The Polaris pool this year is awfully white. So much so that it’s caused quite a stir in the media, both south and north of the 49th parallel.
I noticed, too. I was thinking about it a lot when the long list came out, but I didn’t say anything for a couple of reasons. One, I’m not a Polaris Prize juror, and so not privy to the inner workings of how the long list is made and exactly which albums were/are available to vote for.
Second, I wondered, was I just being sensitive? I had the same complaint about the Junos telecast – there were only white performers. Instead of the mosaic we pride ourselves on, here we were presented with a Kazimir Malevich monochrome. Yawn.
I’m not arguing there’s some great conspiracy in the vanilla mainstream of Canadian media. Actually, maybe I am. Being formerly of the monthly glossy publishing world, where decision-makers openly discuss the fact that people of colour allegedly don’t sell magazines (Vanity Fair just had its first black woman on the cover in six years!) – I can’t believe that those same things aren’t discussed behind the scenes at television networks.
And so the Polaris. This cool, great, relatively new way to celebrate Canadian music. The perfect opportunity for representation of our rich and diverse culture of music. And, over the years, there have been diverse fields. But the end result has been pretty one-dimensional. The first six years the award went to white male after white male after white male. I think white men make fantastic music and deserve to be congratulated for it. But, really? Finally, Feist bucked the trend last year with her win for Metals. (This year’s shortlist is incredibly gender-balanced.)
It may be true that white people really did put out 35 of the 40 best Canadian albums this year. But it just seemed unbalanced: not one black solo artist? Only a couple of acts at all with diversity?
Yesterday, even the L.A. Times thought it was odd: “Canada’s Polaris Music Prize is putting the “white” in the Great White North,” said Mikael Wood.
In a column yesterday for the National Post, Exclaim senior editor Stephen Carlick effectively tears most of Wood’s hastily fired-off argument (that eight of the 10 shortlisted bands are indie-rock, and that the remaining two – A Tribe Called Red, who are First Nations, and Zaki Ibrahim, who is a Canadian of South-African descent – are not). Carlick is right – the genre attributions are nonsensical and saying that white people indie-rock and anyone with a lick of diversity doesn’t, is absurd.
Carlick is also right when he says that associating race and genre is dangerous, absolutely.
But let’s remove genre from the argument completely. It’s a bit optimistic to claim that the Polaris Prize doesn’t see (or should I say, hear) colour. It’s not about there being no hip-hop on the shortlist, as Carlick alludes to. (Actually, the fact that Carlick uses hip-hop as the example against Wood’s genre-equals-skin-colour argument is kinda counterintuitive to his counterargument, isn’t it? Now I’m confused.)
As we know, there are plenty of successful white rappers in this country (SonReal, D-Sisive, Buck 65, Classified, Madchild – actually, most of the rap nominees at this year’s Junos were white). So it’s not about that. It’s about the continued elevation and portrayal of one skin colour in the media, which doesn’t reflect the reality. You take all the artists eligible for the Polaris Prize. You pick 40 that get a lot of media attention, hardly any aren’t white. You pick 10 that get even more media attention, still fewer are a “visible minority” (a dangerous and overused word – yes, yes, I know).
Is this the Polaris’s fault? Not really. As Carlick outlines, the Polaris’s job is to pick the best albums of the year, regardless of genre or gender or appearance of any kind. It is not the Polaris’s job to have a token anything on the list. The Polaris is not The Bachelor or Survivor.
But it’s still something worth noticing, if only as a symptom of a larger social issue.
And noticing is not a “knee-jerk liberal reaction,” as Carlick puts it. Until skin colour doesn’t matter in this country, it’s not a bad thing to notice. And skin colour still matters in this country.
But, a lot of other things matter too. And in the Polaris shortlist I see a Canada that I’m super effing pumped about: two lesbian sisters (Tegan & Sara), three First Nations electro stars who incorporate heritage into one of the newest genres of music (A Tribe Called Red), and a dozen Quebecois crescendo-punk anti-capitalists (Godspeed You! Black Emperor). I acknowledge that diversity and culture are not tied to skin colour. Among the finalists, there are cultures and heritages and belief systems and languages galore.
Maybe someday we shall achieve a post-racial utopia and see Canada fully reflected on broadcasts and in awards banquets. Or, maybe Carlick’s right – we’re already in the utopia, and I’m the backwards dickhead for still seeing colour (or lack thereof) everywhere.
