Montreal, Music, and Vice

I created the charts below using data from Canadian Business Patterns, which tracks the numbers of businesses in Canada by NAICS code. They show trends in Quebec musicians, artists, festivals, studios, and performing arts presenters from 1999-2008, graphically demonstrating what has been clear to many for a while, namely, that in the 21^st century Montreal has experienced an artistic, and particularly musical, flowering.

The question is why. Is there a theory of musician flows and of the rise and fall of music scenes that can help to explain this and other similar cases? A general theory is probably impossible, but we can try to point to some key factors and assess their dynamics and impacts.

I was in New York City last week, and asked a musician friend about Montreal. His answer: Vice, the ultra-ironic hipster magazine that started in Montreal but has been in NYC since 1999. My friend suggested that Vice has a habit of portraying NYC as dead and Montreal as where the cool kids are, and that this has been pretty influential among the new crop of Brooklyn musicians already worried that their time is passing. The timeline neatly corresponds to that of the above charts, and also raises interesting questions about how migrants to New York, like the Vice editors, build cultural bridges back to their sending cities.

Some choice examples from the Vice Guide to Montreal (in typical Vice-speak) of what my friend seemed to have in mind:

The biggest difference between New York and Montreal is basically the quality of late-night snacks. New Yorkers are so high on Puerto Rican coke they don’t want to buy any drunk food. That means New York Jews have no incentive to up their bagel standards from some idiotic big bun with an asshole in the middle to a work of art like this. A sinewy, chewy, thin, fresh-out-of-the-oven, late-night Montreal classic. Can you not just smell their majestic beauty right now?

Now that the threat of provincial separation [in Montreal] has receded (for now), political stability has more or less returned, bringing back a lot of the Anglo business that left in the 50s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. With new ugly prefab condos spreading like AIDS in Africa, business is booming. More business means more people, more people means less housing, less housing means higher rents, and nobody can afford higher rents in Montréal because they’re a) too lazy to hold down a job or b) an artist (who’s lazy). But who can blame those dirty Montréal bohemians for being worried? Until last year, when some shit-sucking journalists started calling Montréal “the next Seattle,” this town was North America’s best-kept secret. For now, the rent is still low by North American standards and the food is cheap and amazing, which means that nobody needs to have a real job and everyone can concentrate on more important things like going out every night, getting drunk, seeing bands, and working on stupid things like their “art.” Now it seems that every shitty emo band in North America is moving to Montréal to be the next Arcade Fire, which is annoying for people who just want to be left alone in the best North American city ever….

…Why come here then? Two words: Sin City. In the 20s, prohibition-starved Americans flocked northward for unrestricted booze and pussy. Today, with lax laws on prostitution, drugs, and alcohol, things haven’t really changed. Plus add to that tons of green space, turn-of-the-century architecture, a killer music scene, and plenty of eye candy and there’s little reason not to visit. Things are also dirt cheap and, unlike New York City where you can blow $100 on your way to meet a friend for drinks, you can live like a king for a week on a couple of C-notes.

Clearly, there are other factors in play, like rents, job opportunities (musical and otherwise), social welfare, political culture, audience engagement, the cultural uniqueness, mood, and vibe of the city, recording opportunities, the quality and richness of the broader cultural scene (including restaurants, cafes, clubs, and such), ties back to New York, Paris, and Los Angeles, and much more. But what role do critical, taste-making aficionado publications like Vice play in shaping perceptions and realities about where the best places to make and appreciate music are, in this case and more generally? And, thinking about Montreal more specifically, any explanation for the recent drops in independent artists and musicians, preceded by a decline in sound recording studios from about 2004? What do those numbers portend for Montreal’s future?