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Calgary Stampede Music picks for July 3

Calgary Stampede Music picks for July 3

Calgary Herald03-07-2025
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The pride of Grand Prairie, Tenille Townes has been a going concern since moving to Nashville 12 years ago, where she played sets at the iconic Bluebird Cafe and began participating in writing sessions with Music City songsmiths. She was only 17 when she received her first Canadian Country Musioc Award for Female Arts of the Year and has been accumulating awards, nominations and acclaim ever since. Her most recent single is Backfire, the catchy mid-tempo duet with fellow Canuck Nate Haller.
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The Ironwood doesn't need to alter its programming all that much during the Calgary Stampede since it's already a hotspot for roots music. But if your tastes lay a little more left-of-the-dial when it comes to country music, second-generation singer-songwriter Devin Cuddy is a safe bet. The son of Blue Rodeo co-leader Jim Cuddy, Devin has inherited his dad's expressive vocals and songwriting chops and adds his own dash of soul and R&B to the proceedings.
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Country singer Dallas Smith winks at Trump's annexation threats with 51-date tour

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Country singer Dallas Smith winks at Trump's annexation threats with 51-date tour

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Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes offers a timely look at the cowboy at Contemporary Calgary
Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes offers a timely look at the cowboy at Contemporary Calgary

Calgary Herald

time6 days ago

  • Calgary Herald

Kenneth Tam's Silent Spikes offers a timely look at the cowboy at Contemporary Calgary

It was no coincidence that Contemporary Calgary opted to open the exhibit to coincide with the 10-day run of the Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth. Whether or not the Calgary Stampede inspires revellers to entertain deep thoughts about cowboys and masculinity is unclear, but the imagery should certainly hit home. Tam himself didn't arrive in Calgary to officially open the exhibit until after the Stampede and did not have much knowledge about it. The multidisciplinary artist has chronicled the plight of Chinese migrant labourers in other projects. Tender is the Hand that Holds the Stone of Memory was a 2023 exhibit of sculptures and video installation based on the plight of thousands of Chinese labourers who built the Southern Pacific Railroad through Texas's Seminole Canyon, while Silent Spikes was initially commissioned by Queens Museum in 2021. Article content Article content Tam said he does not know much about the similar history of Chinese migrant workers in Alberta, but it is something that has been explored locally through museum and art exhibits as well. Both Canada and the U.S. drafted discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Acts in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to restrict Chinese immigration. In both countries, the stories of the Chinese labourers who built the railroad have been largely undocumented. Article content Silent Spikes not only addresses this absence in the historic record but also the lack of pop-culture representation of Asian-Americans in the Western narrative and genre. Article content 'A question for myself was 'Who gets to portray this character of the cowboy, specifically through the Western film,' Tam says. 'It's fairly specific as to who gets to embody this character. While it has evolved, it's still a pretty white idea of who this character is. ' Article content Still, Tam says the exhibit is meant to be layered and the various ideas — the cowboy narrative and archetype, the history of migrant workers — do 'not necessarily resolve themselves neatly.' Article content 'My goal through this project and really through all my work is for people to leave with more questions than answers,' he says. 'There is no natural way in which these things are meant to answer each other. There are supposed to be tensions or moments where things don't neatly fit into one another.' Article content

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