There's no Canada like French Canada, and no one plays the traditional music of Quebec quite like Mélisande [électrotrad].
Comprised of husband-wife duo Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand and the titular Mélisande, the group re-imagines traditional, centuries-old Québécois songs with state-of-the-art electronic instrumentation.
Mélisande herself provides the vocals as well as an impressive and hypnotic mastery of the jaw harp, or 'guimbarde' as the French say.
Currently touring Australia, Mélisande [électrotrad] will be performing at Australia's biggest folk music gathering, National Folk Festival in Canberra this Easter.
We catch up with Melisande to find out more about traditional French-Canadian music and how Australians have responded to their music.
What's been happening for Mélisande [électrotrad] in 2019?
The year started with an official showcase during the Folk Alliance International Conference which was in Montreal this year; it had been 14 years since it had been in Montreal. Then we flew to Tasmania to begin the first stretch of this current Australian tour. We came with our band and our two kids (five and ten years old) to play in Hobart, at the Port Fairy Folk Festival and the Blue Mountains Music Festival. It was an awesome experience.
We are doing an official showcase at the Pacific Contact conference in Vancouver (4 April) then we will do some school shows in our area and come back to Australia to complete the tour. Meanwhile, we also did some field recordings along the Richelieu River banks in Québec; we met many elders who shared their stories and traditional songs with us. Our next album will feature songs from those recordings, arranged in the electrotrad style.
How have your shows in Australia gone so far on this current tour?
All the shows went really well. We were lucky enough to get some dancing and cheering crowds. Our music is very festive and we love to see the audience moving on the dancefloor.
What can audiences expect from your upcoming performances?
The shows will be energetic and fun, with some grooves to dance to. We are very happy to have late shows including a dance party on Sunday at the Coorong.
What are your own expectations for National Folk Festival?
I attended my first NFF in 2008 – I was then following Alex with his band Genticorum; my cousin lives in Hobart and I also wanted to visit her. It was an incredible experience, especially the NFF with all the shows, jams and parties. When Mélisande [électrotrad] played in 2017, it was beyond all my expectations. The audience reacted so well to our music and danced to every performance... something was really happening. I am hoping that this time the audience will welcome our music as well as in 2017, but I don't take anything for granted so I will do my very best to get the crowd moving again.
You last performed at National Folk Festival in 2017; how has the band changed since then?
We are becoming more and more electro-dance oriented. The repertoire hasn’t changed too much since we are still touring the same album; this tour actually closes the cycle of 'Les millésimes'. We will play a couple of new songs 'en primeur', announcing the direction we are taking for the next album. We play with a different line-up than in 2017, incredible musicians again.
It seems Australian audiences have responded extremely well to your music; do you feel like you've been accepted into the musical community here?
Oh yes, it has been a wonderful relationship from the start, I feel really lucky and I hope it will keep on being this good… just like a great love story :)
Thinking back to when you first came to Australia, what were your immediate impressions of the people here and their appetite for music?
Like I said it was in 2008 and I felt a bit like I was at home in Australia. It seemed to me that we were much alike and that the folk music scene was as strong as it is in Canada. I am extremely thankful and proud of Australians to be open-minded and curious of other cultures to the point of listening to French-language music. People in Québec are very impressed about that, they can’t believe it!
The band formed in 2014 – what have been some of the group's major achievements in that time?
We were able to tour quite a bit with the first album (including a first tour in Australia in 2015). We got great critiques and won a Canadian Folk Music Award for 'Traditional Singer of the Year'; This really was a dream come true for me since I was the underdog. We also won an Independent Music Award for World Beat Album and produced a music video that I was really proud of.
The songs on your latest album 'Les millésimes' (2017) were selected during research ventures to archives in Quebec and the US; what was the process you used to pick the songs on the album?
Well we listened to many reel-to-reel tapes and when a song had the potential of becoming an electrotrad song we would select it and try to arrange it. Alex is the one doing the arrangements and I am adapting the lyrics if necessary. We always keep either the lyrics, the melody or both. We want to preserve the essence of the song, it’s our anchorage in the tradition. We always make sure that the song speaks to us, I have to be comfortable to sing it.
What are some of the defining characteristics of Quebec trad music in particular that differentiates it from other forms?
First of all, we have to say that most of our songs come from France, so we do share that culture of the call-and-answer songs, where the lyrics sung by a singer are repeated by a group of people. The songs are usually pretty simple since they were made for everyone to be able to sing them. We have foot-stomping that is really specific to Québec and Acadia; originally the fiddler would use that technique to accompany himself and have a bigger sound to play for dances.
The fiddle has a great place in the traditional music from Québec and usually plays infectious melodies (reals, jigs) along with another instrument such as accordion, banjo etc. In our case it is with the wooden flute, which wasn’t originally in our culture. The mouth music is also specific to Québec. We have all these elements in the electrotrad mixed with drums, keys, jaw harp and electronics.
What are the band's plans for the rest of 2019? Is there some new music in the works?
I mentioned earlier that we have been doing some field recordings in the past year and we are currently working on the next album, which features songs from those recordings. We are super-thrilled because we are working with an amazing producer and friend; we were supposed to do the second album with him but our respective schedules made it impossible.
We are embracing the electrotrad more than ever, going further - more electro in the aesthetic and more trad in the artistic approach. We will tour Canada and the US, maybe Europe as well. We will release the new album along with a new show with a breakdancer in September, a third music video will come as well.
Mélisande [électrotrad] Australia Tour 2019
Thu 18 April - The Vanguard (Sydney)18-22 April - National Folk Festival (Canberra)
Wed 24 April - Upper Lansdowne Memorial Hall
