Translating “Dégenerations”: From Québec with Love

By Paul Allen
Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Mes Aïeux is a Québec folk-music troupe—with a difference. Based in cosmopolitan Montreal, the group evokes strong memories of the history of French-speaking Québecois in a song entitled “Dégenerations.”

The song’s title is a play on words, evoking the decline and decay of Québecois society. It eventually became a sensation, but when it first came out its politically incorrect lyrics made it the object of an unoffical media ban. While the song lauds the festive impulse of dancing, it refers critically to abortion, spurns TV, gives unequivocal praise to their ancestors’ (les aïeux) high birthrates, and pours scorn on the new culture of empty nests.

Musicians and artists are often the first to see irony and tragedy in a social crisis. “Dégenerations” highlights a recent social shift in Québec, a reaction against the 1960s consensus. There is a new angst over the goals and assumptions that drove the province headlong into secular modernity, the so-called Quiet Revolution of the 1960s. the rest