Qu’est-ce que Vous Chantez? Song and Support at Toronto FC
My love of football developed not coincidentally alongside my love of singing. When as a twelve year old boy I was first sat with my uncle to watch the 1994 World Cup, what moved me most was not the movement on the pitch but the boisterous singing heard from the stands. Later I as grew up, my love of singing would refine itself into a professional career in classical music, just as my love of football diverted away from the stands and back to the action on the field. But the close relationship between music and football, both in the element of dance on the pitch and the (mostly) impromptu chants from die-hard supporters, is still a vital part of what draws me to the game.
This was one of the reasons I awaited the inaugural season of Toronto FC back in April 2007 with trepidation. Having watched a few games at the Air Canada Centre, home of the Toronto Maple Leafs ice hockey franchise, I was disappointed that the best the crowd could come up with was a droning ‘go, Leafs, go’ every ten minutes or so. The ’silent’ phenomenon at Leafs games is well-known in Toronto and most commentators associate it with economic class. There’s some truth in this: during home games the most quiet area in the ACC can be found directly rink-side in the ‘Gold’ section, where single tickets are priced in the hundreds of dollars. Men in suits consult blackberries while women clad for the night clubs gossip with friends. Goals often go completely unnoticed while the ‘real’ fans supposedly whoop it up in the nose-bleeds.
However, the sombre atmosphere at Leafs games can be attributed to more than socio-economic status alone; it’s also emblematic of the sort of low English protestantism on which Toronto was founded. While England in the late 1950s and early 1960s saw a society liberated from her dark, Victorian roots by a post-war generation dancing to new tunes from the North-East and inspired by the optimism of Harold Wilson’s Labour Party, Toronto was still covering pub windows in black curtains and listening to the Gospel-inspired ‘Four Lads’.
As David Goldblatt points out in The Ball is Round, the liberating Liverpudlian rock and roll of the late Fifties and early Sixties inspired the terrace chanting at the Kop, chanting which spread throughout Great Britain and is now an integral part of the English game. Before then, “the sound of the British football crowd remained a collage of collective roars and one-liners” (p. 450), which could also describe the sound of the crowd at Leaf’s games. Despite huge social change brought about by an increase in immigration in the 1960s which included many liberal-minded Americans, Toronto’s sport culture would remain inherently WASPish and conservative, and therefore without song, for some time.
Enter Toronto FC. Any fears that the silence of the ACC would envelop BMO Field were calmed on April 19 2007, although it’s interesting to note that the first audible chant from the supporters’ section was a John Lennon song. Although it is now without question there is a sophisticated, football-following base in Toronto, there is a sense that Toronto FC’s fans are creating a ’simulacra’ of support, borrowing songs from the European grounds they grew up watching instead of forming their own spontaneous, organic sound. Most of the songs heard from the supporters’ section are Euro-British rehashes, including some Kop favourites (but mercifully not YNWA) and one or two verses in French borrowed from Le Championat to promote our bilingual heritage. The impromptu chants of the type that give flavour to the Premiership are missing and most of the songs heard this season are exactly the same as the last, and are even officially sanctioned by the Toronto FC website.
There could be a number of reasons for this, including a lack of away supporters to sing to, but my guess is that Toronto FC’s fans, many of whom also support the Maple Leafs, are in the tricky process of figuring out how to support a club with no history or founding mythology (Dichio’s 24th minute chant aside) in a hockey town without an indigenous soccer culture. While the atmosphere at BMO Field is unlike any in Major League Soccer, there is a growing backlash among some city-dwellers who question the authenticity of supporters singing ‘Toronto ’til I die!’ for a two-year old franchise owned by Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment.
