Sacred Songs of Occitan Lo Còr de la Plana at Esplanade Recital Studio

Their music is a raucous ritual of singing, chanting, hand-clapping, knee-slapping and percussions, brimming with influences from the Mediterranean, Arabia, Africa, and Gregorian chants. They sing in Occitan, a little known language unique to France’s Provence region.
Hailing from the city of Marseille, all-male polyphonic ensemble Lo Còr de la Plana (pronounced
“loh quar dey la plahna”) is known for reinventing the ancient sounds of the Occitan, vacillating between the violent and the sacred, the popular and the obscure.
In Es Lo Titre: Sacred Songs of Occitan, they return to their roots with narrative songs from the Early Christian period of the 10th and 11th centuries. Still smouldering from the battles between the pre-Christian pantheons and the new monotheistic order, many of these sacred songs depict stories of Christ through metaphor and allegory. Others humanise him, recounting stories of him in wretched clothes, riding a donkey into the night while mingling human fate with the destiny of the stars.
With their raw vocals and rousing percussions, Lo Còr de la Plana’s repertoire of songs transcends both performance and ritual to conjure up a world of noisy carousing, imaginary paradises, deafening silence and the chaos of daily life.