#occitan folk music

[nofatclips-home]

Embruns and L'èrba d'agram by Barrut, live at WOMEX

[haveyouheardthisband]

[useless-catalanfacts]

People who only wanted to hear a cheerful children's song learning about Joan Petit:

Joan Petit quan balla ("When Joan Petit dances") is a traditional Catalan children's song that lists a series of parts of the body to move in the dance. Here's a video where you can hear it and see how it's danced: people hold hands and move in a circle and sing "when Joan Petit dances, he dances with his..." and add a body part, then repeat the chorus. Each time, the body parts add up on a list that gets longer and longer and the dancers have to remember and dance in order.

Like it happens with other elements of Catalan folk culture, it's shared with our sister nation, Occitania. Occitans also sing it, with the same melody, the same dance, and the same lyrics as the Catalan song but with the lyrics in Occitan language instead of Catalan. However, in Occitania it's more common to remember who the song is talking about, which is mostly unknown in Catalonia.

Joan Petit was an Occitan farmer. In the year 1643, he led the Croquant Rebellion against the king of France Louis XIV's strong taxation of poor people to gather money for war. Joan Petit was captured and tortured on the breaking wheel. The reason why the song lists body parts is in reference to this torture method of smashing all body parts slowly making its way to the head. The story was quickly told all through Occitania and even crossed the Pyrenees, and the memory of Joan Petit and his rebellion still lives on in Occitania. Maybe that's why the Occitan song, by changing only a few notes at the end of the sentences, sounds much sadder than the Catalan version.

One of the most iconic Occitan bands, Nadau, wrote a song explaining Joan Petit's life. Under the cut you can listen to the song and read the English translation of the lyrics.

Occitan lyrics and English translation:

En país de Vilafranca / Que s'i lhevèn per milièrs / Contra lo gran rèi de França / En mil shèis cents quaranta tres. Mes òc, praubòt, mes òc praubòt / En mil shèis cents quaranta tres. In the place of Vilafranca / they rose up by the thousands / against the great king of France / in 1643. But yes, poor things, but yes, poor things / in 1643.

Entà har guèrra a la talha / Qu'avèn causit tres capdaus, / L'un Laforca, l'aute Lapalha, / Joan Petit qu'èra lo tresau. Mes òc, praubòt, mes òc, praubòt, / Joan Petit qu'èra lo tresau. To wage war on the taxes / they chose three captains: / one of them was Laforca, the other Lapalha / the third one was Joan Petit. But yes, poor thing, but yes, poor thing / the third one was Joan Petit.

Per tota l'Occitania, / Que'us aperavan croquants, / N'avèn per tota causida, / Que la miseria o la sang. Mes òc praubòt, mes òc praubòt / Que la miseria o la sang. In all Occitania / they called them the Croquants / they didn't have any other choice / than either misery or blood. But yes, poor thing, but yes, poor thing / than misery or blood.

E qu'estón per tròp d'ahida / Venuts per los capulats, / Eths que vivèn de trahida, / Çò qui n'a pas jamei cambiat. Mes òc praubòt, mes òc praubòt, / Çò qui n'a pas jamei cambiat. And because they trusted too much / they were sold by the powerful / [the powerful] lived only of betrayal / a thing that has never changed. But yes, poor thing, but yes, poor thing / a thing that has never changed.

Que'us hiquèn dessús l'arròda, / E que'us croishín tots los òs, / D'aqueth temps qu'èra la mòda / De's morir atau, tròç a tròç. Mes òc praubòt, mes òc praubòt, / De's morir atau, tròç a tròç. They put them on the wheel / and they crushed all their bones. / At that time, it was trendy / to die like this, bit by bit. But yes, poor thing, but yes, poor thing / to die like this, bit by bit.

E qu'estó ua triste dança, / Dab la cama, e lo pè, e lo dit, / Atau per lo rei de França, / Atau que dançè Joan Petit. Mes òc praubòt, mes òc praubòt, / Atau que dançè Joan petit. And it was a sad dance / with the leg, the foot, the finger, / and thus, for the king of France, / danced Joan Petit. But yes, poor thing, but yes, poor thing / thus danced Joan Petit.

E l'istuèra qu'a hèit son viatge, / Qu'a pres camins de cançons, / Camin de ronda taus mainatges, / Mes uei que sabem, tu e jo. Mes òc praubòt, mes òc praubòt, / Mes uei que sabem, tu e jo And the history took its journey / it took paths of songs / and tales for children / but today we know, you and I. But yes, poor thing, but yes, poor thing / but today we know, you and I.

