29th of August, reflecting on Chalabre en Sérénade, Part I

Ah finalement, I have had time to replenish from the week of festivities that has past. Now I can reflect and try to reconstruct all those happy moments. And where did I leave off? I was returning home after the first night of Chalabre en Sérénade, in a state of levity and confidence for what was to come.

To begin this article, let me describe the origins of this event. From the moment I arrived in Chalabre, July 2017, I have had the pleasure of friendship with my neighbours, Vinx and Jennifer. At the close of that bright, happening summer, in a rounding-off fashion of a happy ending; V and J were wedded in the little chapel on top of a hill above Chalabre, Chapelle du Calvaire. That entire weekend of this matrimonial celebration was a convergence of many histories, ideas and ways of being, but not least the marriage of a bride and groom in love.

Vinx is a charming man of musical prowess, who has taught at Berkeley, sang all over the world with his wondrous voice, established a broad network of artistic and musical friends and colleagues all over the globe. He had found himself in Chalabre with his fiancee Jennifer, who an irrevocably optimistic, determined person of goodwill and levity, did in short succession established herself in community of Chalabre, founding a flourishing estate agency with her business partner; her radiance and persistence proceed her and she is adored by all.

With respects to Jennifer’s FB profile.

With my unjust and too little characterisations of these two impressive neighbours, I shall now recall a bit of history I have learnt over the last few years which will help me construct, as the founders did, the ethos and sentiments of this new festival – which might at the same time give a sense to the depth of a historical continuation in the region.

Chalabre herself is situated on the border of the regions of the Aude and the Ariege, known commonly today as part of the Cathar country, called that because of Catharism, the heretical sect of Christianity, which spread from the Balkans into western Christendom. It was in this region, circa 1200, in the midst of crusading years, the medieval renaissance, the rise and fall of the Angevin Empire, that in the county of Toulouse there was a flourishing culture and economy.

A large part to this cultural flourishing was due to the troubadours; they were poets who composed lyric songs, like the cazones of Italy, who travelled from court to court to play at banquets and festivals, as well as perform in the market places to the general populous. They were typically noble men, often warriors, literate, who voyaged in such romantic ways as to bestow to us the fanciful image of colourfully frocked randonneurs, in possession of a lyre, sat under a tree before a bucolic country, singing away to birds and deer.

The romantic vision is important, for today we who live in these regions of the troubadour find that our own contemporary cultural identity is imbued with this medieval identity, we are often confronted with references and sentiments of that periods. This mountainous, bucolic region, peppered with crumbling stone castles atop craggy heights, reinforces that staying memory of that period, and the local historians and tourist officials expound to no end their influence and image upon today.

The troubadours were poets, the first of them known from this movement was William IX of Poitou, Duke of Aquitaine (circa 1100), the great grandfather of the greatly loved historical figure Eleanor of Aquitaine. I wish I had my book of troubadour poetry with me, because then I could quote to comical proof of what I am about to write. Unashamedly erotic, often hilariously insulting and pertaining of a singularly vernacular voice, William sang short tales of his philandering exploits.

My favourite exploit probably being the one when he pretended to be mute to get into the house of two peasant women and thus into their pants, they were suspicious that he was acting. So they lightly tortured him in various ways to attempt to break his feigned silence, even setting a cat with vicious claws upon his back. But he persisted through these trails and stayed with them for many days, claiming in the end to have copulated with them over a hundred times.

That might have been a little too much information away from the subject I am trying to write about, but alas, William IX of Poitou was the beginning of a movement that raised the manner of courtly love into a more fecund and liberal fashion. He, to all extensive purposes, began the fashion of the troubadour.

To give you a sense of gravity to the movement of the troubadours even Richard the Lionheart himself is tabled among them, most famously from his poem done during his captivity in a Danubian castle. There is the legend that tells of Blondel, a troubadour, who travelled far and wide in searching for his snatched King Richard and after toil and distance, came upon a castle without knowledge that the king was there. As Blondel sang his song beneath the towers of this castle, a kingly voice that he instantly recognised resounded from above and he knew he had found his sovereign.

This was also at the time when the Arthurian legends were prolific, that aspects of the chivalrous knight were taking new and loftier forms, when crusaders were returning from the Holy Land, steeped in the exposure of the culture of the post-Hellenistic, Abrahamic and Islamic world. Furthermore, new wealth had begun to stream in from other parts of the Mediterranean and learning was increasingly being transmitted from the Islamic schools of Andalusia beyond the Pyrenees, scholars and their learning began to permeate into the feudal lands of Christendom, often by learned and travelling merchant Jews.

With regards to Chalabre en Sérénade, the event has embodied itself upon a movement which pushed amorous festivities and romance, which existed in kind in its region’s historical past. It is a charming motif in my estimation, a continuation and not repetition, of the distilled essence of that period.

So in light of this historical background, Vinx and Jennifer not only had a beautiful wedding but also inspired village-wide festivities; agitated by worldly musicians who V and J lured to serenaded us all with performances, as on the street outside Val’s bar, as well as in the village square where hundreds of people came to hear Vinx serenaded his new wife Jennifer with a original song dedicated to her on stage, whilst she sat on a crimson plush chair. All was magnificent, touching, pervading.

