“Jorns de mai” is a troubadour-like song about the “days of May” and gathering rosebuds while you can. But the rest of Tant deman (whose cover depicts a two-legged chair that you can’t sit on — i.e., you have to get up and dance — along with, in Occitan, the words “I have always a little felt myself the child of geometric abstraction”) is more like an Izzo noir. “Nau gojatas” (“Nine Girls”), a frenzied disappearing-one-by-one folk story about girls who want to dance and boys who don’t (maybe they’re gay), takes on modern dress in “Condés” (“Cops”), a contemporary story of nine cops who kill each other one by one, augmented by snare drum and American-cop-show-theme brass. The mother of “Fanfarneta” wants her to marry a prince or a baron’s son, but she’s holding out for her friend Pèire, who’s about to be hanged. “La noviòta” (“The New Bride”) has to improvise on her wedding night when her bridegroom falls asleep while saying his prayers — no problem, she goes off to sleep with her cousin, even as the lads serenade the newlyweds with an intense “ta-la-la-la-la-la-la” shivaree. “Mi parlètz pas de trabalhar” (“Don’t Talk to Me About Working”) speaks for itself, but the polyphonic splendor might be a surprise. Lo Còr plan to end their Somerville Theatre appearance with “La vièlha” (“The Old Woman”) — okay, she’s over 80, but she sidles up next to our hero at a dance, and if he marries her on Monday, she’ll be dead on Tuesday and he can use her money to get a 15-year-old girl. Arnaut Daniel, who wrote, “I swim against the current,” would likely be down with these 21st-century troubadours. Theirs is, after all, “lo bèu païs, tot li dansa e tot li ris”: “the beautiful country [where] everyone dances and everyone laughs.”
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