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Qui-Vive! Two words, one exclamation mark: a whole program hidden in the title of Cie Rassegna's new opus. Its artistic director, guitarist Bruno Allary, takes four musicians on a wild odyssey between voice, lute and turntables, at the crossroads of 17th-century baroque and contemporary music.
2002-2022: twenty years! When he founded Compagnie Rassegna, guitarist Bruno Allary was navigating between jazz, flamenco and traditional music. "At the time, it was just a question of gathering around me a sort of brotherhood of singers and musicians from the Mediterranean whom I accompanied individually. Corsican singers, Arabo-Andalusian musicians, Neapolitan performers, flamenco artists... Artists who came from what we rightly or wrongly call 'popular' music.
The musical in-between: a true aesthetic
The young company, a real laboratory, wants to cross-fertilize popular music from the Mediterranean: what would be the result of having a Balkan song performed by a singer specializing in Corsican polyphony, and vice versa? Interesting friction. "I wanted to provoke mixing, cross-fertilization and contrast, to create an intimate and vibrant relationship with these repertoires. That's what I've done for the next fifteen years! Bruno Allary's work is based on what he calls an "in-between aesthetic". " In these repertoires, particularly in oriental music, we are constantly on the edge of tonal and modal, in a tension between two languages, two conceptions of music...".
Travel, travel
The in-between, the edge, exchange and friction. Cie Rassegna sees itself as a space for encounters, a little like the Mediterranean basin, whose age-old musical heritage it defends... In 2014, its work took a new turn, giving rise to the triptych of which "Qui-Vive!" will be the final link. As is often the case - and perhaps even more so when you're interested in musical cross-fertilization - it's all about encounters. Bruno Allary invites Mireille Collignon and her viola da gamba to join the Compagnie. This time, the musicians were interested in the 16th-century Renaissance repertoire. So they imagined, experimented, tried..." Why not combine instruments associated with early music with... the electric guitar?"
Renaissance and electric guitar
A fruitful partnership that led to the creation of "Il Sole non si muove". Here again, the aim is to break down barriers. "This first part of the triptych blends popular and learned repertoires, tracing the intense movement of 16th-century musicians from the Mediterranean to England. Here again, the challenge is considerable: "How do you make music that comes from oral tradition, in perpetual movement, cohabit with written music?" sums up Bruno Allary. There have been difficulties. "From a purely artistic point of view, the question of tonality and modality is a delicate one. Putting together instruments or singers from the Latin part of the Mediterranean, Westernized, and musicians from the East, constantly confronts us with the use of modes and micro-intervals. If the quarter-tone is a little more like this, it's more Iranian; if it's more like that, it's more Anatolian... It's all very subtle, and the cohabitation is fascinating."
Circulation of music
Bruno Allary then notes the extent to which the divide between the "learned" and the "popular" is still prevalent in France. "I was recently giving a virtual conference to musicology students in Brazil, and I realized after five minutes that for them there was no separation between the popular and the learned. It doesn't exist!" In 2014, Rassegna's project didn't fit into a single box. No matter: four years later, the second part is in the making: after the Renaissance, it's time for music from the Middle Ages. Contretemps", presented at La Crié in Marseille, explores medieval poetry in a new sound machine. On the program: kaval flutes, baroque and electric guitars (as always) and texts by philosopher and historian Patrick Boucheron.
Through the ages
Medieval, Renaissance and, of course, Baroque music. The musical triptych comes to a close this year with the release, on CD(Buda Music), of "Qui-Vive! This third opus was commissioned by the Théâtre Durance, a theater in Château-Arnoux-Saint-Auban (Alpes-de-Haute-Provence). "Two of the musicians I called on for the project come from the world of early music: recorder player Clémence Niclas, a member of the young Apotropaïk ensemble, who sings very well, and viola da gamba player Nolwenn Le Guern. At the first rehearsal, I brought lots of instruments, as I always do, because I didn't yet know what this project was going to sound like. I asked if anyone wanted to play electric bass, and "moi moi moi!" replied Nolwenn. She had always dreamed of playing bass in a rock band...".
Purcell, drums, scratch
Fado singer Carina Salvado also joins the project, "she can sing Purcell while playing drums", Bruno Allary laughs. The guitarist also contacted a DJ, French champion and world vice-champion in scratching: Isa L. Atipik. Working with 17th-century repertoires is very intimidating," confides Allary. I come from a background of music played in the street, in bars. How do you tackle Purcell or Monteverdi? When I come to this so-called learned music, I ask myself if I'm legitimate. If I wanted to be a little polemical, I'd say that the reverse isn't always true. When scholarly musicians take on popular music, they ask themselves fewer questions. What can I bring to these repertoires, which are usually played in a masterly fashion? Yes, I have to respect it, work on it, document it, but I have to find a place for it, dare to take a step aside! I can bring them a little bit of what I think this music has lost, a little bit of grain, a little bit of crackle...".
Sound mirrors
When he discovered the obstinate bass and baroque ostinato, melodic and rhythmic sequences that go round and round, Bruno Allary drew a parallel with trance music, where the interest lies in recurrence. "And what's spinning and rubbing and crackling? The vinyl turntable! Here we have an object emblematic of urban, contemporary music, which finds its place, in a roundabout way, in the baroque repertoire." The turntables are not used in the project to "slack off", but symbolize the whole "Qui-vive!" approach. Isa L. Atipik recorded loops of flute, viola, voice, guitar and bass to create a small library of samples.
Frescobaldi, Boesset, Zanetti, Bailly, Purcell, Barbara Strozzi: some rarities, some hits, from which Bruno Allary and the musicians offer chiselled, astonishing, rustling covers, sprinkled with electro. These audaciously arranged Baroque pages take on a completely new dimension: electrified recorders, violas da gamba in tension, continuous bass scratched on vinyl turntables or loops augmented by electric guitars. To complete the experience, "Qui-Vive!" is built around a theatrical narrative: a prologue, three acts (theater of love, madness and death) and a poetic epilogue in which the musicians embroider on Théophile de Viau's verse, which sounds like a manifesto for 2022: "Ici, mon désir est ma loi" ("Here, my desire is my law").
Suzanne Gervais
Catch Qui vive! and Cie Rassegna in concert on September 22 at 8:30 pm at Studio de l'Ermitage, Paris.