[hearthsandhistory]

Christmas Carols You're Not Sick Of, 21/25

Cantem Nadal

Like all songs in Occitan, this Occitan carol slaps. That's all there is to it.

Occitan

Ieu me soi levat per un matinet Que l'alba preniá son blanc mantelet Cantem Nadal, Nadal Nadal, Cantem Nadal encara ! Ai pres ma capòta e mon capulet E mon cort mantèl de droguet violet Ieu me'n soi anat cercar Guilhaumet. Qu'escotas aquí, gai pastorelet ? Escoti cantar lo rossinholet, Jamais n'ai ausit cant tant aimablet ! N'es lo rossinhòl ni autre auselet Mas del paradís un bèl angelet Ditz qu'a Betelèm, dins un establet Es nascut anuèit un Dieu enfantet.

Modern English

I got up one early morning When the dawn was putting its little white mantel on. Let's sing Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, Let's sing Christmas again.

I took my cloak and my hood And my short coat of violet wool

Then I went to fetch little William, "What are you listening to, gay little shepherd?"

I'm listening to the little nightingale sing, Never have I heard such a nice song.

It's not the nightingale nor any other little bird, But a beautiful angel from Paradise.

He says that in Bethlehem, in a little stable, Last night a Child God was born.

[canmom]

music and narrative {[0]}

so. as part of the ongoing music researches, I've for a while wanted about the relation between music and narrative. that's going to be a long project! but to begin with I wanted to run down the examples I know, and maybe solicit a few more~

now, on some level, nearly any song has some degree of narrative. your basic love song introduces us to some characters - singer, object of their affection - and furnishes them with emotions and desires. moreover, music can play a role in a narrative without literally relating events - indeed, the art of soundtrack design is definitely a subject I want to look into at some point. even songs addressed directly at the real world, such as political songs, construct some kind of narrative.

however, for these purposes, I'm interested in songs that go a bit further in the direction of telling a fictional story, especially when those link together into whole albums (sometimes called a concept album, though this is a slightly broader concept). which can work in a lot of ways!

for example, Janelle Monae's The ArchAndroid tells a sweeping scifi story of an android fleeing an oppressive society and becoming an unintentional figurehead of revolution. it sketches out a wide-reaching set of influences in constructing a scifi world, but you'd be hard-pressed to boil it down into a simple series of events - it prefers to leave a lot to interpretation. by contrast something like Splendor & Misery by clipping. deals with kinda similar subject matter - a scifi story, an escaped slave, artificial intelligence - but with a different musical approach and perhaps a slightly clearer narrative arc; sometimes directly narrating the thoughts and actions of characters, or slipping into memory, but also drawing less direct musical parallels with e.g. gospel tracks and slave spirituals. both excellent albums - both solve the problems of conveying a story musically in different ways.

of course, the largest pool of examples here comes in the context of musical theatre, and further back opera. (the exact transition from one to the other is something I'm going to need to research). particularly interesting to me are sung-through musicals such as Les Misérables, in which there's no spoken sections in between the songs. this restriction means the songs (and staging etc.) have to do all the work of conveying the events of the story.

there's a lot to be said about the various traditions of musicals (for example). there's even more to be said about the history of opera - both the Western traditions and other musical traditions that have been given the label such as Chinese opera. but that will have to wait for later day in the project because otherwise this entire post would be a huge list of musicals, and I want to try and wander all over the shop.

what I'm most curious to find is music that tells a story all on its own - no actors or staging, but more similar to oral narration. of course, in the present era, music is often released along with videos, and these can tell quite elaborate stories that will become part of the overall 'message' communicated by the song, so the lines are a bit blurry! but since the aim of this series will be to look for ways to convey narrative using music, I'm looking for examples where the music does most of the heavy lifting.

music that tells stories is something with a looong tradition in folk music, pretty much the world over. in Europe, the ballad was a common form for it, a word that survives into the present. it seems that most cultures have had some kind of tradition of wandering itinerant musician-poets - for example, at various points in history, there were biwa hōshi in Japan (pictured) and griots in West Africa, medieval Europeans had minstrels, the Celts had bards, the Occitans had troubadors...

moreover, work and marching songs such as sea shanties would also have a certain degree of narrative to them, in addition to their main function of keeping a group moving in time.

