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This podcast is for and about soldiers of the Canadian Army.
Its primary goal is to provide them with useful information through thoughtful and open discussions that reflect their mutual interests and concerns.
Though soldiers are our primary audience, the topics covered on this podcast should be relevant to anyone who supports our soldiers or who has an interest in Canadian military matters.
Hi. I'm Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. Go to any major military event and you'll see them there: musicians. The military has a long standing history of epic bands to carry troops into battle, add flavour to events whether they're solemn or joyful, and provide entertainment in the communities where soldiers live Here talking to us about military musicians are Corporal Hélène Fortier...
Cpl Fortier:That's me!
Capt Orton:...and Corporal Michel Cousineau..
Cpl Cousineau:Thanks for having us!
Capt Orton:...who are part of the band of the Governor General's Foot Guards.
Capt Orton:Okay. So here's a thing that a lot of people might not know is musicians are their own trade within the Army. So it's definitely a thing that we do. The military's job as a whole is to kinda defend Canada and destroy our enemies and such.
Capt Orton:Why does the military need musicians?
Cpl Fortier:I guess when you first look at it, it's a valid question. Like, what do we bring? Because what we bring to the military might not be as obvious. Yes, we're not the ones that will go at the front and defend against the enemy. We're kind of in in the back seat here, but we provide a lot of indirect value to support our brothers and sisters in the military.
Cpl Fortier:On the psychological side of it, whenever they have funerals, whenever they lose brothers and sisters in arms, were there for those ceremonies that are so important. Imagine having a remembrance day not having a trumpet player playing the last post. They need to grieve sometimes or they need to celebrate and we're there for that, we're there for their party time and they need to decompress because the job of the soldiers is so intense sometimes. And we're not the only ones who have career in the back seat, you know. The office people, the medical people, sometimes they're not actively the soldier with the rifle at the front, but there's so many career opportunities in the military, and they're not always super related to what we perceive as the job of a soldier.
Cpl Fortier:We are being thanked regularly by all levels of ranks in the military because we bring something. But, yes, it doesn't doesn't look that obvious. So your question is very valid.
Capt Orton:You know, I really like that answer too because there is definitely a value in emphasizing a joyful time, makes that time better. It adds to the value of that decompression experience. Or like you said, we have to go through that grieving process or, you know, have that decompression. And I think also on the other side of the house, some people might make the argument, oh, well, why not just get civilian musicians? But it's, like, having somebody who gets it, and it's integrated into that whole life, that whole system.
Capt Orton:They understand kind of what you're going through, what the military is, how it all functions, and how it all comes together. Having somebody who understands that, being a part of it, it's it's your team that's helping you out and and sharing that moment with you. So I think you hit the nail on the head. Like, that's a really value add that maybe people don't spend a lot of time considering.
Cpl Cousineau:Well, the military has a long history of, music within the regiments going all the way back to even during wartime, how music really brings people together, and you'd have your troops singing various wartime tunes. Every unit has regimental marches, and, we perform those when we play for various functions, but, mess dinners, for example. And, when we play a regimental march, the members from that unit will usually stand up. Some of them are so proud to hear their march. They'll get up on their chair, or I've seen them get up on the table.
Cpl Cousineau:Right. Some people will gladly sing along. So not only do we provide ambiance for the dinner itself, but we, we get to recognize those regimental marches afterwards. We often parade in public, and, we are the face of the military in the public eye. We provide a connection to, the public because they don't have a chance to see our troops in training or our troops in combat, but they get to see troops on parade in ceremonial dress and, provides that much needed link.
Cpl Cousineau:So I think, we we wear many hats, both, literally and figuratively.
Cpl Fortier:And, we also do concerts for the general public, we do military functions, or diplomats events, like we do music at their dinners or their meetings and cocktails and stuff like that. We're part of, a lot of parades inside military events like changing of commands and in the different units. We bring, marches and we're part of the official ceremonies. Oh, we have so many aspects that we are a part of.
