Musique, immigration et intégration au Québec
Foreign musicians living in Quebec contributed to build and develop cultural landscape, and their influence on the musical world is far from negligible. However, what do we know about sociocultural and professional conditions of integration for these immigrant musicians? What challenges do they encounter? What strategies do they develop to move on with their professional career in a new artistic and social context? This research addresses one of the aspects of Quebec’s musical life through the problematic of the sociocultural and professional integration of immigrant performers of (learned) Western art music (or classical music). Based on the career of musicians living in Montreal since thirty five years or less, this study revolves around four axes: the impact of immigration on immigrant performers; their integration process; the influence of the sociocultural and musical context on the adaptation strategies these musicians developed and their contribution to Quebec’s musical world. Based on a sociomusicologic approach from a mixed methodology – theoretical study and field survey - this research is presented as an exploratory survey aiming to draw a general picture of the situations encountered by the immigrant performers in their integration. A theoretical framework was first prepared in order to expose, on one hand, the peculiarities of the work of performer (learning and professionalization) and, on the other hand, the different steps of immigration and integration, as well as their specificities. Then, by placing in this theoretical framework the data collected on the field, a more in-depth study of five particular cases allowed to apprehend the problematic through the experience of immigrant performers and to observe the strategies they developed to pass by the situations they had to face; one of their greatest challenge being to find the balance between their musical and cultural codes and those of the host country. The study of cases is driven by the parallel exposure of the experience of performers living in Montreal since thirty five years or less, the objective being to measure the incidence of the changes that happened in the musical milieu onto their socioprofessional integration process.  Data analysis revealed that fast professional integration of immigrant performers is rather due to the parallel practice of traditional music from their home country than to their formation in classical music. This new dynamic of adaptation, favored by policies of valorization of cultural diversity, causes a progressive shift of organisms’ interests towards traditional or mixed musical genres. Are we going forward to a change of paradigm, leading to the gradual loss of the predominance of the classical repertoire within immigrant performers, for the benefit of the traditional repertoire?
Immigration Integration Immigrant performers Classical music Cultural diversity Quebec