Re: [Harp-L] Obit.: Gabriel Labbe

[Winslow Yerxa <winslowyerxa@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is a huge, huge loss. I never met Labbé, but I really liked his playing and had enormous respect for his pioneering work in preserving French Canadian traditional music through writing about, collecting, and reissuing old recordings, along with his own work. The Virtual Gramophone at Library and Archives Canada houses several thousand 78s available as mp3s, and a large part of their collection came from his donation.

As a harmonica player, Labbé was one of the last in the great old style of Québécois tremolo players in that characeristic buoyant, rhythmic, strongly defined style that was recorded as early as the mid 1920s by players such as Henri Lacroix, Adélard Saint-Louis, Pit Paré, Mat Bolduc, and Louis Blanchette. 

For some reason, younger players seemed to have forgotten this rich style and tended to sound like a cross between Bob Dylan and Lee Oskar, much as blues harmonica players lost touch with the rich southern pre-war tradition.

Labbé was the last master of the grand old style. I had hoped to get him to SPAH as a performer either this year or next. I had heard his health wasn't great, but I hadn't expected this.

By way of a tribute, I've uploaded to the harp-l google group a recording of a tune that I learned from a Labbé record, a waltz named La valse du Péril:

http://groups.google.com/group/harp-l/files

Winslow 

James Thurgood <jthurgood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: The Quebec harmonica-player and folklorist Gabriel
Labbe passed away on March 14.  Labbe was a major foce
in the Quebec traditional music scene.  Here's a link
to some recordings and Youtube clips: 
http://www.jeanlouislabbe.com/Gabriel/musique_gabriel.htm

- thurg


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