‘To Explore the World of Sound’: Music, silence and nation-building in Bing Bang Boom (1969)

The National Film Board documentary Bing Bang Boom (1969) depicts Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021) teaching seventh-grade students in a suburban public school in Scarborough, Ontario. A close study of the film informs the larger trajectory of the composer’s previous and later writings...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Organised sound : an international journal of music technology 2024-08, Vol.29 (2), p.111-130
Main Author: Magee, Gayle
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
20th century
Indigenous peoples
McLuhan, Herbert Marshall (1911-1980)
Music
Nation building
Nationalism
Native peoples
Native rights
Neocolonialism
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Summary:The National Film Board documentary Bing Bang Boom (1969) depicts Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer (1933–2021) teaching seventh-grade students in a suburban public school in Scarborough, Ontario. A close study of the film informs the larger trajectory of the composer’s previous and later writings and compositions over the next several decades, while a deeper dive into archival materials and concurrent productions from Canada’s National Film Board (NFB) illuminates the organisation’s strategy of nation-building at a crucial moment in the country’s history. Together, Schafer and the NFB illuminate Canada’s problematic relationship to Indigenous peoples, places and sounds.
ISSN:1355-7718
1469-8153
DOI:10.1017/S1355771824000025