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genticorum

Quebecois Music

Album review: Ici on fête, by Various Artists

Ici on fête

Ici on fête

I owe a large debt of gratitude to my friend Melanie in Montréal for alerting me to the gem that is Ici on fête, a recently released live compilation album featuring a broad swath of bands and artists in the Quebecois trad genre. This thing features not one, not two, but FIVE of my top favorite Quebec bands, all of whom I’ve posted about in glowing terms as you all know. La Bottine Souriante! De Temps Antan! Le Vent du Nord! Genticorum! And Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer!

It’s pretty much only lacking Galant tu perds ton temps to be a stunningly accurate summuary of my entire collection, really. And while I must sadface at the lack of that fine group, there is much consolation to be found in several other familiar names out of my collection here–Les Batinses, Mes Aïeux, Nicolas Pellerin, Yves Lambert & Le Bébert Orchestra, Les Chauffeurs à Pieds, and Michel Faubert.

Melanie pointed me at this communique about the album, from which I learn that the redoubtable M. Faubert (whose voice I came to know as part of the Charbonniers) is a driving force behind the collection. He in particular is represented on three of the tracks, and he’s in excellent voice in all three, setting the bar very high for everyone else’s performances–and, happily, every other artist on the album meets and matches him.

Tracks 2 and 3 all by themselves make this collection worth the price of admission for me. Y’all already know I’m a De Temps Antan fangirl, and hearing them whip through a live take of “Buvons mes chers amis buvons” is always fun. But what really blew my socks straight off is La Bottine Souriante’s track 3, “Le p’tit porte-clé”–which I immediately recognized as the song I know as “Le ziguezon”, a very early footstomper from La Bottine’s first couple of albums, recorded with André Marchand singing lead. “Le ziguezon” is one of my regular repeat favorites, and to hear it sung by Éric Beaudry here, doing it fine lively justice, made me want to start stepdancing through the streets of downtown Seattle.

Of course I cannot talk about my favorite tracks without talking about Le Vent du Nord. They’re here too, checking with a very strong take of “La fille et les dragons”. This is a song I’ve experienced as its studio take as well as on both of Le Vent’s live albums–but not with a drum track, which was a startling and fun addition, though I wouldn’t want to make a habit of that. (The drum track, after all, rather drowned out the laser precision of the feet of Olivier Demers. And we can’t have that, now can we?)

Genticorum also represents, with a take of one of their earlier instrumentals, “Cascou”, from their album Malins Plaisirs. The only lament I have about this performance is that Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand is not playing his flute on this set. But since he is cutting loose on the bass, that lament is actually fairly small. I’ve seen and heard that bass with my own eyes and ears, people. Five-stringed fretless basses are love.

And then there’s Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, who offer up what to my ears is a treat indeed: a song of theirs that I do not, in fact, have represented on any prior album of theirs I own! The song is called “Tout l’monde est malheureux”, and it flips back and forth between morose and full harmonic speed. My ear for a song is tugging at this, convinced I’ve heard it before at some point, but I don’t currently have anything else by the same title–so if some other band I’ve purchased music from has recorded this, they did it under a different title. Clearly I’m just going to have to listen to my entire collection again until I find it. Oh darn.

“Souliers rouges” was another song I immediately recognized, though here it’s performed by Manigance, and I’m familiar with the version by La Volée d’Castors. Still, I find it great fun to hear different artists’ interpretation of the same song (the aforementioned “Le ziguezon” is a great example of this, given that I’ve got a version of that by Mauvais Sort in my collection too!). This time was no exception.

Les Tireux d’Roches, as if to console me for the lack of Genticorum’s flute firepower, handed me some of their own and filled my ears with glee. And harmony, for that matter. Very much liked their take of “Maluré soldat”. I’ve got a bit of this group represented in my collection now, but I didn’t have this song yet, which is one on of their albums I have not yet acquired. I shall be rectifying this problem at my earliest opportunity.

I was quite pleased, too, to see women take the lead on the singing at least on a couple of the tracks, so I’ll call them out both by name here: Mara Tremblay on “La chanson du bavard”, and Angèle Arsenault on “J’ai un bouton sur le bout de la langue”. This wasn’t quite enough consolation to make up for the lack of Galant tu perds ton temps, but it did help!

