Laid Back in Marciac
Article for the Mail on Sunday Travel Pages about Howard’s visit to the Marciac Jazz Festival 2001
Everybody knows that for a holiday steeped in world-class jazz you get on a jumbo jet and head forNew Orleans. Well that’s what I always thought, anyway, but it turns out that there is a wonderful alternative much closer to home. You may never have heard of the tiny town of Marciac in Gascony, but jazzers the world over do, since for two weeks every year it gives itself over to a huge feast of le jazz, le blues and le fusion. Paying homage to this remarkable, if somewhat incongruous, festival in one of France’s least discovered regions also gave me and my travelling companions a chance to explore this intensely rural corner of my favourite country for the first time.
Gascony doesn’t exist as a political entity any longer within France, but once it was a mini-country all of its own, given to the English crown for 300 years as a dowry in the Middle Ages. It is a sleepy, forgotten wedge of territory south of the Lot and Dordogne with the Basque country to its West and thePyreneesrunning along its bottom edge. To its East lies Toulouse and the parched magnificence of the Languedoc-Roussillon region, and its capital is the fabulous but totally unknown city of Auch, major stopping-off point for medieval pilgrims en route for Santiago de Compostella. The two most celebrated Gascons in history are semi-fictional Musketeer D’Artagnan and teenage Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, whose healing intercession is still sought by 4 million Catholics a year. Since the 19th century, though, it seems as if Gascony has gone into hibernation, which is as good a justification as any for a holiday there at the beginning of the 21st. The region is so tranquil even the creamy-chestnut cows look like they could do with a good shot of café noir to get them on their feet of a morning. The village architecture is reminiscent ofNormandyand the countryside is a lush, sunflowered version ofIrelandenjoying a permanent heatwave.
The English made the Gascons build hundreds of fortified towers (many of which still proudly stand) since they were a thousand miles from home and surrounded, not altogether surprisingly, by a large number of hostile Frenchies with a much better command of the language and absolutely no fear of the local food. Gascon food is hearty, simple and rustic with an emphasis on duck, duck and more duck. I would hazard a guess that there are more ducks in Gasconythan people. Practically every field and farm you pass displays a ‘foie gras sold here’ sign, market stalls bend under the weight of duck-related tins and jars (Pãté de canard, Fritons de canard, Confit de canard, Gésiers de canard, Rillettes de canard, Coeurs de canard farcis, Daube de canard, Cassoulet de canard, Cou de canard farci, Osillettes de canard, Civet de canard, Manchons de canard, Magret fourré), and we were passionately exhorted to try a popular delicacy of duck neck stuffed with mashed up bits of duck head. I adore Magret de Canard, but I think I may have had my ration for the decade after my delicious week in Marciac.
Lovers of unspoilt countryside and wildlife would find the area somewhat overwhelming- mass tourism hasn’t made any impact here at all- and one finds oneself wandering round villages that are like pristine period-drama sets, with all visual evidence of the modern age removed, not quite believing that in high season you have the place to yourselves. The fortified villageof Bassoues d’Armagnac, for example, would in any other part of Europebe Essential Itinerary for coach parties, festooned with car parks and postcard kiosks. Here it is deserted- a small Café des Sports serving bowls of steaming duck surprise to the locals, blissfully unaware of the staggering beauty that surrounds it. Long may it last. My Irish friend Garrett was so taken with the verdant calm of the place, he immediately began looking in estate agents’ windows for a ruined farmhouse (of which there are plenty). As Garrett runs the Gourmet Mushroom Company back in Eire, one can only hope he will in due course introduce the Gascons to a new culinary experience, Mushroom and Duck Soup. After daily coffee and croissant sessions with him there is nothing I do not know about cultivating exotic shitake from pulverised oak, and nothing he cannot tell you about the superb baroque organs in the churches of Mirande and Auch.
One thing I can tell you about Gascony, though, apart from the fact that almost every town has its own lake providing nautical sports to suit every taste, is that in the unlucky event of you putting your back out water-ski-ing you will find no such thing as an osteopath. This is true of France as a whole, apparently. Normal doctors turn their noses up at what they call charlatans, and the only people with osteopathic qualifications have acquired them in the USA. I only discovered this because my wife Val had a sudden recurrence of earlier back trouble and needed urgent attention. In London she sees an osteopath for this condition who manipulates and adjusts her sacroiliac so expertly she is as right as rain an hour or so later. However, in deepest rural Francethey have everything but a straightforward osteo. Generally, the French medical system is extremely good (the previous year French doctors had successfully treated me for salmonella poisoning and an infected giant termite bite in the same week!) so we were puzzled at their old-fashioned attitude to my wife’s condition. Having made an appointment with a man described as a rheumatologue, the next best thing the French offer, we stopped in Marciac for a distracting coffee, where we found the jazz festival in full flow and, amazingly, an entire church hall full of alternative health stalls. Quelle chance.
