2012/06/23

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  Vieux-Port / Old Port - 2012.06.17
  Scènes de Montréal - Montreal Scenes
  

  Yearly navel gazing

  Radio-Canada's Saturday radio morning show, today. Host Joël LeBigot interviews Gilles Vigneault, our greatest living monument, about his song "Gens du pays" (People of the land) which many (not me) consider to be the unofficial for now and proposed to be official when the time comes, national anthem for Québec.

  Joël Le Bigot: «Celle-là puisqu'elle est devenue... mais on sait pas si ça vous fait plaisir... de dire elle est devenue un hymne aussi... "Gens du pays" est né comment?»

  Gilles Vigneault: «Eh bien quand on me parle d'hymne national je dis toujours que c'est comme un drapeau , c'est pas ça qui fait avancer le bateau ça le retarde souvent, et jusqu'ici on a utilisé les hymnes nationaux et les drapeaux pour envoyer la jeunesse se faire trouer de balles.. alors on parlera d'une chanson.»

  translation:

  Joël Le Bigot: «That one, since it has become... but we don't know if it pleases you... to say that it has become an anthem as much... how was «Gens du pays» born?»

  Gilles Vigneault: «Well, when I'm told about a national anthem, I always say that it's like a flag, it's not what makes the boat go forward, it often holds it up, and up to now national anthems have been used to have the youth sent to be filled with bullet holes.. so we'll talk about a song.»

  He then goes on explaining that he and two others (almost as monumental as Vigneault imo) had been asked to participate in the first large "fête de la St-Jean" (as it was generically called then) megashow on Mount Royal in 1975. For remembrance this is the same show where Ginette Reno first sang Ferland's song «Un peu plus haut, un peu plus loin» of which I've posted about a few times. Since it was a birtday in some way and that the celebration's theme that year was Québec Fête, they had planned to sing "Happy Birthday" [knowing these people, most likely in a sarcastic way], but he got the idea of creating a whole new song for the purpose. Splendid idea the others said, and hey, why don't you go and start. So Vigneault wrote the refrain and they all agreed it was great. Vigneault suggested they then each write a verse. When Vigneault came back with his, the others told him they couldn't do better so Vigneault ended up writing the other two.

  A personal version of this song soon appeared and quickly became the de facto song we sang at someone's birthday, all across Québec, and even at times in some other French-speaking countries, in lieu of the traditional English «Happy Birthday To You», which sounds terrible when sung in French. For the personal version, the lyrics are modified to address the person instead of the people in general. It is a very universal and inclusive song, which can be sung to just about anyone anywhere, maybe it's one of the reasons some want to make it a national anthem. On the other hand, for that same reason, I don't think it is fit for that purpose. It is also a poetic song, which is a big plus, for me.

  This song also quickly took political overtones and became the song of a nation (in the sociological and French (language) meaning of the word). At the outcome of the 1980 referendum on sovereignty, at the end of his defeat-conceding speech, René Lévesque started to sing this hymn, in a gesture to bring all Quebecers back together after that highly divisive referendum. At his death in 1987, It was also sung spontaneously by people along the route which he traveled from Parliament where he was lying in state, to the Quebec City cathedral where his funerals took place. In Montreal, where he lied in state for a few days at the old Court House in old Montreal and where thousands of mourners waited hours to be able to see him (of which me), people started to applaud when he left the court house, heading for Quebec City. It was the first time such a thing happened here. But that's a another story obviously not related to this song. Then again...

  There is a not that bad translation of the song on Wikipedia but which contains a few serious mistakes. I nevertheless used it as a canvas to make a better one. Like I said, it's a poetic song, and «c'est votre tour/de vous laisser parler d'amour» does not mean at all «it's your turn/to let yourselves talk about love» but to «be talked (spoken to) about love». It's a passive form, not active. The use of "country" is also borderline since "pays" in the sense it is used here (by Vigneault, others uses I'll address below) has no real translation in English. It is not at all a country in the political sense, like with borders and stuff. It's a poetic phrase, more of a state of mind, a sense of belonging, something cultural. A region in one's mind or memory, in which one feels at home. It's a little complicated to explain. In an expression like "le pays de l'enfance", pays would be the hood in childhood, say. Land is better than country here, but still not really it, and does not sound well but that's a collateral. Country sounds even worse in these lyrics. I hesitated between "the" and "this" land, and went for the more universal "the". Those who took the word "pays" literally are those who made it a national anthem. And it's not what Vigneault had in mind as I mentioned earlier.

