For non-Canadians, Brave New Waves was a late night radio show aired by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for 20+ years, and officially cancelled recently by the network. It was the only way in Canada for a long, long time to hear music that didn’t fit nicely into the generic commercial machine. There are thousands of people much like me who grew up with BNW, and it helped shape our tastes for and understanding of music immensely. Without hyperbole, the music I make as SIGHUP, and in fact the person I am today, would not be the same without Brave New Waves.
Sadly, CBC rarely exhibited confidence in the show. Always tucked away neatly after midnight, obscured by a station (CBC2) whose programming catered mostly to the bluehairs, and seemingly in re-runs for the better part of the last year and a half. There was talk that the CBC wanted to turn BNW’s time slot in to something resembling its CBC3 “we are trying to be hip” format, which ultimately would have meant more countdown crap with Jian Gomeshi (it looks now that the countdown crap with Jian will be on CBC1). Instead, CBC will be over-emphasizing its jazz programming (you know, the music of Canada) on CBC2 to appeal to that great “youth” market, the 35- to 50-somethings. Oh well, at least I hope they get the jazz stuff right (of course, they won’t – no free jazz, no 70s fusion, no Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Herbie Hancock, Leroy Jenkins, Eric Dolphy, Sun Ra, &c, which will also mean rarely anything made after 1955 and certainly nothing without a pleasant tune warmly approved by Wynton Marsalis).
The CBC is programmed by people who aren’t interested in the CBC. Just look at what they’ve done to its television network. And consider, for a bilingual nation, why are the French and English networks perfectly ghettoized from each other? Or for a nation as multi-cultural and cosmopolitan as ours, why is there nothing on the radio networks aimed at people who don’t count Europe as central to the ancestry? I’d be perfectly happy to see BNW go, if instead they were going to play nothing but dancehall, French hip hop and bhangra every night.
Some folk have called for an end to public broadcasting in Canada, but Brave New Waves is the perfect example of why public broadcasting is a good thing. It allows for music programming that caters to all tastes and perspectives held by Canadians, including those that aren’t always big money makers.
We just need to replace the CBC with an organization that is actually interested in serving the public. Brave New Waves also tells us that there was a time when the CBC took some chances but I think that time has passed. The organization is just overrun with people who view themselves as apart from the Canadian populace.
So, farewell, Brave New Waves, and thanks for all the tunes.