Two years on and a third Chalabre en Sérénade has now past, and more than a week later I am sitting in a Cafe trying to write this piece, far removed from that place of revelry and love. I strain to pull together the memories from all those wondrous nights full of music, discourse, dance and drink; they have somewhat morphed into one.

On the Wednesday night was a street Jam outside Café de la Paix, Manu’s. I could hear the music begin already from the Chateau I was serving dinner at, it would be half ten by the time I would reached there, I fretted. Fortunately, Angus (chef and friend) and I were not impartial to a few glasses of the old vino whilst on the job, so I was well perked before the forage of the night. As I was just finishing, from the back alleyway, I heard the thunderous voice of who I was sure was Liz Blair, resounding over the rooftops, for no other has such a voluminous singing voice as her.

The pretty little village of Chalabre has an internal ring road bollard’d with plane trees with two bars at opposite sides. This was fortuitous for traffic control since, when each bar was to have its street party, their respective road could be close off whilst the other was open. As I approached the party the din of chatter rose as well as rounds of applauses and whistling. Tables were sprawled out onto the street, occupied by arrayed beings puffing smokes or sipping beers. An amber light seemed to veil everybody, but for the fluorescent white flood that shone from the gateways of the bar. In front of the stage gathered an increasingly energised crowd. The stage was in a moment of exchange, a drummer sifted his stool, a guitarist shouldered his strap, a violinist snuggled his chin into his violin and the vocalist took two steps in judgement of a firm grounding. Alas the band began and touched the airways with the echelons of the violin. There was a distinct vein of Spain pulsing through their numbers. They jammed. At one point the vocalist commanded the crowd to give up a bassists, at which point the brilliant Johnny, from the other night, was thrown up and he grabbed the idling four-stringed instrument resting before the drums and began to entwine himself with all the other parts. Of course the bar was overwhelmed at this raucous, but had too great a tendency to serve those with a carte bleue rather than whomever got to the bar first, so we cheekily slipped off to Val’s bar instead to replenish our cups.

Invariably we ended up at the artists’ dwelling at the Hotel de France, where each night remained those whose thirsty lips, for talk and liquor, pursed and where the musicians were resolved to exhaust their pent-up fervour by means of their given instrument. That night I was glad to say that I saw no man hit the deck in a stupor.

The next day was the official commencement of Chalabre en Sérénade, the clinching moment in my eyes, because of its unique disposition. We arrived before the Hotel de Ville at half past four in the afternoon; hundreds and hundreds of us. The sky was blue, light dappled from through the plane trees, the shutters of the village were swung open and our anxious chatter filled those spaces in between.

Soon enough Jennifer was above us all, appearing from the curved limestone balcony of the Hotel de France, where usually flies the flags of France, the EU and Occitanie. Like a skill orator, she spoke in her second language, French, with clarity and rising expectation. She gave thanks to patrons, the gratuitous musicians and those who had volunteered.

Suddenly, with command, Jennifer swung her arm before her, signalling an about-face turn to a balcony opposite. The mass of crowd turned and there before us began the serenading. This was the very special beginning of what was to come for the next two hours.

From stone balcony to iron wrought balcony, around the village we shuffled to hear the excellent vocals drafted from all over the world. Their voices moved us, some spurred us, others enthused. The quality of a cappella and some acoustic guitar involved catana was astonishing – just the capacity of their voices to project was thrilling.

After this, we were all well predisposed for the coming night’s festivities: music and fireworks at the little Lac de Chalabre. Long tables were lined up before a stage, vendors frantically took orders for food, the bar tapped continuously from boxed wine and splashed peach juice into golden lagers. People flocked by the lakeside and reposed on the grass. The sun broke its last crimson rays on the mountainsides of the Pyrenees and soon it was twilight and soon it was dark.

Then with one crack and whiz all turned in shock and then sudden comprehension as the first firework exploded over the lake. Within moments the canons were released and the throng of the crowd was conquered by something greater. The then black opaque lake ignited as its previously shadowed ripples captured the array of differing wavelengths of photons descending from above. The dark space above us erupted, whiz-poppers whizzed in reds and greens, whistler-bangs whistled then banged in rondels or lotuses, and curtain-waterfalls showered like rows of phantom welders.

I looked around me and watched the faces of my comrades sporadically appear and disappear. The bombardment continued like storm waves crashing on a craggy coast, until at last the sea of light was swept out and built into a tsunami only to crash back. The cacophony of brilliant light and thunderous roar summited for one last time and then all was drifting smoke in a black sky and rapturous applause.

But the night was yet young and no sooner had the display ended did we attend again to our revelry and song. A sitar player had commandeered the stage, accompanied by an acoustic guitar. Suddenly our dancing became something exotic, as if we were plucked from the Raj’s palace.

I popped up to the bar one last time to discover that all the bottles were sold! I looked at a box of wine sitting on top of a fridge and pointed. The bar lady lifted the box to ascertain is volume of nectar – she understood that I wanted to buy what remained. She held a counsel with her other colleagues, they pulled a bloody bag from the box, poked it, weighed it and then approached me with it. I guessed the bag was two litres but was only asked for four euros…

Alas, mes amis, I shall leave this as Part I of my telling of Chalabre en Sérénade. It suffices to say that after the fireworks and dancing, the night continued as had the previous nights had done, at the Hotel de Ville, with revivified fervour of live music and exciting chatter.