Franswaze Guerlin sees Vian rose

In the sidebar is a new version of "Quand j'aurais du vent dans mon crâne" recorded at Le Burgaud near Toulouse. Françoise Guerlin is singing, with Maxime Delporte on double-bass and Mathieu Royer on guitar. The band now has a percussionist, too, Laurent Paris, and the set is terrific. They were booked for the Jazz sur son 31 festival in 2007 and already have some bookings for 2008. Two other songs on Françoise's myspace music.
The choice of songs is very interesting, and Françoise also reads some Vian, particularly a piece about why jazz must be banned because it will surely lead to revolution.
Confluences, or great oaks from little acorns grow.
Françoise has always loved Vian and had been talking about doing a tribute to the man, when our reading group in Lombez was looking for a new subject for a mixed literary/musical evening. So we decided to read Vian and asked Françoise to put together the musical aspect.
The evening was a great success, though the local press was less than kind to us – “la lecture, bien qu’agréable, est restée très amateur, mais Françoise Guerlin a régalé le public etc; etc; (the reading, while pleasant, was very amateur (!) but the very professional Françoise Guerlin delighted the audience, etc.).
The person who wrote the review was obviously miffed at not being asked to read with us, for our group, although called “à livre ouvert” is actually quite exclusive for want of a better word.
Françoise then went on to develop a full set with the musicians and the result is spectacular.

Traduttore, traditore

Working on Boris Vian for a musical-literary evening.

“In 1946, he published a faux-French translation of a novel by a non-existent African American author, Vernon Sullivan. Emphasizing through parody and self-referentiality the "impossibility" of translation from American English into French, Vian simultaneously attacks both the notions of a constructed, fetishized "original" text and of racial authenticity.”

Of course translation is impossible.

I will be singing Corcovado on Saturday night, and as a courtesy to my French audience I have translated the English version into French, and will sing both. I have no idea whether the English is faithful to the Portuguese original, so any relationship between my French version and it will be tenuous. I intend to check with a friend who is a Portuguese to French translator, but I dare not till after the gig.

Rosemary Arrojo, Oficina de tradução (The Translation Workshop):

“Instead of considering the text, or the sign, as a receptacle in which ‘content’ can be deposited and kept under control, I suggest that its prototypical image becomes that of a palimpsest, from the Greek palimpsestos (‘rubbed smooth again’).

[…]Metaphorically, the ‘palimpsest’ becomes the text erased in each cultural community and each epoch, so as to give way to another writing (or interpretation, reading or translation) of the ‘same’ text.”

Franswaze

Francoise Guerlin singing Boris Vian