Ray Lambert and I are proud to announce the publication of our book “The Harmonica and Traditional Québecois Music: history, techniques, scores, and players.” Ray and I started writing this book about eight years ago after meeting on the internet. At the time,  there were virtually no instruction manuals available. This book fills the void. It’s focus on Québecois music makes it even more unique.

This book is for beginner and advanced players alike. It contains historical information about Québécois music, the harmonicas and techniques used to play it, musical scores with harmonica tablature and guitar chords for 50 outstanding Québécois tunes, short biographies of 88 Québécois harmonica players, instructions for repairing, tuning, and modifying harmonicas, instructions for foot tapping, more than 100 diagrams, photos, and illustrations, and a list of resources on the harmonica and/or Québécois music. This book will not only interest to harmonica players, but fiddlers, button accordionists, accompanists, and anyone who loves Québecois music or celtic.           

To compliment the book, Chicoutimi (the band I play with), recorded a CD, “Vente de garage.” It contains 34 of the 50 tunes scored in the book. The musicians include myself (harmonicas, feet), Olivier Chérès (fiddle, feet), Philippe Sécheppet (guitar, piano, banjo), Mathieu Mauger (melodeon), and guests Roby Adad (guitar), Benoit Legoff (drums), and Jean-Michel Thébault (contrebasse).           

 

For more information, including a CD tune list, and sample pages (MP3, videos) go to:

http://frenchship.tripod.com/

http://bklondike.e-monsite.com/pages/welcome/presentation-coordinates/bruno-kowalczyk.html