Capt Orton:And then I think the other part is there's a lot of non musical duties that musicians do too. You wanna talk about that?
Cpl Cousineau:Well, most of our duties are musical in nature, so we do need to maintain a basic level of training. So we do need to maintain our personal weapons training. There's also the force test that we need to complete every year to make sure that we're maintaining a level of fitness.
Cpl Fortier:And that makes me think what you just said that musicians are, in general, very fit. They're not less fit than the others. So we can also participate at, different missions inside Canada for flooding and for help during the pandemic. So there are different tasks that the military does for the country that musicians can do. A lot of us have done some clerk jobs and sometimes, we we can still be deployed in anywhere in the world doing clerk work.
Cpl Fortier:So sometimes it's not only the music, we also do other jobs in the military.
Capt Orton:So how does somebody become a musician in the Forces? How do how does it all get started?
Cpl Cousineau:Well, in my experience, I had a couple friends that joined to play with the Ceremonial Guard on Parliament Hill, And they had a blast and told me that I needed to join and do the same. I wasn't really aware of the opportunities available to musicians in the military until my colleagues explained to me their experience. So most musicians that, are part of the Governor General's Foot Guards are students in university and they'll apply through their local recruiting center, complete their BMQ, basic military qualifications, and then join their local regiment, start playing with the band.
Capt Orton:How'd you get your start?
Cpl Fortier:Oh, my start was very different. I could have been starting back in university when I was in Quebec City, but nobody was doing any recruiting in my university back then, and I had no friends doing it, no family in the military. So I did really, like, jobs at minimum salary that were not necessarily rewarding where I could have been doing that. First of all, the musicians in the military are, for almost the majority, already trained musician. The military, they give us some training, but we arrive by music audition.
Cpl Fortier:So we're usually trained ahead. We're usually, we have music degrees, so, which I had. So anyway, fast forward, my twenties, my thirties, moved to Ottawa, became a teacher, a mom, still playing a bit of music on the civilian side. And only in my forties, I was playing in a civilian band, and the teacher from my school board, who's in the military, approached me. And she said, why don't you join the governor general, Foote guards?
Cpl Fortier:And I said, what is this? I had lived in Ottawa for years and didn't even know it existed. I knew ceremonial guard. I was bringing my daughter to the parades every summer and thought with a bit of, oh, I should have been doing that when I was a student and kind of, oh, I passed the moment and I'm too old now. So fast forward, I was in my forties and this colleague said, why don't you join the footguards?
Cpl Fortier:And I said, what do I need to do? And she said, oh, you go for an audition. And I said, do I have to do real military training? I called it boot camp. Yeah.
Cpl Fortier:That's right. So that's what I knew.
Cpl Cousineau:That's what people call it.
Cpl Fortier:Like on in movies. Right? That was basically my knowledge of the military was movies and stuff like that. So I said, do you have to do a boot camp? She said, oh, yeah.
Cpl Fortier:But these people your age do it. So kind of blindly, at 43 years old, I just threw myself in there and did the basic military training with a bunch of young, young guys. And it really didn't fit the profile, Just to show that some people join later.
Capt Orton:So you're both in the reserves. You have jobs outside of what you do in the military?
Cpl Cousineau:That's right. I'm, for the most part, a freelance musician, meaning I take the work where I can get it. I try and play as much and perform as much as possible, but that's not the most steady of incomes. So I teach primarily private lessons. I currently have approximately 70 private students that I see on a weekly basis.
Cpl Cousineau:So sometimes it's difficult to get, the practice hours in. So that's why it's great on Tuesday nights when I get to pull the horn out and play with the footguards.
Cpl Fortier:Myself, I'm now retired from my main civilian job. I was, for 30 years, elementary and high school teacher. Being a musician in the reserve is now my job as a retired teacher.
