Farewell Cyril

Dear Readers,

Our friend Cyril Devouge passed away peacefully this past weekend at the hospital in Chateauguay.

He was a good friend and wonderful teacher in the full sense of the word. As much as he taught me about fiddle music, getting to know him also taught me much about leading a joyful life and the importance of family, friends, music, and laughter. I'm hoping some of these lessons are captured in the stories and jokes we have posted of our visits with Cyril in previous months. I know Brian, Brigid, and I will really cherish the memories we had with our sessions at Cyril's seniors home. We will be posting more tunes and stories from Cyril as I go through all the recordings I have.

His tunes have been some of the most popular on this site and I'm glad that so many people are listening to them and the files where I teach his tunes.

Cyril (Right) cracks a joke. Denzil and Dorothy laugh.

On our last visit with him, I told Cyril how popular his tunes were here and that people had really been enjoying them and had begun learning them. The sense of pride this gave him was clear and palpable in the room. Brigid's husband Jimmy then told Cyril that he had kept his music alive for 100 years and that we were working to keep it alive for another 100. This remark really touched Cyril and as he often did, he shed a few tears of happiness. Knowing that his tunes were not going to be lost really seemed to give him a sense of contentment.

I wanted to say to the readers that in my mind, Jimmy's use of the word "we" includes all the people who have been listening to and learning from Cyril's tunes and stories, so thank you.

Here is another video of Cyril playing for his good buddy Hermas Réhel to step dance to. All I can say about this video is that it is old-time fiddle culture at its finest.



Farewell Cyril, we'll miss you.

Video: Cyril Devouge plays Roland White's Tune

Our friend Jimmy Allen from New Jersey was introduced to Gaspesian fiddling through Brigid's brother, Anthony Drody who moved to New Jersey a while back. Jimmy began going to the Pembroke Fiddle and Step-Dance Festival in the late 1980's and 90's and made recordings and videos of many of the great Gaspesian players who hang out at the legendary blue Gaspé tent.

Here is a video Jimmy has recently converted off an old tape and posted on Youtube. In this clip, Cyril and Brigid are playing Roland White's Tune that we recently posted.



Check out Cyril's graceful bowing and double-time footwork. This is the first time I've actually seen Cyril's bowing as he hasn't been able to play since before I met him. Needless to say, I have a lot of studying ahead of me with Jimmy's videos.

Keep and eye out on Jimmy's Youtube channel for more videos of great Gaspesian fiddlers and step-dancers.

The Coleman Reel

Here is a great driving D tune that Brian, myself, and our friend Jack from Barachois were playing last night at my place. I thought I would share it with the readers here.

Like a lot of Erskine's older tunes in D, the fiddle is tuned ADAE from bass to fine string. This tuning gives the fiddle more growl on the low part especially. This was recorded in 1984 at a Morris family reunion in Douglastown at Erskine's brother Manny's house.

Hear Erskine play the Coleman Reel

I really love the way the two parts of this tune contrast. The low part has a linear, snaky melody and the high part has a more jumpy melody with really tight string crossings and "hooks" (a term Cyril Devouge uses for when you repeat the same note in quick succession). To encourage the fiddle playing readers out there to learn these tunes, on this and future posts I will try to post myself playing these tunes slowly to make them easier to pick up. I'm still learning this style myself so while I encourage you all to get the "notes" and the gist of the style from my recording, I want to highly recommend that you listen closely to Erskine's settings of these tunes many times to try internalizing his feel in this music.

Hear is a link to a folder with a few files of me teaching this tune

At first, I assumed that this tune must have come from the great Irish fiddler Michael Coleman who recorded in the 1920s in New York and whose records were very popular in Quebec. However, the character of this tune is very un-Irish, at least compared to our understanding of Irish music since the early 20th century. In my research, I couldn't find record of any tunes called the Coleman Reel. It could be possible that this tune was learned off of a recording of Michael Coleman but adapted to fit the Gaspé style. However, I do not believe this to be the case.

