Le Mouvement de Liberation de la Femme

I have noticed that many of my readers tend to respond more to my weirder posts (see: Mad Dog Vachon). With that in mind, and because I cannot find the goddamn record I intended to write about, I present Le Mouvement de Liberation de la Femme.

Even though I can't understand French, I will bet dimes to doughnuts that the lyrics to this track are hilarious. I mean, they just cannot NOT be funny. The song itself reeks of that era of unshaven female armpits we call the early 70's, when Helen Reddy's "I am Woman" was a chartbuster and sisters all over were doing it for themselves (often with acoustic guitars).

The song is titled "Quand Les Hommes Seront Liberes", which I am guessing means something along the lines of "When the men are liberated", so I suppose all the wacky sound effects and repartee in the song are humorous jibes at us menfolk. I can dig it though, especially when presented with such rosy-cheeked gusto and a vaguely funky backbeat...

My good friend Google turns up absolutely nothing on the record itself, but a great deal on the actual Mouvement de Liberation de la Femme, which, I would hazard a guess, is French for "Women's Liberation." This included a "Criticism of the New American Left" originally written in French that is really really funny when put into English thru Babelfish.

The songwriting credits are for "M. Saintonge, P.Beauchamp, P.Noles." I don't know who P. Noles is, but P. Beauchamp must be Pierret Beauchamp, a singer of some renown in Quebec (Fun Fact: She was one of 16 children), with a career dating back to the 50's, doing material ranging from Latin to Country. I know very little about her, but for some reason after hearing this song I picture her going home and telling her husband to cook his own damn dinner.


The "M" in M. Saintonge stands for Monique (god bless retrojeunesse60 for this info). Ms. Monique Saintonge is still performing to this day, and if my understanding of her webpage is correct, for a price she will perform at your corporate get together, school or church event, or general shindig. I do know she gets along with her husband; he's her soundman. If I were the chairwoman of the Concordia chapter of N.O.W., I would start saving my nickels and see if I could coax Ms. Saintonge into performing "Quand Les Hommes Seront Liberes", possibly while burning Don Cherry in effigy.



For the trainspotters in the house, the record is on a label called "Le Diable-Musicien", distributed by the more familiar Trans-Canada. The other side of the record was orchestrated by Denis Lepage, a man who I seemingly CANNOT avoid on my scenic journey through Le Musique Quebecois (for those not playing along at home, he went on to form disco sensations Lime).

So, please, loosen your minds, open your ears, remove and burn your bra (fellas, your draftcard will do just fine...) and step back into that era where revolution could be fun and even children and housewifes could achieve a Brady Bunch-level modicum of hip-swinging funk.

Le Mouvement de Liberation de la Femme- "Quand Les Hommes Seront Liberes"