La Vie En Violette
author: Robert V. Guarente
There is something about French music, starting with classical, that sets it apart. The sensational use of woodwinds and brass. Highly original melodies. It is not derivative, it is revolutionary. French popular songwriters of the 20th century could never escape their musical heritage. Influences of compatriot musical geniuses often colored their chansons.
We are living in a new century and new age where little craft is found in anything. The odd illusion among modern musicians is that there's little time for it. Recording sessions are more akin to highly controlled and charted jam sessions. Getting a product out may be more important than the product itself.
Violette de Bartillat's new album, "Joie de Vivre," pays homage to the French tradition, to American jazz, and Afro-Cuban rhythms, and to things blue and bluesy; and yet it emerges as a new, fresh, and original musical testament. There is not just attention to detail. Detail permeates the opus. It is a thoughtful, soulful, loving aesthetic.
As French cuisine pleases the senses; as French music exploits the full orchestra for exotic flavors; and as French film exposes, plays with, pokes fun at, and probes our humanity and the human condition, Violette's idiom is French in every such way—and then American, African, Latin, and jazzy at its core.
"Joie de Vivre" is at once driving, confident, masterful, powerful, uplifting, inspirational, uncommon. and extraordinary. Simultaneously it is nurturing, tender, genuine, guiding, spiritual, honest, and healing. It is good music and wise music, not the standard-issue, bad-ass, flippant, insouciant, vulgar, and virtually artless music that's just about the lay of the musical land in a shattered, disillusioned world.
Violette's songs are artistic and thoughtful. Haste was never an ingredient. Au contraire, patience and discipline and high craft and architecture; outstanding arrangements; dramatic depth; and the generous, genuine, unbridled giving of the heart define this new body of work. We are fortunate heirs to that effort.
Dear Violette, "Bisous — et Bis!"
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