The more than 350-page book has barely reached bookstores when it is already guaranteed to be a bookstore success. Signed Olivier Demers, violinist, guitarist and emeritus member of the renowned trad orchestra Le Vent du Nord, here is 1000 airs from Quebec and French-speaking America — Tome 1, the most exhaustive catalog of songs and instrumentals from the Quebec folk repertoire of the late 19th centurye century to today. The musician has invested nearly 13 years of work in research and transcriptions to finally arrive at this first volume, a colossal project that was initially greeted with skepticism by members of the great Quebec trad family.
A musician for 25 years, Demers has the reels at his fingertips, but it’s impossible to have them all in mind. He has so many that the rigodon runs out of his ears; at least a second volume will be necessary so as not to lose any, he says. Because this project was born out of a necessity: that of transcribing on the computer, using a musical notation software, all these tunes that he has accumulated, just to be able to refer to them when memory alone saturated. “After having transcribed two or three hundred arias, I said to myself that it could well become a book, says the musician. I continued to transcribe those I knew, then I started rummaging through my archives – airs, I have thousands of them at home ”-, on cassette, on record, on paper, in his notebooks, Lark.
The company, he writes in his preface, has met with some resistance from colleagues, for one simple reason: this music lives on through oral tradition. These tunes, reels, brandies, gallops, waltzes, and so on Paul Jones are passed on by word of mouth, from violinist to violinist – from quest to inhabitant as well, recalls the musician: “Before, it was the questers who spread the “repertoire” from village to village, over the course of their encounters with the people who taught them in exchange for the songs of their regions. “Then, to transmit the repertoire, there were the 78 rounds, the radio, the shows TV – At Isidore with The Soucy Family [1960-1962], Canadian evening [animée par Louis Bilodeau sur Télé-Métropole, entre 1960 et 1983] -, vinyls, cassettes, compact discs, the Internet… and why not books today? “
Because, according to some, fixing this music on paper would slow down its impetus, that of the necessary sharing of these tunes from one musician to another, a gesture which allowed the repertoire to persist over time and above all, adds Demers, to evolve. . “My goal is to make people understand that a piece is not necessarily fixed in an era, but something alive, which is transformed, which evolves. Sometimes I had to put two or three versions of the same reel when the variations were important enough to justify it. »Sometimes the same tune has several titles – the Reel of parishioners, for example, is also known in the nearby village as the Real state, the Reel you save or the Cotillion of Arsène Jarry’s father.
The goal is to invite musicians to dive deeper into the heart of this repertoire. I hope my book will have a long life. In any case, it will still be consulted in ten years.
The scores compiled by Demers and classified in alphabetical order contain the strict minimum of information; the name of the composer, when known, the key in which it should be played, sometimes its measure, but no indications specific to the interpretation such as accents or bows; the notes are engraved for posterity; it is then up to the musicians to appropriate these tunes and put them in their hands.
This is precisely what Olivier Demers hopes for, who admits to having been inspired by the work of Francis O’Neill, an American policeman (born in Ireland) and musician who has devoted his life to cataloging the traditional Irish repertoire from recordings on wax cylinders, published scores and interviews with Irish musicians. Two of the esteemed works he published during his lifetime, O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (1903) and The Dance Music of Ireland (1907) are still consulted today: “These books had a major impact on the dissemination of traditional Irish music throughout the world; it is partly because of this that the music of Ireland is played everywhere. “
“My book has a mission, that of saying: here is the music [traditionnelle] Québécoise, as O’Neill’s books have done ”for the Irish tradition, says Olivier Demers, who has already made a second printing of his book, which appeared at the end of November. “My orders come mainly from the United States,” he says. I receive orders from Scandinavian countries. It will be read in England, Ireland, Scotland – even if the preface is in French. [Ce milieu des musiques traditionnelles] is one which is interested in the culture of the other, and that this book is published in French constitutes first of all an affirmation: this is the musical culture of a French-speaking people in America. “
“I made this book to spread our repertoire and provide more accurate information for musicians who sometimes learn a song after hearing it on YouTube or hearing about it in trad music discussion forums on the web. – there are plenty of that. “It will be, Demers wishes, the reference work of the Quebec musical tradition for musicians interested in folklore – when this pandemic is behind us, traditional violin camps will be organized again, in California, in New Brunswick. Scotland, in Lanaudière in July, where the musician expects to find new clients.
“The goal is to invite musicians to dive deeper into the heart of this repertoire. I hope my book will have a long life. In any case, it will still be consulted in ten years, ”says Olivier Demers, who also launched on November 6 a first solo album of original compositions for folk guitar, Inside out of a world.
“The book is aimed at the traditional milieu, who can refer to it, but I also want to expose this music to other musicians, from the classical or jazz world and who wish to get closer to this repertoire, by making them d ‘first understand that it is gigantic. It is a book for musicians of all caliber, of all styles, who want to be interested in traditional Quebec music. I tell myself that if a musician from the Orchester symphonique de Montréal puts this book on his lectern to study it, I will have succeeded. And if that can give the idea to jazz or classical musicians to create new arrangements of these pieces, well go for it! “
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