Really, this tune is a great demonstration of a tune-type that seems to have been very common among the older Gaspesian players. In a conventional reel as they are played in Scotland and Ireland, and many which were later brought into Quebec, the tunes almost always consist of two 8 bar sections that get repeated. Each section contains four distinct musical phrases. However, Erskine and other older Gaspesians had this large repertoire of what I call "half" tunes. These are tunes that consist of two 4 bar sections and so are half as long as a conventional reel (think St Anne's Reel or Soldier's Joy). In the Appalachian region of the southern United States, half tunes are also extremely common (Sourwood Mountain and Cripple Creek being the best known of these). However, in Northern fiddle styles they are much less common.

Researching the older Gaspesian tunes, it seems that a majority of their local tunes were in fact half tunes. I feel that the reason the older Gaspesian players had such a large store of these tunes is because of the huge step-dancing culture that was tied in with fiddling on the coast. There were probably at least as many step-dancers as there were fiddlers and because of this, its my guess that a lot of these tunes (many with Irish sounding titles) may have been composed back in the 19th and early 20th centuries around Douglastown. Why these half tunes are great for step-dancing is that because of their shorter structure, a dancer would be able to quickly internalize the tune and its rhythms. Also, due to their repetitiveness and the fact that there is half as many melody notes, the fiddler could really dig deeper into the hypnotic rhythms of the tune which would further rouse up the step dancers.

Indeed, it seems that many of the tunes that Brigid and Cyril said were good for step dancing are half tunes. I would guess that at least 60% of the old tunes that developed around Douglastown were half tunes. Below I have prepared a list of great half tunes played by the older Gaspesians (Morris, Drody, and Devouge families among many others) that I believe to be local to Douglastown and neighbouring villages. Some of these tunes we have already looked at on the blog and others we will be featuring in the coming weeks. Note that many of these tunes have Irish inspired titles further suggesting that these tunes may have been composed among the strong Irish communities along the Gaspé coast. We also have many untitled half tunes from Erskine and Cyril that obviously don't appear on this list.

• The Shannon Reel
• The Murphy Reel
• The Spruce Knot/The Bois Brule Jig
• Father Morris' Tune
• Eva's Tune
• Untitled D Tune from the North Coast
• The Rocky Road to Dublin
• Holley's Reel
• The President's Reel
• The Drops of Brandy
• Joe Drody's Jig
• Joe Drody's Tune
• The Cockawee
• Miss Emily Crotty's (Miss Oliver Morris') Tune/ The Pride of Quebec

The Life and Music of Cyril Devouge - Part 2

In this second part of our series on the life and music of Gaspesian fiddler Cyril Devouge we will look specifically at his fiddle music. We will look at a couple of tunes and at the bottom of the article, I have provided a link where I break down his tunes for the fiddle playing readers who wish to learn some of Cyril's music.

Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of Cyril's music is his playful approach to the tunes. He dresses them up and adds a lot of cute "jiggles" and "hooks" as he likes to call them. Where other fiddlers would be content to just hold a note plainly, Cyril will almost never miss an opportunity to frill that note up a bit using several techniques we will discuss. On another level, I really feel that Cyril's personality is perfectly captured in his fiddle music: mischievous, playful, joyous, and teasing are some of his personal qualities that come across so well in his tunes.

The first tune we will look at Cyril says he learned from his father, Leslie Devouge. As Cyril doesn't have names for most of his tunes, we have been calling it Leslie Devouge's Tune. It is a really cute mid-tempo tune in G that is related in the second strain to the Ronfleuse Gobeil (Snoring Miss Gobeil) which is in D. I first learned this tune from Cyril's lilting which was just a little different from the recording below in one phrase. He lilted this syncopated lick that I worked out on the fiddle and when I played it back for him he was adamant when he said that I played it exactly like he used to. I guess he worked out several variations of this phrase throughout his fiddle playing career and the one he lilted is not on the recording where he is playing the fiddle. Anyhow, I really like the lick he lilted and you can hear this down at the bottom of the article where I play a few of Cyril's tunes and break them down for those wanting to learn a few of his tunes.

