http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...ational/Canada
A six-string national treasure
"Universal instrument" to be built from pieces of Canadiana
By PETER CHENEY
Saturday, November 26, 2005 Page A1
The idea that launched Jowi Taylor on his Homeric guitar odyssey came to him in September of 1995. Like most Canadians, he was worried -- the forces of separatism had risen from the casket yet again, and a referendum that could split the country was just weeks away.
As the fate of the nation hung in the balance, an inner voice spoke to Mr. Taylor, commanding him to build a guitar that contained Canada's national mojo.
"It was weird," says Mr. Taylor, a CBC radio host and lifelong music enthusiast. "But it made sense, too."
Mr. Taylor understood that the guitar must contain materials from each province, and that every element had to be infused with authentic Canadian spirit. He soon had a long list, including a canoe paddle used by Pierre Trudeau, a plank from the deck of the Bluenose, mastodon teeth excavated in Alberta, copper from the roof of Parliament, and a hockey stick used by Paul Henderson to defeat the Soviets in 1972.
"A guitar is the universal instrument," says Mr. Taylor, who is nearing the realization of his oddball dream, which he has dubbed the Six String Nation project. "It's Canada's talking stick. We need one that sings with all our voices."
Mr. Taylor's decade-long quest to build the ultimate Canadian guitar has forced him to play a number of roles, including artist, fundraiser and politician -- not to mention scrounger, fixer and carnival barker. He has negotiated for everything from sacred objects to national airtime. (Along with the guitar, he is planning a coast-to-coast concert tour that will see it played by dozens of Canadian musicians, all of it documented in a 13-part TV series.)
"It hasn't been easy," he says. "But I still love the whole thing."
At the moment, the parts for the Six String Nation guitar are in the Nova Scotia workshop of George Rizsanyi, a master luthier who has built guitars for the likes of Sting, James Taylor, and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. Even for an expert of Mr. Rizsanyi's calibre, the Six String Nation instrument presents a unique challenge, because of the wide variety of materials involved.
"This isn't your average guitar-building job," Mr. Rizsanyi says. "I'll say that about it."
Although Mr. Rizsanyi and Mr. Taylor briefly toyed with the idea of making the guitar a solid-body electric model, they quickly decided that the only proper choice was a six-string acoustic model -- a classic style suitable for anything from a rock concert to a campfire rendition of Kumbaya.
Making the guitar a hollow-body acoustic, however, vastly complicates the task of building it. As musical construction goes, Mr. Rizsanyi's task could be compared to that of Dr. Frankenstein's efforts to create a human being from a collection of scavenged body parts. Among the items now in Mr. Rizsanyi's workshop are Pierre Trudeau's spruce canoe paddle, oak from Sir John A. MacDonald's board room table, a hemlock board from the world's longest covered bridge in Hartland, N.B., a length of mahogany decking from the Bluenose, a creosote-soaked beam from Halifax's Pier 21, and two sections of hockey stick -- one was used by Wayne Gretzky at the peak of his NHL career, and the other wielded by Paul Henderson when he led Canada to victory in the final game of the 1972 Soviet series.
These wooden parts will be joined by a long list of metals and artifacts, including a walrus tusk, pieces of copper from the roof of the original library of Parliament and -- providing that an underwater recovery operation can be mounted -- a scrap of metal from the sunken wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Great Lakes freighter immortalized by singer Gordon Lightfoot.
Although he has some preliminary plans -- such as using the parliamentary copper roofing as inlays on the frets -- Mr. Rizsanyi says he won't make a final decision about where each object will be used in the guitar until he's collected them all.
"I need to look at them all, stir the pot, and consult the mystics," he says.
Mr. Rizsanyi, who worked as an auto assembly-line worker before launching the guitar-making career that made him a musical cult figure, believes guitars contain an energy that is generated both by the musicians that play them, and by the materials that go into them. And in that respect, he says, the Six String Nation instrument will be virtually unequalled.
"The parts have the vibe of all the people who ever touched them. And all of that goes into the guitar. This is going to be one beautiful guitar."
As the ringmaster of the guitar project, Mr. Taylor has faced even greater complications than Mr. Rizsanyi. One of the most difficult tasks he faced was acquiring a piece of wood from the Golden Spruce, a 300-year-old albino tree that grew in the Queen Charlotte Islands.
The tree, which is sacred to the Haida, became world famous in 1997 when it was cut down by radical environmentalist Grant Hadwin.
Getting a piece of the fallen tree has taken years of particularly delicate negotiation, including entreaties made on Mr. Taylor's behalf by scientist and broadcaster David Suzuki. Although he has now received permission to collect the wood, getting it in his hands will require a flight to British Columbia, where he and Mr. Rizsanyi will attend a Haida service and look on as the wood is harvested from the tree.
Another point of contention has revolved around the fact that the project involves cutting up objects that some might consider cultural artifacts -- such as Mr. Trudeau's canoe paddle, which will be sliced up to form parts of the guitar body.
Mr. Taylor snorts at those who suggest that he's committing an act of sacrilege: "Who says you can't cut up Pierre Trudeau's canoe paddle? I reject the objection. When you do this, the objects live and breathe. They tell their stories. They go out into the world, instead of being dead museum pieces."
When the guitar is finally completed (hopefully within a year or so), Mr. Taylor wants to send it out on the road, to be played by Canadian musicians in a series of concerts that will serve as acts of cultural reconciliation, helping to avert the kind of crisis that occurred in 1995.
Mr. Taylor has compiled a list of musicians that spans provinces, eras, and musical genres. Among them are Daniel Lanois, Alanis Morissette, Blue Rodeo, Kim Mitchell, Sum 41, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Jann Arden, Trooper, and Alpha Yaya Diallo, a West African musician who is now based in Vancouver.
Ideally, he would like the Six String Nation tour to end with an epic performance where the guitar is passed from musician to musician, each playing for a few moments, until at last the guitar is passed into the hands of Gordon Lightfoot for the grand finale.
Mr. Taylor realizes that the project has become something of an obsession, but refuses to scale back his plans.
"People at various times -- usually with my best interests at heart -- suggest that I trim the project to a more modest, manageable size," he says. "To which I usually answer: 'No, I want to make something huge and sweeping and diverse and beautiful and full of contradictions -- like our country.' "
