Here’s a wonderful tune for the harvest season: “Le Batteux” (“The Thresher”), from Louis “Pitou” Boudreault (1905-1988). Le Batteux is Mr. Boudreault’s name for a family tune and dance which in Louis Boudreault’s childhood were linked to the annual activity of grain threshing. In Mr. Boudreault’s father’s day, threshing place during the winter when the grain had dried and farm work was otherwise more or less at a standstill. The local flour mill owner had a grain-threshing mill which he rented to farmers to thresh their grain by turns. Every evening, they held a get-together with music and dance, and “Le Batteux” would be played and danced. Capping off a hard day of collective labor with dancing and celebration seems to be an ancient tradition, not only in Europe and North America, but all over the world.
Le Batteux (sound recording, mp3)
