Mountain concerns

It may seem ridiculous, but a part of the preparation to a big trip like this is preparing a play list with music to take along. I've written before about the "Official Frozen Chicken Air Playlist", and I could easily write more about it, but the question why? brought another concern to my mind...

Have you ever noticed the slight difference between a mountain club and a mountaineering club? Or in Dutch, an alpenclub and an alpinistenclub? Between alpine and alpinism, berg and bergsport?

I have...
It was the Mountain Club of South Africa (MCSA) who made me aware, by stating a mountain club has a much broader view than a mere mountaineering club: almost everything related to the mountains and the mountain world can belong to the interest field of a mountain club, mountaineering and other mountain sports being a (more or less important) part of it. But a mountaineering organisation by her name suggests to focus only on those sports.

Hence my concern about what's going on nowadays in the Belgian/Flemish alpine scene. Where the Belgian Alpine Club (BAC/CAB) in her name and origin was a mountain club, and evenso the VBSF originated from the Oestereichishes AlpenVerein (OeAV), they have now merged into the Climbing & Mountaineering Federation (Klim- & Bergsport Federatie, KBF), thus narrowing their focus on the pure sports thing.

Of course this merge of the two big mountain(eering?) clubs in Flanders was a dream of many -including me- and it is without doubt a good thing. The narrowing focus on the mere sport has already been an ongoing process for years nevertheless. And of course there are other organisations like Mountain Wilderness and socio-cultural associations who cover the non-sports part, but some integration went missing.

I am a bit afraid our climbers and mountaineers will get less feeling with the mountain world they visit, seeing mountains and climbing rocks as little more than a sports field, instead of the vulnerable eco-systems they are. Around New Year there was a series of shows on German television where Reinhold Messner also mentioned the fact of tourists having no feeling with the "real" mountain world.

So... returning to the (mountains of) Canada, I tried to do some research about Canadian music. Yes, reading a couple of Wikipedia-pages is considered research here ;-)

I'm not going to dig into Canadian folk, jazz or whatever specialized music scene, just thought it would be nice to have some Canadian stuff to listen to. The only ones I really knew to be Canadians, were Alanis Morissette, Joni Mitchel and Daniel Lanois, but now I can add Cowboy Junkies, Leonard Cohen, Loreena McKennitt and also Melissa Auf der Maur to that list.
And others like Brian Adams, Avril Lavigne and Shania Twain, but I'm not sure they will make it to our playlist..

Apart from the Canadians, some music does fit in a mountain environment, and other doesn't. It's a quite personal matter of taste of course, but I'd like to hear what music you associate with your mountain and/or climbing experience..