By Daryl Johnson (CIVL DJ) – Email
Print Edition: October 2, 2013
Editor’s Note: the Polaris Prize is an annual award given to a Canadian album based on “artistic merit,” decided on by a jury of Canadian music journalists. This year’s winner, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, for their album ‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, is known for its anti-capitalist, politically-minded liner notes, occasional audio samples, and interview statements, which are sometimes taken as context for their mostly wordless post-rock brand of music. After winning the prize, the band released a statement criticizing the present culture of music media and promotion. This prompted a mostly positive response from many popular music blogs, with a smaller number of outlets criticizing the move, as in Canada.com’s “The glorious hypocrisy of GY!BE’s Polaris Prize statement,” which argued on the case of the band’s benefitting from the event’s exposure and subsequent touring announcement with Nine Inch Nails.
I don’t understand the ridiculous backlash aimed at Godspeed You! Black Emperor (GY!BE) for what it decided to do with its Polaris prize winnings. Most of those commenting on the controversy appear not to care much about independent music in Canada, its creation and distribution, or the proliferation of the “scenes” needed for it to thrive. If this is the case, why would anyone be silly enough to put stock in what some corporate shill, critical of Canada’s most popular source of angst-ridden anarchistic diatribes, has to say about a band known for its contemptuous chicanery? GY!BE giving away its rightfully won prize money should not come as a shock to anyone; it’s not as if they went out and spent the money on oxys.
Around the world, people give away their winnings all the time, just like these gracious folks. Sometimes I think people forget who GY!BE are, have been, and will continue to be: a collective with many interests, ideas, and directions in which it casts a message of artistic anarchy. GY!BE has existed on the fringes for nearly 20 years for a reason; people don’t like the band’s music, attitudes, or the ideas they spread. That being said, I think GY!BE not only welcomes controversy but revels in it.
By trying to call the group hypocritical, national media has done exactly what GY!BE hoped it would, giving even more exposure to the band, the Polaris prize, and the Canadian indie scene. How many more Canadian music fans now know who A Tribe Called Red, Anciients, Suuns, or Whitehorse are? These bands are practically unheard of nationwide, yet all play a huge part in further developing the sound identity of our country.
Perhaps we should just give the award to Feist every year? She should win – her music is uber-challenging and not made for everyone. Or maybe we should let 54/40 win, because clearly that band has yet to get its fill of government handouts. Perhaps we could just leave a pile of government arts funding in the middle of a Toronto street – that way it could really go to artists who need it: the ones on streetcorners, playing for their own enjoyment.
Now, GY!BE won some money it didn’t want, and its members decided to use that money to better the lives of members of our society who are either currently without the means to create music or serving a sentence in prison wishing they had access to music. It’s proven that musical therapy works. It heals the not-so-sick, eases the terminal, and reduces mental strife among inmates (particularly violent inmates). So why does anyone feel the need to jump all over GY!BE? Or is this a result of the media thinking that once an artist is successful, that artist somehow owes us some civility or sense of propriety? Bands have been flipping the finger to corporate sponsors and awards shows for years and still accepting their awards; this is nothing new. The silliest of the gripes against GY!BE is that in the past decade, the vernacular of the band has been degraded to a barely readable and offensive level. Grow up.
The simple fact: GY!BE won a prize it didn’t ask for, then decided to do what it wanted with the prize money, while decrying the corporate nature of the indie scene in Canada.
Yeesh, imagine if they signed to Arts and Crafts Productions or Paper Bag Records, then took the money it made from that corporate sponsorship (both A&C and PB use Universal for distribution) and used that to provide inmates with musical instruments? Or what if GY!BE does start a new program which facilitates musical experiences for inmates in Quebec, which then spreads to the rest of Canada’s prisons and suddenly we have inmates who are less violent and who hope to integrate back into our society. Or, more to the point, what if the exposure of this story makes more Canadians care about independent music-making in Canada?
Would these be such awful outcomes to the latest GY!BE shenanigans? I for one hope the band continues to piss people off and make a mockery of the Canada’s so-called “indie scene,” thus keeping the rest of us on our toes – with zero expectation comes zero disappointment.