Hear Leslie Devouge's Tune

The second tune is one Cyril learned from an older Gaspesian man named Arty Savidant who was from the town of York, just outside of Gaspé. Cyril tells us he remembers hearing this when he was young, sitting outside Haldimand Hall on the grass and listening to Arty play for a square dance. Jean Carignan and Louis Beaudoin both also played this tune. Carignan recorded in 1958 as the first tune of a medley called Danse de la Victoire on the record "Ti-Jean... le violoneux" ( London MB-4). Isidore Soucy also recorded it in 1927 as under the title Quadrille Laurier 1ère Partie, which isn't really a tune title but seems to refer to a dance that this tune would accompany. This tune really has a fantastic drive and Cyril interprets the phrasing a little different than Jean Carignan which I really like, adding a couple extra notes at the beginning of the tune. Thanks to Marc Bolduc and Laura Risk for helping us out with the info on the Carignan and Soucy recordings.

Hear Arty Savidant's Tune

For the next tune, I'd like to repost a tune we put up earlier last year, just because I really think it showcases one of Cyril's complex syncopated bowing patterns that he used a lot. This bowing pattern (or lick) is really the backbone of this tune and is featured most heavily in the low part. We call this tune Cyril Devouge's Hornpipe in honour of the man himself. Thanks to Jimmy Allen from New Jersey who captured Cyril playing this at Pembroke in the 1980s.

Hear Cyril Devouge's Hornpipe

I really love the way that Cyril can give a tune a rolling quality and the next three tunes are examples of these. Cyril told me that the old-timers like his dad and Little Willie White used to "roll" the tunes and that's what made their playing so beautiful.

The first is Cyril's take on the classic standard the Cuckoo's Nest. Here we have a rare example of Cyril playing in the key of D (most of his tunes were in G). I really love his rolling bow on the high part of this tune.

Hear the Cuckoo's Nest

Next, we look at another untitled G tune that Cyril gets a lovely rolling bow on. This is a really beautiful, notey hornpipe with some nice rolling phrases in both sections. I can't get enough of this tune, this is really higher level fiddling here.  (update 2015-04-06: Lorne Snowman from Gaspé informed us that this is one of Eddy Poirier's compositions and is called "Crossing the Old Bridge").

Hear Crossing the Old Bridge

Finally, the third rolling tune we'll look at is a tune that Cyril really gets nice feel on. Some other French Canadian players have recorded this tune, though the French titles escape me right now (Jean Carignan recorded this). Cyril learned this tune from his best fiddling friend growing up, Roland White of Bois-Brulé just down the road from L'Anse à Brillant. We call this tune Roland White's tune. Neil MacKay's father used to play this tune and he gives it a go after Cyril. As is Cyril's custom, he gives Neil a bit of a ribbing for not putting in the little "hooks" on one part of the tune and demonstrates what he means.

Hear Roland White's tune

A special thanks to Brigid Miller (Drody) for supplying us with the cassettes of her and Cyril playing at her house back in the 1990's. Most of these recordings are from her tapes. Brigid really plays some great backup here and the guitar players out there can learn a lot from her bass walks and interesting old-time strumming patterns. I would also like to thank Cyril for letting me post these recordings and for being a really great fiddle teacher. He's really given me a better understanding the Gaspé sound and has always been very patient with me when teaching me a new "jiggle" or "hook" in one of his tunes.

For all our fiddle playing readers out there who would like to learn some of Cyril's tunes, I've recorded myself playing, then breaking down, a couple of Cyril's tunes. I started by transcribing these tunes in standard notation but quickly realized a lot of Cyril's style is either too difficult or impossible to capture with lines and dots. Learning by ear is the best way to go and I play the tunes slowly and teach them one phrase at a time.

Here is a folder where you can listen and download mp3's of me breaking these tunes down.

We hope you enjoy Cyril's music and that some of the fiddle players out there can pick up his tunes. They are a lively bunch!

