Ça va venir, ça va venir, mais décourageons-nous pas (AU1998-1071-001)

Ça va venir, ça va venir, mais décourageons-nous pas (AU1998-1071-001)

Excerpt from interview of Alberta Gagné (TC1998-1071-001) by Martha Pellerin. Part of a project (VFC1998-0007) on Franco-American song in New England funded by the Vermont Folklife Center and undertaken by Pellerin. Interview is one in a series of six conducted between 1995-01-09 and 1995-12-06 as an effort to document the French language song repertoire of Gagné.

“Ça va venir, ça va venir, mais décourageons-nous pas” (“It’s coming, It’s coming, let’s not get discouraged”) is a 1930 song written by Gaspé-born Montreal singer, songwriter, jaw harp, harmonica and fiddle player Mary Travers Bolduc (known affectionately to her audiences as “Madame Bolduc” or simply “La Bolduc”), titled “Ça va venir découragez-vous pas.” The song was inspired by the challenges of the Depression for working class Montreal families and by the August 1930 election of Richard Bennett to the position of Canadian Prime Minister.

Mary Travers Bolduc (1894-1941) was born to a father of Irish descent and a French-Canadian mother in eastern Quebec. Like many poor young country women of her era, she was sent to live in Montreal at the age of thirteen where she worked as a domestic. She married Édouard Bolduc, a plumber by trade, and they and their children scraped by through the 1920s until Mary was asked to fill in as a fiddler for Conrad Gauthier’s popular theatrical show, a kind of French-Canadian Grand Ole Opry, which featured sketches and music and song with down-home French-Canadian content. She was a hit, and her stage success eventually brought her to the attention of Montreal recording entrepreneur Roméo Beaudry, who launched her short but immensely successful recording career. Mrs. Bolduc wrote most of her own songs and in the 1932 formed her own touring troupe, which for five years traveled widely in Quebec as well as Franco-American New England.

As is often the case in Mrs. Bolduc’s songs, the words to “Ça va venir découragez-vous pas” are original and employ both lyrics and lilting, for which she was renowned, while the melody itself borrows from Quebec’s traditional dance music repertory: the first two phrases echo a tune popularized by Montreal fiddler Joseph Allard, one of Mrs. Bolduc’s contemporaries, who recorded it in 1928 under the title “Quadrille de chez nous” on the Victor label. Allard’s melody is very likely a duple-meter recasting of “Home Sweet Home,” a waltz composed by Sir Henry Bishop (1786-1855), an operatic conductor, composer and arranger. It first appeared in the play Clari, or the Maid of Milan, by John Howard Payne, produced in London in 1823. This popular and soon-familiar melody quickly was transformed into a waltz for dancing, as well as employed as a song and hymn tune.

In 1930, Mrs. Bolduc recorded this song for the Compo/Starr label (issue # 15761, matrix # 4573, side A). You can hear her recording of this song on the Library and Archives Canada website, the Virtual Gramophone:
https://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/m2/f7/13505.mp3

VFC1998-0007 Martha Pellerin Collection. TC1998-1071 interview with Alberta Gagné. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.

Copyright (c) Vermont Folklife Center

Full Interview: vfc1998-0005_tc1998-1071

fra

vfc1998-0007_tc1998-1071-002

Ça va venir découragez-vous pas

Ça va venir, découragez-vous pas

Mes amis je vous l'assure que le temps il est bien dur

AG:        Do... l don't know if you ever listen to this one...Ça va venir ca va venir, mais décourageons-nous pas. It's about the famine in the depression, it says even though it's a bad time that woman that was singing she says don't get discourage, everything will welcome back. That's about the song.

 

Title:     C. "Ça va venir découragez-vous pas " (Lyrics :Madame Bolduc - Mary Rose Anne Travers)

Mes amis, je vous l'assure,

Que le temps il est bien dur.

Ne faut pas s'décourager,

Ça va bien vite recommencer.

De l'ouvrage y va en avoir,

Pour tout le monde cet hiver.

ll faut bien laisser le temps,

Au nouveau gouvernement.

 

            [Refrain] :

Ça va venir, ça va venir mais décourageons-nous pas,

Moi, j'ai toujours le cœur gai, je continue à turluter.

(lilting)

 

On se plaint à Montréal,

Après tout on n'est pas mal,

Dans la province de Québec

On mange jamais notre pain sec.

Y a pas d'ouvrage en Canada,

Encore bien moins dans les États.

Essayez pas d'aller plus loin,

Vous êtes certain de crever d'faim.

            Refrain

 

Ça coûte cher de ce temps-ici,

De se nourrir à crédit.

Pour pas qu'ça monte sur les groceries,

J’tapais fort su' les biscuits.

Je ne peux pas faire d'extra,

 

Mon p'tit mari n’travaille pas.

À force de me priver d'manger,

J'ai l'estomac ratatiné.

            Refrain

 

Me voilà bien arrangée,

J'ai des trous dans mes souliers.

Ma semelle est tout’ d’travers,

Et le bout qui r’trousse en l'air.

La doublure est décousue,

Le dessus est tout fendu.

Mes orteils m’passent au travers,

C’est toujours mieux que d’pas en avoir.

            Refrain

 

Le propriétaire qui m'a loué,

Il est bien mal arrangé.

Ma boite à charbon est brûlée,

Et j'ai cinq vitres de cassées.

Ma lumière disconnectée,

Mon loyer n'est pas payé.

Y a pas besoin d'venir m'achaler,

On va l’saprer en bas d'l'escalier.

            Refrain

 

(END SINGING)

 

MP:        That's sounds like another Bolduc

AG:        Ya and she played the harmonica..

MP:        ...she would play in between...

AG:        Ya, it I...

MP:        I heard that song, a recording...

AG:        You must have, it's an old old song but l mean, you know,  every time there was a song like that, I wanted to learn it.

 

sound cassette (analog)