Sa va venir mais decouragons nous pas (MS2011-3222-060)

Sa va venir mais decouragons nous pas (MS2011-3222-060)

Ça va venir, mais decourageons-nous pas

French language song text from VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3222-060 Eva Lacourse Songbook. Pp. 105-107.

“Sa va venir mais decouragons nous pas” [Ça va venir mais decourageons nous pas”; “It’s Coming, Let’s Not Get Discouraged”] is a transcription of 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 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: “Ça va venir découragez-vous pas”

After pinning hopes for a better future on the recently elected federal prime minister, the song humorously relates the plight of Montreal's urban poor in the height of the Depression: inadequate bread and water diets, worn-out shoes, and slum conditions in tenaments.

VFC2006-0002 Beaudoin Family Collection. MS2011-3222 Eva Lacourse Songbook. Vermont Folklife Center Archive, Vermont Folklife Center, Middlebury, Vermont, United States of America.

Sa va venir mais decouragons nous pas

It Will Come, But Let's Not be Discouraged

Mes amis je vous assure

Mary Travers Bolduc

Mary Travers Bolduc

1
Mes amis je vous assure
Que le temp est bien dure
Il ne faut pas se decourager
Sa va bien vite recommenser
De l’ouvrage il va en avoir
Pour tout le monde cette hiver
Il faut bien donner le temp
Au nouveau gouvernement

Refrain
Sa va venir sa va venir
Mais decouragons nous pas
Moi j’ai toujours le coeur gai
Je continu a turlute

2
On se plaisit a Montreal
Apes tout on est pas mal
Dans la provice de Quebec
On mange jamais notre pain sec
Il y a pas d’ouvrage au Canada
Il y en a bien moins dans les etats
N’esseyez pas aller plus loin
Vous etes certain de crever de faim
Refrain

3
Ca coute cher de ce temp ici
Pour se nourrir a credit
Faut pas que ca monte a la grosserie
Moi je tape sur les biscuit
Mais je ne peut pas faire d’extra
Mon petit mari travaille pas
A force de me prive de manger
J’ai l’estomac ratatine
Refrain

4
Me voila mal amancher
J’ai des troux dans mes suiller
Mes talon sont tout de traver
Et puis le bout qui rtrouesse en l’air
Le dessus est tout fendu
La doublure tout decousu
Les orteilles psse a traver
C’est toujour mieux que de pas en avoir

5
Le proprietaire qui m’a loue
Il est bien mal amancher
Ma boite a charbon est brule
Et puis j’ai cinq vitre de casser
Ma lumiere discollecte
Et puis mon eau est pas payer
Y a pas besoin de venir machale
Ma les sapre en bas de l’escalier
Refrain

Fin