The Life and Music of Cyril Devouge - Part 1

Cyril Devouge - Truro, Nova Scotia, 2007

Today I will begin a two-part series about the great Gaspesian fiddle player and all-original character, Cyril Devouge. We wrote about Cyril previously, but as I've come to know him better over the past half a year, and studied his tunes and fiddle style, I thought it was due time to go into a little more depth on the man, his life, and his music. The first part of this series will focus on the man himself, his beginnings, and his family and community. The second part will focus on his music. I'd like to thank Cyril's daughter Trena Devouge-Stirling for supplying the wonderful photos.

Brian and I met Cyril last May (2010) for the first time at his senior's home in Chateauguay on Montreal's South Shore. We were immediately struck by a truly amazing person and a great spirit. At 95, he is still able to spend a whole afternoon telling jokes, riddles, and stories about his life and Gaspesian roots. Though he can no longer play the fiddle, Cyril is a natural entertainer in the full sense of the word. He has an unbeatable old-time sense of humour, great disposition, and can still sing songs and play several of the great fiddle tunes he learned growing up on the mouth organ. In all, he is just a really joyful person, and I feel that people like Cyril are really a rare-breed these days.

Leslie Devouge - Siscoe Mines

Cyril was born into a musical family in 1915 in L'Anse à Brillant (Brilliant Cove) on the Gaspé coast, not far from Douglastown. Both his father and mother, Leslie and Ruby Devouge played the fiddle. His brothers Denzil, Glen, and Herzil also learned the fiddle growing up. Cyril tells us that his mother would say "There were four brothers and there used to be nails to hang up the four fiddles on the wall, and the four of them were never all hanging there together at the same time. And that's what finally drove me crazy". His father, Austin "Leslie" Devouge in particular, was a very big influence on Cyril's sound and a source of many of his tunes. Cyril's grandfather, Elias Devouge, also played fiddle. I'm not sure how far back fiddle playing goes in Cyril's family, but the Devouge's originally came over from Normandy, France about 1830. As Cyril's grandfather would have been born in this same century it is not to hard to imagine that fiddling entered the Devouge family very early after they settled in Quebec.

Cyril's grandfather and father were both cod fisherman based out of the wharf at L'Anse à Brillant and like most fisherman, would be gone during the week and only return on the weekends. They were known to venture as far as Anticosti Island in search of the cod. Due to the rigours of life as a fisherman, Cyril's father would only play the fiddle on Sundays.

Elias "Gappy" Devouge

Though originally from France, soon after settling in Quebec many of Gaspé's Devouges became assimilated in the strong English-speaking culture of the Gaspé coast. I recently asked Cyril if he ever spoke French and in his classic manner he quipped, "I can only speak two languages: English and Profane".

Cyril knew most of the older generation of great fiddle players local to the Gaspé coast. Talking with Cyril and Brigid during our visits, it has become clear the English speaking communities along the coast at villages including York, Haldimand, Douglastown, L'Anse a Brillant, Bois-Brulé, Malbay, and Barachois were once a hotbed of old-time fiddlers and step-dancers. Most families seem to have had at least one family member who played the fiddle or step-danced. Some of the names he has mentioned to us include Captain Bill Lucas, Mervin Hudgins (step-dancer), Arty Savidant, James Henry Connelly, Roland White, and Adolphus and Elias McKay. Cyril recalls that many dances were held at Haldimand Hall, though spontaneous square-dances were known to happen during house parties. When the weather was amenable, sometimes the locals would just throw down a few boards of wood, grab one of the local fiddlers, and have a dance outside.

Roland White of Bois-Brulé

Another big influence on Cyril's fiddle playing was that of his best friend growing up, Roland White of the White family of Bois-Brulé. Cyril and Roland would get together and swap tunes with one another. Many of Cyril's tunes that we have on recording come from Roland White. Cyril told us that once married, he would take the wife and kids over to Roland White's place where they would fiddle and have a get-together every Saturday afternoon.

