“One day I stopped in front of a poem on the women of the Hebrides which spoke of the heart that one puts into doing things. That’s what I was looking for,” recalls Alix Quoniam. The singer, Anglo-Breton who lives in Meslin, started in another repertoire, that of the group La Bande à Basile, but she no longer wants anyone to talk to her about the caterpillar.
Hitchhiking and songs
In 1982, she hitchhiked to these islands on the west coast in the north of Scotland. There she meets the “great singer” Flora Mac Neil who sings strangely beautiful traditional songs in Scottish Gaelic. “I was touched by the poetry that was one of those people who have a strong connection with nature. There are many onomatopoeias. It’s the sound, but also the way people express themselves”.
Touched to the heart by this music, she is also moved by the landscapes of these islands, between sea, lochs and mountains. “In spring, there are flowers everywhere. I’ve never seen that anywhere else. This beauty is dazzling, it is their richness,” says the singer. She meets fishermen or artists on the way, walks through the door of other singers who invite her into their kitchens, a cup of tea in hand.
Tweed treading songs
She learns the real way to sing these treading songs, with ornamentations that are hard to transcribe into music theory. “When women tread wool to make tweed, they sing all the time. It’s very rhythmic. A singer starts a song and the others answer her. There are suitable songs for each moment of treading”.
Alix Quoniam has recorded and performed with other traditional music: legendary French-speaking Christian songs and others related to the Cree Amerindians. But it took her years to dare to sing in Gaelic. “These encounters changed my voice and my path. Before, I found no poetic pleasure in singing. In Scotland, when you ask someone to sing, you ask them to give a song. Give me a song”.
For ten years, she sang these songs from the Hebrides Islands with Dominique Molard on percussion. She recounts this adventure in a small book enriched with a CD to see the walks in Scottish nature and hear her bewitching musical ballads.
Convenient
“From Walks to Ballads in the Hebrides of Scotland”. Dedication on Saturday March 4, at 3 p.m., at the Cédille bookstore, in Lamballe.
