Emmanuelle Parrenin
Maison Rose

It all starts with listening to “Jours de Greve,” an album by Emmanuelle Parrenin and Detlef Weinrich dated 2021.

Classified by scribes as “Esoteric electronic folk,” “Jours de Greve” is a possible fourth world of Hassellian memory, one of those works where ancient and modern blend until they become one.

The destination is one of those that is always best left undefined, but if you want some coordinates, I’d say trance, ancestral singing, and mystical folk could be fitting terms.

However it may be, once past the narrow door and with that elsewhere just a few steps away, the album is at times truly powerful.

There’s a very seventies vibe, the idea of a utopian dream realized in the only place that still allows something to utopia.

So, in the end, you feel a bit in that universal home where we should all live and from which we have all been evicted.

…

Well, upon investigating a bit, I was particularly struck by the figure of Emmanuelle Parrenin.

While Weinrich is a young sound wizard, a guy in his twenties, Emmanuelle Parrenin is quite advanced in years. And I’ll tell you: discovering that made me smile.

For those who, like me, are no longer young, finding someone who ages with style is always a great comfort.

...

So I go hunting on YouTube and come across a video from 2011 where you see a beautiful lady concentrating on a sort of shamanic chant. Besides singing, she plays the hurdy-gurdy, a strange string instrument with a crank. The first thing that comes to mind, listening to its sounds, is Nico’s harmonium...

In the second video, again live and also from 2011, Emmanuelle displays a wonderful smile and sings a pop song that immediately lifts you ten centimeters off the ground. It lasts ten minutes (???) and starts as something funny and sweet, then halfway through it loads with dissonance, and the ending almost reminds one of “A day in the life” by the Beatles.

Pretty enthusiastic, I then move on to the third video, and the third video is “Maison Rose” full album.

The year of grace is 77.

Since “Maison Rose” is beautiful, I decide to gather more information. Here’s what I discovered for you.

...

Emmanuelle was born into a family of musicians. Her mother plays the harp, her father is in a string quartet.

Music reaches her muffled from the rehearsal room, and she receives it as one receives a secret. She discovers its relationship with space and silence, the vibration on the senses.

Emmanuelle is lively, curious, and a bit rebellious. At fifteen, during a vacation in London, she follows the Yardbirds on tour for a month.

At sixteen, she gets expelled from a religious boarding school because she composes irreverent songs about the nuns with her guitar.

At twenty, while attending a folk concert, she has a revelation for the hurdy-gurdy. The fact is that “I felt the sound in my guts, it hit me straight in the stomach, made my bones vibrate.”

So she sets out to find one and eventually gets herself one. There’s just one problem, it comes from an old attic and is so battered that every time she plays it, sawdust rains down on her from the wood and ends up on the floor.

At this point, a strange character, a former butcher (???) who recently transformed his shop into an ancient instrument store (???) enters the scene. And that shop, which for Emmanuelle is a sort of wonderland, what does it display in the window if not a magnificent hurdy-gurdy?

So, one fine day, she finds the courage and enters. After a very brief dialogue, the former butcher invites her to sit down and fetches her the instrument. As Emmanuelle begins to play, he closes the curtains and goes to the back room to get a small barrel of wine.

In the end, somehow, Emmanuelle comes out with the instrument of her dreams, and the former butcher has accepted the trade: the worm-eaten hurdy-gurdy in exchange for the new one.

She then gets acquainted with a group of beatniks devoted to folk music; they record natural albums together and hunt for old songs in the remotest parts of France. Not only that, they also open a venue where anyone can play.

It’s a magical period, but it soon ends: Emmanuelle is an adventurous spirit and that folk music, however admirable, now seems like a small church to her. The only option then is to stray from the straight path and, finding refuge in a little old house, try to do something different.

If then, as in our case, that little house is even pink: watch out...

…

Maison Rose...

Some call it sublime in minor...

It’s a kind of good energy and its relationship with something you don’t really know what. A sort of cosmic connection, with the only problem being that cosmic is a big word.

Here the task of certain records is to make that big word become a little word. Nothing more than three little syllables and a whisper.

And anyway the house is enchanted, you can see it, it’s pretty clear. It starts with awakening, and how do you think one awakens in a house like this?

It continues with ballads of fresh naivety and quite mystical instrumentals. But it’s in the second part that the album becomes transcendent. “Topaze” is almost a trip hop ante litteram and everything charges with those cosmic accents we mentioned.

Not only that, the ballads, while still gracefully delivered in song, now lean towards the shadow side and that almost Nico effect returns. The sound is that of captured magic, a maximum of connection in a minimum of intention.

Ah, also consider that here the singing is in French. And French always has a certain effect on me.

...

Emmanuelle continues experimenting and even finds herself opening for the Clash in Paris. Two things couldn’t be more different, but she finds the Clash quite friendly.

Accompanying her on stage is a former member of Gong, and let’s just say, they are not exactly warmly received. Skirmishes break out, but the two, improvising and changing the setlist, somehow make it through...

During the same period, she also takes up dancing and stages a ballet for which she composed the music. Imagine something like Carolyn Carlson meets esoteric folk. No trace on record though.

Then at some point, she disappears without a trace. And for the sequel to “Maison Rose,” we’ll have to wait thirty-four years.

Music though, even in those years of absence, remains important. Perhaps even more important than before.

...

In the early nineties, due to an accident, she completely loses her hearing. The experience, contrary to what one might think, fills her with serenity, almost as if that silence were simply another experience to live. Sure, it may sound strange, but she feels, in her words, like she’s at the center of an egg made of feathers.

However, being able to listen is wonderful, and to regain her hearing, she uses music in addition to silence. Music and silence, after all, get along quite well and she’s always known that.

She retreats to the countryside and sings...and plays...

She plays not only the hurdy-gurdy but also the harp, dulcimer, and spinett. And even if she cannot hear with her ears, she feels with her body and bones.

Remember those words of hers? “The sound hits you straight in the stomach, makes your bones vibrate.”

And it’s precisely thanks to the “bone vibration,” she says, that she gradually recovers her hearing completely. Fortified by this experience, she then begins to engage in music therapy.

...

Well. It only remains to add that, thanks to word of mouth, “Maison Rose” eventually becomes a cult object over time.

And so, fortunately for us, in 2011 Emmanuelle returns to recording. The comeback album is called “Maison Cube” and the title track is that ten-minute pop song I mentioned at the beginning.

She will also release other works, not much truth be told. But, trust me, only beautiful things...

Trallallà...