All in all the album is upbeat in spirit, which is befitting a release targeted for the holiday season (c.f., the communique I linked to above). While the material here isn’t specifically holiday-themed, it is nonetheless quite festive–one of the things that made me fall in love with this entire genre of music to begin with.

So if you’re looking to get into Quebecois trad, Ici on fête would be an excellent place to start. Investigation leads me to find it only available to a limited degree–it’s on iTunes, but only on the Canada store, here. And if you want to order the album from Amazon, I’d strongly advise hitting Amazon.ca in particular, since the Amazon.com site has it at import prices. You’ll get it much more cheaply from Amazon.ca, here. (Note the slow delivery time. But also note that Amazon.com right now isn’t showing the album in stock at all.)

Quebec listeners can get it from Archambault digitally here as well as on CD. Renaud-Bray is also carrying the disc here.

Outside of Quebec though, your easiest bet will be to try to scarf an iTunes gift card for the Canada store and buy it that way. It’ll be a hard hunt, but if you can find it, your ears will be rewarded.

Quebecois Music

Quebec band recommendations, round 2: Genticorum!

And now we come to the one band of my top seven about whom I had not previously done a recommendations post, an oversight I shall now be correcting with great pleasure. Because, O Internets, it’s now time for me to enthuse about Genticorum!

You’ve seen me post about these boys already, how I got a flute lesson from Alexandre and then got to see them perform live and then got to go to a house party they were at. You’ve seen me review their new live album. And if you’ve been reading my various tunes posts, you know I’ve got several Genticorum instrumentals queued up on the list of Stuff I Want to Learn How to Play.

Because yeah, I love me some fiddle players and all, but Genticorum? They’ve got the flute player. The one who makes the noises I can actually best try to make myself. The one who’s personally taught me tunes. They’ve also got the guitar player who contributed to my Kickstarter! These things are Important and means I can attest that not only are these guys all great musicians, they’re great people as well and you should buy every one of their albums. 😀

Wait, you want me to get specific? Okaaaaaaay fine. As you might guess from my review link I adore the new live album and do heartily recommend it, if nothing else for the KILL ANNA DED WITH HARMONY wonderfulness that is “La rouillette”, which is not currently available on any of the studio albums they’ve put out. But if you want to go studio, go Nagez Rameurs. Partly because not all of Genticorum’s discography is easily available to US customers–only the last three albums are available for MP3 purchase on iTunes and Amazon. But partly also because Nagez Rameurs has some assistance in the credits from none other than Le Vent du Nord’s Olivier Demers, and if you’ve been paying attention to my blog for more than five minutes running, you know that particular gentleman has already won from me the title of Best Fiddle Player Ever. So I have to endorse purchase of anything he had any involvement in whatsoever. (My musical favoritism, let me show you it!)

ETA: All this said, I listened to La bibournoise on the way home tonight and there’s a lot of strong stuff on that album, too. So if you like Nagez rameurs, by all means, get this one too! My preference for Nagez rameurs is only in degrees of awesome–because trust me, both these albums are highly enjoyable.

Favorite Genticorum tracks, off the top of my head:

“La rouilette”: As previously mentioned, for KILL ANNA DED WITH HARMONY wonderfulness. Note: the Genticorum boys skew higher on their ranges, so they’ve got tight, sweet harmony rather than thunder-rumbling low harmony, but that’s absolutely okay as far as I’m concerned

“La chasse”: Big lively number on the live album, also has a strong studio version on their first album, Le Galarneau (but that one’s hard to find, so if you want to hear this song, get the live album)

“Genticorum”: Self-titled song, also from Le Galarneau, but which has some great harmony and call and response in it

“Turlutte Hirsute”: On Nagez Rameurs, fun juxtaposition of turluttes and instrumentals

“Valse de Poeles”: Also on Nagez Rameurs, a slower instrumental. I can play this one! 😀 The backstory on this one in concert is fun, as the boys tell the story of how this one was written when they had to move some stoves

“Violon Guerisseur”: Yet again, on Nagez Rameurs, an excellent instrumental set

And here, have some videos so you can actually see and hear these boys in action! The La rouilette goodness (can’t embed this one, so I’m linking to it)! And here, here’s “Brandy culotte”, which appears on the album La Bibournoise:

ETA: This just in–here’s another video, straight from Genticorum themselves! This is the first of three from the same concert that Enregistré Live is from, the tune “La Finno Gaspésienne”, which is definitely one of my repeat tracks from the album.

