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Written in fRoots issue 226, 2002

MARILIS ORIONAA
Femelís
Armugalh/Darenlà 176401 (2001)

It’s five years since Marilis Orionaa’s cover-feature in fRoots at the time of her first CD, Ça-i. She still hasn’t performed in Britain, but she has showed up from time to time in other European countries, including at 2001’s Kaustinen festival where her passionate Béarnais-language singing and dramatic appearance, a slender figure with her waist-length cape of hair glowing chestnut in the backlight, created a stir among audience and press.
      Her voice is very distinctive, capable of stridency and wild ululation but also great delicacy and warmth. She often inserts burst of fast-quivering vibrato into the middle of even quite short notes, but leaves the ends of long notes starkly un-vibratoed; there’s not a hint of flabbiness nor plumminess. And the songs are as strong as her voice. Their melodies, by Marilis and occasionally other band members, and her lyrics, are continuous with the shapes and subjects of tradition. She’s not imitating the music of the past but working within it and springing from it to speak for herself, in the words of a woman to her child, a letter from a Béarnais emigrant in America, a song to the man whose name is at the top of the list on the war memorial in the village of Balansun, a song of “love and alcohol”, a waltz to a friend that ends “when we divided half and half, the chocolate and the boys”.
      She’s accompanied on Femelís, as she was on Ça-i and is live, just by Olivier Kléber-Lavigne’s Spanish guitar, which is flamenco and perhaps African and South-American inflected but of very individual inspiration, and Nicolas Martin-Sagarra’s equally personal sparse, clicking, clattering percussion. Just one track features a guest, Pascale Respaud on diatonic accordion. As before, Gérard Cauquil is producer, sound engineer and even sleeve photographer. Credits for coiffeur, “stylisme” and “conseil de communication” to her “taties” Marie, Thérèse and Marie, reflect Orionaa’s delight and immersion in the culture and communities of Béarn.
      A splendid album from an intense, magnificent singer, absolutely the sort of thing that shouts to the world of the energy, fertility and differentness of European roots musics evolving in the 21st century. However, until some enlightened UK distributor and retailers seek it out it isn’t likely to be found in many UK shops.


© 2002 Andrew Cronshaw
 

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