My latest musical obsession has been with the songs of the French-Canadian voyageurs. I read this book called "Early Candlelight," by Minnesota author Maude Hart Lovelace, who tells the story about a French-Canadian-American girl growing up at Fort Snelling, and is surrounded by voyageurs and fur traders and all these midwestern pioneery people. Read the book, it is soooo good! Throughout the book these voyageurs sing--almost all the time--and they are beautiful and happy songs. I'd be a very good voyaguer, since I love foreign languages and folksongs. Now they'd only have to show me how to paddle a canoe. I was actually somewhat raised on the voyaguer music as a little kid (see two posts ago). Mom and Dad bought this cd at the History Center gift shop, all the songs being sung by a college choir from Toronto, so the French sounded real. We'd listen to them on long car rides, although the only one my siblings and I could ever figure out how to sing was good ol' "Alouette." It was actually a big part of my life back then. At preschool I drew this wonderful picture of the twelve voyaguers from the cd cover in their canoe, and it became one of the greatest pieces of my shortlived career as a visual artist, along with one entitled "Cast of the Andy Griffith Show." There had to be exactly twelve men in that boat, and I'm told that every time I drew a new figure I had to go back and count them all over again just to make sure. Also inspired by the French-speaking explorers, my older brother taught me how to say, "Ferme le boush." (shut up.) He didn't show me how to spell it though.
So rediscovering the voyaguers and their music has been very cool. The one that Lovelace quotes right at the end the book when...um...something super awesomely cool happens is called "A La Claire Fontaine." I read the words, and it looked very familiar. "Mom," I asked, "do you recognize this?" That's when I found out it's actually her most favorite French song ever. She sang it for me, and it brought me back to being in the the van on the road to somewhere when I was four years old. Isn't it lovely when things like that happen? How music triggers memories. My mom doesn't sing in public very often, doesn't like to, and when she does it's in the choir, but let me say that she sang that song so beautifully, I kept wanting her to sing it over again. The next couple of days I went looking on YouTube (what would I do without you?) for any videos of people singing it, because I didn't want Mom to wear out her voice, but I couldn't remember the tune. That's when I found out it's a children's song. Indeed, the best (and cutest) video I found had three French six year old girls singing it in their backyard. I love the songs that can be sung so simply and still be a thing of beauty. After all that, I looked for the lyrics, even though I don't speak French. I read the English translation and found that it's an interesting storyline for kids to be singing. Here are the third and fourth verses in English:
Sing, nightengale, sing,
Your heart is so happy.
Your heart feels like laughing,
Mine feels like weeping.
I lost my beloved,
Without deserving it,
For a bunch of roses,
That I denied her.
Chorus:
So long I've been loving you,
I'll never forget you.
I never sang stuff that heavy when I was six. The happy tune betrays it's melancholy lyrics, but that's kind of why I like it. Now my mom and I can sing it together.
**I'd upload a video, but YouTube isn't cooperating :(