in modern times, people will sometimes attempt to reconstruct how this kind of music and lyric poetry would have been performed. you can naturally only go so far with the archaeological evidence, but I'm fond of Peter Pringle's recordings of segments of the Epic of Gilgamesh, using period instruments if not necessarily a period musical style!

in the modern age of recorded music, these traditions have become much more niche, but there are still artists who use music as a vehicle to tell a fictional narrative. (fair warning: I'm a huge nerd, so most of the examples I know are like, supreme nerd shit. also about ten years ago I was given an assortment of metal from a friend which included a bunch of what I'm about to put below.)

to begin with I've naturally got to talk about my friend Maki Yamazaki (Dr Carmilla) and the band she founded but later left, The Mechanisms. They tell a story of a sprawling gothic scifi universe, with the band playing the role of travelling space pirates who observe the (invariably tragic) tales that unfold. The Mechanisms' music starts as folk song pastiche, but gradually gets more original, although narratively they keep the approach of crossing over mythology with genre storytelling (fairy tales as space opera, arthuriana as space western).

The Mechanisms got a significant measure of international fame washing back after their frontman Johnny Sims got really big on some podcast or something.

Maki's solo music as Dr Carmilla took things in (from a narrative sense) a more abstract direction, using elaborate production and an incredibly textured sound to tell a (so far!) fragmentary story of the tragic space vampire Dr Carmilla and her doomed relationship with another vampire Lorelei (for example). And I'm gonna have lots more to say about them all, in the future, but this is just an overview so let's not get ahead of ourselves!

In a related vein (though I'm much less familiar with them) comes indie band Decemberists, who often create narratively driven songs - for example, The Mariner's Revenge Song depicts a sailor's motivation for extracting bloody revenge on someone who wronged him, with the actual violence conveyed by an energetic instrumental break. A subject that reminds me of the Clockwork Quartet, now long gone, who managed to record just three of their songs from a larger project, yet stand out as way more interesting than most of the steampunk milieu - with for example The Clockmaker's Apprentice giving a very fun antihero-revenge narrative to the ticking beat of a clock, and The Doctor's Wife a compelling tragedy of desperate medical science.

There's definitely something in common with this type of storytelling and the subgenre termed rock opera, which has a pretty long history going back to the late 60s (SF Sorrow by Pretty Things and The Story of Simon Simopath by Nirvana, thanks wikipedia), with notable examples including some incredibly popular albums like Pink Floyd's The Wall (which was adapted into a partly animated film using animations by Gerard Scarfe, c.f AN86) and My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. In many of these, the connection between songs and narrative is fairly abstract and metaphorical - most of the examples mentioned are about the psychological arc of one character.

Calling this a genre or subgenre is kind of a stretch recently - just in those four examples we see a pretty wide range of musical styles, so it's more like an approach to album writing. Still, for want of a better word, there's definite overlap between this 'genre' and musicals. For example, the history on wikipedia cites The Rocky Horror Picture Show as an example of rock opera, which in my head it's just a musical. (Anyway, exactly the taxonomy of regular opera/libretto, rock opera and musical theatre is not that important anyway, because we want to look at the techniques of all of them!)

A more direct narrative comes in the work of The Protomen, who have the 'no way that would work' premise of creating a huge, dramatic, emotional story based on the plot of the Mega Man games. By putting the focus on the tense relationships of the fought main characters (scientists Light and Wily and robot boys Proto Man and Mega Man), and their sense of rejection and betrayal by the broader society, they somehow pull it off.

Moving gradually in the direction of (progressive) metal, we encounter Ayreon, whose entire career has been telling psychedelic and occult stories of time travel, aliens, warnings projected into the past, out of body experiences, and the history and direction of humanity. I'm not sure if all of their albums fit together into one big story exactly, but certain ideas seem to keep coming up - for example, future societies or aliens sending warnings to humanity to fix our shit before it's too late. In some of their albums (e.g. The Electric Castle) they follow the device of having each member of the band play a character in an ensemble cast, bringing it a bit closer to something like a radio play.

Also in metal land we find the rather unique project Charlemagne: By The Sword and the Cross, best known for that time Christopher Lee shed the blood of the saxon men. This is using music as a vehicle for a (more or less) historical story, featuring an old Charlemagne (Lee) reminiscing on the various awful things he did over the course of his life. Apparently they made a sequel to this album, which I never realised!