What is not known to proponents of ‘authentic’ support is that just as clubs sprang up across England at the turn of the twentieth century often backed by speculating tycoons, fervent working-class supporters would arrive in the tens of thousands as soon the grounds were constructed and provided instant loyalty, no questions asked. The difference in Toronto FC’s case is that supporters are not only warming to a new club, but to an entirely new sporting culture. It will be a slow process, but over time we may begin to hear the home-grown, spontaneous singing that characterizes the best grounds from around the world. And Toronto FC might even help move Toronto away from the self-conscious, navel-gazing Puritanical hangover that has haunted the city since the Victorian 1960s, simply by singing our own songs and singing them loudly.
Photo credit: behindthenet, krazykanadian and Martin Groove on Flickr
About the Author
Richard Whittall is a professional countertenor, a writer, and an administrator at the University of Toronto, Victoria College. He writes the blog A More Splendid Life, the chronicle of one fan's escape to the beautiful game.
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21 Comments
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- EuroDose: June 3rd ‘08 - Euro 2008
- Toronto FC: They don’t pay for healthcare and nor do I « The View From The Shelf
- april 19 1994
Interesting article, but you’re seeing things through British-tinged glasses here.
The spontaneity of chants will come, as you say, but in many footballing nations there is a long history of singing specific songs and chants in an organized manner (which differs from the English support model).
Nothing wrong with either style of support, but they’re different. Toronto will eventually hit upon it’s own “style”. The fact that we do not engage in “impromtu (you forgot a “P” here) chants of the type that give flavour to the Premiership” is a not a bad thing.
Why do we need to have the flavour of the Premiership? Why not the flavour of the Mexican Primera, or Spanish La Liga or Argentinean Primera or any of a number of leagues in the world with passionate organized support with premeditated songs that are sung by the supporters from opening whistle to the end of 90 minutes and beyond?
The arrogance of the supposedly superior British football culture pervades your article.
EDIT: Sorry, you did not forget a “P”… not sure what happened there when I copied and pasted your line.
Hi Jack,
I didn’t mean to imply that boisterous singing is native only to the UK or that the UK should be Toronto’s sole model of support. The streamers at corner flags are a sight familiar to Central and South American football for example, and we have a Brazilian samba supporters group playing throughout each game.
I chose England as a model for the reason that English Canadian culture had strong roots in Victorian England, and where the latter was able to break from the past in the 1960s (terrace chants were indeed one symbol of that break) Toronto has only in recent years begun to truly emerge from its English-inherited conservative roots, at least in fits and starts. TFC represents one these ‘fits’ (so to speak). Although we like to convince ourselves otherwise, the Union Jack (no pun intended) still hangs heavy over the city…
Excellent article, Richard. I found the connections with Toronto’s traditionally conservative public culture to be particularly interesting. From what I remember of the two NASL matches I saw at Varsity Stadium, the Metros/MetrosCroatia/Blizzard support was notably less vocal than their West Coast counterparts in Vancouver (who had a “terrace culture” that was very much British-influenced, though without the violence or away support). Whether that was linked to Vancouver being somewhat more laid back than Toronto, I don’t know.
Jack’s point is of course valid, but it is also worth noting that there is significant cross-pollination among European clubs when it comes to singing. Tunes as diverse as OMD’s Enola Gay and the Triumphal March from Aida can be heard at any number of grounds on the continent (with or without locally adapted words), and the Azzurri’s adoption of Seven Nations Army (or as the vast majority of Italians know it, “Po, Po, Po” as their theme song instead of several commercially-backed efforts is another striking example.
My current favourite, though is the song the Curva Nord sings for Julio Cesar, Inter’s Brasilian keeper. The tune is the theme to the Flintstones (“Julio, Julio Cesar, la-la la la la-la-la-la . . .)
Great article. I would like to ask though, why make an exception of the Dichio24″ chant? It seems like that’s the centerpiece example of the vibrancy of Toronto’s fan culture and their creation of a mythology.
For a club that’s been around for such a short time, I’m personally impressed that Toronto FC’s supporters have already created such an “authentic” response to the game. Their willingness to look to South American supporters (streamers) as well as to the English seems to show that Toronto supporters have a cosmopolitan outlook on the game. They’re drawing on all sorts of influences to navigate the experience of being a football fan.
