A chat with Toulouse musician, dj, producer Canalh about his cumbia mix for a recent episode of Dialectic, took me on an unexpected tangent this month! Canalh spoke about his adventures searching for original cumbia vinyl in Colombia, as well as the inspiration behind the “Campecho” mix, being the music of the ‘peasant’ people – close to the heart of this descendant of the Occitan people of France. His first interview in English, and having lived three years in Colombia, the French-born Thomas has a slightly latin accent. The result I think is a nice, slow, poetic kind of speaking! Here’s the show (which also features a brilliant as always set from 555, taking us through East Asia):
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Dialectic Radio 182 |
Much of our discussion about Canalh’s occitan heritage had to be left on the cutting room floor for the show, of course, as we were there to talk about cumbia! But I was so intrigued to hear of the culture, of which I know very little. So for you, here’s a segment more from the interview with Canalh talking about the occitan language and culture, and its influence on him..
After this, with radio-occitania.com as an initial soundtrack, I’ve been doing a bit of internet searching. The literary language of Europe in the Middle Ages, occitan is the language of the troubadours, a Romance language with dialects still spoken in southern France, Italy’s Occitan valleys (and Calabria?) Monaco and the Val d’Aran in Spain. It is on the UN’s list of endangered languages, a number of the many dialects considered endangered. The wonderful Sorosoro site has a comprehensive history and further links.
It is interesting to me reading about the official ‘status’ of language. In Spain, Occitan is co-official since 1990, alongside Spanish and Catalan in the Val d’Aran … in Italy, Occitan is a “protected language”, ‘allowed’ to be spoken in administration, education, and media ‘anywhere local authorities choose to request so’ … in France, it is “recognised” but controversial, with the Paris administration as I understand it, not allowing it to be considered official language alongside French. The importance of language as a personal cultural and political charge is in this case profound. It’s the sound of your own emotional and spiritual heart, and when challenged, the sound of your passion!
From the Homelands ‘Worlds of Difference‘ radio project (a great project of documentaries exploring the impact of global change on traditional societies) – a transcript of a program on occitan music (go to the site to listen to the program, by Julian Crandall Hollick) :
“Before 1789, France was a loose community of regions, each with its own languages and dialects: Alsatian, Breton, Catalan, Corsican and perhaps 70 more. Occitan was the family of languages from Occitanie, the region that stretched from Bordeaux and the Pyrenées in the southwest to the Alps and northern Italy in the southeast. It and its several variants were linked to a rich creative history, particularly in literature and song. Then came the French Revolution, and then Napoleon, and a new constitution that declared France “one people, one nation, one language.” Occitan all but disappeared. But not completely. More than 200 years later, Occitan is still spoken in the French countryside and in the north of Italy, where it’s recognized as an official regional language…..The most visible—and audible—proponents of Occitan today are not linguists or history buffs, but contemporary musicians….”Looking for the sounds of the spoken language, though there is much written poetry (it is after all the most ancient Romance literature of Europe) I couldn’t find many spoken word recordings to share with you. But of course it’s the poetry of the troubadours, and therefore, it’s a musical poetry.. To go wa-ay back, the Italian group LiliumLyra perform the music of occitan “trobadors” and French “trouvères”..
This I found also, the HUM trio performing ”The Coma Molineta” after a poem by Joan Roier Ives, a poet and student of the occitan tradition.
I’ll keep hunting for spoken words. But, to come back to our modern living world! Here, Massilia Sound System from Marseille, reggae-dub-funky mixing French with Occitan rap..
Massilia Sound System – Tenson du bambou
Massilia Sound System – De Longue
And – Mauresca! Also from Marseilles, harvesting occitan hip hop and reggae, “the clash of languages, the praise of the plurality, the art of debate inherited from the troubadours”
Mediterranee / Mauresca / Cooperativa / 2011
Boul gants / Mauresca / Cooperativa / 2011
Loads more.. a good place to search for music in this language is http://www.paraulas.net. So with thanks to this interview with Canalh, though we were there to talk about cumbia and Colombia, a whole new road of discovery has opened. And of course, as much searching online has been fruitful, further exploration will as he said, require actual exploration, and dancing! There are now a couple more remote towns in Italy and France on my itinerary.
Una soleta lenga basta pas jamai… ?Tags: Dialectic Radio, Español, Français, Global Bass Music, Italiano, Occitan, Poetry
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