Saturday 24 October 2015

Calgary Songs Project: THANK YOU!

Well, that was a fun few weeks. Thanks to all the people we reached out to directly for giving us their top five lists for the High Performance Rodeo Calgary Songs Project. Thanks to all of you who read these wacky posts and left your ideas and suggestions. And thanks especially to Kenna Burima and One Yellow Rabbit for partnering with us on this fine thing we're doing.

We kind of thought that when we started this, we were just working on creating a list of 30 songs for the upcoming festivities in next year's 30th anniversary High Performance Rodeo. Along the way, though, we got to be reminded of a whole bunch of great music that we had forgotten about - or didn't know about in the first place. We also assembled a long list of just under 200 bands and musicians for consideration, and probably close to 250 songs. And there were some wonderful offshoot discussions that we had, one of which resulted in the creation of an extensive list of women who have contributed to our music scene.

Sure, there's stuff we're kind of surprised wasn't mentioned, but there's also a lot of stuff that was brought forward which, well, is going to make it tricky to thin down to 30 songs.

So what's next? From here, we're going to sift through the recommendations and look at areas where there's consensus about which bands and songs should be included. Part of what we'll be looking it is the relevance of the bands/songs, their diversity and, uh, how good they'll sound on the Calgary Tower carillon. As much as we love the Primrods' Barbet Lad, we're not sure that one would translate that well.

Keep watching the blog here for updates on the project over the next few months. The final list of 30 songs to celebrate 30 years will be unveiled at the launch of the High Performance Rodeo on January 7, 2016.

Thanks again!

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