He was a discreet guy. A huge singer, however. But when we talk about the greats, Félix, Vigneault, Ferland, Desjardins, Rivard, we often fail to mention it. It is a mistake. A few weeks ago, working on a collection of poems in which the Centre-Sud district of Montreal is the setting and the heart, I found myself humming: “When we are from Lower Town, we are not from Upper Town”. And I remembered…
I remembered the first time I heard Sylvain Lelièvre on the radio, in our kitchen in Boischatel, in the 1970s. Arborite counter, intense period wallpaper, a window overlooking the island and the other on the city, it was Early morning who played on CHRC… I remember my immediate feeling of closeness to this voice, this tone, these words, this music. I immediately found myself in Limoilou with my favorite cousins, in this magical district where all the streets smelled of toast from 7 a.m. on fine summer mornings.
I then discovered poetry through great singers who had nothing but nature and love. So it did me a lot of good to hear that guy perching his stanzas on the Bell Telephone wires.
The song is a happy nostalgia. I therefore plunged into it without restraint and I was stunned by the number of great songs that I was rediscovering. Do you doubt? And if I tell you you friend, Lower Town, To come to the world, The river, What have we done with our dreams, The piano player, The Lament of the Distracted Child, Tiananmen Square, Gray pants and blue jacket, mom is here, useless things, Marie-Helene ?
A few words about this young girl who had just turned twenty… Marie-Hélène has aged very little. The vague disarray of a groping entry into adulthood still floats there, perceptible, palpable. Admittedly, Lelièvre knew her well, this teenager, CEGEP teacher that he was. Still today, listen Marie-Helene, it’s hearing him sigh modestly close to you, seeing his eyes blur in the smoke of a roller, sitting on a cushion in his little apartment. It’s more than the portrait of a young girl or even of an era, it’s the portrait of an age that cannot be quantified. And the music has a lot to do with it. Lelièvre is a marvelous melodist, doctor in prosody of the Quebec phrase, whose music he understands like no one else.
I have only one piece of advice to give you on this April 30, which marks the twentieth anniversary of his death: take out vinyl records and compact discs, rummage through the great digital bazaar and rediscover Sylvain Lelièvre! Listen to this fraternal voice, to this ever close voice, which has chosen to believe in our complicity. You will hear Lelièvre, right at his piano, walking one quiet evening in a Limoilou alley, a cone with two balls in his hand, and humming, of course. Because he had a singing melancholy, our Sylvain.