Singing the Jura through its emblem. Here is the project for class 7P and 8P of Mervelier. The students wrote and recorded a song on the theme of the flag as part of the 50th anniversary of the Jura plebiscite. Musician Christophe Meyer accompanied the 21 children, aged eleven to twelve, throughout the process. The piece was born from the initiative of teacher Céline Marquis with the help of her colleague Julie Montavon.
However, the initial idea did not start with music. The schoolchildren first revisited the Jura crest by redesigning it in their own way. These works, which were produced as part of the competition set up for the jubilee festivities, are visible on the canton’s website. “The objective was to be as original as possible,” explains Céline Marquis. The resident of Corban explains that the idea of participating in the competition appeared thanks to the presence of a large poster from Christophe Meyer’s collection “Les écussons Jurassiens” in the classroom. If the Jura artist was not known to some of the schoolchildren, he was well known to the teacher, since she was her cousin. To go from drawing to song, there was only one step. “To prepare the students and introduce them to the character, we sang two songs by Christophe Meyer. It was also to show them that we can make songs about the Jura,” says the teacher.
First, Christophe Meyer participated in a writing workshop with the students. They were instructed to write fragments of a song as a group, paying attention to rhymes and feet. A smoothly carried out exercise according to the singer: “I modified a few little things a little, but almost nothing. It was really them who wrote the text. It’s incredible. »
With the flag theme, the children took direct inspiration from their drawings: “A hat on a red flower, three white bricks and four red ones. These are the colors of my home, my badge is the Jura,” the students sing during the chorus. Christophe Meyer then visited the Mervelier school a second and then a third time on Thursday June 13 to record and finalize the piece.
No release date or distribution is planned at this time, although Céline Marquis has expressed her desire to produce a video to accompany the song. /jad
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