This song comes from Southern France and is in the Occitan language. We learned it from the singing of Lo Còr de la Plana, who we like to describe as Marseille’s leading a capella disco-folk band. They write wild arrangements, so we took their example and wrote our own, incorporating some elements of their take into ours.
We made this recording at a house concert in Barrie, Ontario in a lovely upstairs studio space. Our host there said that she often records herself playing the cello there and sends the tracks to audio producers in Toronto. If you get a chance to listen to this on a sound system with good bass you should. Will had a lot of fun mixing this track and playing with Jeremy’s foot stomps. There were no added samples or electronically generated sounds, this was all recorded live and captured by our awesome microphone, Delphina (from Ear Trumpet Labs in Portland OR).
The story of La Vielha goes like this:
There was a woman in Paris, who was over eighty years old. She went to a dance and there she spied a young gallant.
“Gallant,” she said “If you marry me, I can make you as rich as a merchant.”
“I would not marry an old woman without seeing her teeth first,” replied the Gallant.
The old woman started laughing, and then showed him BOTH of her teeth! But one of them was wiggling and the other went and fell out on the spot.
Well, the Gallant took the old woman to the church of St John. That evening they drank white wine and a little bit of Garlaban liqueur.
Monday was the wedding. The funeral was on Tuesday.
The Gallant strode up to the cemetery gate, looking like he was going to Carnival. Little did he know, she hadn’t saved a cent since she was fifteen!
The full text in Occitan can be found here.
Will heard a version of this story sung in French at a back-porch singing party in Québec City. In that version, the final verse was “All through the funeral he was laughing, but he cried when they read the will.”
We love this song for its dark humor and dubious conclusion.
