The very first project of the documentary series The sound of the French of Americaoriginally designed for radio by André Gladu, was raided by Montreal police following the imposition of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis in 1970 “For those interested in the archives, this first version has always been in the vaults of the police headquarters, rue Gosford, for 50 years”, writes André Gladu in The echo of the Sound of the French of America.
This set of texts, posted online by the Cinémathèque québécoise, marks the culmination of the celebrations surrounding the restoration of the 27 short films of the Sound of the French of Americashot between 1974 and 1980 by André Gladu and Michel Brault and recorded in 2017 in the UNESCO International Memory of the World Register.
“This seizure, which mainly included documents on student movements, triggered a reflection in me, said André Gladu in an interview. How do you defend yourself in a democracy against abuse of power? »
don’t lose your memory
Still, in 1970, André Gladu already knew the plot of the Sound of the French of America by heart. A few years later, accompanied by Michel Brault, who had already produced Orders, he signs this series which was going to make school, in the form of direct cinema. The basic idea was to forge a link, through music, between the French-speaking communities of Quebec, Canada, Louisiana, and those of Missouri, in the United States.
“At the start, I wasn’t in the folklore field, it wasn’t my cup of tea, and I wasn’t an ethnologist. But I had the intuition that it was necessary to make a series on it,” said André Gladu in an interview. Today, his series of films allows us not to lose our memory, and to get to know this French-speaking culture “which is not in history textbooks”.
A well of history
“Music is a good medium, a good way to preserve memory,” says André Gladu. Well of history, he tells, in an interview, how the fiddlers were excommunicated, until the 1960s, in certain villages of Quebec. And you have to hear him recount the Poitevine origins of the hunting-gallery legend, modified here by the loggers who worked in camps in the Outaouais.
In the dossier posted online by the Cinémathèque québécoise, participants of varying degrees offer about ten texts reflecting on The sound of the French of America.
“What I find impressive in THE swe of the French of America, this is the breadth of his vision, writes for example the Louisiana singer Zachary Richard. It represents a completely continental and even intercontinental flight that pays homage to this North American musical tradition, while recognizing its Poitou or Breton origins. »
For Zachary Richard, the series highlights the link which, despite the distance, unites all the “communities of French heritage in America, and whose tie cord is called music”. An extract from the short films, accessible on the site, shows a touching youthful Zachary Richard recounting the place occupied by French in Louisiana in 1976.
“These films, it will be understood, are not content to document the rurality of Quebec and Acadia. By walking their camera among the Cajuns (Louisiana) and the Métis (Manitoba), they offer a continental vision of Franco-America. It was a tremendous research intuition, precisely at the time when Quebec tended, in the North American context, to close in on its borders,” also writes Gilles Havard in the dossier.
Most of the protagonists of the short film series passed away today. “Things evolve and change,” says André Gladu. There are always losses. »
But these fantastic archives, available on Éléphant, allow us to dive into Franco-American memory as well as to collect some dance tunes and precious testimonies on a little-known history.