom-
panied music of various kinds, is of great consequence aesthetically and economically,
and the stakes are potentially quite high. Accompaniment plays a role in music’s
overall sound and marketability, and can provoke clashes of opinion over matters of
musical change, modernisation, mediation and intercultural contact. Unfamiliar music
set against a backdrop of familiar accompaniment can shape how listeners experience
difference. By approaching Cape Breton piano accompaniment as a musical and cultural
process, I have shown some ways in which accompaniment matters, and have suggested
some ways in which an emerging and self-conscious field of accompaniment studies
might develop in future research.

Note
1. Barbara LeBlanc’s research from the mid-1980s included interviews with Cape Breton musi-
cians and dancers born in the early decades of the twentieth century. Some recall the avail-
ability of accompaniment being quite sporadic, and unaccompanied fiddling and dancing
being common.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to the research assistants who helped with this project, including Ian Hayes and Jasmine
McMorran (music transcriptions) and Maile Graham-Laidlaw, Carl Getto, Meggan Howatson,
Connall MacKinnon and Anita MacDonald (interview transcriptions and archival research).
Thank you to Heather Sparling and Richard MacKinnon for feedback on drafts of the article.
Musical transcriptions in this article are by Ian Hayes, edited by Chris McDonald.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
20 C. MCDONALD

Funding
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
(SSHRC) under the Insight Development Grant Program [grant number 430-2011-0216].

Notes on contributor
Chris McDonald is assistant professor of music at Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, Canada.
He is the author of Rush, Rock Music, and the Middle Class: Dreaming in Middletown (Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 2009) and conducts research on popular music, singer-songwriters, folk music and
fiddling on Canada’s east coast.

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