Something of the spirit of ‘ 68 inhabits Domaine Isabelle. When we first came to the village we’d pass Charles & Isabelle’s house on the main street and wonder who might be the owners of the stacked bookshelves and the sculptures, who was it within who liked their jazz to flow, of a warm evening, out through the open window. We didn’t have to wait long.
A small group had been meeting through the winter with the aim of awakening the village from its slumber of decades by organising a celebration of the poets that Moux had produced over the centuries (eh oui – more than any other village in France – nous ne sommes pas des sauvages ici, tu sais!). At the fore were Charles and Isabelle.
As mosaic designers and a painter we were invited to take part in this Portes-Ouvertes weekend. Readings and plays, music and dance were performed in courtyards and parcs that had been closed to the general eye. Our own Maison de Maitre, closed up and empty for 30 years, was an ideal venue with its pillared barn – le hangar or auprès – and closed courtyard – to host musicians and actors and flamenco dancers.
Charles & Isabelle are well-known in the small community of vignerons des Corbières for the warmth of welcome at their house and the gaiety of the evenings during le vendange. They are among the few now who cook and eat with their grapepicking team. They make room for all at the long table in le petit caveau, where the music and stories and wine flows freely late into the night. And not just at harvest-time.
Evenings chez Charles et Isabelle start at the door of what to most would seem a shabby lock-up. On the corner of a dismal street in the middle of a dull village in le Midi. But inside -
This particular evening was something of a one-off. André, an adult-education teacher friend of Charles’ from the nearby market town had been working on some compositions with his friend Serge, a small farmer from Indre-et-Loire many hours north. Was there a possibility that a few people could be rounded-up to lend a critical ear? There was. And there was food with it, and wine on tap – literally : from a spigot right behind where they set up their amps.
André brought a collection of instruments : guitar, flute and an alto sax, which proved too loud for the occasion – the songs were from Serge : a surprisingly eclectic mix with a core of sadness in all of them. The longest ( twenty strophes or verses) was a valediction to his daughter leaving the farm to work abroad – an affective drama with Marco Polo showing her a world of wonders and dangers.
The song I recorded has all their weaknesses and their strengths : I still can’t follow all of it, but it concerns the pain of the small farmer in a land less recognisable, where a simple man with sensibilities is increasingly at odds with the world around him – and the way wine can drown these woes.
He hasn’t got a voice, it’s plainly true – but he has a song that after a couple of plays will stay with you. It’s plaintive without being mawkish, and hard without bitterness. Never going to make the charts – but then I’m never going to make the best-seller list. These were intense pieces of his life – his journal. There were only as many listening to him as are reading this.
Noyer dans le vin – Drowning in wine
