Local notables in music featured in new exhibit

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This article was published 11/03/2024 (932 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Daly House Museum kicked off a brand-new exhibit that has been five years in the making with a grand opening on Saturday.

The new exhibit, “The Sound of History: Bands and Musicians of Western Manitoba’s Past,” features the work of famous Westman artists throughout a timeline of music eras from 19th century parlour music to the underground punk scene in the ‘90s.

The idea for the exhibit began five years ago, after the museum was able to have a collection of Roy Brown’s, a Brandon musician in the 1930s, music digitized, museum curator Eileen Trott told attendees on Saturday. When the museum was about to put the music on display for the community to listen to, the pandemic hit and put the project on hold.

After the pandemic started to lessen, with the assistance of grants from Manitoba Sports, Culture, Heritage and Tourism, and the Brandon Area Community Foundation the museum enlisted the help of exhibit creator Kaelyn Delaurier, who began research for the Sound of History exhibit while in her first year of studies at Brandon University.

“I was born and raised here in Brandon, I grew up here my whole life,” Delaurier said at the grand opening. “And I have never really heard of even Roy Brown before, and when I started researching the music in western Manitoba, I found there’s just so much history that I personally have never heard of.”

Roy Brown is from the big band era. He was born in Killarney in 1906 and died in Brandon in 1985.

The Roy Brown orchestra was one of the most popular dance bands in the Prairies. During the Second World War, the band played at Danceland in Clear Lake in the summer and at the Imperial Dance Gardens and Esquire Dance Gardens in Brandon during the winter.

His television show, the “Roy Brown Variety Show,” was the first live production on CKX-TV in Brandon, airing in 1955.

Other Westman artists featured in the exhibit, like James Ehnes, Amanda Stott, and Angela Kelman, have performed for audiences worldwide.

Two local MLAs — Minister of Sport, Culture, Heritage and Tourism, Glen Simard and MLA for Brandon West, Wayne Balcaen — were also at the grand opening.

Balcaen spoke about growing up listening to his grandparents talk about attending grand balls and listening to music of an earlier era in Brandon. He presented the Daly House Museum with a certificate congratulating it for the Sound of History exhibit and its work to “showcase music that has stood the test of time.”

Vice-president of the museum’s board, Sheri Dressler, told the Sun that with the exhibit, the museum wanted to showcase figures like Roy Brown, who played an important part in Brandon’s history.

“It’s our mandate to promote history in our area, not just Victorian, but just local history,” she said. “And so, we thought this was pretty relevant with music being such a big part.”

Meanwhile, Trott and Delaurier hope that people visiting the exhibit come away from it with an appreciation of local history and the contributions to music history that was made by local artists.

“We really want to share to the community that there is such a vast musical history right here in western Manitoba,” Delaurier told the Sun.

The Sound of History exhibit will be on display at the Daly House Museum until Sept. 7.

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