A 21st Century Trobairitz

My Review of Cecile McLorin Salvant's February 9, 2024 Performance at the University at Buffalo

The word is “trobairitz;” it refers to female troubadours of the Middle Ages who performed some of Western music’s first secular songs (and the first composed by women) in the area south of the Loire Valley, what we now call Provence.

As Cécile McLorin Salvant prowled the stage and charmed the crowd with stories of her childhood and songs of lost love, one could not help but think of her as a trobairitz reborn a millennium later. Indeed, she learned Occitan, the trobairitz’s language, so she could translate “Dame Iseut” and put it to music.

McLorin’s voice is soft and nimble, singing Occitan cadences around a bouncy polyrhythm.