Chants des pâturages / Music of the pastures

[English follows]

Kulning est le nom donné à une forme de chant pastoral, une sorte de chant crié ou appels pastoraux traditionnels et très étranges pour quiconque n'en a jamais entendus. Si vous êtes comme moi fasciné par la voix humaine, peut-être partagerez vous le choc esthétique intense qui fut le mien la première fois que j'ai entendu un exemple de ce chant. C'était en 1986, dans l'extraordinaire film de Andreï Tarkovski, un des mes films fétiches : Le Sacrifice. J'ai vu le film en salle, et ce chant que j'avais entendu, qui est à peine perceptible à certains moments dans le film, m'a pourtant poursuivi longtemps après le visionnement initial. J'ai revu le film quelque fois, en cinémathèque, et chaque fois ce chant était au nombre des éléments qui dans ce film me ravissaient complètement. Il m'a fallut attendre la sortie du film en dvd pour le réécouter à loisirs. Puis j'ai voulu en savoir davantage sur ce chant et ma quête a commencée : quel était donc ce chant mystérieux ? Était-ce un chant, une litanie ? Le premier à répondre à ma question et à me mettre sur la piste du kulning fut le musicien Jan Garbarek. Dans une brève correspondance, il fit mon éducation en me disant qu'il s'agissait d'un chant traditionnel - au même titre que la berceuse - en l'occurence ici un chant suédois qu'il nommait 'cattle call'. Et que ce chant qui me fascinait tant servait à ... rassembler le bétail!  Mon choc esthétique devint un choc culturel. Il existait donc une culture si magnifique où l'on chantait de façon si incroyable, et dans le seul but de réunir le bétail ?
Plus récemment, j'en ai appris davantage sur le kulning. Du Moyen Âge à aujourd'hui, dans les régions de forêts et de montagnes où se trouvent les pâturages d'été, en Suède et ailleurs en Scandinavie, ce chant est presque élevé au rang de langage, servant aux femmes, aux jeunes bergères à communiquer avec leurs troupeaux, puis, entre elles, à s'aviser les unes les autres de la présence de prédateurs pour les troupeaux, ou pour se retrouver, se localiser dans ces vastes étendues puisque ce chant très puissant porte loin, au-delà des vallées et des ravins, et peut être entendu à des kilomètres de distance.

Comme je ne suis pas musicienne, si je dis ici des âneries, qu'on me corrige :  il s'agit d'un chant à la fois de gorge et de tête, mais davantage un chant de tête. Il s'agit - et vous vous en rendrez compte immédiatement - de litanies chantées avec des voix hautes perchées. Certains disent que le chant est purement improvisé, d'autres qu'il y a des formes à apprendre et reproduire. Le chant est intense, puissant et perçant. Il est chanté on pourrait presque dire à tue tête, sans retenue, dans un très haut registre, et sans vibrato. C'est un chant qui techniquement exige une forte pression d'air provenant de derrière les cordes vocales. Contrairement au chant classique, ici le larynx serait relevé, et le son est produit de façon clair et puissante, comme lorsqu'on appelle quelqu'un qui est dehors, presque hors de portée de la voix.

Voici quelques exemples en format mp3. Mon conseil serait de d'abord baisser le volume de votre ordinateur, pour ensuite le remonter graduellement dès le début de l'écoute.

Exemple A (1minute 16 secondes)
Exemple B (30 secondes)
Exemple C (54 secondes)

Je suis reconnaissante à Jan Garbarek d'avoir pris le temps de répondre à une illustre inconnue, ignorante de surcroît. Et à Jan Bielawski du site Nostalghia.com pour m'avoir fait découvrir encore davantage d'exemples de kulning. Chapeau pour le travail formidable que lui et ses compères font sur Nosthalghia, site consacré à Tarkovsky.

Music of the pastures

Kulning is an archaic style of singing/cattle call, traditionally employed outdoors in the grazing pastures of Scandinavia from the Middle Ages to this day. Its consists of shepherdess's tunes, calls and tones of enticement, mainly used to keep contact with, and to call the cattle, but also to communicate with other people over long distances. It can be heard far and wide in the forests and in the mountains in the summer pastures. The sound is intense, concentrated and piercing. It is sung with high-pitched voices, at full volume in a vibrato-free high register. Technically speaking, kulning requires strong air pressure from behind the vocal folds. The larynx should be raised compared to classical singing, and the sound should have a clear and forward focus, as when calling for someone outdoors. The music is said to have been developed by young girls who worked hard looking after the cows, alone, and for long period of time. To communicate with one another, to warn for predators and to call their cattle, they used this sort of high-pitched yodelling that could be heard over hills and above valleys.