Lastly, I must give a shoutout to Alexandre’s other musical project, which is the band Mélisande, led by his wife, and who I’ve also had the pleasure of seeing perform. Mélisande is a splendid singer and she and Alexandre are assembling what promises to be a good strong band on the new album they’re putting together. They’ve got a bit more contemporary feel going on with their music, so do consider checking them out too!

Quebecois Music

A guide to Quebec trad for English speakers

Internets, as you all know, I’ve been happily fangirling Quebec traditional music for a couple of years now, and quite a few of you have started to ask me questions about it. And because I like you, Internets, and I want to share with you the musical goodness, I’d like to present for you a Guide to Quebecois Traditional Music for English Speakers!

Q: What is Quebecois traditional music?

A: A very close cousin of Irish/Celtic trad. If you’re a fan of Irish or Scottish music, you’ll probably find Quebec trad very compatible to your tastes; there’s a lot of overlap between the two genres.

Q: What makes Quebec trad differ from Irish/Celtic/Scottish/etc.?

A: Three main differences, which are:

  1. Podorythmie. With most Celtic bands the percussion will usually be handled by a bodhran player, who may double up on shakers or bones. There may or may not be an actual drumkit depending on how far into rock the band in question slants. With a Quebec trad band, though, the percussion is almost always handled by someone who does podorythmie, the rhythmic footwork that’s a big signature sound for the genre.
  2. Call and response. Quebec trad is very heavily structured around call and response, where you’ll have whoever’s singing lead echoed by the rest of the band. Relatedly, you’ll find a great number of Quebec trad songs structured in such a way that the first line of a verse will be called, then responded, and then the verse will finish up with a chorus and then a second line which will then roll over into being the first line of the next verse. (This is a very helpful song structure when you’re a newbie to French and you’re trying to figure out how to sing the words!)

    Now, sure, call and response isn’t unknown in Celtic trad in general–but I’ve seen it be a LOT more common in Quebec trad. It makes the songs highly participatory and that’s one of the big reasons I love singing along to the songs so much.

  3. Turluttes. You’ll find a lot of Quebec trad songs will have a turlutte section, sometimes small, sometimes dominant, and sometimes as the entire song. Turluttes are when you get a singer or group of singers vocalizing a melody that in other traditions might be played with instruments. You’ll also hear this referred to as mouth music or mouth reels, similar to puirt à beul or lilting.

    As the Wikipedia link I’ve pointed at in the previous paragraph calls out, turluttes are built out of a set of specific phonemes–a lot of t and d and l and m sounds. They’re almost always up-tempo and joyous and great, great fun.

    A truly splendid example of turluttes in action can be found sung by Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer right over here, with bonus podorythmie solo in the middle.

Q: How is Quebec music similar to Irish/Scottish/Celtic music?

A: Lots of Quebec trad will be familiar to Celtic music fans just because there’s a rich heritage of tunes, jigs/gigues, reels, etc. There are some fun musical and stylistic differences that instrumentalists will notice–particularly how many Quebec tunes are often played “crooked”, doing interesting things to time signatures and varying up the rhythm. If you’re an instrumentalist you’ll want to listen for that.

Likewise, a lot of the topics of the songs will be familiar to Celtic music fans. Alexander James Adams has been often quoted (in particular by me!) as saying that the three main categories of Celtic music are Whiskey, Sex, and Death. This is also true of Quebec music, although from what I’ve seen in Quebec music, it’s more like Wine, Sex, and Death, with a side helping of Religion. (I’ve noticed quite a few songs involving shenanigans that involve priests, for example. 😉 )

Q: Do I need to be able to speak French to appreciate Quebec trad?