The question of ’simulacra’ (a la Baudrillard) has always seemed odd to me. I’m pretty sure that all human experience, since long before capitalism, has been meditated by signs and symbols. If Toronto fans emulate other fans to come to their own understanding of fandom, isn’t that what all other fans have always done anyway? English fans didn’t spring from the land fully formed as an expression pure English identity. They drew on other traditions, things they’d seen in the past. It just seems to us, as later-day observers that they’re primordial.
If a major discourse of modernity has been concerned with the manufacture of difference between the pre-modern past and the modern now, the concept of an emergent post-modern cultural order centered on images seems to be part and parcel of making modernity, not of critiquing it. The idea of ’simulacra’ seems to only reinforce a sense of alienation, and not to challenge it. I don’t know anyone who feels more alienated and isolated than post-modern intellectuals.
Anyway, here’s to the hope that boisterous singing will defeat navel gazing. I’m totally with you on that.
I understand your point Richard and it is well made. Steve also makes some excellent points in his article.
Toronto (and the rest of Ontario) is still mired in a very Victorian mindset in a lot of senses, which is puzzling given the multicultural mosaic which makes up our city and now is spreading around southern Ontario.
The drinking laws come to mind.
Anyway, your point that we are breaking away from that model with TFC is indeed well made. I see nothing wrong with taking our support model from other places in the world and slowly adapting it to our own, just as Toronto is made up of a beautiful tapestry of cultures from around the globe.
Nice article…well aside from the fact is focses on TFC. :p
Honestly, the chants will come. In US high schools and colleges people come up with stuff on the fly all the time.
The big problem is, in SOOO many other stadiums in other sports, if you have a chant that is too ‘off color’ you get thrown out since ‘families’ might be around. It’s ludicrous. NFL stadiums have been doing that for years and it SUCKS to go to games now.
If MLS makes sure it’s known you won’t get thrown out for a chant that curses a blue streak it’ll happen.
Chicago has done a pretty good job of that as some of the things that come out of that end of the stadium would sound obscene at a vintage Richard Pryor concert.
Kids do it in High School and College because they want to get thrown out. The whole ‘rebellion’ thing I guess.
One small P.S. the less like the Prem MLS is like in the stands and on the field, the happier I’ll be. I hope they get that kind of TV money someday, but the super physical direct style isn’t really my cup of tea. I’d be happy if it was more Argentina-like in both respects. (minus the riots and deaths in Argentina of course.
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GET IN!!!
I would like to point out that the picture after you make the clam that there were no away fans to see too, was take by the Chicago Fire Away fans. I believe we brought about 200 to Toronto last year in full voice. I just thought it was funny that you used a picture that away fans took to talk about how away fans were not there, otherwise this was a very well written story.
Some fantastic comments here! I just wanted to respond to a few:
“The question of ’simulacra’ (a la Baudrillard) has always seemed odd to me. I’m pretty sure that all human experience, since long before capitalism, has been meditated by signs and symbols. If Toronto fans emulate other fans to come to their own understanding of fandom, isn’t that what all other fans have always done anyway?”
In speaking about Toronto FC I have met many a snide hipster who has derided supporters for ‘borrowing’ modes of support from other footballing cultures completely out of context; part of what I wanted to point out is that this ‘borrowing’ has always been part of the growth of football culture which is what your comment touched so nicely on.
The difference in Toronto’s case is that we don’t really have a history of spontaneous public expression, except perhaps outside of the Christie Pits labour riots (you can google it) and the odd awkwardly-festive march down Yonge street when either Team Canada or the Blue Jays win something.
