[MUSIC] Rita MacNeil, "Working Man"
Apr. 8th, 2010 01:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldThe music of Rita MacNeil is not the sort of music that I listen to, not usually, not at all as a point of fact.
Rita MacNeil is a Canadian cultural figure of some note, a woman born in the Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia, who achieved significant chart success in the 1980s and 1990s as a middle-of-the-road country-folk singer, not only in Canada but internationally: she had three albums at once on the Australian charts, even a #11 on the British charts in 1990 for "Working Man", originally released in 1989. I'm not that surprised that "Working Man" was such a hit in the United Kingdom, at the end of the Thatcher era; its subject certainly dealt intimately with one of the central issues of the Thatcher period.
Rita MacNeil's native Cape Breton entered the industrial era as Canada's leading coal province, miners coming not only from all over Atlantic Canada but from all over the North Atlantic world--Jews, Lebanese, Ukrainians, Barbadians--to constitute a tight-knit working class culture with few parallels in the more traditional areas of Atlantic Canada but with many parallels in the tight-knit coal miners' cultures to be found elsewhere in the world: Wales, Appalachia, Silesia, the Donetsk Basin. Life for the coal miners' community was difficult, with the sorts of appalling safety conditions that regularly results in terrible catastrophes--China's long slew of mine disasters, or more recent events in Appalachia, come quickly to mind--and coal miners' families often living in poverty in ill-serviced company towns. It's not surprising, really, that industrial Cape Breton became one of the major centres of working-class radicalism in Canada, much like its counterparts elsewhere in North America and Europe. Like many of these areas, coal mining in Cape Breton entered a steep post-war decline as cheaper and better sources of coal became available, not withstanding activist workers and government intervention. Thatcher crushed the coal miners through political action; Cape Breton dealt with its coal mining industry through slow, hopeless, managed decline.
With the mines' closure in 2001, the coal mining culture in Industrial Cape Breton has dissipated, perhaps falling prey to the sort of slow-motion dissolution of communities, as mass unemployment and general hopelessness takes hold, described here that hit the coal-mining areas of the United Kingdom, and likely others. Life for these people is almost certainly safer than when the mines were open, but it strikes me as somewhat worrisome that we're so quickly forgetting about it, in truth, and rather sad that the strong sense of identity and community associated with that old life which at least gave people hope for the future is gone. Working-class sufferings aren't only limited to Appalachian coal mines, you know.
Rita MacNeil is a Canadian cultural figure of some note, a woman born in the Atlantic Canadian province of Nova Scotia, who achieved significant chart success in the 1980s and 1990s as a middle-of-the-road country-folk singer, not only in Canada but internationally: she had three albums at once on the Australian charts, even a #11 on the British charts in 1990 for "Working Man", originally released in 1989. I'm not that surprised that "Working Man" was such a hit in the United Kingdom, at the end of the Thatcher era; its subject certainly dealt intimately with one of the central issues of the Thatcher period.
It’s a working man l am
And I’ve been down under ground
And I swear to God if l ever see the sun
Or for any length of time
I can hold it in my mind
I never again will go down under ground
At the age of sixteen years
Oh he quarrels with his peers
Who vowed they’d never see another one
In the dark recess of the mines
Where you age before your time
And the coal dust lies heavy on your lungs
Rita MacNeil's native Cape Breton entered the industrial era as Canada's leading coal province, miners coming not only from all over Atlantic Canada but from all over the North Atlantic world--Jews, Lebanese, Ukrainians, Barbadians--to constitute a tight-knit working class culture with few parallels in the more traditional areas of Atlantic Canada but with many parallels in the tight-knit coal miners' cultures to be found elsewhere in the world: Wales, Appalachia, Silesia, the Donetsk Basin. Life for the coal miners' community was difficult, with the sorts of appalling safety conditions that regularly results in terrible catastrophes--China's long slew of mine disasters, or more recent events in Appalachia, come quickly to mind--and coal miners' families often living in poverty in ill-serviced company towns. It's not surprising, really, that industrial Cape Breton became one of the major centres of working-class radicalism in Canada, much like its counterparts elsewhere in North America and Europe. Like many of these areas, coal mining in Cape Breton entered a steep post-war decline as cheaper and better sources of coal became available, not withstanding activist workers and government intervention. Thatcher crushed the coal miners through political action; Cape Breton dealt with its coal mining industry through slow, hopeless, managed decline.
With the mines' closure in 2001, the coal mining culture in Industrial Cape Breton has dissipated, perhaps falling prey to the sort of slow-motion dissolution of communities, as mass unemployment and general hopelessness takes hold, described here that hit the coal-mining areas of the United Kingdom, and likely others. Life for these people is almost certainly safer than when the mines were open, but it strikes me as somewhat worrisome that we're so quickly forgetting about it, in truth, and rather sad that the strong sense of identity and community associated with that old life which at least gave people hope for the future is gone. Working-class sufferings aren't only limited to Appalachian coal mines, you know.
