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Linguistic Intimacy: French Texts in the Lives of Franco-Canadian Musicians

Suddenly, everything changed in the hall. It wasn’t a slow, warm blues tune or a moody, nostalgic personal composition. Her violin didn’t sound rich, thin, romantic, or bright. It wasn’t any of those. It was harsh, raw, loud, fast ... the music was sort of raucous. Her sisters sang backup while Kelly dominated with lead vocals and fiddle, the sound of which was sharp and penetrating. I couldn’t understand the French that she was singing, but her voice, like the sound of her violin, was biting and her syllables flew like daggers. Soon I became aware that the floor beneath my feet was shaking. I looked down and around myself and realized that two men across the aisle from me were stomping their feet and slapping their knees. I thought they would burst out of their seats at any moment and start dancing. I wanted to dance, too, but I was scared. Almost a year after her graduating jazz violin recital on 3 May 2011 at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Music, I interviewed Kelly Lefaive in my kitchen on 8 February 2012. The memory of the last song that she performed during her recital, a FrenchCanadian traditional folk song called Yoyo-Verret, described above, still stood strong in my mind. Her performance of it was my first experience of FrenchCanadian folk music and demonstrated, through music, part of Kelly’s Franco-Canadian identity. I will explore this topic through three case studies: Kelly Lefaive’s Franco-Ontarian identity, Claire Bellemare’s Quebecois identity, and Sophie Dupuis’s Franco-New Brunswick identity. Drawing from the theory of cultural intimacy, coined by Herzfeld as “the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with their assurance of common sociality”, I will investigate each case study through the lens of linguistic intimacy. I proffer a reading of linguistic intimacy as identification with a language instead of a culture (as a language may be shared by several cultures) that provides speakers with an awareness of their linguistic difference and minority when surrounded by another dominant language and whose known difference is a source of shared conflict, defiance, identification, and pride. As cultural intimacy “consists in those alleged national traits ... that offer citizens a sense of defiant pride in the face of a more formal or official morality and sometimes, of official disapproval too”, linguistic intimacy offers speakers a sense of defiant pride in the face of another dominant language that threatens assimilation. Arikha suggests that “Poetry is where we come from – verbally. It is the only form of linguistic intimacy.” The case studies will reveal that, as music lyrics are poetic in nature, the musical texts are a source of, and outlet for, linguistic intimacy, as they express the performer’s and/or composer’s attachment to their mother tongue. Moreover, the musical texts allow each FrancoCanadian to transform her immediate Anglophone surroundings and create a Franco-Canadian musical place. Music is a means through which places can be transformed, social boundaries established, and identities recognized. Because each subject has studied at the University of Toronto, an English university, each has asserted her Franco-Canadian identity in an Anglophone place through performance or composition. Franco-Ontarian Kelly Lefaive celebrated her Franco-Ontarian identity by singing a French-Canadian folk song at her graduating recital. Quebecois Claire Bellemare displayed her Francophone identity by singing French art songs and insisting that her recital program be printed in French and English. FrancoNew Brunswick Sophie Dupuis demonstrated her Francophone identity by choosing to set French instead of English texts in her compositions. I will show that, although each musician is from a different province and culture, the attachment, pride, and love for French that each possesses enables her to transcend and transform her Anglophone environment through the French texts that she sings or composes, thereby establishing a unique and intimate FrancoCanadian musical place.