The nine competitors who paraded during the last three evenings of the Francouvertes necessarily upset the final rankings of the preliminaries, but not to the point of knocking the artists holding the leading positions off their podium. So be it: Soleil Launière, Princesses and Loïc Lafrance will arrive in force during the semi-finals, which will be held on April 15, 16 and 17, followed by Le Belladone and La Monarque, both discovered last Wednesday during the most eclectic evening of this first round.
Belladonna (Gabrielle Audet) opened Wednesday evening with a sense of theatricality in tune with the richness of her electro-postrock song and her almost operatic voice. Surrounded by five musicians, all, like her, dressed in white – let us see the symbol of her desire to cleanse the traumatic past that she puts to music. “My body is heavy, I carry the weight of all those who burned alive,” she says between two of her songs, which powerfully construct her mysterious and captivating universe. Deserved, this fourth position.
Taking fifth position, another beautiful beast than La Monarque (Ariane Drapeau, survivor of The voice), in his eccentric stage costume, who concluded the same evening with muscular electro songs, offering the most explosive proposition of this 28e edition of Francouvertes. Very simple stage layout (drums, two synths), but devilishly effective, in the dance-punk-electroclash lineage of Le Tigre or Fisherspooner two decades ago. The third competitor, Zea Beaulieu-April, did well in 2020 within the activist dark wave duo La Fièvre; perhaps his solo proposal, musically in the same vein, was a little too confusing, between Ramserved as an opening, an authentic lugubrious and dancing bombshell, and the other compositions, with more (too?) experimental structures and melodies.
Rock and folk songs were on the Monday evening program with Sandra Contour, Sakay Ottawa and Patrick Bourdon, all three of whom claim to put their music at the service of the text. Originally from Manawan, Sakay Ottawa did it in the Attikamek language, and with the quiet assurance of an experienced musician who had everything to gain from the Francouvertes showcase. On the eve of National Indigenous Languages Day, Ottawa shone with its rock-folk-country orchestra, but not enough to secure a place in the semi-finals.
Ditto for singer-songwriter from Alma Sandra Bélanger (stage name Sandra Contour, repeat it out loud), recently crowned in the Ma Première Place des Arts competition, after distinguishing herself in the Cabaret Festif competition !, in Baie-Saint-Paul. The song in its most traditional expression: Sandra on guitar, accompanied by a double bass player. Witty, funny and intelligent texts, with well-timed rhymes and measures, but imbued with his strong and endearing personality. The Francouvertes adventure ends here for Sandra Contour, but her professional journey will continue on May 10, when her first album will be released, I don’t have visitors.
From Monday, only Patrick Bourdon will move on to the next stage. We didn’t see this one coming, with its young orchestra experienced in country-rock. He says a lot between songs and two sips of bourbon (or other grain brandy), sometimes sings off the note, guitar at his neck, but what a show he puts on, the guy ! Plume, Les Cowboys Fringants, Paul Daraîche, a bit of all that on the same stage. Arriving in seventh position, he could well find a way to sneak into the final.
Finally, the Tuesday evening, placed under the banner of hip-hop, saw the emergence of Sensei H, the first to parade, with her impressive authority, at the microphone. Franco-Algerian of origin living in Quebec, she surrounds herself with an orchestra to energetically rap her texts to us in the whites of our eyes. The musician could give lessons to the Floraison Tardive trio, which closed the evening in a manner as festive as it was messy: its competent orchestra (led by the beatmaker Tetro) articulated pleasant pop-funk-hip-hop grooves, but MCs Mimile and Tony Baitch always rapped on the same square prosody of texts that were also unintelligible, buried under theautotune.
Between the two, LeBlaze would have deserved a place in the semi-finals. Coming from a Burundian family established in Val-d’Or, the musician sings and raps his very good compositions with contagious enthusiasm, in addition to dancing. His performance was received as a breath of fresh air, he who was the sole representative of the new pop trends in Africa, mixed with rap and R&B. He was also the only black candidate on the poster, very pale, of these 28are Francouvertes. This guy has an appetite for the stage, can’t wait to see him there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=videoseries