Duò Lavoà Lapò

Master of Occitan folk music (France)

The voice and the skin, the strings of the soul and the drums of joy!
That is the motto of the Duò Lavoà Lapò (Occitan: Lavoà = the voice / Lapò = the skin)

In Duò Lavoà Lapò, Damien Toumi and Mànu Théron embark on a journey into the world of Occitan vocal music with shared energy and passion, celebrating it and breathing new life into it. They interpret forgotten and well-known classics from the Occitan-speaking regions and create imaginative, powerful and refreshing new compositions that combine vocal and rhythmic interplay, enthusiastic polyphony and feverish trance-like states. Voice (= Lavoà in Occitan) and skin (= Lapò in Occitan) are aspects of the soul and of joy!
The pieces are drawn from the corpus of ‘Folk Songs of Provence’, as well as from field recordings, written sources and original compositions by the duo’s musicians. They celebrate rebirth, the awakening to the invigorating beauty of the world, and draw in turn from everyday life or the spirituality of timeless stories to recount that special state of mind which embodies an appreciation of otherness. The underlying rhythms reflect the lyrics and the harshness of life that endures in the incredibly colourful and organic folk heritage of the Occitan-speaking region.