As well as history, metal also likes to lean on literature and poetry. For example, Kamelot (classed, apparently, as 'Power Metal') have a rather fun adaptation of the story of Faust into two albums, Epica and The Black Halo. Iron Maiden famously took on the Rime of the Ancient Mariner in a 13 minute song. And that's not even to get into all the songs dealing with Tolkien.

Moving on from metal before we start listing a hundred songs about vikings, it's worth looking more broadly for music about history, since it's a pretty major overlap with fictional storytelling! For example, the Boney M song Rasputin tells an incredibly catchy account of the assassination of Grigori Rasputin. Another rather more charged example comes in Nakam by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, about the unsuccessful paramilitary plot to poison six million Germans as revenge for the Holocaust.

If you go looking, you can find an impressively long list of historical songs compiled by 30 users of lyrics website Genius - though many of these I feel don't really count, since they were describing contemporary events when they were written.

Of course, there is a heavy overlap between this subject and political songs - in many cases the historical subjects are invoked to comment on the present. For example, Wernher von Braun by Tom Lehrer was written at a time when von Braun was leading the US space programme. In many cases, the songs simply invoke a historical event to express a feeling, assuming you already know what happened. Others may recount events more or less directly, before seguing into a verse or two at the end about why it matters now. Most of the songs in this list focus on recent (20th-century) history, sometimes they reach further back - mostly to talk about colonialism.

Historical songs can also be quite oblique. For example, Mili's song Salt, Pepper, Birds and the Thought Police is about the life of Korean poet Yoon Dong-ju, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from the content of the lyrics unless you were already familiar with Yoon's life. More on Mili in a moment - most of their songs are more fictional.

One thing I'm curious about is whether there are examples of more historical fiction in music, which tries to imagine the thoughts and feelings of historical characters... well obviously there's Hamilton, and perhaps that illustrates why there aren't a lot more songs about non-recent history, because the vibes can be off.

Storytelling is still a powerful mechanism even in a contemporary, political song. Take Construção by Chico Buarque - the story it tells is of the pointless death of a construction worker; with the lines ingeniously remixed over the course of the song, this turns into a wider illustration of the ruthlessness of the system that killed him. Its lyrics are absolutely fucking genius, even if you don't speak Portugese.

Speaking of language, most of the examples I've covered so far are in English, since well, that's my native language. It's naturally a little harder to access a story in a language you don't speak, but in these days of subtitles, we kinda can! So for example I can encounter projects like MILGRAM, something of a combination of music project and voting-driven story, in which we are introduced (by character song) to a number of characters facing execution - and then invited to vote on who should die. Heavily illustrated, it is somewhere vaguely in the space between album and straight-up anime.

I mentioned Mili already, but many of their other songs have a strong narrative arc to them, and sketch out the contours of a fictional setting. For example, one of their best-known songs is world.execute(me), which portrays the failure of a bdsm relationship between an AI girl and her creator. Which is relatively grounded by Mili standards - other songs depict for example the relationship of a jiangshi and a mad scientist cooking food, or a witch reanimating a knight with scientific methods to kill on her behalf.

And I think that will suffice for now. But we are of course only scratching the surface - this is by no means supposed to be an exhaustive list but I'm sure there's stuff that I'll be kicking myself for not mentioning. Mostly, however, this is a request for recommendations - particularly, of music from genres I haven't addressed in this post, and especially non-English languages, or that convey their stories in especially creative or unusual ways.

This project will likely be a long time in the works - it's something of a supplement to the Music Theory Notes (for science bitches) series - but my aim will be to pick out a few of these to examine how they go about conveying narrative through songs. Because I think that's kind of one of the big things I want to do with music.

ok canmom out i gotta go play some music. see you next time!

[polar-night-scout]

Got tagged by @tissitpoispaita for the "put your playlist on shuffle and post 10 songs" meme (thank you! Glad I can participate in the rituals again). I don't have a playlist currently, my main way to listen to music is going to youtube and finding what I want. So I went through my history, disregarded the autoplayed songs/artists, and put one song for each artist which I deliberately sought out.

