Bla bla bla

[nooj]

I got interviewed for a local publication that was interested in who I am and my experiences.

Here are two of their questions, and my answers.

Ens vares contar una anècdota dels primers dies que eres a Mallorca, quan vares anar a obrir un compte corrent i el banquer no et va entendre en català, i et va demanar que li xerrassis en castellà. Et va sorprendre que aquí, no t'entenguessin parlant la llengua pròpia?

Si, me va sorpendre molt. No m’esperava que en un banc no m’entenguessin en català, ja que tenen contacte amb la gent cada dia. No hauria de ser la única persona que va demanar-hi un servici en català. Una persona que treballa de cara al públic, crec jo, hauria d’entendre al manco la llengua de la comunitat en la que fa feina.

You told us of a time when in your first days at Mallorca, you went to open a bank account and the bank assistant didn't understand you in Catalan and asked you to switch to Spanish. Did it surprise you that there they didn't understand you in the language belonging to here?

Yes, I was greatly surprised. I didn't expect a bank not to understand me in Catalan, since they have to deal with people every day. I wouldn't have been the only person who asked them things in Catalan. A person who works with the public, I think should at least understand the language of the community in which they work.

Et sembla que oferir la llengua pròpia a persones que venen de fora és un acte de generositat?

I tant! Compartir la llengua és un acte de generositat, perquè no tenen perquè fer-ho. Per tant, cada vegada que qualcú me xerra en català, n’estic molt agraït, perquè tenc l’impressió que m’estan donant una mà i dient-me que sí, volem que t’integris aquí. Sino, crec que me sentiria un poc aïllat. Tant de bo que tots els immigrants tenguessin la mateixa oportunitat.

Do you think that offering the language that belongs here to people who come from elsewhere is an act of generosity?

Yes! Sharing the language is an act of generosity, because they don't need to do it. So every time someone talks to me in Catalan, I'm very grateful, because I have the impression that they are stretching out a hand to me and saying that we want you to integrate here. Otherwise I would feel a little isolated. I wish all immigrants had the same opportunity.

[nooj]

I have a French friend who I made in Australia when she came over to finish her Masters on...Australian literature. Many Australians would ask her...what Australian literature? And yet, yes there is such a thing!

She was telling me something which I found extremely interesting, which is that in her opinion Francophone literature has a much more complicated and conflictual history with French literature than we do with Anglophone literature vis a vis English/American literature.

Not only is the French language very centralised in the head-space as an ideological construction, it is also true in material terms.

Authors using the French language are systematically obliged to go to a single publishing house, Gaillimard, in France, in Paris. Francophone literature is classified and treated as the literature of the Periphery. That is to say, you may have great Arab, African etc authors, but French literature (as opposed to Francophone) is automatically put on a higher rung. If you look at the books that are most sold in France year in, year out, they are almost entirely French authors.

As part of her work, she also studied Francophone literature in other parts of the world, and she is highly critical of how it is studied or taught:

"On n'étudie pas ces oeuvres pour la culture du pays mais pour leur relation à la France"
We do not study these works for the culture of the country, but for their relation to France.

Anglophone literature has had to grapple with this problem a bit earlier, due to India and the massive theoretical outgrowth of post-colonial studies.

This is not just my friend's idiosyncratic criticism, Leila Slimani (winner of the 2016 Prix Goncourt) said exactly the same things, that editorial and publishing houses needed to be made for Africa because it is absurd that they have to come to France to publish, that Francophone literature needed to be taught in French schools etc.

My friend lives now in Québec, I should ask her what she thinks of French Canadian literature...

[reineke]

I have a French friend who I made in Australia when she came over to finish her Masters on...Australian literature. Many Australians would ask her...what Australian literature? And yet, yes there is such a thing!

She was telling me something which I found extremely interesting, which is that in her opinion Francophone literature has a much more complicated and conflictual history with French literature than we do with Anglophone literature vis a vis English/American literature.

Not only is the French language very centralised in the head-space as an ideological construction, it is also true in material terms.

