The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #102392   Message #2077733
Posted By: GUEST,Bob Coltman
15-Jun-07 - 09:21 AM
Thread Name: Folklore: Lumberjacks, Voyagers and Traders
Subject: RE: Folklore: Lumberjacks, Voyagers and Traders
The songs commonly known as sung by voyageurs appear only in scattered places. A few, like Envoyons d' l'avant, Raftsmen, Youpe Youpe sur la riviere, and Un Canadien Errant are included in a little school-style songbook, Edith Fowke's CHANSONS DE QUEBEC, Melody edition, Waterloo, Ontario, Waterloo Music Co Ltd, 1958, if you can find one. It was still being reprinted as late as 1973. All its songs are in French and it's a great anthology of Quebec ditties.

Lilianne Labbe's album UN CANADIEN ERRANT, a good mod-folk collection of French Canadian songs dating from 1980, Philo 41069, includes the great "V'a l'bon vent" and "Youpe! Youpe!"   "V'a l'bon vent" was also recorded back then by Ian and Sylvia, who may have done others, but never more than a few.

The book-CD set Songs of the Voyageurs by Theodore C. Blegen, MHS Press, available from the Minnesota Historical Society, ISBN 0-87351-361-4 (watch out, it's sung by an all-male chorus) lists the following. Note there are few voyageur-specific songs:

À Saint-Malo (1:15)
Envoyons de l'avant (1:59)
C'est le vent frivolant (2:18)
En roulant ma boule (2:14)
Margoton va-t-à l'eau (1:30)
Mon merle (1:57)
Dans les prisons de Nantes (2:01)
Passant par Paris (2:13)
Au cabaret (2:08)
À la claire fontaine (2:30)
C'est l'aviron (2:49)
Alouette (2:18)

But even at best, genuine songs about voyageur life sung by voyageurs appear to be few. Marius Barbeau, Fowke and others who have collected French-Canadian traditional songs never seem to include more than a handful. Lomax collected French songs in Louisiana but not in Quebec as far as I know. Mostly it seems to have been a neglected area. It may help you in further search. Bob

However, I append this quote about Franco-Canadian folk music from http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=U1ARTU0001243

QUOTE
Foreign visitors who heard the singing of the voyageurs - the canoeists, the coureurs de bois, the fur traders of the north - were the first to draw attention to it. The voyageurs sang to set the rhythm of their paddles and to give themselves courage. Their songs excited the admiration of 18th- and 19th-century travellers.

The Irish poet Thomas Moore, who sailed from Kingston to Montreal in August 1804, marvelled at the sight of these men rowing together and singing in chorus against the magnificent panorama of the St Lawrence River. So enthralled was he that he memorized several of their songs in order to teach them to his sister. It was during this journey that he composed his 'Canadian Boat Song'. In 1817 John Bradbury mentioned that in the course of his journey he had heard canoeists sing 'Trois Beaux Canards' (Travels in the Interior of America, in the Year 1809, 1810 and 1811, London 1817; 2nd edn 1819, pp 20-1). During Captain John Franklin's expedition to the Arctic Lieut George Back collected voyageur songs and sent them to Edward Knight Jr in March 1823. Knight provided piano accompaniment for the melodies, and George Soane and J.B. Planche wrote English texts which they thought more representative than the original lyrics; the results were published in London with the title Canadian Airs (1823). John Mactaggart discovered a 12-verse version of the 'Fille au cresson' (Three Years in Canada, London 1829, vol 2, pp 255-6). Before 1830 Edward Ermatinger, an English emigrant of Swiss and Italian descent, collected the melodies and complete texts of 11 canoeists' songs. The Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto) owns a manuscript, signed by Edward M. Hopkins (1861), containing nine songs which appear to have been copied from Ermatinger. The New York weekly The Albion, 19 Nov 1836, published an unattributed version of 'À la claire fontaine' under the title 'Original Canadian Boat Song'; the words were in French and the music included a piano accompaniment.

Many other people have noted down songs in their travel diaries, among them Mrs Jameson (Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada, London 1838, vol 3, pp 111-13), James H. Lanman ('The American fur trade,' Merchant's Magazine and Commercial Review, New York September 1840, p 189), R.M. Ballantyne (Hudson's Bay, Edinburgh 1848), John Jeremiah Bigsby (The Shoe and Canoe..., London 1850, vol 2, pp 81, 321-2), and Johann Georg Kohl (Kitchi-Gami, London 1860). Kohl recounts the legend of Cadieux ('Petit Rocher de la haute montagne') and quotes several lines from the lament. Among other foreigners who observed this folkloric survival in Quebec were several from France, including Alexis de Tocqueville, Alphonse de Puisbusque, Xavier Marmier, who published Chant populaires du Nord... (Paris 1842), and Jean-Jacques Ampère.

From the numerous testimonies of foreign travellers, Conrad Laforte has compiled the 'Répertoire authentique des chansons d'aviron de nos anciens canotiers (voyageurs, engagés, coureurs de bois),' (Présentation à la Société royale du Canada, 1982-3). These rugged workers adapted medieval dance songs, mostly recounting feminine misadventures, to the rhythm of their paddles. These same voyageurs, engaged in fur trading, and the later foresters (loggers, raftsmen) sang of the hardships of their labours. A collection of these songs was published in 1982 by Madeleine Béland and Lorraine Carrier-Aubin (Chansons de voyageurs, coureurs de bois et forestiers).
UNQUOTE