TOOL - Lateralus

Juno Reactor - God is God

Ai vist lo lop (Occitan folk song, band uncredited, probably Hollóének Hungarica)

Kent - Kärleken väntar

Biggie Smalls feat. Thomas the Tank Engine

Pathologic (Classic) OST - Utroba Night (Stone Yard)

Turisas - To Holmgard and Beyond

Heroes of Might and Magic 4 - Combat Theme IV

Path of Exile soundtrack - The Grand Arena

The place promised in our early days OST - 16 solitude

Tagging @starfally @blackrabbitrun @momiji-no-monogatari @yuuago @superdark33 @menhavingagoodtime @lcatala @vakavanhasaatana (pretty sure at least a couple of you will resent being tagged but this is part of the fun isn't it :D I'm thinking of you have a great day!)

[sheirukitriesfandom]

Summer Reading/Writing/Arting Tag

@thequeenofthewinter (and I think domeone else too but there's nothing in my notifications 🤔) tagged me a while back but because I have a whole bunch of shit going on irl I've been feeling rather "socially drained" and putting all my free time into Italian and ESO.

So sorry for the wait 😅.

Tagging: @elavoria @skyrim-forever @alma-amentet @katastronoot @miraakulous-cloud-district @dirty-bosmer

1) Describe one creative WIP project you’re planning to work on over the summer.

I hope I'll finally finish ACoS: Foe so I can move on to the letter G (ACoS is based on a series of letter prompts). I also want to continue with my original writing project.

2) Rec a book!

I rarely get around to reading for myself rather than uni (two foreign languages = two literary canons, yay), so I'm going with an author I admire greatly. 

I recommend "The House* of Ulloa" (Los pazos* de Ulloa) by Emilia Pardo Bazán. 

The story is set in 19th century Galicia and follows the young priest Julian Alvarez, who becomes chaplain for the marquis of Ulloa. Upon his arrival at the run-down estate, he gets drawn into the intrigues between the marquis, Pedro Moscoso; his majordomo, a suspicious, brutish man named Primitivo; and Primitivo's daughter Sabel, who is the mother of Perucho, Pedro's illegitimate son.

The House of Ulloa is an example of the Spanish naturalist movement, so if you're a fan of minimalist style, this book probably isn't for you.

*House doesn't exactly equal pazo. A pazo is a manor house in the countryside which often looks a bit like a small castle.

(Pazo de Meiras, where EPB used to live. Sadly, it later became the summer home of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco...)

3) Rec a fic! 

A Dream of Empire by Melampus

I'll just let the summary do the work for me:

"The Empire was all Lyrian had ever known. From a simple war mage trainee to Fatebinder, she never looked back on her choices, assured of her life as a loyal servant of the Empire and the Overlord. The war of conquest for the Tiers changed that. The fires of war forged Lyrian into something else beyond a mere tool. War was an ugly, dirty thing, but Lyrian felt right at home in the grime of battle, the spilling of blood. She never aspired to more, yet the world simply laughed.

And yet, in the chaos of war, there was a constant that she gravitated around without truly realizing it. Or rather, someone.

The Fatebinder of Balance."

I love Lyrian and her relationship with Calio, I love the additions to Tyranny's worldbuilding, I love the way everyone is characterised—it's just a great fic for a great, underrated game.

4) Rec music!

I've been thinking long and hard about which Trve Kvlt metal band I'd talk about just to show off my ~~eclectic taste~~ but fuck, I wanna gush about Angelo Branduardi. 

I love Angelo Branduardi. 

He's a renown Italian folk/traditional/pop musician, author, film soundtrack composer, (small-time) actor and, relatively recently, voice actor for a point & click adventure game.  

His music spans an incredible range of genres, lyrics & time periods ranging from songs of medieval origin to quiet folk to singer/songwriter to pop. He's released 28 studio albums and 50 albums in total. My favourites are the "Futuro Antico'' albums which contain adaptations of traditional songs from different areas and time periods as well as languages.

For example, the other day I listened to "Loibere Risen" from the first Futuro Antico album and thought to myself "Wait a minute, that's not exactly German… but it sounds so German I can kinda understand it." It's a song from the 13th century sung in Middle High German… Other obscure languages and dialects, such as Occitan, also find their way onto those albums.

Many publications call Branduardi a "modern day bard" and I think that's an apt description so if you're in any way inclined towards folk and "Bard-ish" music (or are learning Italian and looking for an easy to understand singer), I recommend you check him out.

Oh, and Angelo Branduardi is also the voiceclaim for Chief Justiciar Valcarion, one of my ESO OCs.

 5) Share one piece of advice!

When it comes to creative activities, rules are there to be broken. 