Capt Orton:So doing prep for the Podcast, I kind of looked at the number of different bands for the different elements, and there's, like, 50 something army bands, and there's all sorts of different flavors. You wanna speak to the different bands and how they kinda work?
Cpl Cousineau:Well, we're both members of the governor general's foot guard band. This is a reserve band, one of the 50 or so army bands. So we parade once a week on Tuesday nights. So it's a part time thing, but there are also reg force bands. There are 6 reg force bands across the country in Halifax, Quebec, Ottawa, Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Victoria.
Cpl Cousineau:And this would be a full time possibility of employment for musicians. It's a little bit different than what we do, but that's an option that's available to us if we wanted to be employed full time in the military.
Cpl Fortier:And several of us, myself included, we sometimes do part time contracts with regular force bands. If there's maternity leaves or sick leave and they need someone to play for 2 months, like in the past year, I did 4 contracts with the Regular Force Band in Ottawa. So there's a lot of combinations possible, but definitely more reserve bands because there are bans in the different communities and all the different provinces and territories as the regular force bans, there are only 6 bans in the whole country.
Capt Orton:Yeah. Also, there's just a lot more reserve units in general. Look at infantry, there's like nine Regular Force infantry units, and then there's something like 40 some odd or even more Reserve infantry units and so they have a lot of bands attached for that. Another thing I learned is that Piper is its own trade and that's a whole other thing.
Cpl Cousineau:That's right. Highland regiments which have, pipes and drums band rather than your typical marching bands.
Capt Orton:I feel like we're way too late in the podcast for me to ask this question, but what do you play?
Cpl Cousineau:That is a good question. I'm a saxophone player, but I also double on piano. So I play on the jazz combo on keys as well.
Cpl Fortier:And I am a flute player. I play flute and piccolo. So on parade, the little piccolo, and the rest of the time, flute or piccolo.
Capt Orton:What's a day to day musician experience like?
Cpl Cousineau:Most of our Tuesday night rehearsals involve getting ready for the next engagement. So most of our time will be spent rehearsing, whether that's a marching band gig. So we'll be out on the parade square practicing, playing, and marching, or a sit down concert where we'll just practice repertoire in the band room or a small ensemble gig, which our band does fairly often. We've got saxophone quartet, brass quintet, jazz combo, a Celtic band. So for certain engagements, they'll request 1 ensemble or another.
Capt Orton:What are the different functions of those bands? What events do they support?
Cpl Cousineau:Well, really, it comes down to the venue and the size of the engagement. We won't send our entire concert band to play for a dinner of, say, a dozen officers. It just doesn't make sense. Typically, that'll be held in a small room and probably wouldn't have enough space for the entire band. So depending on the venue, depending on the event, sometimes it's just more fitting to send a smaller ensemble.
Cpl Cousineau:And the the music and the ambiance that your jazz combo will offer sometimes is a little bit more fitting to that event. So usually, the different events will request certain ensembles based on on the venue, based on what they're going for. Obviously, if it's outdoors, we'll be marching in the streets. If it's a smaller function, we could send a flute quartet or we could send a smaller group of musicians.
Capt Orton:We've organized events before and they're, like, you know, we want the full band in there and it's in the drill hall, for example, which is a relatively enclosed space. And sometimes people don't fully appreciate the amount of power that that a full band has in an enclosed space. You know, it's one of those challenges again where planning events, it's important to consult your subject matter experts on that and say, yes. We want a 30 piece band inside this building to do this thing. And they're, like, nobody will hear anything other than the band during that.
Cpl Cousineau:That's definitely happened a bunch of times in the entire evening. We have people coming over and saying, play quieter. Play quieter. Play quieter. And as a 30 piece band, sometimes that's just not doable.
Capt Orton:That's right. Trombones make trombone noises.
Cpl Cousineau:That's right.
Capt Orton:They're loud, that's how it
Capt Orton:goes. And tell us a little bit about the composition of the band. Like, what does that look like? How many of what?
Capt Orton:How does it differ from a symphony or an orchestra or whatever?
