By: David Hiltbrand / Knight Ridder
Turns out Avril Lavigne isn't just an inscrutable pop Smurf. The singer, in the midst of a North American tour, is also a modern-day pioneer for Canada.
The extraordinary success of the 20-year-old sk8er girl from tiny Napanee, Ontario, opened the borders for a raft of precocious female talent from up north, including Fefe Dobson, 19, Skye Sweetnam, 16, and Keshia Chante, 16.
Actually, Chante hasn't managed to cross over with the rest. Though the impressive young soul singer from Ottawa may well be the most talented of the bunch _ she ran the table at the Canadian Urban Music Awards two weeks ago, she is the only one who hasn't landed on Billboard's Heatseekers chart, the only one who hasn't been on MTV's video countdown, "TRL," or featured on AOL's influential music programming.
She is, most tellingly, the only one of the four signed to a Canadian, rather than U.S., record label.
The disproportionate musical influence of the U.S. recording industry makes it difficult for purely Canadian acts to turn a profit, says Jennifer Hyland, artist-and-repertoire manager for Chante's label, BMG Canada.
"Even if we're platinum in Canada (100,000 units sold), it doesn't mean we're recovering the money we spent," Hyland says. "We need the international sales to start making money. And the first question they ask when we pitch an artist to Germany or Australia is, `What is the U.S. doing with it?'"
Our northern neighbor is not only less populous _ 32 million compared with 295 million here _ its musical tastes are unusually balkanized.
Nova Scotia and other eastern provinces nurture a distinctive, rather rural, often fiddle-based folk music. Quebec fiercely maintains its Gallic identity.
"After last year's `Canadian Idol,'" Hyland says, "we signed the winner and the fourth runner-up who spoke no English at all, only French."
Tipping the trade imbalance even further is the cultural hegemony we enjoy over Canada.
"The media in Canada, 80 percent are American _ the fashion magazines, the TV, and teen magazines, all of it," Hyland says. "Even Much Music, our music channel, is importing (MTV's) `Newlyweds' and `Making the Band.'"
Radio gives Canadian artists their only home-field advantage with a rule that at least 40 percent of all music played must be homegrown.
As a consequence, Canadian musicians, from the time of their first talent showcases, are eager to attract the attention of U.S. labels.
Ken Krongard, the music executive who discovered Lavigne for the Arista label, recalls the mindset of her first manager.
"Cliff (Fabri) was all about the American labels," Krongard notes. " ... The deals are much bigger and the (promotional) power of the American labels is far superior. They can break artists on a worldwide level. There aren't many Canadian artists signed to Canadian labels who have broken worldwide."
Without Arista's influence, Lavigne's bratty-punk 2002 debut, "Let Go," would not have sold 14 million copies. The young singers in her wake may not reach such sales heights, but thanks to her, it's cool to be Canadian.
Back in 2000, Krongard was one of few Americans actively scouting for talent in Canada.
"I wanted to look in virgin territory and Canada was being undersearched," he says. "People were intimidated to travel to what they perceived as overseas, but it's a short flight to Toronto and they speak English."
Still, it took a discerning ear. When he first heard Lavigne, she was a raw 15-year-old, warbling her way through a derivative brand of country karaoke.
"A lot of young Canadian singers come from the country scene," Krongard says. "It's the only place for them to perform and hone their skills."
With her latest album, "Under My Skin," Lavigne's style has evolved into to a sophisticated and personal brand of power pop. Curiously, though, her next single, due Nov. 9, is the theme song from the "SpongeBob SquarePants" movie.
At this point, all four artists have had a chance to experience life on both sides of the border, especially the pop-oriented Sweetnam, who traded places with a teenager in Lexington, Ky., for a week for the ABC Family series "Switched!"
"It's totally different down there," Sweetnam says from her home in Bolton, Ontario. "Everything revolves around the school and the cheerleaders. Up here, everything is hanging out and chilling. A lot of our activities are outside school."
All remark on the more relaxed pace and civility of their native country.
"In Canada, people on the streets seem to talk to each other and hold the door open for one another," Lavigne says via e-mail. "They'll even say hi to strangers on the sidewalk. It's more laid-back than America."
Yet, all are vigilant for any signs of their own Canadian provincialism.
"I call beenies `toques' and I call soda `pop,'" Lavigne says. "In fact, I can't use the words `beenie' or `soda' because they're just too weird for me."
Sweetnam recalls: "When I was recording (the song) `Tangled Up in Me,' there's a lyric that goes, `Do you want to know more/More about me?' And the producer stopped me and said, `You went a little too Canadian on that line.'" In other words, "about" came out as "aboot."
Accents aside, what is most noticeable about this freshet of talent from the north is its diversity.
"My mom is white," she says on the phone as she is being driven to an appearance in Montreal. "She's Canadian, (native) Indian and Irish. My dad is black. He's Jamaican and Asian. I think of myself as a rainbow child."
"Canada is at a crossroads right now," says Rebecca Sullivan, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Calgary. "What's great about this emerging group of female artists is it shows that Canada is finally growing up and recognizing itself as an urban nation with many subcultures coexisting in large cities."
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