I first heard that haunting style of singing in 1986, while viewing the extraordinary movie by Andreï Tarkovsky : Le Sacrifice.  From then on, I was on a quest to find out more about kulning. Two people were instrumental in helping me in that quest, probably without their realizing it. First, Jan Garbarek, the swedish saxophonist, who had answered my letter asking about the songs. He is the one who broke it to me : it was nothing but ... cattle call. My aesthetic shock became a cultural shock  : there was in this world a culture that created such magnificent songs to just call the cattle ? And then Jan Bielawski, from Nosthalghia.com, the ultimate website on all things Tarkovsky, who made me discover more examples of kulning. The rest, I found in books and on the web. Some say that kulning is purely improvised and others say there are patterns to learn and reproduce. It is now also used in swedish folk music.

I have provided three short examples of kulning (right above the english portion of my posting). I advise the listener to first lower the volume on its computer and then slowly raise it at the very beginning of the songs.

I hope your awe will be as huge as mine was and still is to this day, twenty some years later.

Comments

[Rédigé par: robin andrea]

What an incredibly interesting sound. I haven't really heard anything like it before. Has this sound been incorporated into modern music of Sweden at all?

I was a fan of Jan Garbarek in the 70s when he did a fantastic album with Keith Jarret. I lived on their music for almost a year. How nice that he wrote you back. Did he do the soundtrack for the movie? How did the music of the cattle calls work in the movie?

Some human sounds come from someplace so deep. The depths of this sound reminds me of the Tuva throat singers of Mongolia. A sound that just goes right inside of you.

Thanks for raising my awareness of Kulning.

[Rédigé par: Suzanne]

The sound is incorporated in the repertoire of some folk groups all thru Scandinavia, and some blend it in with other sounds and instruments,either ancient or contemporary. When I first heard it in the movie, I was almost hypnotized by it. Not sure what I had heard really. Because in the movie, it was in the background, faint, not loud, brilliantly used by Tarkovsky. / As for Garbarek, he was very gracious to answer my question. The first album of Garbarek I had bought was 'Dis', which is him on the saxophone accompanying a 'wind harp', litteraly a huge harp set in a bay on a seashore where they have the longest winds, and the wind went thru the harp and made the music, Garbarek plays along. Very seventies. LOL / Garbarek didn't do the soundtrack of Le Sacrifice. The only reason I asked him was that I knew the singing/music was swedish and he was the only swedish artist I had every heard about back then. It turned out he knew exactly what it was. / I'm glad you liked the calls. Because it is so high-pitched, I'm not sure everyone will like them.

[Rédigé par: Suzanne]

Robin Andrea - I forgot : yes, the Jarret-Garbarek album was really good.

[Rédigé par: Annick]

J'ai baissé le son, ai mis en route la bande son, ai fermé les yeux, très vite ai augmenté pour me laisser enlever par ce voyage magnifique dans les pâturages, j'en ai la chair de poule, cette voix captive, envoûte, j'ai oublié que j'étais dans des pâtures, un tel sublime, une voix si prenante, si forte, si unique, sprituelle... bien bel échange... merci..

[Rédigé par: janeboatler]

Suzanne, I struggled all through the French before I discovered the English beneath. Good practice for me.
I found the chant beautiful and full of power, but chilling. It gave me a frisson, that's for sure.
Imagine all that effort for cattle - well not really, as they use it to communicate with each other. I would imagine that those sounds would carry a far distance.

[Rédigé par: Suzanne]

Jane - I don't always always put bilingual notes, but most of the time I do. Green type for French, and blue for English. / Yes, a lot of work to call the cattle. But I guess those shepperdess had a lot of time on their hands.

[Rédigé par: Pohanginapete]

Suzanne, this is extraordinarily beautiful. I heard it here, for the first time, looking out into the night across Wellington harbour with the lights of an interisland ferry moving across the darkness... As Robin says, there's something of the quality of Mongolian throat singing in the sound; like Janeboatler I found it intensely beautiful and full of power: but I didn't find it chilling. Instead I'd liken that frisson to a sense of what now seems to be called "wabi-sabi". I think it would still move me even if there wasn't that similarity to Mongolian throat singing (of course, anything that reminds me of Mongolia tends to fill me with wanderlust, or what I heard described once as "seelenwanderung": "soul wandering" was the literal translation given). Thanks so much for this, Suzanne.

[Rédigé par: Suzanne]

Pete - Real glad you like it. To see other people's reactions, it reassures me about myself, since I really really was under the spell of those calls until I had really found out about them. I just had to find out who was singing in such a way and why. If you ever get to see the Tarkovsky movie - Le Sacrifice / The Offret - pay close attention because you will hear those calls in the background here and there, and they add a wonderful dreamy quality to the movie.

[Rédigé par: Peter]

I was actually looking for something quite a bit more silly; but I had to look. To my surprise I found myself realizing that I had at one time actually wondered if herding Maids/Boys actually sang to the herd or if it was a form of mountain communication between herders and their families/towns.

My knowledge has grown.

What I am left wondering now is ... might there be a USA album of this music?