La vie cajun

Féloche

Too easy, mate.

Haven’t found a whole album of Silbo Gomero yet, Jules. This’n’s got Silbo in several songs. Mostly it’s French, danceable, folksy, immensely imaginative, and…so satisfying. It’s the kind of album that, I think, leaves one happy in a mos’ childlike simplicity. Today, I am glad that music exists. Just glad. Unadulterated joy.

Féloche has got some of the best use of sound I’ve heard in an age and an age. If music is the artful arrangement of sound, and it’s been around for a million years in some form or another, then it has become like any other human endeavor: full of prescription and formula. You “may” use these things to achieve this effect, the formula prescribes. You “may” deviate just so but no further, the formula prescribes. And in some ways the prescriptions and formulas are good, because they allow people with plentiful imagination and a shortage of imagination in other areas to express themselves. If they’re not very good at remembering how the infinity of possible sounds fit together, they can still rest easy knowing that arranging a guitar, a bass, some drums, and vocals will give a pleasant shape to the sounds they can imagine.

Féloche is displaying a certain genius, I think, in breaking the prescriptions and formulas for what sorts of sounds you’re “allowed” to include in your music, if you’re seeming to play in some genre or other. He’s breaking certain conventions that seem to dictate the sounds he is “allowed” to include, but he isn’t breaking the sorts of conventions universal to music by which musicians seem to produce satisfying and pleasant music.

The music he’s making, as a result, is interesting, but not bizarre.

And it features some Silbo Gomero, because apparently the dude can…speak it…is speak the right word? He can communicate in it.

Tomorrow: I may, finally, find a Swedish language album…or German. We shall see.

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