Mont de Marsan, to the rhythm of a city of the south...
Mont de Marsan is a city of the south,
festive and cultural, imprinted of traditions
Two strong times in the month of July assures its renown :
Festival of art Flamenco
(beginning of the month). Since 1989, this demonstration welcomes a public of insiders and of curious, always more numerous, during 6 days. It constitutes a real crossroads of exchanges, a place of fraternity. Flamenco, it is a business of passion that transmits itself of generation in generation.
To the program: spectacles, practicums (dance, compass there palmas), conferences, exhibitions, spectacles of street.
Fêtes of the Madeleine (they always start Saturday after July 14 except the years where July 14 is one Saturday): 1ères ferias in the Southwest after Pampelune (Spain).
They are waited very by the small and the big. Bandages (musical groups composed of coppers), festayres, bodégas (barrooms and meals), peñas. has the vocabulary used during 5 days of popular jubilation.
Bullfights, novilladas and shoppings landaises (big contest landais) make vibrate the arenas of the Plumaçon (1889, restored in 1933 and renovated in 2007: paintings and track).
In the streets, the cavalcade, paraded of chariots achieved by the associations and committees of districts, knows a quick success. Other animations: concerts, sporty meetings, cycle race, etc...
As for the firework, it illuminates the city of one thousand fires and makes shine a lot of eyes!
Folklore: the water birds of Mont de Marsan name themselves the Tchancayreses and the group Essor.
Historic kid of the Moutonnierses or Water birds landais:
It is the high silhouette of the shepherd landais "perched like a heron" on its stilts - the tchanques - that is us so much familiar it has been popularized by the engravings of the XIXe century and, closer to us, by the photographs of Felix Arnaudin.
The country of the long legs
The stilts (the tchanques) were a long time the means of locomotion of the shepherds and even of the factors. They allowed them to move quickly through the marsh and to supervise the herds better that, evidently, scattered themselves through the moor.
On a lot of engravings of the last century, one sees these shepherds, loud perched, as herons. Often clothed of a sort of dolmen made of sheepskin, they spin wool, twist it or knit on a very short spindle their own gaiters. Some pictures also represent them chatting, very at ease, he seems on their stilts.
He is true that they passed there of the whole days. Sometimes, however, some drawers let themselves drag by their fantasy while perching very loud the shepherds landais. The stilts never raised them to more of 1 or 2 meters above the earth. Their only goal was to protect the feet of the humidity of the swamp and to allow them to cross the wet moors comfortably.
The stilt was composed of a leg made of light wood and a stirrup on which rested the foot, held by the attachments made of leather. The tip of the stilt, the pedic was in horn of bovine or in wood hard. So the stilt never penetrated in the swamp. Soil, constituted essentially of sand was, in fact, hard enough.
The shepherd always had with him a long stick to clear the streams, to lower itself and to collect an object. The big enemy of the water birds was the molehills.
With the apparition of the forest on the moor, the shepherds were less numerous. In the beginning of the 20th century, they left their stilts. Now the landais shoes them only on the occasion of feasts or shoppings. several folk groups perpetuate the tradition.
The use of the stilts is a very old tradition; they were already known of the Greek and the Roman and were used in a lot of ritual dances in Africa.
Stilts and soul landaise
To look at the card of the Moors: a vast department! (the 2nd bigger of France after Gironde). An immense wooded massif, hemmed at the west by the ocean with a lace of ponds, separated to the south of the curve of the Adour of a vast region agricultural jouxtant the Pyrenean confines.
Two types of population lived on these earths: the some, exclusive agriculturists ate to their hunger in the dense villages; the other vivotaient in the structure agro-pastorale. All spoke the same language: the Gascon.
The traditions collected take out again these 2 origins and the folk groups having each their originality, draw their roots in that melts popular.
The country was poor but a healthy joy reigned, that shows in the dances. To simple and lively melodies a choreography corresponds well removed of popular games. A song it doesn't say: "To dance the Bigue-biguette, it is necessary to have the agile leg?" The dance being joy to meet and to have fun in common, the "rando" landais. open or closed. is the living picture of it, corresponding well to the Provencal farandole and to the sardane catalane.
The dances to soil, always quick, were as elsewhere the support of one social life rhythmized by work with the Marensin or the lighter moor and the more well-off Chalosse. The shepherds perched on their stilts, real acrobats, managed to dance. Their descendants don't hesitate to make it, with vivacity and elegance on a rhythm to 3 times of the last century. The weight not counting, one is played of the balance!
