Alain Stan - Le Poète Joue mp3 album

Alain Stan: Le poète joue. (The poet plays) ORF CD 3197, LC11428, 2015. Source: Innsbruck University, Austria, Atem magazine nr 1, Author: Ursula Mathis-Moser. Following the 2007 and 2010 albums Terres du Ciel Lands of Heaven (2007) and La musique a son mot à dire Music has its word to say (2010), Alain Stan, aka Alain Driguès, presents his third LP produced under the label ORF Ö1 (Le poète joue, The poet plays 2015). Already in 2002 Étrange Planète Strange planet (Hoanzl) had been published and another five years earlier (1997) publisher Verlag der Apfel Wien published a book, Beruf: Ausländer Profession: Alien, in which the author depicts in "a False German" (www.alainstan.at) or "French -Viennese" german language one of the major weaknesses of the host country, the subliminal fear of the stranger.But who is Alain Stan? Eva Allerstorfer sums it in one sentence: the actor, director, playwrighter, street artist, auteur-compositeur-interprete etc. was born in Algiers in the early 1950s, grew up in France, travelled the world and now lives in Vorchdorf, Upper Austria" (Allerstorfer 2011). Although he has always made music - in the 1970s in the metro of Paris, then at the Forum des Halles - the center of his artistic commitment was, however, until around 2003, his Théâtre de l'instant, Instant Theater, founded in Bordeaux in 1984, of which also his stage name Alain Stan - à l'instant - derives. (à l'instant means "just now"). Few, only seemingly harmless props, excellent pantomime learned in Paris and Berlin, a tireless playing and questioning of the "normal everyday life" with its false facades and inconsistencies - that is his trademark and it is not surprising that the artist, who in the In the early 1990s, the committee "Save the Street Art" was founded, in 1991 and even thereafter in Vienna was repeatedly banned from performing.So is Alain Stan a politicaly involved person as a dedicated auteur-compositeur-interpreter ? The answer is tricky: to a certain extent yes, in its own special way, but certainly not in a concrete political sense. Because as the title of the album reveals, Alain Stan sees himself in his songs above all as a poet, and as a poet, which stands in a long tradition. In his songs the lyrical ego distances itself from the biographical ego; the text has particular weight, because the artist wants to convey content to the audience; The music, in turn, though by no means simple, serves the word and emotional communication. Thematically, the artist takes up different threads. First, there is the worldview of romanticism and late romanticism, that is, the symbolists, right up to the "Art poétique" by Verlaine and the "Voyant" the Visionary by Rimbaud. There is also the rudeness and irony of a Brassens, Ferré and Co, with very noticeable hints to Villon. Finally, there are overlaps with current problems such as drug addiction or nationalism, and not least contemporary apocalyptic visions, which draw the (late) romantic feeling of life into illusion-less postmodernism. Or is there hope? The song 15, "La la la", with its reduction of the lyrics to a childrens verse, with his melodious line, his children's voices - a song that initially seems completely inappropriate to the listener - the CD rounds off thematically and invites them to reflect on their structure. Or is it merely a reminiscence of Charles Trenet's "L'âme des poètes" the soul of the poets from 1951, which consoles the auteur-compositeur-interprète of today? Trenet: "Longtemps, longtemps, longtemps / Après que les poètes ont disparu / Leurs chansons courent encore dans les rues Long after the poets have disappeared, their songs are still sung around... / On fait la la la la [...]." Even the title of the album would be so his explanation.But back to the structural argument. The CD is subdivided by four instrumental pieces by Thomas Nickel whose titles - again in a (late) romantic-symbolistic manner - take up the idea of ​​travel and the seasons. Only the order surprised, because not spring-summer-autumn-winter or summer-autumn-winter-spring are evoked, but in internal crossover summer-autumn-spring-winter. The calming cycle of the seasons is thus broken, and yet "l'été / l'hiver recommencé" summer / winter is back ( - the subtitles of the pieces of music - also speaks of recurrence. As the cyclic principle shows fault lines, the apocalyptic final state that our societies have achieved in the 21st century and that characterizes several chansons remains not uncontradicted: The apocalypse is neutralized by the singing of the children in "La la la" while the last 'Herbstlied' -autumn song- 'Le poète joue' The poet plays - (number 9) - is taken up a