Artist:Natalie MacMaster
Song:Catharsis
Album:No Boundaries
Canadian fiddler Natalie MacMaster had chart success in Canada partially because of her looks. But mostly because the CRTC's Canadian Content (CanCon) regulations force broadcasters to play a percentage of CanCon. And they have to pay employees to keep track of it. Natalie was born June 13, 1972 in Troy, Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island which has a long musical history. So she comes from a musical family including her uncle Buddy MacMaster. She took fiddle lessons with her cousin Ashley MacIsaac. She started performing at age nine. After self releasing a couple of albums, Natalie signed with Rounder Records in the US and Warner Bros. in Canada. Of course Rounder is a roots music label so they know how to sell this kind of music. But in Canada, Warners was counting on CanCon to get Natalie radio play and have her videos played on MuchMusic and CMT. Catharsis is from Natalie's 1997 album No Boundaries. It was her third album on Rounder/Warners. It was released as a single and as you can see, there's a video for the song paid for by VideoFACT which was funded by MuchMusic's parent company. The album was produced by recording engineer Chad Irschick meaning that Natalie produced it. Most of the songs including Catharsis are traditional. The musicians on that song are Ray Parker on keyboards, Michael Francis on guitar, Tom Szczesniak on bass and Brian Leonard on drums. Francis, Szczesniak and Leonard are all session musicians and they play on about half of the album. Guest vocalists include Runrig lead singer Bruce Guthro and Cookie Rankin from The Rankin Family. This album is available as a budget CD. Natalie has won two Juno awards and was named East Coast Music Association Artist of the Year several times. She is a member of the Order of Canada and was inducted into the Canadian Fiddle Hall of Honor in 2023. Natalie married fiddler Donnell Leahy of The Leahy Family in 2002 and they moved to Lakefield, ON which is near Peterborough. They have seven children and they record and tour together. They released a 2023 album on their own label distributed by Linus Entertainment. Here's the video for Catharsis by Natalie MacMaster.
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