Musique Dimanche: Sara Dufour

As I continue to work on my French so when I finally get to go back to Québec (peut-être cet été? on verra) I can eavesdrop on conversations more effectively, I’ve been listening to a lot of Québecois country and pop music. I wrote about Pépé Proulx, who performs solo as “Pépé et sa guitare” on Twitch, back in October. Another Montréal band that’s taken to streaming during the pandemic is Raffi, who perform on Twitch with the username “livedanslgarage” (Raffi Live dans l’Garage). I recommend both; there’s some English spoken, especially in some of the songs they cover, but it’s mostly French, and Québecois French at that, which tends to be spoken pretty fast and has a vernacular all it’s own.

One artist I learned about from Pépé’s stream (because he’s covered a couple of her songs and also because she visited his home in December for a lengthy performance and interview video as part of his “Tout l’Monde Veut Jouer Avec Pépé” series) is Sara Dufour. Sara isn’t streaming but her music is available on Apple Music and other services and she has some videos of her songs on YouTube.

Sara’s songs are earthy, funny, and occasionally surprisingly touching. She writes about the things she loves, including snowmobiles – see the videos below for “Chez nous c’est Ski Doo” (featuring vintage Ski-Doo advertising films) and “Chic-Chocs” (shot in the Chic-Choc mountains on the Gaspé Peninsula in eastern Québec and featuring Ski-Doo sleds, naturally).

I’m not a snowmobiler – never been on one, actually – but after watching Sara’s videos for these two songs I’m ready to go.

Here are a few of her YouTube videos. Even if you speak no French, I think you’ll get a smile out of watching them. Enjoy.