Live

What a great evening! When someone as hip as this is singing in it, Occitan can't be considered a dead language.

Local group Du Bartàs had invited friends to a concert, so there were 16 musicians on stage: Du Bartàs themselves, Lo Barrut, a 10-voice polyphonie occitane choir from the Hérault, and Djé Balèti from Toulouse. The instrument Mr Djé Baleti is playing is an espina, an obsolete four-stringed instrument from Nice; he had it specially made and electrified it himself. It may look folksy, but he struts the stage like Jim Morrison, and plays it like a heavy metal guitarist, accompanied by a funky female bass player and a devil drummer.  Cuban father, Sicilian/Tunisian mother, brought up in Venezuela, and finally settling in Nice -- he incorporates all these influences to that you swing from calypso to blues to rock to Balkan folk.

The concert finished with a crazy jam session from all 16 musicians, and no-one wanted to go home. My photos were all pretty bad because I only took the little camera, but I hope this conveys the atmosphere. Here's a little clip of Djé Balèti, but you had to be there really.

All proof that Occitan rock is alive and well. The founder of Du Bartàs, Laurent Cavalié, has a lot to do with that. We first encountered him at Notre Dame de la Consolation about ten years ago. We were eating curry at long tables on the bluff before a concert when an accordionist emerged from the pinewood playing blues and singing in Occitan. Like a pied piper he compelled us all to follow him into the chapel. Since then he's collected almost forgotten songs from old people all over the Languedoc by visiting them and getting them to sing them; he then transcribes and arranges them in his own way.