Cyril Devouge

Cyril often talks about how much laughing there used to be among his community growing-up. It seems there were some real characters out on the coast. In particular, Hansen McCauley, Cyril and many others will tell you was the funniest man they ever met, "If he couldn't make you laugh, he wouldn't talk to you". Cyril himself is renowned among friends and family for his devilish sense of humour and he will have you buying right into many a tall-tale. When he left home at age sixteen to go work in the Siscoe Gold Mine (on an island in the middle of Kienawisik Lake near Val-d'Or, Quebec), his grandmother teasingly told him before leaving, "Cy, I want you to know that wherever you go, you will always be a tormenter".

Highly intelligent, Cyril is a man of many talents. In addition to his music and story-telling skills, throughout his life Cyril has been a superb carpenter and mechanic. He has secret remedies for just about any mechanical woe you could imagine and was responsible for maintaining the snow plows at the Kahnawake reservation on Montreal's South Shore. He recently told me how after they bent apart one of the shovels, he bent it back in place and spot-welded it back together so well that they are still using that shovel to this day. He even fashioned his own fiddle bridge by whittling down a beef bone that he reports, "the dog brought me one day". An old man in Douglastown once told him that the best material for a fiddle bridge is bone. Cyril's dear friend and amazing Chateauguay Valley fiddler, Neil MacKay now owns Cyril's bone-bridge fiddle. Having seen this fiddle myself I can attest that the bridge was cut just perfectly.

To hear many more of Cyril's stories and jokes, you can follow this link that we posted last year after first meeting Cyril. Cyril has a seemingly endless supply of stories and jokes and we are looking forward to future visits with him where we hope to capture more of this precious culture. In Part 2 of this article, we will take a closer look at Cyril's unique Gaspesian fiddle music.

Finally, here are some more great photos of the Devouge Family from Cyril's daughter, Trena.

The Devouge Homestead - Top of the Hill at L'Anse a Brillant

Cyril's grandparents, Angelina and Elias ("Gappy") Devouge

Cyril's parents, Leslie and Ruby Devouge

La Grande Rouge (La Grande Gigue Simple, The Red River Jig)

In this installment, we are going to look at Erskine's treatment of one of the most ubiquitous tunes throughout Canada.

Hear Erskine play La Grande Rouge from the 1990 Tape

Hear Erskine play La Grande Rouge from a tape made in the 1980's

I really love the contrast between these two settings. Erskine's 1990 version is much faster and sprightly with really sharp-sounding foot work. The version from the 1980s is played at a more relaxed tempo and has a really heavy, almost loping feel to it that is really different.

This tune belongs to a family of tunes that began in Quebec, perhaps even in Gaspe, and traveled west with the fur trade into the Prairies. In Quebec, this tune has been called La Grande Gigue Simple (Isidore Soucy, Jean Carignan). Out west, this tune evolved into the Red River Jig which is by far their most popular regional tune for Metis stepdancing.

Here is Isidore Soucy's beautiful recording of this tune.

Here is modern Metis fiddler Andy DeJarlis' wonderful setting:


Here is a great Metis fiddler Stanley Beaulieu playing an amazing version of this tune which is somewhere between the Quebec and more standard Metis versions:


As recorded versions of this tune by modern players (Carignan, DeJarlis, Townsend) are so widespread across Canada, I first assumed that Erskine must have learned this tune from a record. However, I could not find any examples of this tune family using the "La Grande Rouge" title. I have heard other English-speaking Gaspesian fiddlers refer to this tune as "The Grand Jig" a direct translation from the French title.  It seems that some other Douglastown fiddlers played this tune as well as Erskine so it is quite possible he picked it up there.  What is interesting to contemplate is that "La Grande Rouge" (literally "Big Red") seems to be referring to a "red" river and that perhaps this tune was brought back eastward from the Red River area of the Prairies by French Gaspesiens with the "La Grande Rouge" title.

