Alte Voce

It is a slightly eerie feeling, to meet people for the first time that you feel like you have already met. Priscilla had been telling me about the Corsican vocal group, Alte Voce, for over two years. When I had first visited here in June 2006, she had played their music for me, and told me about her wish to connect with them. Over time, that is what she did, offering to translate songs for them from the Corsican, as a way to help them widen their appeal to a broader (and global) audience. In the past two years she had become close enough to them to be invited to join them for New Years in Corsica, and I had seen pictures of the Alte Voce family (for indeed, many of them are related), and even seen a video of Corsica, which used the music of the group and showed some of their members performing.

My first night out in France was with Priscilla to the town of Eze, where Alte Voce was performing the final in a summer concert series in the village church. Eze is a beautiful village perched on a hill overlooking the Mediterranean, but on the whole is a tourist spot, with an expensive Relais & Chateaux five star hotel just below the medieval town. We arrived at the town around 6 p.m. for the 7:30 concert, finagling a parking spot in the crowded parking lot at the bottom of the hill. After a quick change into concert-appropriate wear in the public bathrooms (we had spent a few hours before arriving at Eze shopping in a Carrefour mega store closer to Nice), we headed up the hill toward the church.

As we came around the bend, we came upon the singing group, a cluster of five men in black t shirts and black pants, sitting and standing on an outdoor staircase. Priscilla greeted the oldest member of the group, Jean, warmly. I was introduced to each of them, not quite remembering their names all at once, but recognizing at least two of them quite distinctly from photos I had seen. As we were doing hellos, a woman came down from the top of the stairs, Rosanna, the matriarch of the group, with her long raven black hair and black outfit – not a t-shirt and pants, like the men, but a flowing black top and skirt for the occasion.

It was now 6:30 or so, and supposedly the group was to be practicing, but that never occurred. We walked up to the church with them, and there was chatter that I didn’t follow, but soon we were in the church, finding chairs in the front row (reserved for the Mayor, but there seemed to be so many reserved that us taking two was not too much of an imposition – besides, we were with the group!), and settling in. The church itself was nearly packed at 6:45 – for the 7:30 concert. Evidently, the tourists in town for the day, or those who were familiar with the concert series, or just folks who were interested in hearing Alte Voce, were eager to get a seat. And, as I learned later, having a seat for the 2+ hour concert was a near necessity!

The concert started on time, with a brief introduction by the concert coordinator and then a flourish from the Mayor: "Alte Voce!" The five men gathered in the front of the altar and started their signature a capella chant, with the haunting sound of a single voice joined in succession by others in simple polyphony.

It turned out that Rosanna was nursing a sore throat, so she would not sing this concert. Which, according to Priscilla, would affect the line up of songs and perhaps the length (which they ended up managing quite well, I thought). Joining the group was a professional guitarist, Eric Sempe, who added quite bit to the very accomplished guitar playing by Jean (who did a little harmonica too). The songs were a mix of vocal solos, backed up by guitars and some choral support from the others, guitar solos and interspersed, the a capella sounds of the five men.

All of the songs performed were indigenous Corsican songs, or songs composed by members of the group. They were all sung in Corsican, and for that reason, Jean introduced each song to the audience with a careful explanation and rendering of the text. Jean’s speech was very proper French, and given his articulation, I followed along quite well with what was being said. There are still plenty of words I don’t know in French, but I was able to get the sense of most of the songs throughout the evening.

Jean’s explications seemed to get a little longer as the night went on, but the audience seemed quite happy with the musical offerings and able to tolerate the increasing vehemence with which Jean made his pitch for Corsican independence as borne out in many of the songs’ lyrics. (Corsica has almost always been owned by some other country, most recently France.)

Finally, the group was singing the Corsican national anthem, and then a final a cappella alleluia.
Priscilla and I hung around afterwards, and it turned out that we had been invited to join the group for a post-concert dinner. The dinner it appeared, was in a restaurant at the bottom of the hill, near where we had parked the car, and had been arranged by the concert arranger for the group. For a moment, it looked like there would be too many people for the number of places being set at the two tables when we arrived, but finally the numbers sorted out, and we joined Fanfan, Antoine, Pascal, Jean, Eric, Rosanna and the other young man whose name I can’t remember and two other young ladies for a dinner of pate and salmon en croute.

At the dinner, I had a chance to speak briefly with Fanfan, the most striking looking and one of the better singers in the group, and let him know how much I enjoyed the concert. We spoke for a few moments about what I was doing in France, and he made an effort to pronounce Washington correctly (they don’t really speak "w" in French). At the table, I was sitting next to Eric, the guitar player, and enjoyed speaking some English and French with him too. He tours around the world playing, and his level of musicianship was clearly a notch above that of his friends, the Alte Voce singers.

At the end of the evening, after Rosanna called me "sympa" – which is shorthand for "nice" – I told Priscilla I had felt included in the group, and was happy that she had shared her Corsican family with me. We will spend five days in Corsica next week, so I will have the opportunity to see a few of them again.

Can’t think of a better way to be introduced to a new place, than by family.