New songs inspired by falling leaves, tight deadlines

Flora Luna, Alpha Toshineza and Suzanne Kennelly each make their own kind of music, but Saturday, they’ll each perform a song inspired by the same prompt and composed for the same deadline.

Last month, the three francophone musicians — who respectively make lush indie pop, heart-pounding hip-hop and butter-smooth jazz — met at the Saint Boniface offices of the music-driven non-profit Le 100 Nons to receive their assignment from executive director Eric Burke.

By the first Saturday night in October, as part of the Vos idées en chansons program, the artists would have to create a new song to correspond to the theme Reviens me voir à l’automne, or “Come back and see me in the fall.” What normally might take months or years of contemplation now had a due date, forcing the artists to work hard and resist preciousness: whatever would be would be.

Flora Luna’s Geneviève Freynet says the project reminded her of cramming to complete coursework during her undergraduate degree in Indigenous studies or her master’s in education.

“It did feel a little bit like school in a way, staying up late to get my assignments in, trying to finish, except it’s a lot more fun,” she says.

Freynet, who was raised in St. Genevieve and plays in a folk duo with her brother Pierre, began her process the same way as usual, writing whatever she felt compelled to scribble down, while resisting the urge to edit or judge herself. “So I wrote down some obvious words related to fall — about the wind, the leaves, the colours, the nostalgia, preparing for hibernation, starting fires — that kind of stuff.

“It kind of painted a picture and put me in a mood,” adds the singer, who counts as influences Madison Cunningham, Fiona Apple and Klô Pelgag (Quebecois singer Chloé Pelletier-Gagnon). “Sometimes it’s easier when something is imposed on you; then you don’t have the white-page syndrome. This time, it was a little hard to connect, so I did more or less restart a few times. But it’s been a fun process getting those creative juices out and finding the meaning of that theme at this point in my life.”

Last fall, Freynet participated in a similar challenge put on by 100 Nons while attending a songwriter’s workshop with eight other francophone artist at Falcon Lake.

“We had to write one song per day in groups of three from beginning to end,” she says. “It was an amazing challenge and some very good songs came out of it.

“But it’s intimidating on your own. It’s harder to have an objective point of view. You have to take your raw material and do the best you can with it.”

Burke says the idea of Le 100 Nons’ program is to stimulate creativity and to include an audience in the artistic process of song development. Saturday’s event — which will be presented in a Winnipeg Folk Festival-style workshop setting at Centre Culturel Franco-Manitobain — is the first of four Vos idées events this fall, with Dominique Reynolds serving as MC.

On Oct. 22, Tommy Douglas Keenan, Justin Lacroix and Jérémie Gosselin will perform songs inspired by audience suggestions gathered at the inaugural show. On Nov. 5, Bush Lotus, Daniel Roy and André Peloquin-Hopfner will continue the chain. And on Nov. 19, Andrina Turenne, French RK and Paul Lachance will show what they tunes they can spin in a two-week span.

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