Otago Girls' High School
Thursday, October 11
Canadian folk music reigned supreme in Otago Girls' High School auditorium last night when four musicians who are the unique Montreal group Le Vent du Nord entertained a large audience.
Traditional Quebecois music flowed with great rapport and audience participation, and with a compulsion to become entrenched in the beat and folksy melodies, stylistically Celtic or Medieval French in origin.
Heavily accented English banter was all part of the charm, with anecdotes and humorous introductions, and the mood of infectious congeniality was all-consuming.
These widely-travelled musicians make their music with voice, keyboard, fiddle, button accordion, hurdy-gurdy (a stringed instrument with a rotating wheel), various guitars, and foot percussion.
No drums, but solid-soled shoes, and a seated fiddle-player co-ordinating his "foot and 'eel" with unfaltering rhythmic precision, provided continuous drumming obligato, amazingly without total muscle spasm.
The repertoire generally had many verses of story-telling, but the foreign text did not really seem to matter. The beat, feeling and passion said it all, and introductions explained that all were about a guy who loved a woman, and they mostly had "bad endings!" I initially found the amplification far too heavy for this venue and often vocally distorted, but perhaps to a lesser degree after the interval when I shifted to the rear of the auditorium under the mezzanine.
A softer number came with a four-part a capella song in well-balanced harmony.
The music of Le Vent du Nord is skilfully arranged with instrumental individuality and harmonic flavour of its own. It is infectious, toe-tapping stuff, guaranteed to lift the soul and spirit, drawing audience participation with clapping and "la-la-la- ing", as in Lanlaire, came easily.
Merci beaucoup, mes amis!
- Elizabeth Bouman
