Saturday, November 5, 2011

The Many Sounds of Music…

I was asked the other day what we did for the Fête de la Musique and the response when I recounted our adventures was so enthusiastic that I thought I would share them with you as well.
First, a little background information….each year, June 21 marks the summer solstice for the northern hemisphere. The word “solstice” comes from “sol”…the first syllable of the French word for sun…soleil… and the Latin “stare”, meaning “to stop.” It’s the longest day of the year in these parts…a day when the sun seems to stop in sky.

We know now that the sun doesn’t move and it’s more a matter of the earth being at its greatest tilt…towards the sun for the northern hemisphere and away from the sun in the southern hemisphere…resulting in winter in Australia when it’s summer in France. Early civilizations chose that day as a time for joyous assembly with sporting games, music, and dancing.

In 1982, Jack Lang, then the French Minister of Culture, decided the summer solstice would be a great day to celebrate all things musical; his idea grew and today, in more than 100 countries, June 21 is hailed as the Fête de la Musique. It’s a major happening in the environs of Paris; public transportation runs all night, the majority of the events are free, and they are held in every imaginable place…from isolated street corners to the courtyards of lofty museums…some are scheduled performances, while others are spontaneous.

Moustaches…J-P’s favorite pet store…got in the spirit of things with this poster featuring a feline version of the “Blues Brothers” in their window…
moustacheswindow
It’s just a great day, one where music fills the air! An event
that celebrates all genres of music…classical to punk…symphonic to electronic…emanating from amateurs and professionals alike. Everywhere you turn there are guitars, drums, accordions, pianos, violins, cellos…every imaginable instrument.
We began at noon with a pique-nique salsa in the fore-court of the Musée des Arts et Métiers in the 3rd arrondissement…for a lunch with a decidedly Cuban beat!

cubansalsamusiciansA group of fourteen musicians from Cuba…Will Campa y su gran union…were on stage while dancers from the School of Cuban Salsa demonstrated the way the Cuban Salsa should be done…cubansalsadancers2…they made it look so effortless…cubansalsadancers1Of course, we all gamely tried to replicate their steps…although, filled with all that picnic fare….the results were far less than spectacular…but fun nonetheless.
Then we walked over to the Jardin du Luxembourg…luxembourgsign … where the kiosk pavilion was decorated with banners that gave the schedule of events.
Each year, France celebrates a different culture and 2011 is the year of the Outre-Mer….or “over-seas”…referring to the French over-seas territories…exotic places including Guadaloupe and Martinique in the Caribbean, Tahiti and Bora Bora in French Polynesia, and the Reunion Islands in the Indian Ocean.
The first group on stage was Te Hina O Motu Haka from the Marquise Islands…

polynesian group…singing and dancing…in traditional costumes and native tattoos…
tahitian dancer
After that, the stage was filled with a Creole group named Gospel Forever…
gospel
…the park reverberated with foot tapping, hand-clapping music…
gospel group
A group from Guadaloupe by the name of Negoce was next. They were accompanied by a fantastic quadrille of dancers in traditionally-inspired dress…
guadelupe squaredance
It was quite reminiscent of an American square dance…complete with a colorfully-dressed “caller”…only she punctuated her instructions with maracas…dancer callerThe dancers were wonderful…
dancers…and because the Jardin du Luxembourg is the “back yard” of the French Senate, the dance floor was soon “invaded” by government bigwigs…
dignitarydance …in a French equivalent of if American politicians John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi decided to join in on a square dance performance on Capital Hill.

After Roger Raspail  and his group from Guadaloupe…it was time for a performance by “Sully et les Chamanes”, a Parisian group that pulls on their réunionnais roots to create a true Bal Créole. To get into the spirit of things, each performer ceremoniously indulged in a shot of rum beforehand…

sully  …here’s Sully with the rum not far behind.

Then, on our way home for a little something to sustain our strength…when what should we see but a team from Michel and Antonin building a pyramid of mousse…chocolate mousse. To publicize a new product, buckets filled with chocolate mousse were being used to create an impromptu sculpture in the forecourt of the Pantheon.
mousse at pantheonWould we like a couple of buckets to take home? Oui, s’il vous plâit!

Making our way along the Pont de l’Archevêché…rentaboat …the evening’s festivities were in full swing with boatloads of music-lovers. No time to dilly-dally though as we had buckets of mousse to put in the frigo…French for our teeny excuse for a refrigerator.
Since we were home anyway, we ate dinner and then walked it off by heading back across the river…
quai …where the Quai Montebello was beginning to attract music-lovers in search of spontaneous musical happenings. Tempting, but we had a specific destination in mind…the Collège des Bernardins…a recently restored thirteenth century abbey in the 5th arrondissement. Now used as a cultural center…
interiorcollegebrndn …the evening’s program offered a type of music that we had never experienced…a group of Mongolian musicians were giving a performance. It was Mongolian folk music…The Song of the Steppes…
mongolianmusiciansintro …performed by musicians in native costumes…left to right, Enkjargal Dandarvaanchig, Nasanjargal Ganbold, and Naranbaatar Purevdorj. The music was amazing. Evolved from centuries of long, solitary evenings spent by nomadic horseback sheepherders, it is fairly unknown to the western world…isolated for seven decades by the domination of the region by the former U.S.S.R. How to explain the sound? It’s almost supernatural…the voice techniques have labels to describe the six different modes of diphonic chants…the musical instruments have names like bishguur and  morin khuur…and the effect is positively hypnotic…a sort of Mongolian version of Home on the Range.

The rigors of Mongolian throat singing necessitated that the performance be given in fifteen minute long sessions with a short break in between each song. 

A quick couple of photographs of the instruments during a break in the performance…the bishguur is a Mongolian oboe…


mongolian instruments4mongolian instruments3…while the morin khuur is called a horse fiddle due to its traditional, carved horse-head ornamentation.
Enkjargal spent his break time signing CDs…

costumemongoliansinger
Their music was mesmerizing and filled our heads as we once more hit the streets…
airtahiti …walking  past the offices of Air Tahiti, we switched tunes…

…and then headed back across the river… quaimontebello …where the impromptu jam sessions were gathering momentum.

We ended our evening with a Brazilian samba class/performance in front of the Hôtel de Ville….braziliensamba…and then it was time to say Boa Noite…Brazilian for “good night”…and head home so we could dig into our buckets of mousse…
mousse Music and chocolate…a great duet!
 

We have since tried in vain to describe the Mongolian throat singing…only to end up hurting ourselves in feeble attempts to demonstrate the sound with our untrained diaphragms…but I did find this link on the site of the Collège des Bernadins

http://www.collegedesbernardins.fr/index.php/art/musique/archives-musique/fete-de-la-musique-2011.html
Wait a few seconds and you’ll hear a sample from that evening’s concert…admittedly, without the visual benefit of being there in person, it is difficult to tell where the musical instruments end and the vocals begin…but it will give you the idea.
Stayed tuned for more behind the scenes adventures of The Meadows Collection or check out the results at www.meadowscollection.com