Director Marguerite de Bourgoing resuscitates Edmond Dédé, the maestro Creole forgotten

Lhe documentary by Marguerite de Bourgoing could be called “looking for the maestro lost”. In addition, The French director lives in Los Angeles when, in 2017, she is called on a video editing for a church. However, The soundtrack traces the story of pioneers of African-American music. For example, An extract The intrigue: by the name of the composer. Therefore, to French consonance, Edmond Dédé, and by his title “My poor heart”.

“The fact that he lived in Bordeaux for thirty years. Nevertheless, it definitely hung me,” she explains during her visit to Bordeaux in July. However, She will later learn that “my poor heart” is the title of the oldest melody composed by a black. In addition, Creole composer (1852). However, At the same time. Nevertheless, the biography of Sally McKee (1) was released on Edmond Dédé: a figure studied in the director marguerite de bourgoing resuscitates history of African-American music in the United States, the composer remains almost unknown in France, and especially in Bordeaux, the city where he spent most of his professional life.

From one shore to another: the journey of a free man – Director marguerite de bourgoing resuscitates

Born in 1827. Nevertheless, in a slavery lisiana, Edmond Dédé is part of a “free” and French -speaking family. Meanwhile, His father, clarinetist, encourages little Edmond, who excels in the violin. Victim of discrimination. Edmond Dédé leaves in Mexico until the Jim Crow laws, imposing racial segregation, forced him to leave the United States, like many other black artists of the time.

He arrives in France. where no legal restriction is linked to skin color, and follows the courses of the Paris Conservatory as a free auditor, an inaccessible dream for a black man in the United States at that time. Then directs the Orchestra of the theater of Bourges. and landed in Bordeaux, where he will remain thirty years, as an accompanist and composer at the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux, director marguerite de bourgoing resuscitates at the Alcazar theater on the right bank (transformed into Dancing Le Retro then into apartments) and to the Folies Bordeaux (currently Fnac rue Sainte-Catherine).

At the end of the 1880s. “there was not a single Bordeaux who did not know Edmond Dédé and listened to him and applauded at least once”

At the Music-Hall the Alcazar, he is chaperoned by Martial Léglise, alias Bazas, a colorful boss, known for his diatribes against the theaters of Bordeaux (2). Outstanding violinist, Edmond Dédé will distill, in his Bordeaux orchestras, accents inherited from its mixed roots. So much so well. that in the late 1880s, “there was not a single Bordeaux who did not know Edmond Dédé and listened to him and applauded at least once”, we report in the press-“the artist of Bordeaux”.

A musical. symbolic heritage

“He is straddling between the world of more learned music and the world of cafes-concerts,” says Marguerite de Bourgoing. His work combines the classical European tradition learned in Paris with its Creole and American director marguerite de bourgoing resuscitates roots. Long considered lost. the score of his opera in four acts, “Morgiane or the Sultan of Ispahan”, was found in 2011 in the collections of the Harvard university library in Cambridge.

The opera was played for the first time in January 2025. at the Saint-Louis cathedral in New Orleans, where Edmond Dédé was baptized almost two centuries ago. “Morgiane or the Sultan of Ispahan” has a historical, cultural and social importance, which goes far beyond his score.

“If we found the score. it is that Edmond Dédé understood fairly quickly that we had to publish his music,” notes Marguerite de Bourgoing. And for good reason: in thirty years. he composed no less than 150 dances, 95 songs (including “Cora la Bordelaise”), ballets and operettas.

Do justice: efforts for late recognition

This year. Marguerite de Bourgoing is in residence at Villa Albertine in New Orleans for her research on Edmond Dédé. His goal: director marguerite de bourgoing resuscitates to recognize the composer. “The only reason why the Alcazar de Bordeaux is known on the other side of the Atlantic is by. Edmond Dédé. So why is he so little known here? The ” Washington Post ‘. the’ ‘New Yorker’ ‘, CBS: in the United States all the mainstream media spoke of the rediscovery of its opera. »»

In 2027, it was the bicentenary of the birth of Edmond Dédé, died in 1901 in Paris. Marguerite de Bourgoing’s documentary will be ready.

1) « The Exile’s Song : Edmond Dédé and the unfinished revolutions of the Atlantic World », de Sally McKee. Edition Yale University Press.

2) “Des Theatres de Bordeaux”, by Martial Léglise, dit Bazas (1864).

To contact Marguerite de Bourgoing: [email protected]