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Nation Branding for your iPod? Canada Votes for a National Playlist.

Nation Branding for your iPod? Canada Votes for a National Playlist. Photo by FHKE via Flickr, (Creative Commons)
Photo by FHKE via Flickr, (Creative Commons)

Call it change you can listen to: CBC Radio is hoping to get some made-in-Canada music onto incoming President Obama’s iPod.

The Canadian broadcaster is accepting nominations for a “definitive Canadian playlist”—dubbed “49 Songs from North of the 49th Parallel”—to be unveiled on Obama’s inauguration day. “One of the best ways to know Canada is through the depth and breadth of our artistic expression,” said a CBC representative. “We’re excited about the new president, and we want him to be excited about us.”

So how do you go about compiling a definitive national playlist? CBC producers will whittle the suggestions from the public down to a manageable 100 most-nominated songs, and then online voting will cut the shortlist down to the final 49.

Sure, the project seems a tad goofy—realistically, Obama will have bigger things to worry about on Jan. 20 than whether he prefers Stompin’ Tom Connors or Gordon Lightfoot—but it got me thinking about music and national identity.

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