Get Your Kicks on Route Soixante Six
or Integration Blues
It was early March when suddenly winter started to back pedal, the sun came out and we stood in the garden of our new English friends’ Charentaise farmhouse celebrating their move at a house warming party or, in French, cremerie. The champagne bubbled, the mayor of the village slumped lower and lower under the weight of the hospitality and the neighbours gossiped about the ex owners who it seemed hadn’t been too popular
One of our English friends introduced me to someone new in the area who, like myself, turned out to be a musician and naturally as he was new in France our conversation turned to how he would find fellow players and generally get into the music scene.
This was a new one as the standard response when asking new arrivals what they plan on doing in their adopted country is usually ‘Gites’. How long will it be before France slips off Europe and sinks into the Atlantic under the weight of all the gite conversions of the last ten years? Another fairly standard response is ‘Oh and of course we want to ‘integrate’; hmmm, I think to myself, easier said than done.
So back to my conversation with Phil the keyboard player where I filled him in on my experiences over the past ten years in getting involved with music in Western France. Later whilst driving home I reflected on the ‘integration’ thing and the ‘performing’ thing and how, for me, they had come together.
My first excursion into the music scene here came during 1990 when my family and I decamped to spend a year at our holiday cottage in the Vendee. My wife, Camilla, was on maternity leave following the arrival of our third child and I had managed to persuade the governors of the primary school, of which I was the Head, to give me a much needed sabbatical year.
Alongside my teaching career I had always maintained an active interest in live music playing guitar in a string of London blues and jazz groups. Naturally two of the most important items packed into the van were my treasured Fender Strat and an amplifier. After a few months settling in to our new life the urge to start playing again was enough for me to put a card in our local town’s music shop; ‘Guitariste Anglaise cherches groupe ou musiciens tendance blues/jazz’.
Much to my surprise this produced a call from someone who was putting together a new formation and who were looking for a guitarist. He explained that this was to be neither blues nor jazz but in fact an ‘orchestre de varietie’ to be called the ‘Orchestre des Annees Soixante’. My immediate thoughts were; ‘1960’s? Well I was there, Stones, Beatles, Cream, Ray Charles? Yeah I could do that stuff.’ After a five-minute audition, which consisted of the bandleader listening to me play some improvisations, I was invited to the first rehearsal. In my playing life I had played in some weird line- ups but this topped the lot. In total, on a good night, eleven musicians attended rehearsals. This included 2 keyboard players, 2 trumpets, 3 Saxes and a second guitarist who couldn’t play a note and had been brought into the band by his uncle, the lead trumpetist, to keep him off the streets.
When I was handed the guitar parts, a box file of sheet music, I realised that 60’s popular music in France had been rather different to my experience in the UK. Of the thirty or so titles I could only recognise a couple ; ‘Twist Again ’ and ‘Summertime’. The remainder were hits recorded by Johnny Halliday, Claude Francois, Aznavour and Brel and a host of lesser known artists. There were also a large number of ‘Latin’ tunes, Bossa Novas, Passe Dobles, Cha Cha chas, tempos which I didn’t have a clue how to play. The second shock was to discover that in France sheet music is notated in a form of Tonic sol fa, solfege, so that what in English/American would be the chord of C in France is written as Do, the chord of E is mi and so on. Confused? I certainly was.
The rehearsals, or repetitions, proved to be chaotic but a lot of fun. All the playing was done from the sheet music, reading the dots. There was no improvisation and my occasional solos were regarded with awe as if improvisation was a lost, mystical art. It seemed that there was a power struggle going on between the talented first trumpet player, Jean-Louis, and Raymond the modestly talented tenor sax/violinist who would each shout incoherent advice as we bumbled through the tunes. This often led to the two sections, brass and woodwind, parting company with one or the other coming to the end of the arrangement one bar, or more, ahead.
However I came away from this first experience of playing with French musicians having learned some useful points. The first was that amongst musicians the formal ‘vous’ is never used, always ‘tu’ and that, however long it takes, the preliminary handshakes must be observed. There was a warmth and camaraderie amongst the group that I’d rarely found in the UK but, there seemed to be more interest in talking about the music rather than getting down to playing. Lastly that ageism is pleasantly absent from the music scene; in the group was a whizz kid accordionist of 14 together with a dapper 70 year old on Hammond organ. This spread of ages would be repeated in future line-ups.
Always held on a Tuesday, the rehearsals, inexplicably, would begin at a different time each week. When I enquired about this it was explained that one of the saxists, Michel, and his drummer son, Leon, were mussel cultivators and so could only attend at high tide. How silly of me not to have realised this!
