Secret Frequency – Music, Community, and Ideas

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  • About
  • Canadian Festival Report Card
  • Artist Features
  • Resources
  • Artist Database

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  • Canadian Festival Report Card

    2017 Canadian Festival Report Card

    November 12, 2017 /

    The 2017 Festival Report Card is here! For the past twenty years, the music industry has seen its stages dominated by men in most genres and scenes.  With the exceptions of the occasional women-focused festivals, like Lilith Fair, women have tended to see very little representation on stages, and nowhere is that more noticeable than at a festival, where sometimes hours can pass before a woman, a racialized person, or an LGBTQ, Two-Spirited, or Gender Non-Binary person walks on stage as a member of a band. With that in mind, we’ve been tallying up the numbers, and are presenting them below. We’d like to give a huge thank you to…

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    Candace 0 Comments

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    2018 festival report card

    2018 Canadian Festival Report Card

    March 6, 2019
    2019 festival report card

    The Big Count – 2019 Festival Report Card

    June 18, 2019
    Canadian Festival Report Card

    2014 Canadian Festival Report Card

    September 12, 2014
  • Articles,  Big Ideas,  Events,  Ontario

    Music City – A strategy

    April 7, 2016 /

    The points I’ve included below – headlined ‘A Strategy for Music Peterborough‘ – was created with my hometown in mind, but swap out a few names and organizations and this would be useful in any city to frame the way you approach different sectors with a view to creating a cohesive push to highlight music (or, I think, almost any local art or cultural highlight) and create a Music City mentality. I’ve made a few edits from the original document to make explicit the sort of things that I take as a given, but which aren’t obvious to everyone (like gender parity, inclusion of racialized people, good working conditions, etc.). A…

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    Candace 0 Comments

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    A brief commentary on band websites and bios

    February 29, 2016

    Help Me Promote You

    October 10, 2012

    Ideas: the difference between a folk festival and a music festival

    November 12, 2013
  • Eaglewood Folk Festival
    Canadian Festival Report Card

    2015 Festival Report Card

    September 12, 2015 /

    In 2015, two volunteers collected data on festival lineups in our second iteration of the Canadian Festival Report Card. This report graded Ontario festivals on gender parity on their stages. Here are the results: A    45% – 50%+ (2 festivals) Home County Music & Art Festival ON – 61.11% Summerfolk ON – 60% B    35% – 44% (3 festivals) Hillside Festival ON – 38.10% CityFolk ON – 37.84% Live From The Rock Festival ON – 36.84% C    25% – 34% (2 festivals) Eaglewood Folk Festival ON – 33.33% Mariposa Folk Festival ON – 30% D – 15% – 24% (1 festival) Northern Lights Festival Boreal ON –…

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    Candace 0 Comments

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    2019 festival report card

    The Big Count – 2019 Festival Report Card

    June 18, 2019
    Canadian Festival Report Card

    2014 Canadian Festival Report Card

    September 12, 2014
    2018 festival report card

    2018 Canadian Festival Report Card

    March 6, 2019
  • Folk Alliance International Showcase
    Events

    Folk Alliance International Showcase

    February 17, 2015 /

    We’re heading on down to Kansas City in February with 3,000 of our closest friends and folkies to the Folk Alliance International Conference.  Secret Frequency’s own Candace Shaw will be there, presenting a showcase room of Trad & International artists. Private showcases are the gem of music conferences; they are the late-night, hotel-room, no amplification opportunities for artists to play to a very, very intimate crowd – as many people who can cram into a hotel room.  The next room over, there’s another band showcasing, and on and on, filling two full floors of the hotel with music and promoters and DJs and more.  You’re up against If you can…

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    Candace 0 Comments

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    Workshop: What Bookers Want – Band Promo 101 ONLINE

    March 10, 2020

    Folk Music Ontario Conference

    October 8, 2013
    The Conductor

    The Conductor – You’re Invited!

