The Occitan red of the female quartet La Mal Coiffée

On June 21, for the Fête de la Musique, La Mal Coiffée came to the capital to sing in the garden of the Palais-Royal. This is the risk, as the Ministry of Culture took that day, when one bets on so-called "traditional" music, much more protest than conservative despite its name. "They are only great because we are on our knees," thundered Laetitia Dutech, one of the four musicians - with Karine Berny, Myriam Boisserie and Marie Coumes - of this quartet singing in Occitan, while a collective leaflet distributed by the " actors of the folk movement" presented grievances against the "millions of euros in cuts and credits canceled by decree, all in denial ^by the Minister." The operation was carried out under the windows of Rachida Dati, the Palais-Royal being "a good symbol of domination" for Laetitia Dutech.

Three weeks earlier, it was in a more expected setting that La Mal Coiffée, a name chosen in reference to La mal cofada, a character from Occitan popular tradition mocked for his unkempt appearance, presented its eighth album, Rojas , the third part of a “red-sound” trilogy inaugurated with Roge in 2021. Red, therefore, like anger, passion and the blood of the earth that fueled the wine-growing struggles of Languedoc, from the winegrowers’ movement repressed in 1907 to those of the 1970s, when the song Lengadoc Roge by Claude Marti resonated. From this singer and poet, La Mal Coiffée today covers Lo pais que vol viure (“The country that wants to live”), with its references to the Albigensians victims of the Crusaders (1209-1229) and to the Commune of Narbonne (1871). This country, “it is the erect cypress, the salty Corbières/It is the dead village, the abandoned land” (“Es lo ciprès quilhat, las Corbièras saladas/Es lo vilatge mort, la tèrra abandonada” ).

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