” I had fun ! “: Nadau celebrates 50 years of career at the Zénith de Pau

Your three concerts at the Zénith in November are sold out. This is why you proposed a fourth date in February 2024. Fifty years later, how to explain that Nadau’s success is not weakening?

I’ve always wondered. I think people come because our music is about them. There are a lot of singers who make people dream of what they are not, we make them dream of what they are. It’s also because we’ve never been fashionable… But we’re starting to become fashionable, it smells of fir! (laughs)

On three occasions (2000, 2005 and 2010), trains have been chartered specially to attend your concerts on the stage of the Olympia. It was the whole of Occitania that went up to Paris. How did you experience it?

It is both a privilege and an enormous responsibility to see people coming down from the mountains, leaving Montréjeau (31), Lourdes (65), Dax (40), embarking the gang with survival rations. When they arrived at the Olympia, it was extraordinary because I could have sung the yearbook, it was the same thing! I will always be proud to have made them laugh, cry. To bring happiness.

It is both a privilege and an enormous responsibility to see people who come down from the mountains, leave Montréjeau, Lourdes, Dax, embark the band and come to L’Olympia with the survival rations.

Nadau is also full coaches of rugby players who sing poetry…

One day, a second line said to me: “The song “My God, I’m at my ease” is the only one that can roll back a scrum of 900 kilos! This masterpiece of poetry from Savoy, whose lyrics were written three centuries ago, uses very popular images. Guys 2 meters tall, it shoots them!

In 1996 for the second Zénith, Nadau was accompanied by a classical ensemble with the Orchester de Pau, where Serge Lecussant signed the musical adaptation. It is the meeting of Béarnaise song with great music…

There was a meeting with people who didn’t know a note of music – including me and all the choirs who were pharmacists, peasants, masons – and others who had their heads in it all day! The choirs brought their spontaneity and our language was entitled to the first violin. This magnificent encounter gave Béarnaise music a majesty.

Since its origins, Nadau has defended a culture and a language. Would you say that you managed to take Occitan music out of its folkloric image?

I have never denied the shepherds, I have even written songs on this subject, because for me pastoralism is sacred. Despite the discouragement, I am very happy to have continued because there is hope with the calandretas, the bilingual schools and the Ciutat [ cité créative de la culture béarnaise, installée dans un quartier de Pau, NDLR]. There is a desire to stop backing down and to say: “We are what we are”.

One day, a second line said to me: “The song “My God, I’m at my ease” is the only one that can roll back a scrum of 900 kilos! »

Nadau, which began in 1973 with three musicians, is also a collective adventure…

With the musicians who have been there for decades, we shared everything: the sound systems that didn’t work well, the approximate meals, the road… And they still have the same joy of being on stage. Many musicians try to show that they play well, they try to play well. We have no production, no turners: we do everything ourselves with our own equipment. We are sixty-eighters, autonomous and independent. Fortunately we never signed with Warner, in the end we do everything in a short circuit: it’s directly from the producer to the consumer!

For thirty years, you taught mathematics in Arthez-de-Béarn while playing your music. How do you view this journey?

I am at a time when we look back. I had fun. And I know that we have sown a lot of things. My grandchildren speak Béarn with me, they even have a music group. I’m very proud of it.

You say you are more a photographer than a poet. If you had to take a picture of your 50 years of career, what would it be?

The day I found a sentence that said: “We are from the country of those who loved us. » I believe that this country can be a dirt road, a caravan, a cabin… There is no escaping it, it is fundamental.