The first stall that caught our eye was one demonstrating ‘The Cushion of Health’. Though you may by now have an image of this church hall which is all hippies and assorted nutters promising Elixirs of Life and Miracle De-Ageing Creams, bear with me. We were happy to take any comfort or alleviation of pain mankind could offer at this point- Val was in agony, and the appointment with Bone Man was still hours away. ‘The Cushion of Health’ turned out to be a rubber device with nine spaced-out bumps on it that vibrated automatically if you sat on it. In the excitement of the moment all six of us gave it a test sit, and all three couples purchased one at £22, imagining cold winter evenings in front of the telly with the throbbing cushion to calm one’s aching spine.
Later that night, around the dinner table, in the quiet cool of the evening, we encountered The Cushion of Health’s limitations. The vibrating noise it made sounded like the neighbours were attending to a little night time tractor-mowing, or that we were playing our Perudo game on the deck of the QE2 as it pulled out ofSouthamptonharbour. It was impossible to concentrate on any social activity, however trivial, with the Cushion of Health in full sail. Still, it was a nice thought. Back in the bustling hall, our next port of call was Veronique and her ‘Seated Relaxation- With Pleasure’ therapy. Veronique was a charming and kindly woman who gave Val a thorough Seated Relaxation session (in full view of the assembled throng, mind) for about 20 minutes. This entailed an unusual orthopaedic-style crouching-sitting contraption (jolly comfortable, by all accounts) and much massaging and pressing. The blurb said it was an ancient Japanese art (l’acupression) that would lead to well-being, efficiency, tone, vitality, suppleness and joy. Sadly by this point Val was well beyond joy, with her back practically collapsing in on her discs, but Veronique’s efforts nevertheless were a welcome relief and her sympathetic attention at least made us feel as if the hour’s car journey ahead, to meet Bone Man, was going to be slightly less traumatic for poor Val.
As we set off for Auch we worked out we had three options if Bone Man were to prove ineffective. Option one was a man in the thermal spa town ofLectoure(“town of water”), another hour or so North, where healing treatments of all kinds were advertised. This was my favourite option on the grounds that we could have had tea in the town’s poshest hotel, the Hôtel de Bastard, I kid you not. The second option was rather more drastic and involved asking Saint Bernadette if she would make an exception for a couple of Prods (“Huguenots to you, your saintliness”) and the third option was flying home to Proper Back Man inLondon. After our usual dispute about my parking skills (or lack of them) outside Dr Large’s surgery, and my accidentally slamming Val’s fingers in the car door (when it rains….), we finally made it to the rheumatological reception room. To the back ailments novice like me, Dr Large’s surgery looked like a torture chamber. Luckily, he was the kindest, sweetest man inGascony, and you wouldn’t wish for a nicer bloke to strap you up in traction or wire you up to an ultrasonic dalek. Elsewhere in the clinic,Toulouse’s world-famous rugby stars were having their sports injuries tackled, while my wife was braver than I’ve ever seen her, being mangled, stretched and pummelled. An hour or so later she was packed off back to the outside world, her legs now looking almost the same length. Dr Large may have had old-fashioned kit and may have turned his nose up at osteopaths and chiropractors but his stuff did the trick. I think even Bernadette would have been impressed.
That night Val courageously sat through a whole concert in Marciac- legend and icon Nina Simone live on stage to 8000 people in a vast tented arena. Ms Simone knows a thing or two about pain herself, and frankly looked like a live gig was more than she could manage on a sweltering night like this. For many in the audience simply seeing her was probably going to be enough, which was just as well, since the legend herself seemed out of sorts. The highlight of the show was a heart-breaking rendition of ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’.
The Marciac festival is approaching its first quarter-century and has attracted in that period every single living legend in the jazz and blues field. Around these landmark acts there orbits a plethora of other artists catering for every possible jazz taste. The town’s population is more than doubled by buffs from all over the world, and every nook and cranny is taken over by le jazz. I have not seen so many young men with long flowing hair since the mid-70s, nor so many beards within which one could mount a pretty serious truffle hunt. The atmosphere is incredibly friendly- visitors from the UK would find the total absence of drunken yobbery at a major public festival bewildering. More Gascogne then Gascoigne, you might say. Perhaps the yobs are all up at the Hôtel de Bastard. This year alone you could have seen performers as diverse as Wynton Marsalis, Dr John, Toots Thielemans, the Mississippi Jazz Band, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Richard Galliano, McCoy Tyner, The Stars of Faith gospel group, Tania Maria Viva Brazil Quartet or the Phil Woods Big Band. Many of the concerts are free and open-air. We enjoyed enormously the Duke Ellington School of the Arts Jazz Orchestra from Washington D.C. accompanying our morning coffees in the town square.
Perhaps it isn’t after all so surprising that a remote farming town in Gascony should host this Jazz Paradise. Even when jazz is at its most frenetic and rhythmically neurotic, there is a mellowness and coolness at the heart of it. The folk who love jazz have a live-and-let-live attitude to the world and many of the greatest exponents of the style have a maturity and seniority that is rare in other types of popular music.Gascony has a relaxed, unhurried air about it as well, and its lack of modernity is all part of its gentle charm. Dr Large and his bones (good name for a big band) liked le jazz too: “you know, Val, what you must do now is take it easy……”.