second time after the final instrumental part 'Voyage, l'hiver recommencé' Journey, winter is back (number 17). In the flow of continuity and break, this reprise underscores the artist's message, which turns out to be the postmodern relativized heart of the album. Incidentally, the tension between breakage and continuity also exploits the cover art, a painting by Annie Driguès, the artist's sister. In it, the colors of the apocalypse and of life dialogue with yellow, red and black, but masks and ships also dialogue as metaphors the rigid and the movement.But let's take a closer look at the chansons -songs-. The album opens with "Capitaine solitaire" -Solitary captain- (number 2), a chanson in which the lyrical self, as a lone captain, embarks on a dangerous sea journey on a piece of wood: unprepared, without anyone showing him how to steer, thrown into existence, wrestling with the elements. "La tempête fait rage, / Ne perds pas ton courage", -the storm is at its peak, dont loose your courage- the singer hors texte interjects. Conscious of its transitoriness and, as it were, celebrating its secularism when it thinks away from the hate and craving for pleasure of the "cités maladroites", -the clumsy cities- this self inevitably reminds the listener of the famous "Canción del pirata" -Song of the pirat- (1830) by the Spanish romanticist José de Espronceda, whose ship "sin temor" -without fear- defies the forces of nature and lets the ego find freedom. Baudelaire with his poem "Le Léthé", which was also interpreted by Ferré, is subliminally present when Alain Stan in the next chanson "Au rivage du Léthé" -At the shore of Lethé- (number 3) again addresses impermanence, immutability, but also the repression of the immutable: Au rivage du Léthé, le monde a oublié " - At the shore of Lethé the world is oblivion-, it says in one of the rare refrains of the auteur-compositeur-interprète. But also the very poetic (and only) text by Annie Driguès, "La ville" -the city- (number 4), recalls inevitably remind the listener that in Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal -The flowers of evil- there are 'cityscapes'. "La ville" is one of those texts that Alain Stan recites and does not sing and impresses with his simplicity. Isotopes of urban representation, down to the anonymity and indifference of the city, are combined with concepts of nature and corporeality and at the same time refer to Camus' chain of the absurd boulot - métro - dodo. -subway/work/sleep- or -same old routine day in day out.-With "Les sens de l'amour" -the senses of love - (number 6) Alain Stan manages an incomparably beautiful song about the continued existence of love, which rises victorious beyond aging and maturing processes, beyond fears in the memory. Like Brassens in "La mauvaise réputation" -the bad reputation- (1952), but by no means ironic, the artist here plays with the sensible reality: Even if the ego is described as 'blind', 'dumb', 'deaf' and 'far away' his love that you 'see', 'speak to him', 'hear' and 'hug'. The following two chansons, which give examples of what I have called "the rudeness and irony of a Brassens, Ferré and Co", strike a very different tone. In "Rendez-vous" (number 7) - consisting of 15 (approximate) 24-silverers, as if the ego wanted to elude the 'meeting' endlessly - it tells while waiting for a bus, the middle-aged personified death of his plan to leave his body with skin and hair to the crawling creature, the "gente [sic] non humaine" -the non humain creatures- . Until then, however, it will leave the dust, not without leaving the listener with the feeling of déjà vu. What was the name of François Villon's "Ballade des pendus" -ballad of the hanged", ?But also "Le président, le prêtre et le procureur" -the president, the priest and the prosecutor- (number 8) is reminiscent of Brassens and the so typical for the restorative post-war institutional pincers. The venerable representatives of state, church, and jurisdiction turn out to be drug addicts, pimps, and molesters - who does not think of "Le Gorille"- while the lyrical ego turns with a simple "sauter la femme [du procureur] -screw the prosecutor's wife- ". The last chanson before the instrumental piece "Voyage, le printemps écarlate" -Journey of the scarlet spring- is eponym (number 9) with the title of the album and leads back to those poètes, of which Ferré had demanded "les papiers!" At that time the poet risked life and death , looks behind the scenes as 'voyant' and in Verlaine's manner dit 'l'indicible sans l'avoir prononcé' -says the unspeakable without pronouncing it-. The poète is finally a master of the metaphor and Alain Stan's metaphors are new and original. In his world, the Eiffel