For any creative expression there are so many guides out there telling you to do this and that and while you should understand why those rules exist, don't let them limit you. Write that experimental 500k word novel from the perspective of a goose, wear that weird outfit you find cool even if they tell you those colours don't go together or it's out of fashion, draw that proportion-defying figure even if people tell you that's not how it works. 

It's all about expression and it's all good as long as those deviations from the norm are your intent (rather than, say, trying to draw a proportional human being but failing and hiding behind style).

[beyourselfchulanmaria]

Composer Bear McCreary introduces the various sounds of the hurdy gurdy used his score to "Black Sails."

手搖琴，又稱絞弦琴，是一種出現在歐洲各地的古老弦樂器，透過樂手轉動樂器上的手柄，聯動腹腔內樹脂包裹的輪子來摩擦琴弦，從而震動發聲。手搖琴有多個低音弦，因此可以產生一種類似風笛的持續音，而實際上在奧克西塔尼亞、加泰羅尼亞、卡津、坎塔布里亞和匈牙利的民間音樂中它常常和風笛交替使用。Most hurdy-gurdies have multiple drone strings, which give a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. For this reason, the hurdy-gurdy is often used interchangeably or along with bagpipes. It is mostly used in Occitan, Aragonese, Cajun French, Asturian, Cantabrian, Galician, Hungarian, and Slavic folk music. It can also be seen in early music settings such as medieval, renaissance or baroque music. One or more of the gut strings called 'trompette' usually passes over a buzzing bridge called the 'chien' that can be made to produce a distinctive percussive buzzing sound as the player turns the wheel.

bear mccreary on tiktok talking about his hurdy gurdy (and playing the black sails theme!)

[hartshorn-and-isinglass]

From his video description:

"Vocals by Aurora Aguilar & Farya Faraji, arrangement by Farya Faraji. This is an arrangement of two different but related folk songs, one in the Piedmontese language, one of the many Romance languages of Italy, closely related to Italian, and the other in French. I grew up familiar with the French version, and would later learn that there exist multiple versions of this same tale in Occitan, Catalan, Piedmontese, and other Romance languages of that area. The Piedmontese and French version, however, share in common a very similar starting melody, which is why I wanted to arrange them together. According to scholar Georges Doncieux, the song's motifs would have Celtic and Scandinavian origins: https://www.persee.fr/doc/roma_0035-8... Whatever the exact origin of this continuum of related folk songs, they all share in common the same motif of a king dying.

"My purposefully uses the overlapping aspects of modern Italian and French folk music, using instruments found in both traditions: a mandolin, accordion, and dulcimer. Some versions of the French song are in duple metre, but I used the version in triple metre to match the Italian one. Interestingly, the triple metre French song shows perfect syllabic and metric correspondence with other royal-themed historical French ballads like "La Fille au Roy Louis," which likely dated to the 1600's, showing at least continuity with earlier centuries, if not roots from that era."

[mynameisnowwyrm]

Got randomly recommended medieval occitan folk music on youtube and gotta say it is fantastic, ai vist lo lop indeed

[haitilegends]

Singer/Composer Cécile McLorin Salvant’s New Album, ‘Mélusine, Due March 24 on Nonesuch Records | Nonesuch Records

https://www.nonesuch.com/journal/cecile-mclorin-salvant-new-album-melusine-march-24-nonesuch-2023-01-16

🎥 "Cécile McLorin Salvant - D'un Feu Secret (Official Video)" on YouTube

https://youtu.be/FxvhZRtyHV0

Nonesuch Records

Jan 26, 2023

" Cecile McLorin Salvant performs 'D'un secret,' from her new album, 'Mélusine,' due March 24 on Nonesuch Records. Pre-order now at

Cécile McLorin Salvant, vocals

Sullivan Fortner, synths

Video by Amanda Bonaiuto in Brooklyn, NY

Assistance by Kohana Wilson

'Mélusine' features a mix of five originals and interpretations of nine songs, dating as far back as the 12th century, mostly sung in French along with Occitan, English, and Haitian Kreyòl, that tell the folk tale of Mélusine, a woman who turns into a half-snake each Saturday after a childhood curse by her mother. Mélusine agrees to marry Raymondin on the condition that he never see her on Saturdays. He agrees but is later convinced by his brother to break his promise, piercing his wife’s door with a sword and finding her naked in the bath, half snake, half woman. When she catches him spying on her, she turns into a dragon and flies away, only to reappear every time one of her descendants is on their deathbed.

