41 f Gurdy Up!
Cara Gibney hears how three French musicians headed to the Mississippi hill country to record the remarkable Muddy Gurdy project.
“O
ne day I woke up with an idea,” French percus- sionist Marc Glomeau was explaining by email. “Going to North
Mississippi with our trio, Hypnotic Wheels, with the hurdy-gurdy. Going to record with North Mississippi musicians, in different places, front porches, people places, Mississippi memories places. Everywhere, but not in a studio.”
There you have it, the spark that ignit-
ed Muddy Gurdy: the idea, the collective, the project, the journey, that brought three musicians from France across the world to Mississippi with the mission of collaborating with the descendants of some of the hill country blues’ most renowned figures: R. L. Burnside, Otha Turner, Junior Kimbrough, and James "Son" Thomas. Their descendants, Sharde Thomas – fife player in the American fife and drum blues tradition – and guitarists Cedric Burnside, Cameron Kimbrough and Pat Thomas, joined Hypnotic Wheels in sharing their vision of the songs selected for the Muddy Gurdy recordings.
Hypnotic Wheels are the curious mix
of Tia Gouttebel on guitar and vocals, per- cussionist Marc Glomeau, and viellist Gilles Chabenat, the trio’s hurdy-gurdy player. “We began a musical encounter never done before – there was no reference for it,” recalled Glomeau. “Tia brought her perfect blues knowledge, guitar, and voice talent. Gilles brought his particular instru- ment with all his possibilities, and I brought some percussion from different cultures, (calabash, bendir, cajon, etc.), and a vision of what we could do together.”
Each with their own independent careers, the trio that was to become Hyp- notic Wheels started out as a duo with Tia Gouttebel and Marc Glomeau recording “tunes in my home studio with only percus- sion, guitar and voice, trying to find anoth- er way to play old blues songs … Then in 2011 I suggested to Tia that we invite a hurdy-gurdy player I worked with in an original Franco-Venezuelan jazz project.” The idea of the hurdy-gurdy was a surprise for Gouttebel. “Tia was a little bit sceptical about the sound of this old and dusty
Gilles Chabenat, Sharde Thomas, Marc Glomeau and Tia Gouttebel
instrument, but when she heard what Gilles can do with it she said, ‘Let’s do it!!’”
“Old and dusty?” Well, the hurdy-
gurdy, known in France as the vielle à roue, or vielle for short, is an ancient hand- cranked stringed instrument on which the melodies are played by a keyboard. “The hurdy-gurdy has served all musical styles for a thousand years. It is a sort of strings organ,” viellist Gilles Chabenat explained.
Chabenat, who was born in Central France, started playing the hurdy-gurdy at a young age with an organisation called Les Thiaulins, dedicated to promoting folk art and tradition. His talent for the instru- ment won him several awards and he was inspired to work further on the music of the region, looking at, for example, the style of hurdy-gurdy playing that is specific to Central France. “It’s a rather energetic style, essentially intended for dance… The hurdy-gurdy is a symbolic instrument in Central France, and today still, many young people continue to develop it. The organology of the hurdy-gurdy can adapt itself to various musics, a little like a medieval computer!”
H
e now plays an electroacous- tic version of the instrument, developed by the luthier Denis Siorat. “His work is a contemporary version of the
hurdy-gurdy, which allows me to play the music of today.” Indeed, over the years, Chabenat has collaborated with jazz musicians, with artists from various other genres, and played in a twelve-year part- nership with the Corsican folk group I Muvrini. Now, he is “using the hurdy- gurdy as second guitar” in Hypnotic Wheels. “That idea comes from Marco and Tia, but it came rather naturally because there are many points in com- mon with the music of Auvergne: simple, strong melodies, and hypnotic.”
And the hypnotic element is an impor- tant backdrop to the band. “Our common link is that we all three like hypnotic and trance music,” Glomeau pointed out. “We all come from different music: blues, French folklore, Afro-Caribbean music, African music… all this music has rhythm as a common link. That’s the reason why Tia suggested we work especially with
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