Toujours Québec
New Releases from Québec Folk Artists
By Steve Winick
Most people familiar with Québec's music know just one major band: La Bottine Souriante. But there are lots of flavors of Québécois music to choose from, including traditionalists, iconoclasts, and everything in between. One trait often shared by Québec musicians, though, is an enthusiasm for Québec's cultural traditions and a belief that a satisfying future can grow naturally from a Québécois past.
In that spirit, many of today's Québécois musicians express their deep connection to older relatives or other elder musicians. As is often true in music traditions, the student/teacher bond approximates a familial relationship. Thus it is that Violoneux d'origine [self- produced/ Gag CD26421 (1998)], the posthumous CD release from Aimé Gagnon, came to be produced by his two children, Danielle and Yves, and his student Claude Méthé. Gagnon was a renowned traditional fiddler from Saint-Louis-de-Lotbinière, southeast of Québec city. Although he was a farmer and a carpenter by trade, he led a popular dance music trio, was recorded by Québec's most important folklore archive (Laval University's), and eventually traveled as far south as Washington, D.C., and as far west as Vancouver, bringing his fiddling to discerning audiences across the continent. The CD features Gagnon accompanied by a wide range of friends and family members: Méthé plays fiddle on several tracks, and Gagnon's wife, Lisette Lemay, plays piano on a few. Other guests include Gagnon's brother-in-law Marcel Lemay (accordion), his students and friends Paul Morissette and Paul Mar chand (guitars), and the Seattle band Pleasure of Home. The tracks were recorded mostly at house parties and are essentially personal tapes owned by the family. The decision to release an album was a way to memorialize Gagnon and also a generous gesture to future generations of musicians. Although some of these tunes are familiar enough, many more of them are either rarely recorded melodies or unusual settings, and some of them have delightfully inventive names as well. "Cotillon de la Patte du Mouton" is a fine example of an uncommon, humorously titled and jaunty tune, being played enthusiastically by a talented trio led by Gagnon — it doesn't get much better! To top it off, the tapes, which were digitally remastered, cleaned up, and given professional-sounding fade-ins and fadeouts by musical and technical wizard André Marchand, sound better than I imagined they would. Gagnon's fiddling, his foot-tapping, and all the music around him can be heard clearly and appreciated for what they are: brilliant traditional music, captured live in its natural contexts. Rare enough under any circumstances, this is doubly precious as it's the only album of Gagnon's music available.
There are six more recordings reviewed in this article in Dirty Linen #90 (Oct/Nov '00).
