Occitan, mother tongue of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Richard the Lionheart, had a literary golden age in the 12th century and produced the great singer-songwriters of the Middle Ages, the troubadours and trobarises. It was still widely spoken in southern France in 1904 when the Occitan poet Frédéric Mistral won the Nobel Prize in Literature, but the 20th century was hard on the storied Romance language (nearest relative: Catalan). Though commonly heard today in some villages, ask residents of Toulouse, historic Occitania’s capital, if they speak Occitan and a recurrent response is, “No, but my grandparents do.” Nonetheless, an Occitan music scene emerged in the “Pink City” in the 1980s, just as bilingual French-Occitan schools began opening in the region. Cocanha, three women who sing polyphonic songs—alternately rousing and mesmerizing—represents an innovative revival stage, dedicated to Occitan tradition but ready to tap into rock and hip-hop for stylistic tips, Brazil and Africa for percussion touches. i es ? (Are You There?), their first full-length album, is a collection of Pyrenean, Gascon and Languedoc songs, crafted with generous vocals, string tambourine and caxixi, to engage the ears, feet and heart. The trio has feminist flair, evident in editing male-centered traditional lyrics and on their album’s photomontage cover showing a sculpted clitoris. Feminine agency appears in Dempuèi Auriac (From Aurillac to Marseilles), the ballad of an itinerant laborer and (surprise!) faithful husband, and in M’an dit Martin (Martin Told Me), with bourrée dancers offering added percussion to a song about what women want. Progress and its cultural toll drive La Valsa d’Emiliana, while Se sabiatz/Que son aüros (If You Only Knew) is a short primer on the curse of marriage. Language revival is a challenge, but Cocanha may just have the formula—not only to inspire but also to edit the answer to that pregnant question: “No, but my children do.” From: https://worldlisteningpost.com/2018/07/17/cocanha-i-es/