Cpl Cousineau:Well, the band won't go out and actively look for instruments that they might be missing. We're kind of at the mercy of who might be applying to join our band. But we are fortunate right now to have a pretty well balanced band, meaning that we have enough of all the instruments in the different sections. So that includes flutes, clarinets, saxophones, French horns, brass instruments like trumpets, trombones, tubas, and percussionists, of course. We're approximately 40 musicians.
Cpl Fortier:About 40.
Cpl Cousineau:Something like that. So there aren't too many spots available with our our band, but, we're well balanced, and that offers us the possibility to form these smaller ensembles since we've got all the instruments covered.
Capt Orton:So one thing we haven't discussed yet is the role of ranks within the band structure because it seems maybe a little bit counterintuitive that the military structure that applies to the chain of command and execution of tasks, maybe that not obviously fit into a band structure maybe. Can you speak a little bit to what that means and how it works?
Cpl Fortier:Yes. So we still have this structure inside the band, but we have also a parallel structure by a system of musical section leaders, and the music section leader is not necessarily the highest rank. So if you have a group of clarinet players, but the strongest player is not the highest rank in the military. Well, that person might be the head of the clarinet section, and then we'll have music leadership responsibilities. And the person who has a higher military rank inside will have to follow that.
Cpl Fortier:So we have 2 parallel systems. Sometimes it can be a little bit of an issue, but usually not, because they're not supposed to use their military rank when we're in a music format. And usually it's the director of music and the everyone in the top leadership positions of the band who decide who will be the different music section leaders.
Capt Orton:I think that translates well though because, like, let's say within a platoon or within a section of I'll speak to infantry because that's what I know, is the highest ranking person is maybe not the best shot. There may be Exactly. Not not the best navigators. And so there's selection of team in terms of skill and ability, and then you have the rank structure, which generally speaking is more enabling in terms of personnel management, making maybe tactical and strategic decisions. So based off of what you're saying, seems like it's pretty much the same thing within the band structure is.
Capt Orton:The chain of command is more of a decision making structure, and then the skill levels kind of dictate how you're going to execute a task, in this case, do music.
Cpl Fortier:But I think in terms of band structure, it's a stronger firm structure of leadership positions than I think what you're referring to. I think you're still falling in the regular military structure as us. It's all the time that if you're the music section leader, you have this responsibility always, the whole time you're doing music all the time.
Cpl Cousineau:Yeah. It's kind of a hybrid in that sense. We have our musical section leaders, but we also have the more traditional rank structure. We have the one officer who's directing. Our band sergeant major will be a warrant.
Cpl Cousineau:And depending on the year, the band will be divided usually into 2. We'll have a sergeant in charge of our 2 groups, and those groups are divided into sections which are led by a master corporal. But it is kind of a hybrid because that would be for the more administrative side. Whereas for the musical side, we've got the different leaders which don't go by the rank system necessarily.
Capt Orton:I feel like one of the things that you haven't talked about, which is probably the most impressive part is a lot of musicians have the comfort of sitting in a chair and just playing and having access to all of their stuff. But marching band is a whole other level.
Cpl Cousineau:I think that was probably the most challenging thing. As my colleague mentioned, we show up for the most part in the military trained. We're usually university students, so we're already playing at a fairly high level. But most people have never marched and played at the same time. I joined to play with a ceremonial guard band, which is a marching band.
Cpl Cousineau:So I had a very intensive drill period where I had to learn or essentially relearn everything that I thought I knew on the saxophone. On the move. Which was so easy to do sitting down, but all of a sudden when you're marching. And not only marching, but taking mace signals from the drum major that's ahead of the band, but you're also maintaining your dressing. So lining up with the person in front of you, also to the left and to the right, you're multitasking like you wouldn't believe.