Authors using the French language are systematically obliged to go to a single publishing house, Gaillimard, in France, in Paris. Francophone literature is classified and treated as the literature of the Periphery. That is to say, you may have great Arab, African etc authors, but French literature (as opposed to Francophone) is automatically put on a higher rung. If you look at the books that are most sold in France year in, year out, they are almost entirely French authors....

I don't know... I see a lot of publishing houses on the ombres-blanches library page in addition to Gallimard and France has been investing in francophonie for years.

Bigger Presence of Francophone African and Haitian Publishers in Frankfurt

Africa has a larger presence in Frankfurt than ever this year, with a strong contingent of francophone publishers as part of the France Guest of Honor program..

https://publishingperspectives.com/2017 ... ublishers/

https://www.ombres-blanches.fr/rayons/l ... hones.html

[nooj]

I've been waiting for some videos of the Revetla to be put up, and some kind person finally has.

You can see me on the edge of the circle, a wide grin on my face (I'm the one wearing the yellow scarf). The Escola de Música i Danses de Mallorca put on a magificent show, in exquisitely reconstructed peasant clothing. Mallorcan ball de bot (traditional dancing) does not usually have much musical accompaniment. The band on stage is playing the xeremia (Mallorcan bagpipe), tamborí (Mallorcan kind of drum), flabiol (Mallorcan kind of flute).

The balladors are dancing different kinds of boleros and jotes. An interesting thing to note is that in Mallorcan ball de bot, women always lead in the dancing. The instruments the dancers are using in their hands are castanyoles.

I'm going to highlight one dance that I particularly like, the jota robada, which is strictly between two people. When a third person enters, they 'steal' the other person away, giving the name.



Meanwhile, giant torrades were taking place all over the city. Traffic was completely shut down in the centre of the city, people set up communal BBQs in the middle of the street, in the middle of the plazas. All you had to do was bring your own food. People crowded around the BBQ and cooked together. I did not know this and asked a couple standing nearby a BBQ (in Catalan) how this worked because I was new. They handed me a plate, put food on it: Mallorcan blood sausage, botifarró and poured me their wine. We ate, talked and watched the demonís (demonic figures, garishly dressed, fireworks).

There must have been tens of thousands of people out on the streets that night to celebrate the festival. The woman was from Palma. The man was from the Basque Country and I got to practice some Basque with him. I left them, but not before the woman made me promise to drop in on her, she works at a jewelry story nearby.

When I wandered back to the same Plaça Mayor you see in the video, with beers and snags in hand, I was thrilled to see multiple circles of ordinary people forming and dancing together. It is certainly not a 'folkoric' thing that is limited to professionals and reconstructionists. This is the bullanguera:



Open carrying of alcohol was perfectly okay this night. I joined a botellón (sitting together on the ground, drinking, eating).

Most of them I met were foreigners, so a lot of Germans, Austrians, even an Afrikaans speaking South African who works on a ship that has just docked for a month in Palma. And with them I spoken in English as they did not speak Spanish, let alone Catalan, but there were also a group of three Valencians.

There is an immediate 'in group' feeling with Catalan speakers, wherever you meet in the world. That does not mean you're going to be instant friends, but it does make things easier. There is a stereotype among Catalan speakers, that out of all the Catalan speakers, Valencians are the most open and friendly. They certainly didn't break the stereotype. I had no way of getting home to my town (public transport is horrible in Mallorca) so I slept over at one of their places, but we didn't even turn in until 4 am.

[nooj]

Speaking of communal dancing, a section from one of my favourite movies (Latcho Drom) of one of my favourite directors, Tony Gatlif (Algerian-Romani). The entire movie is a musical journey from India to Europe, the path the ancestors of the Romani took centuries ago.

In this segment, he films flamenco in Extremadura.






I've seen flamenco before, I went to see a small show in Cádiz with a guy I met when I first came to Cádiz...a surf instructor who looked the part, blond and weather beaten, born and raised in the city.

