It’s a Madrigaïa world
Local vocal collective mixes genres and wins fans from here to Haiti
Peter Vesuwalla

Sitting among the members of Madrigaïa as they rehearse in a room at the Franco-Manitoban Cultural Centre is a strange experience.

It’s just a regular afternoon, and six members of the seven-woman vocal ensemble are relaxing on leather couches in one corner of the room. There are plenty of black tops and denim jeans and a general air of informality. In the middle of the group is half a bag of chips and an open jar of salsa. It seems like any informal get-together — until they start singing.

I’m treated to an a cappella rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Who By Fire, and there’s some weird kind of resonance as all six voices mingle in my ears and swirl around my head.

There’s no dominant voice here. Each complements the other until the collective — Annick Brémault, Sarah Dugas, Ariane Jean, Marie-Claude McDonald, Dominique Reynolds, Brigitte Sabourin and Andrina Turenne — forms an entity that’s more than the sum of its parts.

To hear the Madrigaïa sound on its 2005 album Pléiades is one thing — to hear it live, where the sound fills a room without reverberating off the walls, is beautiful to the point of being almost eerie. This is why the septet was named best vocal group at the recent Canadian Folk Music Awards in Edmonton.

“We used to interpret songs pretty much as we worked through them, adding certain parts, but it was pretty much close to what it was like originally, whereas now we have fun with it and let our imaginations go nuts,” says Turenne.

“You’re going to hear that even more,” adds Dugas. “Since the release of that album, it’s grown.”

“That realization hadn’t even set in yet,” Turenne says.

In conversation the women also tend to talk over one another, expanding on one another’s ideas and even occasionally finishing one another’s sentences. (I confess I had a time telling their voices apart when I listened to my interview tape.)

They tell me their upcoming Christmas show on Dec. 20 at the West End Cultural Centre won’t be quite like their other shows as far as content goes, and during their rehearsal they run through a few ideas, dismissing some immediately and embracing others. (The idea of doing Santa Baby is met with an immediate, enthusiastic “No!”)

The vocal troupe, formed just over seven years ago, can afford to be picky about what it performs because it has a repertoire that ranges from traditional French-Canadian folk songs to Brazilian beats. Gospel mixes with Celtic folk, and even a little soulful reggae finds its way into the mix.

The group finds new material anywhere it can, from radio to folk festivals, and the members consider ways to adapt other types of music to their own sound without losing the spiritual essence of a particular song.

“It depends what it feels like the important thing in that song is,” says Annick Brémault. “I don’t know if it’s always a rule. We don’t adhere by a rule, but I think we always like to feel out what the essence of that song is, and if it means keeping a certain rhythm or keeping a certain pattern then we’ll keep it. We’ll change everything else. I think it’s kind of a case-by-case basis.”

“I think it depends too on what the song is about,” Dugas says. “If it’s more about the lyrics then you have more freedom with the music itself and where it goes. But if it’s, let’s say, a style like a Brazilian song or something, it’s based around the rhythm. So if you take that away then what is it exactly? It depends on whether the focus is musical or lyrical.”

Turenne continues: “And also different cultures have music that is a little more sacred, and we’re never trying to take the importance out of that, and (we) always try to be very respectful to all the styles that we do, but we think that music is just like people, just blending cultures and mixing it in. It’s like a universal language. And so to us it’s quite beautiful sometimes to break certain rules and put certain things together where it might be seen as taboo or risky.”

The Christmas concert and a New Year’s Eve gig at Westminster United Church will cap off an extraordinary year for the group, the highlight of which was a trip to Haiti in May, when they accompanied Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean to the small nation for the inauguration of its new government.

“We may do some of those things again,” Turenne says. “We might again have bodyguards shoving us in armoured vehicles. We might again sing in front of 100,000 people. We might again be in one of the craziest cities in the world. But it will never be the combination of what all those things meant at that time. It was the energy of the people and the whole new settling of the government.”

The experience of being strangers in such a strange land, where crowds of poverty-stricken people maintained relentless optimism despite the constant sound of distant gunfire, left a strong impression on the members, who returned to Winnipeg feeling they shared an even stronger bond.

Not that they’ve decided to adopt any kind of hard-line political agenda, but they’re no longer content to present themselves as seven attractive women with nice voices.

“It’s about standing for what life is, even though that sounds really funny,” Dugas says. “But life isn’t just one thing. It’s about standing for how we want to live our lives.”

Turenne puts it another way: “You have to be the change you wish to see in the world.”