Description

Date de parution : 2021

Muddy Gurdy a enregistré son premier album comme un voyage initiatique, sur le terrain dans le Nord du Mississippi, avec des musiciens locaux. Homecoming est le second, enregistré en Auvergne comme un pèlerinage païen à la source. Dans une grange, dans des chapelles, dans l’ancienne salle de bal d’un bistro de montagne, dans le cratère d’un volcan en pleine nuit, à la lumière de torches. On y entend des invités locaux, chantres des musiques traditionnelles : un duo de danseurs de bourrée, un harmoniciste, un joueur de cornemuse, un spécialiste du briolage (cet ancien chant de travail des laboureurs)… La musique de Muddy Gurdy vient du blues, mais tout autant d’Auvergne : à l’échelle d’un groupe, c’est une révolution copernicienne, incontestable et brillamment démontrée.
Ce disque accompagne et illustre une réflexion sur les correspondances entre les musiques rurales du monde entier, sur la créolité, sur la modernité et la modernisation des traditions culturelles. Mais, comme dit le proverbe, Muddy Gurdy ne met jamais la charrue avant les bœufs : Homecoming n’est pas un traité d’ethnomusicologie comparée. C’est juste un grand disque de musique venue de la terre et qui vise les étoiles, qui transcende l’espace-temps et donne le frisson.
Stephane Deschamps

Blues is without a doubt the most universal world music. The root of all American –thus the world’s– popular musical of the 20th century. It was born in Mississippi. The ancestors of its earliest performers came from Africa. Since the first recordings a century ago Blues has traveled around the world, converted generations of followers, has been translated, sung and played in all languages and everywhere . But never like Muddy Gurdy.
The trio comes from the Auvergne area, the « Appalachians of central France ». The band includes a guitarist and singer – she could be the spiritual daughter or R.L. Burnside and Jessie Mae Hemphill-, a percussionist -very fond of Latin American rhythms- and a hurdy gurdy player of international fame. Muddy Gurdy recorded its first album with local musicians during an initiatory journey in the North Mississippi Hill Country.
Homecoming is their second album. This time it was recorded in the Auvergne area as a pagan pilgrimage back to their roots. In a barn, in chapels, in the former ballroom of a mountain bistro or with torches in the middle of the night in the crater of a volcano. The album is an absolute tribute to traditional music and culture, thus including first rate local guests and traditional bards : a duo of « bourrée » dancers, a harp player, a bagpipe player, and a specialist of « briolage » –ancient ploughmen work songs.
Muddy Gurdy’s music comes from blues music as much as from Auvergne. For the band, it is an indisputable and brilliant demonstration of a Copernican Revolution.
Homecoming accompanies –and illustrates– a reflection on the similarities between rural music from around the world, but also on the Creole identity, on modernity and the modernization of cultural traditions.
But as the saying goes, Muddy Gurdy never puts the cart before the horse. Homecoming is not a dissertation on comparative « ethnomusicology ». It is just a phenomenal album born on earth and aiming at the stars and transcending space-time to give you the chills.
Stephane Deschamps