Cpl Fortier:Yeah. If I can add something to this, it makes me smile. So I was a trained musician until 43 years old, but I had never marched, I had never been in a parade watching what's left, right, in front, behind, doing little choreographies and stuff. So it always stayed my weaker side, I would say. And even at the last Remembrance Day parade, I was again thanking one of my flute player colleagues.
Cpl Fortier:I said, I don't know what I would have been doing these last 15, 16 years without you around telling me, Helene, go here. Helene, watch this. So I never really messed up in a parade, but thank God I had good colleagues around me. So just to show that it's a whole different sets of skills that civilian musicians don't practice unless you're in the military.
Cpl Cousineau:When you're learning to march and play, one of the things you're thinking probably the least about is the music itself.
Capt Orton:Dont crash into people! Well I think we'll make it easy on you but if ther is any format to be able to demonstrate what somebody does for the Podcast, this is definitely it. So I know you guys brought your instruments in. Let's do some music then. Sounds good?
Cpl Fortier:Sure.
Capt Orton:Alright.
Cpl Cousineau:[MUSICAL INTERLUDE]
Capt Orton:That was great. Thank you. Not every day that the saxophone and the piccolo, that's it. So I don't think
Cpl Cousineau:we've ever played just the baritone saxophone and the piccolo.
Cpl Fortier:Good idea. We should
Cpl Cousineau:take this on the road?
Capt Orton:Make it a thing! .
Cpl Cousineau:I think it's important as a musician when you're deciding what you're gonna play for an event to make sure that you play some music that people will recognize. You could play fantastically well, but if people don't know what you're playing, it won't resonate the same way with them. So as soon as you play something that, they recognize, all of a sudden, oh, you're great. So hopefully, you recognize that piece there. It's called Colonel Bogey.
Capt Orton:I didn't actually know the official name of that.
Cpl Fortier:And we have also amended of educating the public as well. So it's kind of a combination, I would say, between things you can recognize like movie themes or marches that they've heard before, but also play other music a bit more serious or things that they've never heard before before and get them to, broaden their music, knowledge and stuff?
Cpl Cousineau:It's important for us to play, to cater to the crowd. So when we play some of these old wartime tunes and you've got these veterans, you could see sometimes the tears forming up in their eyes. You're playing these old war tunes that they they would sing together that got them through some tough times. And the saxophone quartet, for example, has a more modern selection such as Bohemian Rhapsody or the Pink Panther. And I think it's gonna be important moving forward that we consider the music of the time, and we make sure that we're covering some of this in future engagements.
Capt Orton:Yeah. I would imagine it's pretty tricky to strike the balance too. I remember, I think it was during one of the Fortissimo years. You guys had Game of Thrones going. That was a lot of fun.
Capt Orton:You know, it catches the crowd. But then also on the other hand is during something like Ceremonial Guard when people are marching up Elgin Street in Ottawa, and you have those, like, really old school 1930-40s war marches, and you're like, woo, dramatic. And maintaining that balance of keeping the cool old war tunes that kind of really tie you back to those before times. But also playing the fun, you know, let's say, popular music of the moment is also gratifying in its own way.
Cpl Cousineau:Absolutely. The music that we played on Parliament Hill this past summer with Canada on the March featured some modern selections such as a medley of the music of Star Wars, which always Yeah. That always hits. Always a hit. But we also made sure to play some of the pieces that were originally composed for military bands.
Cpl Cousineau:So stuff that was composed either at the end of 19th century or the turn of 20th century. And these pieces sound fantastic military music that we've been playing for over a 100 years, as well as a more modern selection.
Capt Orton:Hey! Well, speaking of 100 year old tunes, I think we're gonna play us out to one of those, just now. So thanks again for coming in!
Capt Orton:Thanks to Corporals Hélène Fortier and Michel Cousineau for being on the show.
Cpl Cousineau:It was our pleasure. Thanks so much for having us.
Cpl Fortier:Yes. Thank you so much.
Capt Orton:And now the Governor General's Foot Guards band is going to send us off with their regimental slow march: Figaro.