A: No! Certainly no more than you need to be a Irish or Scots Gaelic speaker to appreciate Celtic music, anyway. I find that studying a little bit of French enough to let me get an idea of how Quebec trad lyrics go enhances my appreciation of the songs considerably, but you don’t have to go to the lengths I’m going. A lot of the most active bands in the genre post lyrics to their websites, often in both French and English, and even if they only post the French lyrics that’s enough for you to throw the words through a translation engine.

And there’s fun stuff to be found in the lyrics, too. Plus if you do that, you get to be one of the Anglophones in a Quebec trad concert who can start snickering at all the best bawdy bits of songs!

Also, turluttes are language-agnostic!

Q: Enough overview! Who are some bands or artists I can check out?

The ones I’m most fond of are La Bottine Souriante, La Volée d’Castors, Galant, tu perds ton temps, Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, Genticorum, De Temps Antan, and especially Le Vent du Nord!

And if you have trouble telling all those names apart, I can direct to you to this handy flowchart I made for that exact problem!

Quebec Band Flowchart

Quebec Band Flowchart

For a nice crossover of Celtic and Quebec fiddle styles, I also highly recommend Celtic Fiddle Festival, who feature André Brunet of De Temps Antan. There are also a couple of excellent albums done by André Marchand and Grey Larsen, specifically on the theme of crossover between Irish and Quebec music, and I recommend those too. You can find them here.

I will update this FAQ with new data as I think of it. I did overviews on my favorite bands a while back but I’ll be posting new ones as well, since several of the bands in question dropped new albums since I originally wrote those posts.

Any questions I haven’t covered here? Shoot ’em at me!

Music, Site Updates

Quebec tunes sheet music

I had a couple different people hitting my site today looking for sheet music to La Bottine Souriante tunes–specifically, “Hommage à Philippe Brunea” and “Valse d’hiver”.

Since I am not actually a sheet music site, I direct interested parties to these links:

Failing either of those, TheSession.org may be able to help you. I’ve periodically found Quebec tunes there, though I use it as a tertiary resource.

You may or may not be able to find tunes composed by specific Quebec artists. I’ve found things composed by André Brunet (who in fact has a few of his tunes available in PDF form here, along with tunes by a couple of other people), and a couple of things composed by Olivier Demers (“Gigue à trois”, which is on the Montreal session tunebook site) and the guys in Genticorum (again on the Montreal site, but a couple on TheSession.org as well–notably for them I’ve found “Violon guérisseur” and “Valse de poeles”, the first on the Montreal session site and the second on TheSession.org).

I will also note that the lovely people at the core of the session I go to, La Famille Leger, have a collection of accordion-friendly tunes right over here. I note also that I am NOT an accordion player, but as I am a flautist, stuff that’s easily playable in D is very friendly to my flutes.

Happy tunes hunting, my fellow instrumentalists!

Quebecois Music

And now, to solve an ongoing problem

My belovedest of Daras is at a bit of a loss when it comes to comprehending my rampageous affection for Quebecois traditional music. She doesn’t speak a lick of French, and so I could mention any one of the various bands I’m following, only to have their names just parse to her as “French sounds”. And it didn’t help matters much either when we went up to Harrison Hot Springs this past weekend–because two of the guys in De Temps Antan ARE brothers of guys in Le Vent du Nord, and the sets of brothers in question do look rather alike!

Several of you who read me on a regular basis won’t be having these problem, but in case you’re in the same boat Dara is and find yourself trying to figure out who all these people are I keep enthusiastically babbling about, here. I present for you this handy flowchart for how to tell apart my seven favorite Quebecois traditional bands!

Quebec Band Flowchart

Quebec Band Flowchart

Never let it be said that I am not helpful!

Music

Bonjour, all you Genticorum fans!

Goodness, a lot of you are dropping by from Facebook today! This is apparently what happens when one of your favorite Quebec bands posts your review of their album to their Facebook page! (HI ALEXANDRE, YANN, AND PASCAL! I see what you did there!)

