Matapat "Petit fou" Borealis BCD 133

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Summer, 2002 by Sarah B. Hood

The members of Matapat (Benoit Bourque, Gaston Bernard and Simon Lepage) arrange and perform the folk music of New France. The songs and instrumentals come from all over French Canada and France. Even so, just as you think you've taken the measure of these creative interpreters, they throw in a musicological twist and you find yourself listening to a seamless blending of Quebecois instrumentals with an unmistakable Indian tabla performance; the mix (which works) suggested by the unusual mode of one of the traditional Quebec airs.

The spirit of the music is buoyant and vital enough to inspire step dancing on a cold winter evening. The lyrics are effective even to the non-Francophone ear because of their rhythm, repetition and internal rhyme, as in the infectious line "Ah venez vous promener" of the call-and-response song "Le champ de pois/Le reel des cent larmes". Sheer delight.