The pranks of the song | Rediscover Brassens

Brassens, who died 40 years ago, would have been 100 this year. This double anniversary is underlined by the spectacle The pranks of the song, featuring Michel Rivard, Luc De Larochellière, Ingrid St-Pierre, Saratoga and actress Valérie Blais, whose last performance will take place at the Francos. Take a look at this giant with three of the show’s artisans.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

Ingrid St-Pierre

in the show The pranks of the songIngrid St-Pierre interprets The non-proposal of marriage, by Georges Brassens. It’s a nice coincidence: a few years ago, she echoed it in her song The nuptials, her “non-marriage proposal” to her. Brassens, then, she knew. Or rather had the feeling of knowing him. “I realized while doing the show that I didn’t know the man and his repertoire so much,” she admits.

Beneath his harmless exterior, Brassens could make remarks that were not only very critical, but also misogynistic. However, this is not what Ingrid St-Pierre retains from this dive into her work. She finds that he is the “least worst” of the giants of French song at the time and that he was even a little ahead of his time in certain respects. “Brassens loved women,” she said. He took a much less reductive look at women than Brel, for example. It grabbed me and comforted me. »

“We also gave women songs that perhaps could no longer be sung by men,” she continues. That a woman appropriates these texts and gives them a completely different meaning. That’s what’s beautiful. »

Michel-Olivier Gasse

With his lover Chantal Archambault, Michel-Olivier Gasse forms the Saratoga duo. “We are those who have the most playful approach, I would say, although Valérie Blais adds a rather stunning layer of play to her songs, he nuances. We went light. »

Michel-Olivier Gasse had never gone very far in his exploration of this collection of songs riddled with innuendo and a rebellion not always quiet. He contented himself with a compilation of the collection master series, while for Ferré, he offered himself the box. “Even if I prided myself on tripping on Ferré, I came back a lot more often to Brassens”, he admits with the same honesty that we also find in Analogous storiesa recent collection in which he shares his love of music.

Years later, with his background as a musician, he was impressed both by Brassens’ qualities as a melodist and by the apparent simplicity of his songs. “He has the finesse to make believe that there is nothing complicated in there, while everything is cut with a knife,” he says. I’m not sure people realize how much it stretches and plays over time. I find it wonderful. He’s a great master, really, and he passes that off with a good-natured air. »

Yves Desrosiers

“It’s not easy to sing Brassens”, says Yves Desrosiers straight away. He, moreover, does not sing in The pranks of the song : he rather signs the arrangements and directs the trio he forms with François Lalonde (drums) and Mario Légaré. A small tight-knit group, which has been playing together for 25 years, that is to say since Lhasa’s first album.

“I like, when you pay homage to someone, to keep their ways,” says Yves Desrosiers, who played a lot of Brassens songs with Mononc’ Serge in the Quarts de rouge and the Badgers in the 1990s. Brassens was not breaking his head with the finale of his songs? He did not take care of them on this level. Brassens liked the gypsy guitar? That’s good, him too. “I took the opportunity to please myself,” admits the guitarist. Which didn’t stop him from taking some songs to sound more “Tom Waits” or even ska…

To dive back into the work of Brassens above all allowed him to better know the man behind the songs, in particular through interviews gleaned from YouTube. Yves Desrosiers notes the desire to “kick the ass” to good morals, ready-to-think and ideologues. We guess it all smiles on the other end of the line: “I realized that we were very similar. »

The pranks of the songSaturday, June 18, at the Maisonneuve Theater