Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Soul Music from Québec: Richard Desjardin's New Album Is Out
Like Leonard Cohen, that other guy born with "a golden voice," Richard Desjardins is a national treasure. Existoire, his just-released album is great, mixing the personal and the political in a terrific brew. Even if your French is high school level, you'll like his bluesy, funky, folksy songs.
This is the guy, by the way, whose film L'érreur boréale (Forest Alert, in its English version) is credited with saving great swaths of Quebec's boreal forest.
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The OTHER Richard who sings folksy songs about the "working man" (and woman), the environment and other issues, Richard Séguin, also has a good new album, "Appalaches". A song about the late radical trade union leader Michel Chartrand, and another about workers heading off for a pleasant (spring?) weekend while they await the notice of their plant closing, the only employer in their small town. Both subjects Desjardins could have written about with equal skill and conviction, but a very different style - more earthy humour perhaps? Funkier for sure.
They are both exceptional albums. I expect to hear extracts from each at the May Day march soon ... one day before the elections (just hope the NDP and Bloc contingents don't come to blows!)
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