Tadoussac was the site of the first Canadian trading post along the St Lawrence in 1599. Its location where the Saguenay River and fjord meets the St Lawrence River made it an ideal trading site between the European and indigenous people of the region. The location is also beautiful! Current-day Tadoussac, home to fewer than 1000 people along with scores of whales, has become a popular destination for tourists (many in search of a glimpse of said whales) and second homeowners from the more southern parts of Quebec. It was also the site of the 37th annual, 4-day Festival de la chanson de Tadoussac (Tadoussac Song Festival).
The festival features and honors Quebecois songs and songwriters, celebrating the spirit of francophone song. We weren’t familiar with any of these artists and performers in advance of the festival, and we realized that our ability to speak and understand only rudimentary French, while it allows for basic communication, would not be enough to understand the lyrics of songs. In a sense, it would be like attending, say, a Bob Dylan concert without understanding the lyrics – good melodies and catchy rhythms, to be sure, but it is the lyrics that set the music apart. So we were prepared to miss some of that, and we did, but we found that picking up a few words here and there and reading the emotion from the artists often allowed us to gain and feel much more of the sense of the song than we had expected.
The music was unarguably Quebecois – not only were the songs (almost all of them) sung in French, the chord progressions seemed subtly different, though it’s hard to say how. The rhythm parts often featured interesting ostinatos with generous embellishments of percussion – shakers, tambourines, hand drums, and more. Cellists, keyboard players, and wind players throughout the various bands supplied clever riffs that were always fresh with different grooves and voices. Most of the musicians played multiple instruments. It seemed to us that an important part of the performances, nearly on par with the songs themselves, was storytelling between songs – an additional art form that we’d not seen to this extent before, and many of these artists appeared to be especially adept.
Highlights for us:
Ingrid St Pierre totally rocked a grand piano. Backed by a cellist, a guitar/flugelhorn player, and a drummer (also her husband) who occasionally stepped in to play keys (hmm…), all of whom sang exceptionally well, her music ranged from folk to rock. We found her to be a wonderful vocalist whose tones reminded me at times of Stevie Nicks.
Having recently released an album based on his true stories (histoires vraies) of being a 10-year old in Laval Quebec in 1976, Luc De Larochelliere treated us to seriously fun tunes we could easily relate to – songs about his GI Joe, an older brother, that first guitar, skinny dipping, and the bike with the yellow banana seat. Though he is a thoroughly modern singer, I think I could hear hints of classic French vocalists like Maurice Chevalier and Jacques Brel.
The Boulay Sisters (les soeurs Boulay) demonstrated their range with quiet duets, folky ballads and hard rocking pop tunes, with a majestic stage presence. Harmonies connected as only sisters can, above a powerful rhythm section that created tidal waves in your veins, as they both took turns on guitars and keyboards.
Elliot Maginot blew us away with his vocal power and incredible range, further enhanced by 3-part harmonies with his band mates. We loved his music, his singing, his band, all of it! Beyond that, though, we were surprised to notice something else. Although Elliot is a francophone from Montreal, he does most of his songwriting in English. His English lyrics were very interesting for us to hear, especially coming as they did at the end of the festival, not so much for their content but for the way they pointed out to us how much we had come to be able to take in from the French lyrics we’d been listening to all weekend.
We do keep an eye out for music festivals as we travel, and we’re very happy that we got to attend Chanson Tadoussac!
There are a few other places of interest in Tadoussac, some of which we were able to visit between shows, including the whale museum/cetacean interpretation center in the photo above. A few more sights from around town are here. If you’re interested, here are all our festival shots, and here is where we were camping.