Music pub elle et vire3/17/2023 ![]() ![]() No, the song of the French sailors is not the short list of printed texts often of literary origin which has been circulating for half a century it is the treasure which lies hidden in the memory of the people on the coasts of France. To get to this point, a profound change of mentality was necessary: we are finally rediscovering the importance of the oral tradition. This kind of exchange between singers and audience is just what the artisans of the present rebirth of interest in sea songs had been hoping for. We luffed, we luffed, at the same instantĪ version totally unknown until this day! And a moment of true pleasure for Cabestan. Belfleur, a Newfoundland fisherman born in 1872 - 33 campaigns under sail - often hummed this song, which he began to sing to an attentive audience:Ĭ'est à grands coups de hashes et d 'armes ![]() When the song is ended, an old man in the room gets up to show that he knows it, but not like that. It is a version of the famous song The 31st of the Month of August collected 3 years earlier from M. Christian Desnos leads a chant a virer (capstan shanty) joined on the chorus by the four other singers of the group 'Cabestan', and by the public. We are far from the situation in the USA or in Britain, where ballads and shanties form a part of the atmosphere of all the festivals in honour of traditional sailing boats, and resound in all the pubs and bars along the coast!Īugust 1985 and an evening concert in Sables d'Olonne. This aspect of maritime culture has nevertheless still not received the recognition in France that it merits. From 1981 the publication 'Anthology of Sea Songs' by the magazine Chasse-Maree, the fruit of some 15 years of research into the sailors' oral heritage, has largely contributed to this new interest. Today they are rediscovering the originality and the richness of French sea songs. The Songs of the French Sailors Article MT097 - from Musical Traditions No 9, Autumn 1991 The Songs of the French Sailors the rediscovery of the French traditionįor a long time amateur singers of sea songs have had the magnificent repertoire of Anglo-American shanties as their sole reference. ![]()
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