Celtic music with a French accent

Genticorum plays a style of music unique to the Canadian province of Quebec. City Pulse caught up with Yann Falquet, guitarist for the group, during a retreat at a lakeside cabin in Montreal.

Tell me a bit about this Quebecois style of music you play.

If people have never heard Quebecois music, maybe they’ve heard Irish music, which is more common where you are. It’s the same family; we’re distant cousins. Our fiddle music is related.

But we do have percussive dancing — it’s not really dancing because it is done by the fiddler, and the fiddler is sitting in a chair playing percussion with his feet. I think it infuses a whole lot of energy into the fiddle tunes and into the arrangements. It’s definitely a very danceable music. It was played for dances at evening parties for a very long time. We hope people will express themselves in vertical motion, as we call it.

Tell me about the roots of Quebecois music.

Like all “new world” music, it’s a mix of different things. The French settlers who founded New France, or Nouvelle-France, brought with them their songs and some of their dances. And when the Irish and Scottish arrived, their style influenced what we’re doing now in Quebec. It’s sometimes described as Celtic music with a French accent. So bands in Quebec will play that fiddle music and will do lots of songs, and these are in French, songs that were popular in France when those settlers arrived.

How did you get into this style of music?

For me, it was hearing some of the best bands in Quebec, like La Bottine Souriante. I heard them when I was a teenager, and was compelled by the music. There’s so much energy. Their arrangements are so interesting and the way they play the music really captivated me. I was not playing that kind of music before, I grew up playing rock music in my garage bands, some jazz at some point. But when I heard La Bouttine Souriante, I had to explore what I could do with that music, and I never looked back.

Have you noticed a recent resurgence in interest in folk music?

I think it’s always been there. People have always been interested in what was done in the past. In Quebec, there was a big revival in the ‘70s, with people getting interested in traditional music. But since then it seems like there’s been a revival almost continuously.

Some people focus on it, some people focus on it less.

Since I started 15 or 20 years ago, it seems like every journalist says, “It seems like we’re in the middle of a revival.” I’m not sure why. People who play this music play it non-stop, and sometimes people notice it more, sometimes less. It’s a healthy thing. There’s plenty of interest, plenty of musicians, people getting some fans and people supporting all the festivals. It’s been going on for a while now.

Have you played the Great Lakes Folk Festival before?

We’ve never played the festival. We’ve played in Michigan a few times, not too far from where you are, but never at this festival. We’re excited. I looked at the schedule and there seem to be a bunch of great musicians there. We’re excited to be part of it.

What do you enjoy about playing new cities?

Showing up in a new city is really interesting for us. We’ve been touring for maybe 15 years. We’ve been many places, but there’s always somewhere we’ve never been, and it’s always a pleasure to discover who in that city are involved in folk music, who is putting the festival together. Sometimes we’ll see familiar faces from other nearby festival or musicians we might have seen at other festivals. It’s always exciting for us.

And we always like to see what the best restaurant is in the new city, make sure we try the good food wherever we go. We also make sure to check out the local microbreweries. We’ll try to get a taste of the Lansing food culture.

You have multiple sets at the Great Lakes Folk Festival? How does this affect your song selection?

The great thing with Genticorum is that since we’ve been playing for 15 years — we’ve recorded five albums and we have lots and lots of repertoire — most of what we’ve done in the past we can pull out and put in a set if we feel that it’s the right number. Knowing that, it’s easy to play different programs for every set. Depending on the setting  — some are high-energy dance stages, others are intimate listening settings — we now have enough material to cover all that range. That’s something you can’t do if you just do one concert. It’s fun to have these multiple sets to show different personalities.