Tower does not walk as it does at Trenet's, but miraculous things happen that are probably due to the intercultural experience of the artist:Une tempête de neige enfante le désert, A snowstorm makes the desert pregnant,une montagne surgit de mers inconnues, a mountain emerges from unknown seas,une avalanche se met à rebrousser chemin an avalanche starts to roll backwardset la foudre reste muette quand le glacier s'enflamme and lightning remains silent when the glacier ignites(number 9 and number 17)Not for nothing does the auteur-compositeur-interprète end the album with these very verses (number 17).The last group of chansons, numbers 11 to 13, shows apocalyptic as well as concrete contemporary references. Already the man with the "Visage de brume" -Face like mist- (number 11) is more than a homeless person, exposed to the road freezing. It is also about existential homelessness that painfully affects the numbness of the world: the cities 'mow down', their intersections cut like blades, sirens hammer litanies. The scenario of the chanson "Le souffle des anges" -The breath of angels- (number 12) is even more dramatic: Here, the listener is led by gruesome but mostly very original images into a hallucinatory world: 'banging' in eyes and ears, fragments of glass cover the pavement, phantoms, mutilated Body, the air filled with earth, the hesitant lead figure threatens to overthrow. Certainly, even Baudelaire's lyrical I could complain in "Spleen" (1857), but this new whimsy has a new quality. He calms down in "Vagues" -Waves- (number 13) to a chorus that defies the end with a certain pride - "La vie n'est plus, mais elle continue / dans un passage fier entre terre, ciel et mer" -Life is no more, but it carries on / in a proud passage between earth, sky and sea ", " meurtritudes "and" enfer de la peine -bruises and hell of sorrow- but stay. Finally, the last chant "À l'ombre de la lumiere" -In the shadow of the light- (number 14) becomes concrete when it evokes the 'grand narratives' with the symbols cross (Christians), star (Jews, Muslims) and flag (nationalists) Shadow violence and death thrive. In the shadow of the flags grows an "état de guerre latent"-latent state of war-, which is denied the view of the "kaléidoscope des terres et des cieux", kaleidoscope of lands and heavens- and in the 'sunset of mankind', the symbols will silently remind the symbols that no one else is the light can celebrate.In his last CD, Alain Stan creates a poetic universe that would be inconceivable without the poet before him, since it is precisely from the play with the manifold forms of intertextuality that it obtains its originality. It would go too far to go into the poetic language of auteur-compositeur-interprète. It is only said so much that Verlaine's "De la musique avant tout chose" -Music first and foremost- in rhyme, internal rhyme, homophony, etc. is felt at every turn. As far as the rhythm is concerned, we should not only refer to the frequent combination of stanzas of different lengths, but also to stanza-internal phenomena such as isometry. Already on paper it is by no means the norm; In the lecture, however, she gives way to a dynamic play of accentuations and pauses, and this also where the artist chooses to recite or to sing. The voice is central to Alain Stan, he lets her 'souffle' run wild.For the composer and musician, on the other hand, the motto "Prima le parole e dopo la musica" -First the words and after that the music- familiar from the opera world can be applied, and yet Alain Stan's music is by no means monotonous. It helps the artist to set content accents. Piano, guitar, as well as keyboard and melodica allow a broad musical coloring, whereby Stan operates with various artifice: an end that urges for harmonious dissolution, the change from major to minor, chromaticism, dissonance, polyrhythmics, melody fragments to imitate the reality search, acceleration, ritardando, crescendo and much more. All in all, the present CD is a successful artistic whole in which many threads of the classic chanson tradition come together and at the same time are independently spun on.ATEM 1 (2016) 4 Finally, one last, critical remark is allowed: whether on stage or in the Textbook, Alain Stan attaches importance to the fact that the listener has a German translation available. Unlike the wanted "false German" of the comedian, it is here, however to create a most poetic universe in another language, and unfortunately this does not succeed. Translation errors, syntactic problems, but also missing the pitch in the target language do not make the translation enjoyable and referenced the listener back to the original.ATEM 1 (2016) Ursula Mathis-Moser. Alain Stan: Le poète joue