Anyway, if you’re popping over from Genticorum’s page and you see this post, say hi, won’t you? Talk to me on the topic of Damn Those Boys Sing Pretty Don’t They, or maybe Screw Wanting to Play Like Alexandre When I Grow Up, I Wanna Play Like Alexandre NOW (And If I Try to Match His Tempo I Blow My Own Head Off), or how about Exactly How Much Wine Does a Quebecois Fiddler Need to Knock Back For a Concert’s Worth of Podorythmie?

And if you’re coming in from Quebec, because I appear to have broken my record for most visits from La Belle Province in one day: bonjour! Je suis ravi à voir tout le monde! J’aime tellement la musique traditionelle du Quebec, et j’apprends français à comprendre et apprécier meilleur toutes les chansons merveilleuses! Et j’apprends les tounes sur ma flûte, mais je ne joue pas aussi bien que Alexandre! 😉

I mean, because SERIOUSLY, people, lookit that guy go! I try that, I do indeed blow my own head off.

Quebecois Music

Album review: Enregistré Live, by Genticorum

And because I’ve managed to go more than five minutes around here without talking about Quebecois music, let’s correct that little problem, shall we? Because my boys of Genticorum have just put out a shiny brand new album, and if you have any interest in Quebecois trad whatsoever…. actually, chances are you already know about this album and you probably even heard about it before I did! But that said, if you’re one of my readers and you’ve seen me enthusing over Quebec trad and you want to check it out for the first time, you could do a hell of a lot worse than picking up Enregistré Live.

When it comes to Quebec trad, okay yeah, I gravitate to the powerhouse bands. Give me Le Vent du Nord and their hurdy-gurdy goodness, or La Bottine Souriante and the sheer unmitigated awesome of their entire horn section. Or the Charbonniers, who pull off the impressive feat of matching La Bottine in power with nothing more than five voices and ten feet. Genticorum is subtler and more deft than these groups in some ways, though, and not just because a flute being one of their primary instruments contributes a certain delicacy of style. This manifests as well in the swift, light podorythmie from fiddler Pascal Gemme, the nimble guitar from Yann Falquet, and the delivery of their vocals.

Did I mention this is Genticorum’s first live album? Since I’ve had the distinct pleasure of seeing them in concert, I was particularly excited about picking this album up. I wanted to see if it captured the energy of the concert I’d previously experienced, and I wasn’t disappointed in the slightest. The between-song intros are minimal, so if you don’t speak French, or if you have enough to follow song lyrics but not stage intros, there won’t be much to interrupt the music for you. (For me, though, I also quite enjoy trying to figure out what the boys are saying about the songs–it’s an excellent way to practice French if, like me, you’re learning!)

Because of course, the songs are the point of the album. There are a couple of tracks here that were familiar to me from the studio albums I’d bought, like the dextrous “La brunante”, where Alexandre de Groisbois-Garand shines on his flute. And the big closer, “La chasse”, is one of my repeat play tracks from their very first album; this is a particularly awesome one since the boys are in high form, and they get the audience going too. The very last track, presumably an encore, was also familiar to me–but because I’d encountered it before on a Galant, Tu Perds Ton Temps album! “La valse turluttée” worked very well by the Galant girls as a complex a capella piece, but it works splendidly here with Alexandre’s flute too.

Of the tracks I didn’t recognize going in, I particularly liked “La finno-gaspésienne”, another deft instrumental; “Déline”, featuring lovely vocals, and especially “La rouillette”, another vocal number, but one which gives each of the boys a chance to sing lead (and Pascal to delightfully milk the hell out of his turn), and which has fun overall structure as a song. (And you can find this one on YouTube! Clickie!)

The album’s not released in the States yet, so right now your options I’m aware of for getting your hands on it are Amazon US, Amazon CA, Archambault in Quebec, Reynaud-Bray in Quebec, and the Canada iTunes store.

But I’d strongly encourage you to keep an eye out on their website for further updates! Or follow them on Twitter or on Facebook. And tell them Anna sent you!

ETA: Bonjour, all you Genticorum fans! Gracious, a lot of you have found this post.