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Product Details
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Product Description
Review
"The ongoing mission of Le Voyageur and the Six String Nation project is to encourage Canadians to tell the story of Canada from a multitude of perspectives, to know and embrace Canada's diversity as a kind of commonality and to celebrate the power of music." (Inside Toronto 20090318)
"Six String Nation, a marvelous and optimistic and quintessentially Canadian book." (Bill Richardson 20090617)
"Six String Nation is a reminder of the power and position of music in Canada today. Putting everything else aside, maybe it is music that holds this nation together, the magic of singing and playing that unites us: Acadians, Quebecois, Albertans, First Nations Peoples, Metis, Ontarians, men, women, professional musicians and amateur pickers alike." (Owen Sound Times 20090626)
"Jowi Taylor, a Toronto broadcaster...set out in 1995 to create an object more quintessentially Canadian then hockey, Tim Horton's doughnuts, insulin, the CN Tower and Lake Louise. Eleven years later, he was able to hold it in his hands -- an acoustic guitar made from 64 bits of Canadian history." (Vancouver Sun 20090730)
"Braiding the stories of the guitar, its pieces, and its fans makes for a powerful back story, a kind of magic that is positively galvanizing." (Boing Boing 20090923)
"The Voyageur was a true labour of love for this writer, radio host and producer, involving some science, some alchemy, and a whole lot of hard work. Six String Nation, the book chronicling the Voyageur (and Taylor's) journey from an initial idea to a very tangible reality, was published just over two months ago. It paints a vivid picture of Canada through stunning portraiture and insightful interviews with a wide range of people who contributed to the project, or who had the opportunity to try their hand at playing the Voyageur once it was finally finished." (Pique News Magazine 20090924)
"Collectively, these relics sound like the contents of a small and somewhat eccentric museum of Canadiana. And so they are -- except that this museum makes sweet music when it's strummed, because this repository of true-north iconography is an acoustic guitar.'" (Georgia Straight 20091010)
"People seem to love Taylor and his patriotic axe." (Times Colonist )
"Six String Nation, a marvelous and optimistic and quintessentially Canadian book." (Bill Richardson 20090617)
"Six String Nation is a reminder of the power and position of music in Canada today. Putting everything else aside, maybe it is music that holds this nation together, the magic of singing and playing that unites us: Acadians, Quebecois, Albertans, First Nations Peoples, Metis, Ontarians, men, women, professional musicians and amateur pickers alike." (Owen Sound Times 20090626)
"Jowi Taylor, a Toronto broadcaster...set out in 1995 to create an object more quintessentially Canadian then hockey, Tim Horton's doughnuts, insulin, the CN Tower and Lake Louise. Eleven years later, he was able to hold it in his hands -- an acoustic guitar made from 64 bits of Canadian history." (Vancouver Sun 20090730)
"Braiding the stories of the guitar, its pieces, and its fans makes for a powerful back story, a kind of magic that is positively galvanizing." (Boing Boing 20090923)
"The Voyageur was a true labour of love for this writer, radio host and producer, involving some science, some alchemy, and a whole lot of hard work. Six String Nation, the book chronicling the Voyageur (and Taylor's) journey from an initial idea to a very tangible reality, was published just over two months ago. It paints a vivid picture of Canada through stunning portraiture and insightful interviews with a wide range of people who contributed to the project, or who had the opportunity to try their hand at playing the Voyageur once it was finally finished." (Pique News Magazine 20090924)
"Collectively, these relics sound like the contents of a small and somewhat eccentric museum of Canadiana. And so they are -- except that this museum makes sweet music when it's strummed, because this repository of true-north iconography is an acoustic guitar.'" (Georgia Straight 20091010)
"People seem to love Taylor and his patriotic axe." (Times Colonist )
Product Description
A musical quilt, this unique guitar becomes a passionate metaphor for Canada.
The Six String Nation guitar, Voyageur, is made from sixty-seven pieces of Canadian history: Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle is a tone bar, the Grey Nuns convent in Winnipeg-once a classroom to Louis Riel-makes up the back and sides, Paul Henderson's hockey stick from the 1972 Canada/Russia Summit Series is a detail on the pickguard, the sacred Golden Spruce of Haida Gwaii forms the top face and gold from Maurice Richard's 1955-56 Stanley Cup ring adorns the ninth fret.
Thanks to a crazed determination to share this guitar and his impassioned vision of Canada with as many Canadians as possible, Taylor has taken the guitar to festivals, conferences, schools and community events, from sea to sea to sea. Along the way, countless citizens have added their own definitions of what it means to be Canadian, either through music or the very act of engaging with this object that is at once artifact and living instrument. Six String Nation allows them to, literally, hold history in their hands-and add a little harmony of their own.
Illustrated with documentary photos and gorgeous portraits of the people that Voyageur has encountered, Six String Nation chronicles the journey of one special guitar, from conception through construction to the road it still travels across our land.
(20100131)
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Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The story of one man's quest to express the nature of his country through the creation of an artifact,
By C. F. Casey Guitars (Manitoba, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Six String Nation (Paperback)
SIX STRING NATION is the story of one man's quest to express the nature of his country through the creation of an artifact.
In 1995, Jowi Taylor conceived the idea of a guitar in which each part would derive from some aspect of Canadian history, geography or culture. The guitar, once built, would be taken on tour throughout the country and photographed in the hands of Canadians both famous and obscure. It took some ten years to bring the project to fruition. This book is the record of the process. Much of the book deals with the acquisition of the guitar's raw materials, and the sources certainly make a wide sweep across the gamut of Canadiana: wood from the Haida Gwaii Golden Spruce, Wayne Gretsky's hockey stick, and Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle; copper from the Parliamentary Library roof and gold from Rocket Richard's Stanley Cup ring; stone, bone, horn and antler from the wilds across the country. Almost every one of the guitar's sixty-nine components came from a different source. The description of the selecting, locating and acquiring of the components is a fascination, and at times a very emotional, one. As I read about the steps necessary to take wood from the Golden Spruce (sacred to the Haida Gwaii First Nation), I found myself pausing at times to wipe the mist from my eyes. It's a powerful story. It seems particularly appropriate that this wood should be used for the guitar's soundboard, since the soundboard is in a sense the instrument's soul, determining the quality of the sound. The book also contains an interview with George Rizsanyi, the luthier commissioned to actually construct the guitar. The photographs are an extremely important part of this book. There are shots of the acquisition of some of the raw materials and of the actual construction process. But most importantly, there are photos of Canadians holding and playing the guitar. Some of the people are instantly recognizable, some are identified in captions, but most are simply anonymous, ordinary Canadians like you and me. (I was photographed with the guitar, at the Winnipeg Folk Festival ,but didn't make it into the book.) There are all sorts of poses: some formal, some playful; some actually making music, some merely holding or looking at the guitar, some working it like a fashion accessory. Every time I browse back through the photos, I notice something I hadn't seen before. But the final impression SIX STRING NATION left me with was simply the passion that Jowi Taylor put into his project. I suppose, in the final analysis this is a love story; a moving tale of a man's love for his country and how that love came to be expressed in music and art.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book to keep out on the coffee table,
By
This review is from: Six String Nation (Paperback)
I read Six String Nation through as soon as I got it, and was pleasantly surprised to see all the great photos of people playing and holding the guitar. Some of them are musicians I have met, so that was a nice connection too. The book and the guitar tell a great story, and I have learned things about this country that I had never heard before. It makes me want to find out more details on some of these fascinating stories.
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