Funny story, I had rocked up to the city on a bus late at night not having booked any accommodation. I was wandering through the streets, even at night Cádiz is absolutely stunning (probably my favourite Spanish city). I ended up in front of a small bar, with a couple of Spanish people standing around and smoking outside. I figured they looked like locals and would know of some place to stay. So I asked, and one person turned around to ask another person, who turned around to ask another, and finally it was this Cádiz guy who had a friend who ran a youth hostel. So he gives him a call and wakes him up in order to let me in. It was a fantastic youth hostel as well, and I should know, I've been to a fair few. But before letting me leave for the hostel, he tells me that as soon as I put my bags down in my rooms, I have to come back to join him and the others for more drinks. Which I did...

Have I said I love the Cádiz dialect of Spanish? Beautiful.

What was I saying...flamenco. Aside from good shows of course, flamenco is also to be enjoyed, he said, by watching it when you're invited to private gatherings, dinners, family meetings. That's how most Andalucians 'know' flamenco. They don't pay for it.

Well I love this segment from the movie, which should be watched in its entirety, because it is communal: from the boy cantaor to the grandmothers who dance or if they can't dance, clap their hands. I find it transfixing and beautiful. I admire that ageism is not an issue. Most kinds of dancing you see on TV, in the theatre, in movies, in music videos, is dancing done by and for young people. If you are a different body shape, or a different age, there is less choice for you.

Lyrics for the first song in the video:

Ai los gitanos somos así
somos errantes,
ai nuestra forma de vivir
no hay quien la cambie,
recorremos los caminos
que nos lleva a cualquier parte
y en la orillita de un rio
desatamos nuestro arte…

This is how we Gitanos are
We are wanderers
There is no one who will
Change our way of life
We travel the paths
That take us anywhere
And on the shore of a river
We unfurl our art

Ai unos cantan y otros bailan
y es luna llena,
que se case una gitana
y esta noche vamos de fiesta
y a la noche sonará gitarras, palmas flamencas
y a la novia mirala con un pañuelo de seda.
Ai respetamos nuestras leyes como gitanos,
seguimos las tradiciones
porque el tiempo va pasando
porque son nuestras costumbres
las que dios nos ha mandao,
en la sangre lo llevamos
el flamenco es el gitano

Some sing, others dance
And it is the full moon
Let a Gitana woman be married
And tonight we party
And at night, there will resound guitars, and claps of flamenco
And the bride, look at her with a silk handkerchief.
We respect our laws as Gitanos,
We follow the traditions
Because time is passing
Because the traditions that
God handed to us are ours
We have it in the blood
Flamenco is to be Gitano

[nooj]

A song from the Breton musician, recently deceased, Kristen Noguès. Just before playing the song, she makes a completely lucid and accurate criticism of the way the Breton language is treated, excluded, ignored, which you can see here. It is part of a documentary made in 1979, called Yezh ar Vezh 'the language of shame', about the systematic destruction of the Breton language. You can watch all of it here.

It is also interesting to note the Breton used by the elderly native speakers. Their French is influenced by Breton. They clearly think in Breton first, then translate it into French. There are not many young people are around today who that could be said of.

Even in 1979, you could somewhat easily find native speakers. If not your own grandparents, then by just going to the countryside (the further west, the better). Young metropolitan Breton activists at that time who were coming into their own, advocating for the political, cultural and economic renewal of Brittany, would do 'farm stays' in the countryside for weeks, learning Breton in immersion with farmers.

This is almost no longer possible. The native speakers are dying at a rate of 5000 per year. Watching things from the 70s fills me with incandescent rage. Some things have gotten better of course, due to the tireless work of Breton activists. But in many respects, 79 was already late. People should have woken up en masse then. In 2019, it is no longer about having slept through the alarm. The speakers of minoritised languages in France are trapped in a monolingual nightmare that they can't wake up from.

[nooj]

Reading Valencian, exposing myself to as much varieties of Catalan as possible. Not to be multidialectical, ja en tenc prou amb un sol dialecte, I already have enough on my plate with one dialect, but in order to bathe in the wonderful diversity of this language, to expose myself to the possibilities of this language: even if I don't use it, I like knowing that someone else does, somewhere.

