Le trésor de la langue: An Interview with René Lussier
Within its genre, Le trésor de la langue (1989) is a unique musical work. A kind of sonic “road movie,” it explores the political, historical and poetic dimensions of the French language spoken in Quebec. Bringing together heterogeneous materials through the technique of sound collage, René Lussier offers a critical listening of the history of Quebec. This interview tracks the compositional process of Le trésor de la langue as well as some of the ethical and political issues involved in the use of sound archives and field recordings in this work. It testifies to the capacity of music to scrutinise recent history in order to answer common questions, beyond what is said and what is silenced in collective memory and official history.