Jean-Pierre Ferland, Michel Rivard, and Daniel Bélanger, Thursday July 27, 2000

What a great concert. The three Quebec giants are very good entertainers. The crowd identified with the music, it seemed that they grew up with it. Parts of the crowd sang along the whole concert. Daniel Belanger had a beautiful strong voice. The three interacted with each other with humor which kept everyone amused. The crowd really got into the music: they almost ripped the seats apart in excitement and joy. I haven't attended a concert with so much emotion in a long time. The performers gave two encores. The crowd asked for more with a standing ovation that lasted for at least 10 minutes. When we entered the hall there was a stinky smell, which Guy Latraverse identified as "syndical odors" implying that the technicians of Place Des Arts had thrown stink bombs. I felt bad when I heard Mr. Latraverse attack the union: Instead of him being ashamed to have his festival hosted  at Place Des Arts which is illegitimately hiring scabs and union breakers he instigates the people against the poor technicians. Mr. Latraverse, please take your festival to a more honorable place, the only thing that stinked in the hall was your right-wing union-busting breath.

Marcelle Deeks

Axelle Red Theatre Maisonneuve, Saturday July 29

The titian-haired Belgian singer-songwriter was ably supported by her seven-piece band (3 guitarists, 2 keyboardists, and 2 percussionists), providing a richly-textured sound, at times reminiscent of Earth Wind and Fire, with rhythm and blues overtone. Although they performed some up-tempo rock and pop numbers, Axelle Red is at her best belting out her deeply-felt ballad about sensuality, love, loss, and the attendant feelings of confusion and vulnerability. Her grilish Jane-Birkenesque speaking voice and shy demeanor when addressing the audience were rather incongruous with her strong singing style. However, the audience lapped it all up, singing and dancing along to her better known numbers for the last half of the show.

Cynthia Adam

This concert began like a Club Med holiday entertainment package: Lavilliers overlaid his popular French songs with borrowed rhythms from World Music. In the first hour of the concert, Lavilliers and his 4-piece band unabashedly used these hot beats to appeal to a largely white audience whose only contact with the third world has probably been through organized winter escapes to " the Islands". Lavilliers knew how to turn this particular crowd on with the use of samba, ska, reggae, salsa and rock. The inauthenticity of his popularization of the music of colonized peoples swallowed us up into a tide (La Grande Maree) of derivative pop commercialism. Lavilliers himself did not look entirely comfortable on stage. Perhaps he was aware that his inane repackaging of pretty tunes to energize a beleaguered French song tradition may not appeal to the critics. He announced at the top of the second hour that he would now proceed to perform some fresh, yet-unrecorded material for the benefit of the media. Indeed, the improvement was noticeable. When he picked up his guitar, we felt that he was finally singing from his heart. The best thing was that the spectators (some of whom have no doubt traveled to "les colonies" and some who simply seemed to enjoy Lavillier's sweet reconstitution of world beats) were standing on their feet and dancing by the end. I enjoyed best his rendition of :"Why", "Qui veux-tu que je sois dans cette societe la?", and Leo Ferre's "Est-ce ainsi que les hommes vivent?", all of which lived up to Lavilliers' rebel image. Touching also was the use of his half-Brazilian heritage in many of his songs, rendered with smatterings of Brazilian Portuguese. This attempt at bringing in "other" sources of inspiration has a long tradition in France. .Classical composers like Ravel (who borrowed from various folk traditions of Europe), Milhaud (who borrowed from South American music), and Messiaen (who imitated pristine bird calls of Polynesia) did it; and French pop music is doing it too. Of course this is not new to Francophone pop either: Remember Quebecois, Robert Charlebois' "Je reve a Rio"?

Soprano

Faudel, Wednesday August 2

Je n'avais jamais vu de spectacle de musique raï et j'ai été impressionné par l'atmosphère générale. C'est une musique envoûtante et sensuelle du fait d'une instrumentation inusitée et des mélodies du violon. Le chanteur avait également une voix très flexible. Dommage que je ne comprenais pas l'arabe. Et la salle était délirante et agitait furieusement de nombreux drapeaux algériens. Le seul regret que j'ai est que cette musique peut facilement sombrer dans la monotonie alors que son potentiel général est si riche. Il me semble en effet que son bagage traditionnel ajouté aux multiples possibilités expressives des instruments et à leurs capacités technologiques (instruments synthétiques notamment) permettrait une  exploitation et des rencontres plus intéressantes.

Jean-Philippe Trottier,
Bureau d'Artistes de Montréal