By Caroline Rodriguez-Charette

Ottawa Showbox had their fifth anniversary this year and put together a compilation of great music performed by local musicians called Five Years: Ottawa 2012-2017.

Showbox, a not-for-profit organization and webpage, is a comprehensive resource for Ottawa’s independent music scene, where they write reviews on various gigs, interview different artists and inform their readers of upcoming shows and events.

Matias Muñoz, the founder of Ottawa Showbox, stated on their website that these past five years have been a “crucial” period in the Ottawa music scene because more DIY (“Do It Yourself”) musicians  “than ever before came out of the woodwork and made albums.”

“Different types of music pervaded through this period, demonstrating Ottawa [is a] potential hub in the Canadian landscape,” Muñoz wrote. The music has ranged from garage, punk, hip hop to folk and many more.

The compilation includes The Creeps (punk), Slack Bridges (soul and R & B), the Steamers (“power folk”) — and 47 other bands in a near-countless array of genres.

While many people consider Ottawa to be a boring government city, if you look around, you will find tons of talented musicians and passionate concert goers in a lot of different music venues all over the city.

Ottawa band The Murder Plans play the Elmdale Tavern in 2010.
Ottawa band The Murder Plans play the Elmdale Tavern in 2010. Photo by Frederic Dekkal.

For example, three popular music venues are the Rainbow Bistro, Babylon and Mavericks. The Rainbow Bistro on Bank St. is “home to the blues,” but they also have a range of music from pop, ska and reggae, to country, jazz and rock. Babylon is a nearby night club that usually features rock, punk and indie shows. Mavericks on Rideau St. tends to feature harder-edged punk, metal and underground bands.

Out of six mid-sized Canadian cities measured in 2015, the Ottawa-Gatineau region was ranked fifth when it came to census-reported musicians and the income-earning musicals acts registered as business. Ottawa also had the least activity in the main music-business activities of recording studios, labels and publishers, according to Lynn Saxberg, a journalist for the Ottawa Citizen.

The scene is underground, and unconcerned about Toronto or Montreal, commented Muñoz on the Ottawa Citizen article. “We do our own thing because we can, and don’t feel the ‘need’ to go out and try to make it big in the music industry,” said Muñoz.

Steve Marriner, a band member in MonkeyJunk, was asked how he would describe the Ottawa music scene in an interview with Canadian Beats.

“It’s eclectic. There’s so much talent and creativity across many genres. It’s not just one style of music that’s prominent,” said Marriner in his interview.

On Oct. 28, Ottawa Showbox launched a concert series to display homegrown talent. The first concert featured singer-songwriter Claude Munson and his band.

The idea is to take advantage of the music activity that’s happening in Ottawa.

“A lot of the emerging underground artists making music in town need a bigger stage to be heard, and we want to celebrate the established artists. We also want to give concert goers a new experience,” said Muñoz, regarding the new concert series.

This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 10, No. 2 (Oct/Nov 2017).