Jim Corcoran bridges French-English divide on CBC Radio show

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Jim Corcoran bridges French-English divide on CBC Radio show

Corcoran translates French lyrics into English on his popular program,
À Propos

[ PHOTO: PETER MCCABE FOR THE TORONTO STAR
Quebec musician and CBC radio host Jim Corcoran in a Montreal CBC
studio. He is celebrating 25 years of his show, A Propos, which
transmits and translates French Quebec music to English Canada. ]

By:Allan Woods Quebec Bureau, The Toronto Star Published on Fri May 10
2013

MONTREAL—Jack Corcoran, a gruff Irish Catholic, could not bear the
sound of the popular French songs of the day when he was raising his
family in Sherbrooke, Que. And he could not fathom how his son, Jim, a
long-haired pacifist more interested in writing tunes than in learning
a trade, figured he could make a living with his guitar.

So one can just imagine Jack’s outrage in the early 1970s when he
started hearing the family name transformed into “Cor-Co-Ran”—
something that Jim’s growing francophone fan base could more easily
wrap their tongues around. So pervasive is that French pronunciation
now that some mistakenly assume Corcoran is a francophone with an
Irish name and James Joyce spectacles rather than proud Irish stock
with a successful 40-year-career making music in Quebec.

One can also understand the disappointment that Jack Corcoran, whose
favourite refrain was that Jim would only win a Juno Award if he sang
English tunes, died two months before Quebec’s favourite anglophone
singer of French songs took the 2006 prize for Francophone Album of
the Year.

It is the second career of the younger Corcoran, now 64, as host of
CBC Radio’s À Propos, that is being honoured this year after 25 years
on the airwaves. Highlighting the best of French music and lifting the
language veil for a generation of English listeners across the
country, the show is one of the few intact bridges to span Canada’s
language divide.

The idea for the show started in the late 1980s after Corcoran was
asked to interview Joni Mitchell for the music video broadcaster
Musique Plus. A Montreal producer caught the program and came up with
the idea for the radio show, which has transformed a singer with
credibility in the province’s music scene and the natural tone of a
CBC radio host into a sort of cultural ambassador.

“Perhaps if I had an accent there would have been a bit of backlash,
because it becomes cumbersome for somebody who’s not really patient,”
he said. “Another element is that I’m credible. I really like this
music.”

But music is music and politics is politics. Corcoran breathes the
former and holds his nose at the latter, particularly as threats,
concerns and arguments over language — the rising presence of English
and new laws to boost the use of French — arise in Quebec.

“Language is essential and, cyclically, there are flare-ups. That’s
natural and it’s important that it happens, because we can’t become
complacent. But it’s always or often clumsy. People are very easily
offended in that way and people will point to the other and say that
he or she is intolerant,” he said.

Francophone musicians in Quebec have often been saddled with the
province’s nationalist aspirations. Corcoran himself was awarded the
2012 prize by Impératif français, a notable pro-French lobby group,
for his “exceptional contribution to the vitality of the language.”

That’s about as political as Corcoran is comfortable with.

“The identity of a nation isn’t a responsibility of songwriters and
singers,” he said. “It’s only music. They share in the identity for
sure, but they don’t have the entire responsibility.”

Corcoran’s own path to singing and writing in French was inherently
commercial before it became a passion.

His first following came at the English bar on the campus of Bishop’s
University singing the likes of Leonard Cohen and the popular folk
songs of 1960s and 1970s at night while studying French and philosophy
by day. When asked to take his popular routine to the campus’s French
bar, he thought it only appropriate that his set list better reflect
the audience.

It took a while before his early efforts at writing a proper chanson
paid off, but when it did he never looked back.

And that respect for his audience has carried on into one of the most
popular features of his radio show, with the translation into English
of the often poignant French lyrics. He came up with the idea about 10
years into the program.

“I was always saying on the air that these songwriters are really
great poets and I was sort of imposing an act of faith on the audience
by saying it but not proving it,” Corcoran said. “So I thought I’d
start translating a couple of songs so that they know what I mean and
understand my enthusiasm.”

As you might expect, the segment has become a staple for French
teachers across the country who are trying to engage their students,
as well as with francophiles and those who are simply curious to
unlock the secret words behind the melodious songs coming out of
Quebec.

But it has also become one of the most pleasing aspects for the
musicians who come on the show, Corcoran said.

“They want it now. I’ve translated hundreds of songs and every artist
who comes to the program and hears the translation — and I never tell
them about it before they get there — is very excited about it.”

Many, like singer-songwriter Daniel Bélanger, grew up on the pervasive
and popular English music of The Beatles, David Bowie, Bob Dylan and
Leonard Cohen.

“(Bélanger) told me . . . ‘These were my idols. These were the people
I looked up to as a kid when I was learning music. All of a sudden I
hear my songs in Shakespeare’s language and in the language of these
people and it gave me goosebumps.’”

En Scène is a monthly column on Quebec culture. Email:
awo...@thestar.ca