Genticorum: Nagez Rameurs
by: John Davy

          The easiest flowing folk music I've heard in some while comes from this Quebecois trio.  Genticorum have three previous albums to their name and have clearly established a wide renown for their recorded music and for their performances. Led by fiddler and foot-stomper Pascal Gemme, the three of them weave elegant and graceful music. Pascal's playing is a constant delight, simultaneously relaxed and precise. He knows exactly where he's going but there's always a bit of room for a flourish here and there, as the mood takes. The music seems to flow so easily and naturally from this band that they have no notion of being anxious about "authenticity".

           Alongside Pascal Gemme there is Yann Falquet on guitar and Alexandre de Grosbois-Garand who predominantly plays his flute but also adds fretless bass and a second fiddle to the sound. They all take a hand in the vocals and, with several call and response type songs amongst the material here, there always seems to be plenty going on. Their voices have that deep nasal quality usually associated with folk music but whereas most English language bands of this ilk, including Canadian ones, would seek to overwhelm you with their chaps-together manliness (which, of course, can be quite wonderful in its way), these guys seem to have a much more gentlemanly approach. With their voices and with their instruments they dance around each other in elegant interplay so that each of them has space to come through as an individual.

          Looking to the French Canadian song tradition that the three of them have soaked up, this collection of tunes and songs is built around the music of the voyageurs and loggers, the people who worked the long and wild rivers of Canada in pursuit of exploration, the fur trade and the timber trade. The modern wealth of Canada was built on their almost unimaginable hardships and risk-taking, so a celebration of their efforts is a fine subject for their internet-age descendants. The title song could translate as something like "Row, boys!" - it's an exhortation to the paddlers of a long boat - but the French song is actually based on an Irish poem, "A Canadian Boat Song", written by Thomas Moore some two centuries ago.  They delve widely for their material, do Genticorum, as well as writing plenty of new tunes themselves, and in making this album they've invited along quite a few friends from the Canadian folk music community who all seem to fit in seamlessly with the Genticorum sound. You'll rarely find music making that is so straightforward in intent and execution as the music these guys produce, and so uplifting in its quiet joy.