Book-disc by Chloé Sainte-Marie | “The Triumphant Deconquest”

She “begs for poems to feel alive,” says her friend Joséphine Bacon. With the book-disc cursed silence, Chloé Sainte-Marie pushes even further the boundaries of her poetic repertoire set to music. She does so in 14 Latin, Creole and Aboriginal languages ​​in close collaboration with the geographer Jean Morisset, as well as with the words of Nancy Huston, James Noël and even Jack Kérouac.

Emilie Cote
The Press

“Like I didn’t know my real family,” she says.

When Chloé Sainte-Marie crossed paths with Jean Morisset, author of the book On the trail of wandering Canada, she had some sort of revelation. The same she felt in Haiti in 2015 for the Native American Nights show, where she performed with her great friend Joséphine Bacon, whom she affectionately nicknamed Bébitte. “I had the impression of having denied my creoleness. »

With a thirst for better knowing “our roots from one pole to the other”, the one that has long been driven by Innu culture wanted to highlight languages ​​that have “escaped nothingness” from the Far North to Patagonia. .

In the show from his previous album, At the crossroads of silencesChloé Sainte-Marie recited a poem by Jean Morisset – a geographer by training – entitled Kyrie-Kyrie Kwe-Kwe. But it wasn’t enough. “It’s a native stabat mater and I wanted to sing it,” says Chloé Sainte-Marie.

This musical desire nourished the foundations of cursed silencethe fruit of six years of work and close collaboration with Jean Morisset, who wrote numerous texts and translations of poems, some of which can only be found in the magnificent illustrated book that accompanies the two discs.

“Chloé is a little gifted. She has the meaning of the words, because she has the sounds in her,” adds Jean Morisset.

multiple voices

Invested in the cultural mix of the three Americas, Jean Morisset, son of a navigator, visited the Far North, Haiti, Brazil, the West Indies, Patagonia… The voices of many friends and acquaintances can be found on cursed silencebecause Chloé Sainte-Marie absolutely wanted to have voices for several of the 14 Latin, Creole and indigenous languages ​​that appear on the book-disc… “The album wasn’t finished until we had Guarani, Quechua, Maya, Mapuche […] I stuck with it,” she says.

Thus, Wara, a student of Bolivian origin, recites in Quechua a poem by Jean Morisset whose title is You whose tongues escaped nothingnesswhile Mateo Pablo, from Guatemala, pronounces in Maya the words of the poem You who resisted the attacks of the tongue cutters. “Mateo Pablo lives here now, but he lived through the massacre in Petanac [en 1982], underlines Chloé Sainte-Marie. It disturbed me to learn that Maya is not written. »

Chloé Sainte-Marie introduces us to the words of the Haitian poet James Noël. She hands over to her friend Josephine Bacon as she sings the words of Nancy Huston on Plain Song Song of a Plain Man.

Faithful collaborator

To set half of the 27 texts of the double album to music, Chloé Sainte-Marie called on her faithful collaborator Yves Desrosiers as well as the director François Richard. They gave a vibrant breath to songs like Ti Katkat and Tchee-Kee Dee-Dee-Dee-Dee (a kind of rap with cello!), while Kondiaronk — a tribute to the Huron chief to whom we owe the Great Peace of Montreal — is all in sobriety.

It’s nice to hear Chloé Sainte-Marie sing in Spanish on Be the Triumphant Deconquista. “That’s basically the album, the triumphant defeat! “, she says.

It is with emotion that she also bears the words of Louis Riel, as well as, on two pieces, those of Jack Kérouac (Jean Morisset and Chloé Sainte-Marie stick to this spelling with an acute accent). “Kérouac, I feel he could have been my brother. I am sensitive to his writing and his way of behaving in his excesses. I would have liked to know him. »

At the service of the words of others

“I only read poetry and I sang hymns all my childhood with my mother,” says Chloé Sainte-Marie modestly when we highlight the vast scope of her repertoire of sung poetry with seven albums.

If the rebellious red-haired artist is in love with words, she is above all attentive to others in a perpetual quest to learn.

Chloé Sainte-Marie had never read Gaston Miron before meeting him, she reminds us, in the same way that she had never seen a film by Gilles Carle before speaking to him. The latter also said of his sweet that she had escaped any “university formatting”.

One thing is certain, Chloé Sainte-Marie has immense respect for the notion of memory. She also remembered many details of her first meeting with the journalist who writes these lines, 18 years ago, at her former home on Île Verte, when her great love, now deceased, was still at home. his side and under his very loving care. The purpose of the report was to explain what a “natural caregiver”, a term – and a fight – that everyone knows today, thanks in particular to her.

Why is Chloé Sainte-Marie so often ahead of the major concerns of tomorrow? “I feel things,” she simply says with the burst of laughter that makes her so endearing.

cursed silence releases October 12.