After a couple of months a semblance of a programme had been achieved and the orchestre was ready to go on the road. Our first gig, or concert, was to be at the salle de fete, village hall, at a nearby village to celebrate its opening. This evening would establish the pattern of most of the gigs that followed through the coming summer. First the arrival, around 7pm and the interminable setting up of equipment and sound checking. ‘Des annees Soixante’ had bought a massive pa system, which could have coped with Wembley Arena and was totally over the top for the venues we would play. The pa came with an operator, Marcel, whose role up until then had been to provide lubrication, in the form of a rosé he produced at his farm, during rehearsals. His knowledge of mixing desks and speakers was close to zero so that during performances his random sliding up and down of the controls would add to the general anarchic sound we produced. After the sound check we would sit down to a long vinous supper. This very pleasant aspect of gigging in France happens at even the smallest venues and at first took me by surprise. Kick off time was never before 10pm and then the marathon would begin, an orchestre de varietie is expected to entertain dancers non-stop for at least four hours. We would lighten this ordeal by having sections in the programme when the accordionist would play solo or just with the drummer or when I would do a medley of guitar numbers with the rhythm section. To compensate for the gruelling playing times and the unappealing character of this kind of venue (blinding neon lighting coupled with shiny formica tabletops) was the response of the country audiences. Before the first bar of the first number they would be on their feet; grannies, babies in arms, inbetweenies and young couples would bop till they dropped.
So that summer slid by with almost weekly excursions of this sort. Sometimes in village halls and other times at restaurants on the lovely Vendeen coast. We weren’t the best band around but as long as Leon the drummer kept the tempo our audiences seem to like it and kept dancing. The end of the season saw the end of our sabbatical Idyll and so it was back to the day jobs in the smoke.
However the story doesn’t end here for four years later, in 1994, various things fell into place, the family were able to return to France on a permanent basis and we moved into a large maison bourgeoise in the town of Lucon, again in the Vendee.
So ten years on and what’s happened musically? Well my first decision was to stick with things I knew best so it was goodbye passe dobles and hello jazz and blues. At that time one of the jewels in Lucon’s crown was The Big Band which was attached to the music school and heavily subsidised by the local council. The band played a fairly predictable programme of swing jazz, mainly Ellington and Basie but played at a very impressive level. In spite of them having a resident guitarist I talked my way into joining the weekly rehearsals.
Even the smallest towns in France seem to have an ecole de musique and in larger centres these rise to the heights of conservatoires. They are splendid institutions providing a range of classes for both young and old and are a great way into the local community. As well as instrumental teaching they often run a couple of choirs and even individual voice training. Meeting musicians in the Big Band led to further ventures and by the end of the following year I was playing in a blues group, Charlie Blues, and a jazz trio, Les Cool Cats who both provided great fun as well as more late nights.
In 2000, tiring of the flat Vendeen landscape, my wife and I decided on a change of scenery and moved to the Charente Maritime with its equally flat landscape. So too far away to continue with old musical mates I set about forming a new band. Moving to a new area and putting a band together is not as difficult as one might imagine. The first point of contact can be simply through the classified ads in the local or regional freebie weekly. Under the musique heading can be found an assortment of instruments for sale and musicians looking to join others. Alternatively one can place one’s own ad and hope for a response. This is exactly what I did and came up with an excellent keyboard player who brought along a drummer who, though a beginner, showed great promise. A second ad unearthed a bassist and so the current band, Funky Chicken was born. There followed a long, almost a year, of weekly rehearsing and indoctrinating the lads into the kind of music I was trying to reach. What materialised was a hybrid style which mixes blues, soul and jazz funk and which is aimed at appealing to a range of age groups. As our publicity says it’s;’ 50’s blues, 60’s soul and 70’s funk.’ A year ago we added a veteran jazz sax player, Berliner, Helmut Wilburg, making the group truly international.
So where was I? Ah yes integration. It seems to me that the best way into a new culture must be through being pro-active and getting involved in some activity, which involves the host society. Yes daily chats with the French neighbours are fine but rarely take you further than finding out how the chickens are laying or how many teeth the new baby has. My route has been through music; my wife’s has been by teaching, both children and adults. Others we know have joined the local angling club, joined a choir, attended the town computer group, joined a gym or yoga class, the list is endless. Even the smallest of towns have a wide range of ‘associations’ or clubs catering for a range of interests and whose details can be found at the mairie or library.
Postscript. Since this article was published in French Property News, four years ago, I've had another house move and now play in the group that accompanies the La Rochelle Gospel Choir. I've also got a Saturday job teaching guitar in a local music school. Still integrating!
( Copywrite the author : G Thomas )