  In the personal version (birthdays, celebration parties, hommage, etc), «Gens du pays (People of the Land)» is replaced with «My dear [person's or group's name]», and only the refrain is sung. The first time ever the song was done, at that concert, they replaced, only in the first and leading refrain, Gens du pays by "My dear Quebecers", using it in the 'birthday' application of the song. The political application came later..

  
  GENS DU PAYS
  Lyrics: Gilles Vigneault
  Music: Gilles Vigneault/Gaston Rochon
  Translation: Wikipedia and me

  The time we take to say I love you
  It's the only one left at the end of our days
  The vows we make, the flowers we sow
  Each of us harvests them in oneself
  In the beautiful gardens of flowing time

  People of the land, it's your turn
  To let yourselves be spoken to 'bout love

  The time to love, the day taken to say it
  Melts like snow on the fingers of spring
  Let us feast with our joys, let us feast with our laughter
  Those eyes where our gazes meet
  It's tomorrow that I was twenty

  People of the land, it's your turn
  To let yourselves be spoken to 'bout love

  The river of days today stops flowing
  Forming a pond where each one can see
  Like in a mirror, the love he reflects
  For these hearts, to whom I wish
  The time to live our hopes

  People of the land, it's your turn
  To let yourselves be spoken to 'bout love

  From the 1975 concert on the mountain, the first ever rendition of Gens du pays, presented as a gift to Quebecers to finally replace and for ever the "disguised in French" 'Happy Birthday to You', a song with no clout and showing only that we can translate English and that we have nothing belonging to us, a song we've been waiting for 200 years (I'm loosely translating all they are saying here ). Some have stopped singing it later on when it became a political rallying song for others (or maybe they never sang it, how would I know):

  That clip above comes from our RDI (allnews channel) and from a program hosted by anthropologist Serge Bouchard. At the end of the video, we hear Vigneault say something (below) which motivated the essential of my life and is why I live in Quebec. No one, ever, will treat me again as a second-class citizen. And for this to happen, it's not very complicated. All one has to do is to own himself, and preferably also, his society. Then, being open to the rest of the world is the easiest thing on this planet to do. I own myself, but some Quebecers still have problems, even today, suffering from over two centuries of British colonialism and still bowing to the conqueror, often without their even being conscious of it. As Jacques Brel said in a famous 1971 interview (my translation): «What is hard, for a man who would live in Vilvoorde and who would want to go to Hong Kong, it's not to go to Hong-Kong, it's to leave Vilvoorde.» When you finally decide to leave Vilvoorde (or Canada), the whole planet is up for grabs.

  Vigneault: «I would like, through all that I have done and all that I will still try to continue doing.. to transmit that idea.. to possess oneself.. so as to be able to say "Welcome!" to the people who come to see us».

  What he means of course is that when you own yourself, you are no longer afraid of losing your identity, and therefore the stranger, no longer a menace, becomes instead a source of personal enrichment that you welcome heartily. It also means that you have to own your dwelling if you want to have a say on how it's run.

  Below is the 1976 St-Jean mega-concert on the mountain (Mount Royal), one year after the 1975 creation of the song. In one year it had already swept Québec. The concert featured five of Québec's greats: the late Claude Léveillée, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Yvon Deschamps, Robert Charlebois, and Gilles Vigneault singing his song helped by others. Keep in mind Vigneault is a poet, not a singer . That historical concert was attended by 300,000. Six months later, René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois were elected, becoming the first ever independentist government in the history of Québec. 1976 was a major date in Quebec's history.

  With the "printemps érable" (maple spring) that is shaking Quebec these days, some make a parallel between 1976 and today. Stephen Harper secretly met last week with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to discuss among other pressing issues the possible return to power of the Parti Québécois, as early as this fall. The thing is, if there were a referendum on independence these days, contrary to the other times, there is no one on the federalist side having enough clout and/or credibility in Québec to even think leading the federalist forces, and those still having a working lightbulb in the brain are a little disturbed by it. These people considered the idea of independence dead and wrote off Quebec. Harper has 5 or 6 members of parliament from Quebec. Might as well say none. English Canada, every time they have a chance, take their wishes for reality. They are clueless about understanding the Quebec psyche. Tough luck for them.

  

  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to install a few Québec flags in my hanging flower baskets, because tomorrow is the Fête Nationale of this country-in-the-waiting of which I am very proud to be a citizen of, a country as astounding at times as it can be despairing. But a country with a life. And these days, that's a rarity.

  Oh, and I got a red square too.

  

  • 15:57
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