My true passion

by Marie Labrecque, Montréal, Quebec

Jim Corcoran has been enriching Quebec’s musical landscape for decades. The singer-songwriter has released eight solo recordings. His most recent album, Pages blanches, won the Juno award for Francophone Album of the Year in 2006. An incredible achievement for an artist who embraced French much later on in life...

Jim was brought up in an English-speaking family in Sherbrooke, without any exposure to the French language. “In the 1950s, the city was mainly English-speaking,” he remembers. Jim spent his teenage years in the Boston area. “At 13, I ran away from home and told my parents that I was never coming back. They let me leave, thinking I would eventually come back, but I was very stubborn.”  

The hard-working and independent teen continued his studies at a seminary while he looked on with sadness at the state of American society and the challenges of the 1960s. At the age of 20, after losing some friends to the Vietnam War, he decided to leave the United States. He came back in the fall of 1970 to a province brimming with cultural activity, and that’s where he found his salvation. “What was happening in Quebec at that time was powerful,” he explains. “Popular music was extremely poetic. I could feel myself being immersed in a Francophone culture that was really exciting. It was my way of getting away from an English-speaking America that had disappointed me. To feel liberated, without rejecting anything, and to be reborn.”

Learning the language

In order to fully participate in this culture, Jim enrolled in philosophy and French classes at Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, and dove into the Francophone world. “I improvised with the way I learned. I only read and listened to French-language media. I was eager to learn. And soon enough, thanks to great professors and friends, I was able to understand and carry on conversations,” he says.

Jim started singing by accident. The young man wasn’t looking for a career in music, which he saw as a “kind of meditation, a way to relax,” a stress-reliever. He started singing in bars in order to pay for school. Then he started getting more and more offers to sing and “it just turned into a career,” he says modestly. 

His career really took off through his folk group, Jim et Bertrand. After working with Bertrand Gosselin (from 1973 to 1979), the Anglophone started to write in French. At first, he wrote in French to be “polite,” since the duo performed mainly for a French-speaking audience.

His decision to pursue a career in French left some people perplexed. “My father found it very difficult. Every time I came home with an album, he asked me: ‘Are you singing in English this time, Jim?’ It didn’t make sense to him that I would limit myself to the French-speaking market. I couldn’t give him an explanation because what I was doing was very personal. All anyone needs to understand is that I had to follow my heart, my true passion. It was something I had to do and I’m very happy that I did.”

The poetry of the French language

Learning French mostly on his own through books gave Jim a unique style. The author of Je me tutoie likes to play with words and chooses ones that sound good to him. “I scour around and do a little digging in the language to find the real gems. Sometimes, I get tired because it’s the kind of work that never ends. I am always correcting myself and trying to make things better. But at the same time, it’s fabulous!”

The singer believes we express ourselves differently according to the language we use. “I find myself saying things in French that I can’t say in English. However, it’s more work. There’s a long tradition of great French-language poets, which means the bar is set higher. When I write in French, I have to think about it more. It requires more effort and is therefore more satisfying. I feel like I have accomplished something that I am really proud of.”

Breaking down barriers

The songwriter does his part to break the “sad” barrier of cultural unfamiliarity that separates the two language communities in Canada. Over the last 20 years, he has written for and hosted À propos, a program dedicated to French-Canadian music, broadcast Saturdays at 9 p.m. on CBC Radio One.

He gives interviews and translates song lyrics into English. Above all, he shares his unbridled enthusiasm for his fellow artists. “I never play a song that doesn’t excite me,” he confesses. By staying current with everything going on in Quebec, he broadens the linguistic and musical horizons of listeners that are hungry for diversity, by introducing them to very eclectic programming.

“I’ve realized, based on the reaction of my listeners, that I play a very important role. There are plenty of people, around the world, who want to experience something different from the usual Top 40. Their need to have access to something unique reminds me of how I felt when I first fell in love with Quebec culture.”

What a great way to come full circle.

Credits

Credit: Volt-Martin Tremblay