The first time Stéphane Archambault fell in love with trad was in an apartment in the Plateau Mont-Royal. At a youth party, two guys, with a violin and a guitar, started playing.
“My folklore enlightenment came to me very late, in my twenties. I was a student at drama school. I pick myself up in a party young people from the Plateau, where people talk and dance a little. And there are two guys who arrived with a guitar and a violin. They turned off the music and they said, “We’re going to do a couple of tunes.” They started making reels. the party lifted so much, it didn’t make any sense. There is something completely visceral in trad,” he says.
Since then, Stéphane Archambault has drawn abundant inspiration from the traditional repertoire, writing the songs of the group Mes Aïeux, which merrily mixed folklore, rock and pop.
This year, he is taking up the torch of French-speaking American folklore, and he will hold it throughout the twelve one-hour episodes of The great vigilwhich takes the poster at ICI Artv.
As a host, he will receive French-speaking trad groups from different backgrounds, in addition to conducting interviews in front of an audience.
Its goal is to publicize folklore groups and inspire viewers to attend one of the 40 trad festivals that take place in Quebec each year.
A trail of young people
“Having been there a few times, I can say that it’s fascinating to see how lively these festivals are. These are not Golden Age festivals. There is a whole trail of young people who are interested in it and it is hyperactive, ”he notes.
And beyond the festivals, everywhere in Quebec dozens of musicians meet, in a living room or in a bar, to embark on a jam session to make nightclub DJs pale. “Sometimes there can be 20 or 30 fiddlers together,” he says.
In an interview, Stéphane Archambault observes that trad music is one of those categories of music that constantly evolves, that reaches generations of young people, but that is not broadcast in the mainstream media, except, of course, during the holiday season.
In fact, the reference to traditional music on television often dates back to The Canadian eveningas Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette evoked in the show Phave lost, which deals with the jig, and which she signed with Émile Proulx-Cloutier. In this show, she also tries to establish where we come from a certain shame of traditional music.
“We have a twisted relationship with our folklore, recognizes Stéphane Archambault. Maybe because it’s identity music. »
However, the singer and actor in turn wants to dust off all that, by summoning professional artists in “psychotronic” settings. In fact, the series was shot entirely at L’Escaouette Theater in Moncton, New Brunswick. “These are musicians who make Québec shine a lot abroad,” he says.
A folklore in the broad sense
For his show, he decided to interpret the word “folklore” in a very broad sense, and we can see, for example, the group Les Gars du Nord interpret 2December 3 of Beau Dommage. “As it’s the holiday season, we’re stretching the patent a bit,” he says, to folk and bluegrass, for example, with music from Louisiana. “But our hard core is traditional folklore. »
Through Mes Aïeux, he “discovered mind-blowing musicians, and an extremely rich history of transmission”. With this show, he wants to share his discoveries.
For him and for these musicians, this heritage is “a material with which one can have fun, and not only in the Quebec rigodon”. “We thought we were going to do a program on traditional music from French-speaking America. It can be instrumental music or songs in French. »
We will find at his microphone groups from Quebec, but also from the Maritimes, Saskatchewan and Louisiana. In the Maritimes, we hear Celtic and Scottish influences, while in Quebec, the sources are more French and Irish, and a little Scottish. “We are also going to look for groups from Louisiana, our Acadian cousins from the South. The idea is to mix generations and accents. »
We go so far as to present certain bilingual versions, such as the song Mittens no thumbsoriginally written by Ovila Légaré, which Nova Scotia native Mary Beth Carty renamed Squeegee.
In our folklore, there is an instrument that we all have, these are our feet. Personally, I find that everyone should do pedorhythmia in elementary school, as part of physical education classes.
This passing of the torch between the generations seems to take on the colors of the times. “If we want to pass the puck to other generations, you can’t just stomp your feet and play with the spoon, ”says a musician interviewed in the show. Also youth groups like É.T.É. do they make traditional music with bouzouki and cello, but also with jig. It is also thanks to É.T.É., and the young jigger Élisabeth Moquin, that the jig has carved out a small place for itself in the programming of The great vigil.
“In our folklore, there is an instrument that we all have, these are our feet. Personally, I find that everyone should do pedorhythmia in elementary school, as part of physical education classes,” says Stéphane Archambault.
Among other favorites, he also talks about this program where the Mauricie region is featured, with the groups Les Grands Hurleurs and Les Tireux d’roches, while the earthiness of the vocabulary of some complements the hyper-sophisticated arrangements of others.
Everything is therefore an initiation or a rediscovery of folk groups, to give young and old a taste for listening if a trad festival passes one day in their area.