    March 13, 2020
  • Artists,  Manitoba,  Quebec

    Artist Spotlight: Claire Morrison

    January 7, 2014 /

    There’s something about Manitoba; it’s not the largest Canadian province, nor the most populous, but something in the air or the water or the quality of the light seems to create a terroir ((That one’s for you, Eli!)) that informs and supports the growth of great musicians.  Is it the long Winters, or the support of amazing organizations like Music Manitoba, or some other, less tangible factor? I don’t know, but somehow Manitobans seem to consistently delight me. I first heard Manitoban/Montrealler Claire Morrison at the Folk Music Ontario conference this past Autumn; I was part of a panel called Demo Derby, where artists bring a demo of a song and,…

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    Candace 2 Comments

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    Artist Spotlight: The Galpines

    April 23, 2020

    Artist Spotlight: Unbuttoned

    August 20, 2013
    Eekwol and T-Rhyme

    Artist Spotlight: Eekwol and T-Rhyme

    March 16, 2020
  • Ozere
    Artists,  Ontario

    Artist Spotlight: Ozere

    November 8, 2013 /

    For the duration of my life, guitars have driven almost all of the music around me.  Whether they be sensitive strummers or wailing rock gods, they’ve been sort-of inescapable.  And as I’ve moved through different jobs as a music booker, I’ve found my ears got kind-of worn-out on the guitar; even great players rarely catch my interest.  It often feels like the possibilities of the guitar have been explored, past the comfort of familiarity and straight on to dull repetition, especially in the Folk community. ((Sorry, dudes, it’s just… y’know. I still love a lot of guitar-playing acts; it just rarely gets me all excited to hear a new guitar-based…

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    Candace 1 Comment

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    Artist Spotlight: Rakkatak

    May 28, 2020

    A short list of women and gender non-conforming Canadian artists

    April 8, 2018

    Artist Spotlight: SATE

    May 14, 2020
  • Band Advice,  Events,  Ontario

    Folk Music Ontario Conference

    October 8, 2013 /

    The Folk Music Ontario Conference ((Formerly the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals!)) is an annual event that draws just under a thousand artists, presenters, and other music industry people to hang out together, jamming, learning, and talking music for four days every October.  It’s always a highlight of the year, a chance for bookers, promoters, writers, and DJs to hear some of the best emerging touring acts in one place over one weekend in one hotel. This year, the conference takes place in Mississauga, Ontario. Secret Frequency founder and writer Candace Shaw will be in all of her usual haunts at the conference – wherever there’s good music or good…

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    Candace 0 Comments

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    Musicians: It's worth paying artists - Chris Culgin CD - album art by Brendon Mroz

    Musicians: It’s worth paying artists.

    September 17, 2014

    A brief commentary on band websites and bios

    February 29, 2016
    Some thoughts about - and a good, green idea for - Music Submissions

    Some thoughts about – and a good, green idea for – Music Submissions

    April 22, 2016
  • Articles,  Events,  Ontario

    Ideas: A small-town musical roadshow

    October 3, 2013 /

    Ideas is a series talking about the communities, people, and ideas surrounding the music and culture industries. I love Ontario’s small towns; I grew up in one, a tiny village called Keene that, even today, is home to only about 500 people.  I’ve got no illusions about small-town life – it can be stifling and tortuous, especially for a young woman with unusual tastes who doesn’t fit in.  But there’s lots to be said for their sometimes-fading charms; heritage downtowns, odd little shops, idiosyncratic bits of architecture.  They’re monuments to a time when our country was more sparsely populated but prosperous, when travel was slower, and when even a small…

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    Candace 3 Comments

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    Help Me Promote You

    October 10, 2012
    NXNE PRESENTS A SAUSAGE FESTIVAL - Electric City Magazine

    NXNE PRESENTS A SAUSAGE FESTIVAL

    July 8, 2016
    On not getting gigs or grants - ChocQuibTown at The Distillery District

    On not getting gigs or grants.

    July 30, 2015

We sing on a Secret Frequency

Secret Frequency (formerly Canadian Women Working in Music) is and education and advocacy not-for-profit dedicated to raising the profile of under-represented people within Canada’s music community – women, trans and non-binary folks, racialized and Indigenous people, and more.

We’d like the music community to be as awesome as it pretends to be.  We want it to be a safe, good place to party, to create, and to work.

We’re ready to rock the boat, even if it’s the boat that some of us are sitting in; no organization or individual should be above question or consequences.

If you don’t invite us to the table, we’ll show up anyway, and we’ll bring our own chair.

We produce the annual Canadian Festival Report Card, grading Gender representation on Festival stages, skills workshops, research, and more.  We aim to create initiatives with demonstrable, measurable impact, which are also accessible and modular, designed to be shared and implemented by other organizations.

  • About
  • Canadian Festival Report Card
  • Artist Features
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