32 - Orality and the French-Canadian Chanson

Summary

“La pensée se fait dans la bouche” (Tristan Tzara)

ORALITÉS-POLYPHONIX 16, a festival and symposium that took place in Quebec in June 1991, explored fundamental aspects of orality, its forms and functions as well as its specific Québécois character. Orality can operate both in a printed text and in the act of performing, whose most popular manifestation — next to theater and dance — is the chanson. One of the many facets of orality is the euphonic experiment with linguistic material, which has already been touched upon in connection with surrealist and postsurrealist sound effects and language practices (see ch. 17, Mathis-Moser), and which is especially prominent in the works of, for instance, Claude Gauvreau (1925–1971), the poet, composer, and performer Raoul Duguay (1939–), the “automatists,” and the representatives of Counter Culture. In many cases this particular form of orality was combined with visual experiments that further hybridized genre borders. Thus Duguay created “visible” rhythms in his texts, rhythms that are visually perceivable through their affinity with the score of a composition; and the almost cosmic vision of his “stéréo-poèmeaudio-visuel” (Bayard) mixes calligraphy and “lettrism” with effects of sonority and multimedia experiments.

While such games may appear elitist, the chanson has been extremely popular with a wider audience. As a genuinely Quebec genre that does not exist in the rest of Canada in comparable abundance and variety, it deserves particular attention. It is difficult, however, to clearly distinguish the chanson from the monologue québécois, another genre typical of Quebec.