While we tend to hide behind our multi-cultural make-up, we are at heart a city that has a strong undercurrent of social conservatism similar to that which permeated post-war Britain (and on that note you should all pick up a copy of David Kynaston’s “Austerity Britain.”) Toronto FC may offer a unique opportunity for a younger generation of colonial Anglos and second generation immigrants to join forces in bucking this cultural trend, especially when TFC’s honeymoon with the local media comes to an end…
((–”Victorian roots by a post-war generation dancing to new tunes from the North-East”–))
Are you referring to the Beatles?
They were from Liverpool, which is in the North-West of England, not the North-East
Jay — Good eye. That should of course read North-West.
well said jay cos i cant remember many bands from my home town of middlesbrough in the 50s and 60s,had me baffled that one! oh and chicago had 200 fans!bloody hell !where did they manage to park the 4 buses?just kiddin ,i do realise the travelling involved,here in england we rarely have to travell more than 300miles round trip.
really nice peace of writing. thanks a lot for that!
Richard what happened to you on TLN???? how come you are no longer commentating SERIE A games??? we miss you Richard….
I miss Richard Whittal and Wayne Boyce on sunday mornings
Well, if you want to talk about working class roots of the game, you wouldn’t have been sitting next to your grandad!
It was all stands for the working class and for kids like me it was a quick train ride and maybe a tube ride to get to the parks like Highbury, Stamford Bridge and others like Crystal Palace.
Unfortunately it’s also where the yobo culture rooted in the 70s when hooliganism exploded. Still, there’s enough of that “brothers-in-arms” mentality to carry forward as a unique tribal culture without the idiots who cause the trouble.
As a season ticket holder at TFC in Section 114 behind the goal I’ve seen the best of the culture and the worse of it.
Still, too many people use the game as an exuse to get drunk and do stupid things like throw fireworks and golf balls onto the field.
The good news is that over time a true TFC culture is emerging. One that does borrow from the English experience but also blends the Latino, the Carribean, Italian and eastern European footie cultures.
In a couple of years we may still borrow from the standards but we will create our own voice and our own content.
It’s hard to get chants going because most Canadians are programmed to sing along with the organ music at hockey and baseball games.
Spontaneity is not their forte. So when the savvy Euros among the crowd do start to sing something other than, Toronto Till I die, or when the Reds go Marching in or Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Mo Edu, it’s usually one or two voices and the surrounding folks are lost because they have no play list.
This will change. Right now there’s only two or three players with songs….Danny Dichio, Mo Edu, Armando Guvera …Jimmy Brennan’s song is too complex to resonate and the others are just reworked lyrics over tired melodies ripped off from Europe.
It’s probably indicative of the fact that there are different fan factions, the U Sector, Red Patch Boys North End Elite ect and each wants to be the “true” voice.
When they put aside rivalries and get behind one team, TFC, this too will change and when one section takes up a chant or song, the rest will get behind it.
Having said all that, I had a chance to sit in a box for a game recently and what a difference.
It was boring!!!!!!! Talk about yer prawn sammie brigade.
That’s where English football changed..it was an affordable working class pastime where dads, brothers and kids could go to a game in the stands.
With the arrival of seats, then boxes,, it became much more upscale. Just look at the price of an EPL ticket today.
Hardly working class anymore.
Great article and discussion. I agree that it takes a while to come up with a chant, and while we Toronto fans may be a bit quiet at the start, we should catch on soon enough. And I do hope without the hooliganism.
While we may be quiet in the stands, we tend to be a bit louder proclaiming our support for teams on the street with our cars – there is much noisemaking during Euro games and World games especially. Some area much louder than others. I used to live in the Italian/Portuguese quarter and you could always tell when a game was on, and especially if they won, just by the sounds of the traffic.
As for boxes – blech. You are absolutely right – paid for by entertainment accounts to entertain clients, none of which have the slightest interest in the game. Very very sad on too many fronts.
The Brits are a legend when it comes to this sport and we really feel the passion through the fans chanting and cheering in the stadium. Richard you made a great point there.
Steve