I read this quote by Sant Vicent Ferrer. A Valencian saint who died in 1419, the story goes that he preached from one end of Europe to the other, miraculously he was understood by all. I don't know if that's true, but what is true that I can easily read him after centuries, and that is miraculous to me.

Aquest món és dit nit, e l'altra vida dia clar. Ara nosaltres som axi com a muçols, o rates penades, o olibes. Tant és la claritat altra.

This world is called night, and the life beyond is called clear day. Now, we are like owls or bats. So bright is the clarity of the other side.

[nooj]

Chisclet me peroudi ques

As a part of a FB group that gets a lot of elderly Mallorcans grandparents, sometimes they post orthographic whoppers. Who says that only young people write 'badly'? I say badly, but really they're just writing it as they hear it.

In standard orthography, it would be:

Xisclet, me poreu dir què és?
Can youse tell me what is a xisclet?

Porer is poder, the verb for 'can'. It has undergone rhotacism. There's nothing wrong with this form, but it has definitely lost sway in the younger population and using it makes you sound old.

In Mallorca, a xisclet refers to having sex OR getting slapped with the hand. Depends on the person and the town where you're using the word.

[nooj]

The Menorcan writer Àngel Ruiz i Pablo wrote this passage in praise of the usually illiterate, oral improvisational composers known as the glosadors in his work 'Per fer gana', in 1895.

Note that the words 'los expedientes' and 'correspondencias mercantiles' which he spits out, are in Spanish, the language of commerce.



The glosadors were almost all people of the countryside and of the sea, carriage drivers and so forth, as if Nature, which they contemplated more and in closer proximity than other men and in which they take full enjoyment every day with all of its splendours, had sparked poetic genius in them.

They are people made for shutting up and thinking, for whom their work is not an impediment to letting their imagination fly free. To the contrary, it helps them. Not like us, animals of lead - thusly do they call us with deserved scorn - who, chained to names and to 'documents' and 'business letters', can never fly through the serene regions of idealism.

They, in preparing their nets, in fixing their longlines, and beholden to the oar, and working the land and reaping and driving the beasts of burden, they can sing and compose, they can allow their thought to soar through infinite space, in the noble loneliness of the sea, the field and the sky. They are like the bird of the forest, while we who pretend to be artists in the cramped space of the office or writer's room, we are birds in a cage, who can only compose cantics sometimes by imitation or study, songs that seem imbibed with the sadness and longing of a captivity most painful.

[nooj]

Here is a song by Mallorcan singer, Biel Majoral. Biel is a Mallorcan name, short for Gabriel. He sings what is actually originally a glosa composed at the beginning of the 20th century.

The subject of the glosa, the death of a bethrothed woman, was apparently historical. The heartbroken peasant commissioned a glosador to compose a glosa for the funeral.



I translate the ending:

Com mentres obrí la porta
t'hi vaig veure, Margalida.
Freda, morta, sense vida
jo no sé lo que em passà,
sa meva vista tornà
tota d'aigo consumida.

When I opened the door,
I saw you there, Margalida
Cold, dead, without live
I don't know what happened to me
My face became flooded all with tears

Com va venir en el cas
que l'haguérem d'enterrar.
Dins sa fossa vaig entrar
i es baül vaig ben tapar,
perquè terra no hi entràs.

We found ourselves having to bury her.
In the tomb I entered
And the coffin I covered well
So that no earth would enter

Quan la vàrem haver enterrada
jo i aquell germanet seu,
vaig dir: Margalida amada,
jo per tu pregaré a Déu.
I a dins es pensament meu,
sempre et tendré retratada.

When we had buried her
Me and her little brother
I said, beloved Margalida
I will pray to God for you
And in my thought
Forever I will have you drawn.

Adiós Margalideta,
Margalideta adiós.

Goodbye little Margalida.
Margalida, goodbye.

Déu del Cel qui és piadós
allà et tendrà Margalida.
I jo en acabar sa vida
que mos hi vegem tots dos.

Heavenly God who is merciful
Will have Margalida there
And when I end my life
I hope we both see each other there.