They did not have Instagram, they did not consume suspicious substances or take mass baths, but the troubadours were already “rockstars” eight centuries ago, they traveled from castle to castle to offer their music to the finest of the European nobility. Love poems that the singer-songwriter Francis Cabrel has used as inspiration for his latest album, A l’aube revenant, the fourteenth by the author of Je l’aime a mourir, who at 70 years old has sold more than 25 million records and has become in one of the classic voices of French music. Embarking on the Trobador Tour, he will visit Barcelona next February 1 as part of the Mil·leni Banco Mediolanum festival to sing about love in French and Occitan, the language of his land, which he has included in his latest work.
“After 40 years of composing, I realized that songs already existed in the 12th century,” explains Cabrel from his home in Astaffort, by videoconference. “There were verses, choruses, strong phrases here and there, we did not invent anything, we must perpetuate this song format for as long as possible.”
Cabrel, who has sung about love so many times, also highlights that the troubadours were the first to include in their songs the need for women to consent to love. “Women had the right to refuse, it was the troubadours who invented this concept in literature that everyone talks about today, they wrote the first poems that included women’s consent.”
The son of Italian immigrants, Cabrel lives in Astaffort, a town of 2,000 inhabitants just over an hour’s drive from Toulouse. There he has built his life and his career away from the hustle and bustle of Paris and the big record labels, “Paris doesn’t exist for me, there is Toulouse and that’s it.” He also created Voix du sud in 1995, a music academy where artists who have already taken their first steps come to perfect themselves and learn from other more veteran musicians to compose and develop their professional careers in Cabrel’s own primary school building. A project that complements the Rencontres, a biennial that for half a century has brought together professional artists with aspiring artists in the municipality.
His love for this land has led him to dedicate his latest single to it, Un morceau de sicre, and to become interested in Occitan, the language of Oc, which he uses in several songs on his latest album. “For years my Occitanist friends tried to convince me to sing in Occitan,” a request to which he finally agreed “because the language should not disappear,” a commitment that he extends to French, threatened by the hegemony of English. “It seems that he wants to cover everything, we are subjected to English, we can draw a parallel with the disappearance of Occitan in favor of French, a language that is dying in favor of another more powerful one.” The calandretas, schools where compulsory education is taught in the southwestern language, are fighting against the forgetting of Occitan, supported by the local population. “There are many people who fight to keep it alive,” despite the government’s disdain.
The author’s song is also fighting for its survival, which “is a bit out of fashion in France,” he laments. “Urban music has taken over everything for 10 or 20 years, but there are still some old mavericks like me who continue to preserve the model.” So does Bob Dylan, the musician who inspired him at the beginning of his career and whom he continues to respect. “When you go to see Dylan it’s like being before a god,” that’s why he doesn’t criticize his surly attitude with the public, “there’s no point in expecting him to talk, he sings for two hours and appears on stage every night, that’s how shows his respect towards the public.”