This tune's popularity throughout Canada is somewhat surprising to me. Though a great tune it is, it is also highly unusual in that it is a reel in 3/2 time. In modern-day old time fiddle, reels are always in 2/4 time and waltzes are really the only form still played in triple time. However, there was a time when reels and hornpipes were commonly played in triple-meter time signatures like 3/4, 3/2, and 6/4. In fact, the local Douglastown tune Tommy Rooney's Jig that we looked at in earlier posts is another example of a reel in triple time. I was not aware of this fact until Laura Risk pointed this out to me and also noted the resemblance between Tommy Rooney's Jig and the Red River Jig family of tunes.

To modern ears, if one is not aware that this is a reel in 3/2 time then it can be very difficult to hear where the phrases start and stop. Tunes like these fell out of fashion at some point and most modern audiences, even those acquainted with fiddle music, would be very unaccustomed to hearing a reel in triple meter and would suspect that the fiddler was up to something mischievous to throw of his accompanist. In fact, the introduction of piano and guitar accompaniment to fiddle music may be one of the reasons that these forms fell out of favour. Playing a reel in triple time is no easy feat for the uninitiated guitar player. While in Quebec this tune is essentially in 3/2 time throughout the tune, out west the tune is really free form being a mixture of 2/2 and 3/2 time in different phrases. Here is a wonderful article on the history and development of this tune. This tune is the only example left of a reel in triple meter that is still in the repertoire of modern Canadian fiddlers.

This tune also must be played with the fiddle in either ADAE tuning or ADAD tuning. Erskine and most players in Quebec used the ADAE tuning. The practice of retuning the fiddle is also almost non-existent these days in Canada and this tune's popularity surprising in this respect as well.

I really feel this tune embodies the older aspects of Canadian fiddle music. At a time when the old practices of retuning the fiddle and playing in mixed time signatures were falling out of favour in Canada, even the modern fiddlers like Graham Townsend and Andy DeJarlis were recording excellent versions of this tune.

Lord MacDonald's Reel

Happy New Year readers!

I wanted to say thanks to all the kind people who helped Brian and I out with the project in 2010 by sharing info, music, comments, stories, and their great company. We're really pleased with the response we have been getting from people from Gaspe to the U.S. and even Italy. The word is getting out about the beautiful music and culture of the old-time Gaspesians and people around the world are starting to notice. 2011 should see a lot of great stuff here. There is no shortage of material in the pipe-line.

Here is Erskine's wonderful setting of this old warhorse of a tune. This is originally a Scottish tune and can be found in Neil Gow's tune book from 1792. From Scotland this tune is found all over the New World and its rare to find an old-time fiddler on this continent who doesn't know a setting of Lord MacDonald's Reel. In the U.S. they generally call this tune Leather Britches and there are many fine versions of it from various regions down there.

This tune is originally in G and is almost always played in that key. Erskine also played it in the key of G, but on this recording he has devised a setting in the key of D with the fiddle tuned with the bass string raised to A. Again, this was common practice for the old-time Gaspesian players when playing in the key of D.

Hear Erskine play Lord MacDonald's Reel (ADAE)

I really love this recording because Erskine just gets so much emotion in his playing. Its performances like this that really show the beauty and emotional depths of the art of old-time fiddling.

One of the things that I really respect about Erskine's playing is that he really thought about his tunes and how he could improve them. He was always working out different bowings, melodic hooks, and would even try out different keys and tunings as is the case here. It is really the mark of someone absolutely devoted to their craft.

In the key of D with the fiddle tuned ADAE, Lord MacDonald's Reel has so much resonance and is really hypnotic. I especially like the way the low part really rumbles in this key. As usual, Erskine gets great syncopation especially in the middle part of the tune. In the 3rd and highest part of the tune, Erskine gets a lot of drive by repeating the same note consecutively, a technique we've discussed previously.

This comes from a tape Erskine made in Cambridge in the early 1980's. The playing on this tape is really nice, Erskine plays at a more relaxed tempo and really gets a lot of expression in his playing.

All the best in 2011!