Canada is home to some of the biggest artists in the world.
From Drake, Justin Bieber, The Weeknd, Jessie Reyez to Celine Dion, Avril Lavigne and Nelly Furtado, it goes without saying Canadians have impacted music forever.
And believe it or not, this fascination made way for a full-blown PhD dissertation at the University of Western Ontario, which looked at how Canadians are changing the game in music and how they have used social media marketing to skyrocket their message.
Dr. Amara Pope spoke with Now Toronto about her in-depth study titled: Redefining R&B: The Online Marketing of Drake, Justin Bieber, and Jessie Reyez.”
Pope’s work also seeked to uncover the missing history of Canadian R&B which has, according to her, been ignored even from within Canada.
This goes back to incredible talents such as R&B, funk, and soul band Crack of Dawn and Canadian jazz pianist and composer Oscar Peterson, to name a few, who didn’t get the respect they deserved for what they brought to the table.
Pope’s work touches on how racial differences played, and continue to play, a major role in the success and visibility of artists, then and now.
“I was passionate about choosing those three artists because they represent different Canadian national narratives. Jessie Reyez represents the Canadian immigrant struggle as a Canada-Columbian woman. Justin Bieber represents that traditional Canadian narrative of the great white north and Drake represents different ideas of multiculturalism and identities,” she told Now Toronto in an interview.
Although not born in the 60s or 70s, Pope herself faced challenges when moving from Toronto to a small town in Ontario and being known as “the brown family in the corner house.”
“We were very visibly and culturally different and I really relied on music to help me feel seen and heard and that included a lot of R&B music,” she said.
She also said that it was that cultural awareness that would eventually be the driving force in her studies years later.
It was during her Masters that she looked at how artists use their unique cultures to tell their stories through music and in part influencing how people view identities.
“I did that for Drake and how he represents a lot of cultures and identities in different music videos. I also found that a lot of Canadian immigrants worked together to mix cultural sounds in R&B music like hip hop, reggae, and socca to gain that visibility.”
Soon after, she would double down on her studies and use her PhD research to expand on that idea and look at how artists in Canada changed and redefined “R&B-ness and Canadian-ness” in the music they created throughout their careers and most notably during the Black Lives Matter movement and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Canadian-immigrant struggle and a love for music ignited her passion for her 400-page study.
Music is no doubt being studied now more than ever, that’s why in 2021 Toronto Metropolitan University launched a course called “Deconstructing Drake & The Weeknd,” which made headlines all over the world.
