Mes Aïeux

Today I thought I would take a moment or two to talk a bit about my favorite Québécois group, Mes Aïeux. I would be pretty shocked if my readers from English Canada had run across them before and even more shocked if my new American readers (Thanks to a recent link from Stumblingthroughlifewithgrace.com) had even the slightest clue who they are. Since they’ve recently released a new CD/DVD set in Quebec, I thought that now was as good a time as any to talk a bit about them. I don’t know too much about the history of the group (Yes, I know. My bad. But it seems to me that the music is more important than quaint little tales of origin.), but it’s pretty clear that they’ve been deeply influenced by traditional Québécois folk music. The sextet is comprised of Stéphane and Benoit Archambault, Fredéric Giroux, Eric Desranleau, Marie-Hélène Fortin and Marc-André Paquet and has released 4 albums to date.

I picked up their 2004 album, En famille, when I was in Quebec City during my first French immersion course and from the first song, I was hooked. The song? Dégénérations- very recently the #1 francophone song in Quebec. The song was first released 2 years ago, but it got no airplay from radio here. Apparently the Powers-That-Be in music programming didn’t think it was right for their audience. Constant pressure from the fans of the group finally got them to change their minds and the next thing you know, it’s the most popular song in Quebec.

For the most part, the song’s sung a capella with only a tribal drumbeat to keep time (though I suppose the presence of ANY instrument disqualifies it from truly being a capella). It traces the history of a family through its days of clearing farmland to present day apartment living, comparing one generation to the next. In a touch of irony, the song’s present generation yearns for the very things their forebears gradually gave up: a plot of land to work and a large family.

I’ve found the same sort of subtext (a desire to return to simpler times) in songs by other sovereignists, though I can’t for the life of me give examples at the moment. The difference between this song and those by other sovereignists is the acknowledgement that the past was pretty miserable. They seem to advocate a balance between the old ways and modern living. Now how anyone attains such a balance is anyone’s guess.

Their songs do have political undercurrents (no big surprise in Quebec), but they also have a sense of humour (again, no big surprise). Heck, they wrote a whole song about leaving the bar after last call and going for late-night poutine! Overall, I’d recommend them to anyone who’s a fan of the pop-folk genre, even if you can’t understand what they’re saying. So fire up your file transfer program of choice and track down a few songs. Til next time…