To Those Governing Canadian Music

The NAC has played a critical role in the national branding of Canada in the fifty years
following the country’s centenary. But at the same time that the nation was defining itself as a multicultural society, the cultural institutions that were emerging (the NAC included) failed to contribute to this branding initiative. The exclusivity perpetuated on its stage, can be traced back to elitist institutions who excluded non-classical music in order to exclude non-white people (Kajikawa 2018).

This is a perpetuated cycle that can be broken by representation of popular artists in programming. This change in programming would correctly brand Canada as the multicultural country that it is, while it would at the same time uplift and encourage Canadian popular artists to continue working hard to create high quality music.

Future studies should expand on this data to evaluate representation in the years following 1976. Evaluating the representation of popular music programming in the last decade would be especially important, as the NAC adapted its mandate to include indigenous programming - rectifiying an issue built into its structural policy. There is great value of representation in reflecting the multicultural ideals in federal policy. Exploring Canada's representation of popular artists on NAC's stages from 1976 onward, keeps those governing Canadian music accountable to its past and present activity.