D'UN FEU SECRET

(Michel Lambert, air de cour, 1660)

D'un feu secret je me sens consumer

Sans pouvoir soulager le mal qui me possède;

Je pourrois bien guérir si je cessois d'aymer,

Mais j'ayme mieux le mal que le remède.

Quand je mourrois, pourroit-on me blasmer ?

Qui commence d’aymer , ne doit-il pas poursuivre ?

Quand on sçaura, Philis, que j'ay cessé d'aymer,

On saura bien que j'ay cessé de vivre.

///

By a secret a fire

I feel myself

I feel myself being consumed

Without being able to relieve the pain that possesses me

I could be cured

If I stopped loving

But I prefer the disease than the remedy

When I die, will they be able to blame me?

The one who begins to love, should he not pursue?

When they know, Mélusine,

That I have ceased loving

They will surely know, that I have ceased living "

____________

Album Cover Notes:

By Cecile McLorin Salvant

My new album, ‘Mélusine,’ will be released March 24 on Nonesuch Records, with the vinyl due May 19. You can pre-order now at https://cecilemclorinsalvant.lnk.to/melusine

Mélusine

1. Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent? (Louis Aragon and Léo Ferré)

2. La route enchantée (Charles Trenet)

3. Il m’a vue nue (Pierre Chagnon, Jean Delabre, François Pruvost, Modesto Romero Martínez, and Georges Thenon)

4. Dites moi que je suis belle (E. Deschamps/anonymous, 14th century)

5. Doudou (Cécile McLorin Salvant)

6. Petite musique terrienne (Michel Berger and Luc Plamondon, from the musical Starmania, 1978)

7. Aida (Cécile McLorin Salvant)

8. Mélusine (Cécile McLorin Salvant)

9. Wedo (Cécile McLorin Salvant)

10. D’un feu secret (Michel Lambert, air de cour, 1660)

11. Le temps est assassin (Veronique Sanson)

12. Fenestra (Cécile McLorin Salvant)

13. Domna N'Almucs (Iseut de Capio, female troubadour,12th century, in Occitan)

14. Dame Iseut (Almucs de Castelneau, female troubadour, 12th century, in Occitan and translated to Haitian Creole by Alix Salvant)

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[zhanteimi]

Regrelh – Cants dels trobadors : « La douceur d'un son nouvel »

Regrelh – Cants dels trobadors : « La douceur d’un son nouvel »

France, 1979, Occitan folk / avant-folk Next time you’re at a pub quiz and they ask you where precisely electronic music and folk music meet, say “Occitania”, where drone meets the recitation of Medieval poetry, where tape music is the bedrock upon which old cultures are reborn.

[reckonslepoisson]

La Nòvia, Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. (2000)

A celebrated work from one of Japanese psychedelic rock’s most important contemporary outfits, La nòvia is a droning, folky, krautrocking and somewhat improvised epic. Acid Mothers Temple and Makoto Kawabata’s music is experimental and fresh for a genre that peaked over half a century ago, their search for inspiration taking them to Occitanian folk tunes and their instrumental skill ensuring La nòvia’s success.

One should probably warn that enjoyment of the disc is likely dictated rather sternly by one’s tolerance for tropes of psychedelic music more generally. Acid Mothers Temple continue to loyally traipse through some of psychedelia’s most dated (and perhaps weary) clichés – especially those that are indulgent and concerned with a conjured mysticality regarding elements of South Asian music.

Get past that, however, and La nòvia is an easily-enjoyed work of archetypal psych rock, and one of the less tiresome of such works this side of the millennium.  

Pick: ‘La nòvia’

[sonmelier]

1. San Salvador | La grande folie

France | Pagans | 59 minutes | 8 morceaux

Les six membres de ce sextet originaire du petit village corrézien de Saint-Salvadour (250 âmes) ont été à bonne école. Celle d'Olivier Durif, sorte d'Alan Lomax du Massif central qui a répertorié et enregistré les chants occitans traditionnels dans leur grande diversité. Tout autant que cette connaissance d'un terr(it)oir(e) musical prodigieux, c'est un goût pour la liberté et l'invention qui leur a été transmis et dont ils font un usage ébahissant. Jusqu'à transformer des chants originellement solitaires en polyphonies mystiques qui emportent tout sur leur passage. Ils ont marqué les esprits partout où ils ont joué ; leur premier album est, lui aussi, un triomphe.

[selezione-innaturale]

In just a month, we're all fucked in the ass!