
The "imaginary folklore" is not a nostalgic catch-all; it is the treasured pleasure of encounters and moments that one would want to last forever, escaping the erosion of banality, the announced profitability, or cultural opportunism. These slices of life, dreamed yet truly lived, include: a melody in the desert at dawn, an Armenian song in a suburban area of Lyon, a drum solo on a UNESCO record, an Indian street orchestra, a South African choral song, the resonating voice of a worker 15 meters below sea level, a photograph taken while driving, a sung text with an irresistible smooth accent, and more.
These shared or unspoken encounters with sounds and musicians in improbable situations, or even through recordings that have seeped into our sensitive lives to the point of determining our aesthetic choices; these encounters with people whose class culture, imagination, and even vocabulary have, in a nearly fantasized way, become creative triggers for the group; these encounters with universal voices and timbres, because not immediately locatable... have invited us to compose musical responses of gratitude.
The musicians of the Workshop de Lyon want to respond to all these distant friends they have met during their tours or intimate lives as musicians; a musical letter tailored to fit, in a language and vocabulary aligned with the original source of the exchange, in order to preserve the sense of the unique encounter, with the unreasonable hope that it will one day be received by its intended recipients.