OC

Here in this obscure corner of Southwest Central france where I live, many people still speak and are reviving the traditional pre French language, Occitan. It's a patois, and it changes from one region to another. In fact in the late 1800's it varied from village to village, so people from region to another had a very hsrd time understanding each other. Basically, it declines like latin and it is a degraded form of latin with many Celtic, Germanic and yes, French words.

The culture is very much alive and today I spent the afternoon in a place called Yssandon, which is a hilltop village in the Correze that is clustered around the ruins of huge fortress. The villages in this area are like little islands on the top of the hills that jut out of the valleys.

I listened to some great amateur musicians playing bourrees on the vielle, cornemuse and violin between rainstorms this afternoon.

Bourrees are for dancing. The cornemuse is the local version of a bagpipe and the vielle has a disk which is turned by a crank which vibrates a drone strings. There are wooden keys which depress the strings to create the notes. A great vielle player can inject a lot of vibrato and rythmnic accents to the sound.

There were a few pieces on YouTube, notably quite a few by Patrick Bouffard which really show the range of Occitanian music, but I thought that this rather informal piece here portrayed the wild sound of the players I saw today.