Forêt Endormie – Acadia: A Word Disappeared from the Map

The Portland neo-classical/folk ensemble explores Acadian culture, language, history, and more in Acadia: A Word Disappeared from the Map, a new work supported by SPACE’s Sonic Visions Fund.

What stories do our names tell? For many of us throughout the state of Maine, our French surnames connect us to Acadia, that region in what is now Northern Maine and the Canadian Maritime provinces. Regardless of our ancestry, all of us in Maine encounter the names of streets and businesses that we think of as “French,” but the story of how those names arrived is hundreds of years removed from France, and is a result of an emergent Acadian culture, distinct from that of France and Europe. Many Acadians arrived in Maine in the late 18th century after being forcibly removed from Acadia by Britain after it won the territory from France, an event called Le Grand Dérangement (or The Expulsion of the Acadians). Acadia as a distinct region disappeared from the map, but Acadian culture continued to evolve in the regions that Acadian refugees settled, including Louisiana and Maine. Despite deliberate attempts to limit the influence of this Acadian culture (and Franco culture, more broadly) over the next centuries, such as when Maine passed the English Education Bill of 1919 that forbade the use of French in public schools, our state has been heavily influenced by Acadians, their culture, and language.

Acadie: Mot disparu de la carte (In English, Acadia: A Word Disappeared from the Map) is both a new musical work and a multimedia event that connects new and traditional music, language, storytelling, history, and poetry, and seeks to the audience to a culture that has been so influential in shaping our state. 

The French-language neoclassical/folk ensemble Forêt Endormie will present a new song cycle built using the words of Acadian poets. These new compositions draw on traditional Acadian music while continuing to push genre boundaries, somewhere at the intersection of modern classical, dark folk, and art rock. There are moments in this music when the Acadian musical influences are overt and shine through, and others when those influences were a starting point.

The evening will include an appearance by Robert Sylvain and Steve Muise, who will perform traditional Acadian music and provide an educational component that will use music as an entry point to help us better understand Maine’s history and modern culture. 

All French will be translated/interpreted. 

ARTIST BIO FOR ROBERT SYLVAIN & STEVE MUISE

Two friends, fiddler Steve Muise and singer Robert Sylvain play music rooted in the traditions of their shared Acadian heritage. Both from musical families, they inherited a treasure trove of catchy maritime fiddle tunes and old French-language folksongs which they bring together with modern sensibilities and original material that speaks to the continuing influence of Franco-American culture in New England. The result is a rhythmically unstoppable, lyrically fantastic blend of musical history and innovation that invites audiences from all backgrounds to revel in authentic Acadian joie de vivre.

Deux amis, le violoneur Steve Muise et le chanteur Robert Sylvain, continuent la musique de leurs ancêtres. Ils représentent une génération d’Acadiens du Maine qui veut honorer nos traditions, le même espoir trouver l’esprit nouveau d’Acadie aux Nouvelle Angleterre. Ils jouent les airs tordus, les complaintes anciennes, et les chansons folklorique et originelles, en Français, Anglais et Franglais. Ils ont joué sur la scène principale du CMA 2014 à Madawaska avec la groupe Boréal Tordu, qui a représenté les Franco-Americans dans le compilation “Des voix s’élèvants” organisé par Zachary Ricahrd pour Le Centre de la francophonie des Amériques.

Forêt Endormie (“Sleeping Forest” in English) is a neoclassical / dark folk ensemble formed in 2016 by Falls of Rauros guitarist and composer Jordan Guerette in the “Forest City” of Portland, Maine. Their current instrumentation of violin, double bass, clarinet, piano/keyboards, percussion, electric guitar, and voice allows for the exploration and fusion of disparate, but overlapping, musical worlds.

Distorted Sound Magazine called their most recent album Le désespoir utopique (2023) “an exquisite piece of work, one that rewards paying attention to its intricacies, and one that sends echoes down through the centuries of humanity’s movement, displacement, and longing for home”. This album expands the group’s stylistic boundaries with explorations of early European classical music (Renaissance and earlier), “continuous music” (Lubomyr Melnyk), and avant-garde jazz (Alice Coltrane), while incorporating more electronic/synthesized elements drawn from trip-hop and ambient.