The Scene

Music By Allan Wigney

Marianne Dissard & Naim Amor w/ The Empiricals

Thursday, July 13 Zaphod Beeblebrox, 27 York St. 8 p.m., $8

She is a poet and filmmaker who breathily sings sultry songs perched on a stool. He is a jazz-influenced guitarist who spent time in an anarchist punk band before touring with a troupe devoted to political, philosophical and theatrical expression, and to “not getting out of the crisis, but going with it.” It seems almost redundant to add that Marianne Dissard and Naim Amor are natives of France.

Certainly, it is no secret to residents of the husband-and-wife musical team’s adopted hometown of Tucson, Arizona. Chanteurs and chanteuses are few and far between in the desert. Yet, this contemporary Serge et Brigitte is no mirage. Dissard’s forthcoming CD Entre Nous and Naim’s solo and group work may sound like exotic treasures from another place and time, but they are the real thing. One need only ask Joey Burns, who produced Dissard’s debut album and provided music for the veteran lyricist’s words. Burns and pal John Convertino have called on Dissard to sing, bien sur en français, on Calexico recordings. (She also joined the band onstage at Bluesfest last weekend.) As Giant Sand members, Burns, Convertino and Howe Gelb also recruited Dissard to film a tour-documentary. “They are a really big part of my American experience,” Dissard says of the trio. “I was once roommates with Howe Gelb, though I didn’t know his music then. And I have always kept in touch with those guys.” Hence, when it came time to make an album, Dissard called on Burns to bring her vision to life. Bien sur, en français. “I have always written both in English and in French,” Dissard says. “But when I started writing those songs they had to come out in French. It probably had to do with wanting to express something more personal. The words I write in English tend to be more abstract.” Of course, Burns’s task was to provide music for words he did not understand. To help, Dissard compiled songs intended to thematically guide the producer and composer. David Bowie, Nico, Tom Ze… each influence represented a desired mood. And echoes of each permeate the sounds of Entre Nous.

Likewise, of course, fellow collaborator Amor, whose own music – also performed solely in French ‑ recalls an era of smoky lounges and jazz clubs. When Amor and Dissard join forces, as they will during separate sets at the Black Sheep Inn Saturday, the results are not merely intercontinental but otherworldly. A loyal following in the American southwest already knows as much. But Dissard and Amor are well aware of the fact that upcoming shows in Montreal and Ottawa will find the francophones in the rare situation of performing for audiences that speak their lyrical as well as musical language. “I enjoy singing to an audience that does not get a word of what I’m saying,” Dissard admits. “It’s fantastic, because you have to rely on something else entirely to communicate. But I am really looking forward to performing in Quebec and Ottawa. It is going to be very special.” So it is. For all present. For rare is the artist who can transcend barriers of language so effectively. And if those barriers are dropped, so much the better.

Dissard learned of those barriers at a young age, having begun her journey from Toulouse to Tucson while in her teens. “I was just starting to figure out what it meant to be a teenager,” she recalls, “and Blam!, the rules were changed. I kind of went into shell-shock for a few years and retreated further into myself.” She found a sympathetic ear in Amor when the couple met 11 years ago. Soon, they were collaborating on songs across the miles, the Tucson-based Dissard sending poems to the French musician. At the time, Amor was striving “to use my own vocabulary with music.” Three years later he was in Tucson.

Thursday, Amor will come to Ottawa with Dissard, drummer Arthur Vint and a saxophonist known as ‘Mr Tidypaws.’ And they will be speaking our language. awigney@yahoo.ca