Acadian Songbook
Special | 3m 4sVideo has Closed Captions
Robert Sylvain revives traditional Acadian ballads from his Mémère Thibodeau's notebook.
Robert Sylvain brings to life the beauty of old Acadian ballads, playing and singing melodies passed down through generations. The songs come from a well-worn notebook once owned by his Mémère Thibodeau, its pages rich with history and tradition. With each note, Robert connects the past with the present, preserving the stories and soul of his heritage through music.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
Assignment: Maine is a local public television program presented by Maine PBS
Assignment: Maine is made possible by Lee Auto Malls and viewers like you!
Acadian Songbook
Special | 3m 4sVideo has Closed Captions
Robert Sylvain brings to life the beauty of old Acadian ballads, playing and singing melodies passed down through generations. The songs come from a well-worn notebook once owned by his Mémère Thibodeau, its pages rich with history and tradition. With each note, Robert connects the past with the present, preserving the stories and soul of his heritage through music.
Problems with Closed Captions? Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Assignment: Maine
Assignment: Maine is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
(soft guitar music) - It took me 20 years to get the first dozen songs matched up to their original melodies.
Learn them in French.
(Robert singing in French) Then I've got the French lyrics and my English translation.
♪ To leave my home ♪ And fly away In the search for the melodies and the search through the language, I learned a lot about what was important to my meme, and these are the songs that are important to Acadian culture from her perspective.
(Robert singing in French) This is my meme's notebook.
It's the original songbook that she used to remember lyrics that were important to her, and it's almost all Acadian folk ballads, all in French, and these are things that she remembered from her childhood that were passed down through the generations, and my life's work is to unlock these hidden treasures.
(Robert singing in French) A lot of them are hundreds of years old, written even before the Acadians came to Maine in 1604, and they've changed over the years too, as folk songs do.
So this song, (Robert speaking in French) is an old Acadian ballad.
It's about leaving home.
(Robert singing in French) (Robert continues singing in French) This is the songbook for the first dozen songs, and this is a working copy of volume two.
A lot of 'em are ballads.
A lot of 'em have a moral.
Each one is a little piece of what is important to Acadians, what they've meant to Meme and what they mean to me.
It's just been fun to translate them so that they can be appreciated for a new generation.
♪ Farewell ♪ I'm leaving today (soft guitar music) Voila.
Support for PBS provided by:
Assignment: Maine is a local public television program presented by Maine PBS
Assignment: Maine is made possible by Lee Auto Malls and viewers like you!