The diatonic accordion replaced the vielle and the bagpipe of the Big Moor, the oboe and the flute of shepherds, but the rhythm given by the hooves and the strokes of whistles remains unchangeable. These are all joys of work and the domestic feasts.
The costumes are modest. Only, the big shawl brings like a rich note "The songs, are on the other hand strong beautiful". The language being also suitable to the narration, the Landaises are gladly storytellers. To "joke like a Gascon" says one and the Landaises are Gascon. They like their country: when they dance, either sing happy, they don't joke!
Shows then all the soul of the Moor.
You will be able to find the calendar of the spectacles of the water birds while clicking on the following tie: http://fgfl.free.fr/calendrier.html
The "course landaise" :
A FEW OF HISTORY: The race landaise is practiced since always in the West South. The oldest authentic document kept to the national archives made state in 1457 an immemorial custom to make run cows and beefs in the streets of Saint-Sever on the occasion of the Feasts of the Midsummer's Day.
Then, during several centuries, one especially knows bullfighting landaise by the different attempts of interdiction of which she was time and again the object and without success.
It is during the XIXème century that two major évènements made it go in modernity. First of all it was the obligation to practice the shoppings solely in delimited places and closed surrounded of steps, and no freely in the street like that was the case until there. It is in this space limited of the arena that was first born then the gap the jump, the two artistic faces of the race landaise.
Then, it was, in August 1853, the apparition of the Iberian origin livestock that proved to be more capable than the local livestock to the practice.
It is at the end of the same century that the bullfighters landais adopted holding that they always carry today: the white trousers and the bolero of color ornamented of spangles of gold or money. the code and the content of rope appeared to the same time as well as the tampons at the end of the horns of the most dangerous messengers.
The twentieth century could begin: all was in place more or less in the shape where you can see it today.
A SPORT, A HERITAGE, A SPECTACLE: The race landaise is a regional sport recognized by the Ministry of Youth and Sports, managed by a Federation French created in 1953. The present actors are sportsmen high-level and their athletic prowesses make the admiration of all during the seasons, of beginning March to end October.
It is also, an element of our cultural heritage and a living tradition well anchored in modernity. The race landaise is again today the main évènement of numerous feasts of village (of the smallest to the biggest!) who animate and rhythmize the Gascon summer.
To attend a race landaise that is to be also sure to participate in a spectacle where vibrates the Gascon soul and where one can meet true characters and characters again as well on the steps that in the arena!
THE ECARTEUR: Essential character of the race landaise, he faces the wild cow of the center of the track in the appellant to provoke his load. The second, behind him will have for role to attract the animal to him when the écrat will be done. at the end of the arena, generally in front of the presidency where is the jury and the broadcaster, the trainer, since the shelter, places the cow and directs it toward the man who calls it and provokes it. As the cow speeds along on him and give the impulse to take it, he avoids it of a gap that lets pass the cow to the hollow of his kidneys while losing the less possible land in relation to the attack.
2 shapes of gap exist :
- the gap on the make-believe where the écarteur waits for the firm foot cow, the arms crossed on the chest.
To the approach of the cow, he "throws" it of the opposite side where he intends to leave, while advancing and while inclining the bust slightly in this direction, inviting the cow thus to hit side while turning to the last instant of the opposite side.
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The gap on the jump is the more appreciated and most difficult. When the cow is only to some meters, the écarteur makes a jump joined feet, advancing the leg opposed to the side where it counts to turn, "to embark" the cow in this direction, nevertheless slightly. As his feet fall again on soil and that the cow gives the impulse, the écarteur must revolve then on the other foot to depart and to dig the kidneys to make pass the body of the cow.
If this strategy fails, it is then the tumade. the écarteur was not fast enough or didn't leave enough place. the cow sees it, takes it with his horns and projects it violently to soil.
THE JUMPER: Since the race exists, there were some bullfighters landais that, instead of separating, preferred to jump the cows. However, little by little since the années1960, this discipline imposed itself like an inescapable element of the race.
Put aside a few too rare exceptions today, the jumper is first a gymnast who achieves a set of jumps above the horns in movement.
The feet in the beret, legs bound by the tie are the first that was practiced since the 19th century, he remains the most difficult to achieve because it is necessary, without impetus, to rise to feet joint to 1,40m to the minimum above a thrown cow. The pierced somersault is the last arrived, it requires a mastery perfected of the gesture. The two other, classics, are the jump of the angel, easiest apparamment and the classic somersault.
You will be able to find the calendar of the Race landaise 2008 while clicking on the following tie: www.courselandaise.org
