“I don’t know my story. The story I know is totally false. When I understood that, it grabbed me. It put me in tabarnac”, admits from the outset Chloé Sainte-Marie, when The duty the meeting, on the occasion of the publication of cursed silence. At his side, Jean Morisset, co-author of this album-book, has a smile at the corner of his lips. Bringing to light the other side of the story learned and told is his life’s work.
The performer’s frustration is quickly dissipated. After all, the project, if it takes note of the genocides suffered by the First Nations of the Americas, if it admits the negation of their culture, their language and their contribution to our society, is above all a celebration. A celebration of such magnitude that, faced with their accomplishment, Chloé Sainte-Marie and Jean Morisset cannot help but sigh, as if overwhelmed by what they have been able to do.
make peace
“This album-book required / five centuries of preparation / and six more years”, writes Jean Morisset. The book, first of all, brings together poems and historical chronicles by Jean Morisset, to which are added those of a few collaborators, including James Noël, Nancy Huston and Joséphine Bacon. Chloé Sainte-Marie performs these poems, set to music by Yves Desrosiers. The 27 tracks allow us to hear fourteen languages, from nations of the three Americas, from Innu to Guarani, including the four languages of the colonizers.
“It started with a tribute to Kondiaronk that Jean wrote for the 350e of Montreal,” recalls the artist. “We had asked Yves Desrosiers to write the music, and we were lucky: it was refused. It was our starting point. A no meant it was good. At the mention of this memory, the two companions burst out laughing. Six years of working together forges ties.
Kondiaronk, because it seems necessary to recall it, is a Wendat leader who played a major role in bringing about the Great Peace. “Kondiaronk is really what makes us here,” says Chloé Sainte-Marie. “It is through him that we exist. His Great Peace in 1701. He brought I don’t know how many nations, 40, 50, who found themselves here, in Pointe-à-Callière. He died during the ceremony. His body is buried under the Notre-Dame church. Worse, it’s crazy, Kondiaronk is completely forgotten today. »
The vibrations of the territory
As vast as the territory of the Americas is, it is through it that the project took shape. From Patagonia to Ellesmere Island, Chloé Sainte-Marie let herself be immersed: “It is the territory that has been our guide. We had intuitions when we started, but it was by traveling the territory – the three Americas! — that languages and collaborations have imposed themselves on us. »
She has this unique way of feeling the world: “Me, I think with my feet. I speak with the palms of my feet. When you say to someone, “You think like your feet”, I think that’s the best compliment you can give them. When you walk on the territory, it is your feet that give you your thought and your vision of the world. »
By walking, she goes towards the other and, in doing so, meets his tongue. The interpreter sang all the languages of the First Nations of Quebec, but she regrets not speaking them: “When I made my first music video with Joséphine Bacon, there was an Innu who was with us. He spoke French, English, Innu and Cree, and I told him: “It’s fantastic that you speak all these languages”. And he looked me in the eye: “A language can be learned.” I didn’t speak Innu. It was a slap. I took it. He was right. »
The American Deconquest
Jean Morisset proposes to “reverse the Americas until their rebirth”, and this implies the recognition of our belonging to its history: “We put ourselves in an intrauterine Quebec cocoon, but we are part of everything. We are genocidal, we are genocidal. We are bleached, we are bleached. We are mestizos, Micmacs, Bolivian heroes… We are part of a whole. »
By reminding us of the memory of Louis Riel or of the tales of outrages suffered by the Inuit and the Selk’Nam, in particular, Jean Morisset is addressing “all those born in the Americas / who question the round trip of the antipodes / to the very mix of latitudes / and the song of the first orality / of which we are the happy tributaries”.
By dint of swimming against the tide and putting forward stories that have been silenced, he comes to seek his bearings: “I don’t even know if I am contemporary with myself. However, Chloé Sainte-Marie and Jean Morisset are anchored in the present, demanding, in chorus, the “liberation of Franco-Mestizo Americas” by honoring the music of languages: “You whose languages have escaped oblivion / by imposition of biblical translations / allow you to be invited / to the shared meal of taste sounds. »
cursed silence, music, poetry, archives, embodies a vibrant invitation to resume together, from one pole to the other, the path of reconciliation. Through their loose-tongued survival songs, Chloé Sainte-Marie and Jean Morisset give birth to a reconciled community: “Any people whose word of silence / stops reinventing their inner laughter / to tell their story at dusk / finds itself in danger of climatic drought. »