Toulouse, Paziols: “To Bernard, as if he were there”
The Toulouse boules champion and globetrotter, friend of Nougaro and Ferrat, was also a poet and an artist. The Aude village of Nougaro is organizing a party for him from June 24 to 26, with concerts, exhibitions and pétanque competitions.
“It’s not a tribute… it’s a sequel… we continue as if he were there”. Jacqueline Delpey is the organizer of the “three days of Merle Bleu”, in the Aude village of Paziols where Claude Nougaro and Bernard Champey had put down, for a time, their suitcases of swing and tiles. The singer had met the globe-trotting “bouliste” on the Place d’Antraigues in Ardèche, the village of Jean Ferrat, and the little bull from Les Minimes had followed the champion traveler from Romans, a Toulousain by adoption, to the heights of the Corbières, at the top of the village of Paziols where the composer of O Toulouse had bought the house opposite the church. And opposite Le Merle Bleu, then a restaurant run by Jacqueline. Claude Nougaro had found the baptismal name of the establishment, with Bernard.
Music, poetry, exhibition and pétanque
The three days of Merle Bleu is not a cycling race but a mini-festival that does not say its name, which will take place from Friday 24 to Sunday 26 June, in Paziols. Very much in the style of the summer activities offered each year by Bernard Champey in the Aude village. One of these animations had seen a whole team of singers gathered around Claude Nougaro to interpret the most beautiful songs of the interwar period, under the title: “Once upon a time, as if I was”. Title found, again, by Bernard Champey. Hence the one given to the 2022 edition, which moreover seems to have been concocted by the same. The circle is complete.
On the program, a (free) tribute concert “Around Nougaro” with Léo & Co, the trio who offered an album to “Monsieur Claude”, led by Philippe Léogé (the soul of Jazz on his 31), crooner and pianist, with his sons Denis on double bass and Jordi on drums (Saturday June 25, 9 p.m., Espace Sirven in Paziols); musical show “Sang Blues” by Cécile and Julie, a duo of sisters from Toulouse who interpret the texts of Bernard Champey, set to music, accompanied on the piano by Olivier Nebout. A show that will take the audience to the banks of the Mississippi, in New Orleans (Sunday June 26, 9:30 p.m., Espace Sirven). And then an ephemeral exhibition by a duo of visual artists (Julia Renaudot and Lara Juste) at the Saint-Félix church in Paziols (June 24 to 26, opening Friday 24 at 6 p.m.) and the unmissable petanque competition (Sunday 26 to 15 hours, under the plane trees of the Espace Sirven, participation 25 euros). All accompanied by various gastro-viticultural festivities throughout the weekend.
Bernard will be there, that’s for sure. With maybe Claude and Jean, and the others. In the air. And in time. That of friends first and of “real life”.