Tulle, FranceEntertainment, Travel & Adventure in

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Story & Photographs by Keith Mundy

Tulle? That’s a kind of cloth, isn’t it, a sort of netting?

Yes, that’s right, a frou-frou material loved by brides for

bulking up their wedding gowns, ballroom dancers for ex-

panding their dresses, and ballerinas for making their tutus

stick out. Tulle, a town in southwest France, on the lower slopes

of the Massif Central, is where the material was invented,

and where it is still made today—just about.

In a little shop facing the 14th-century cathedral, its spire

rising 75 meters, three ladies of a certain age are sewing poinct

de Tulle—Tulle needlepoint—under a teacher’s guidance. Using

square frames holding a canvas grid, they sew designs into the

grid, referring to a pattern on paper. They all are members of a

promotional association for Tulle needlepoint, founded in 1985.

This is the real tulle, handmade, with finesse and dedica-

tion, only sewn as a hobby now in its place of origin—well

known for its lace and silk production in the 17th and 18th

centuries. In the 19th century, industrial tulle was invented in

England and churned out in Victorian textile mills, and that

mass production of an inferior material killed off

the original craft industry in this town.

Accordion Town

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In 2017, the Tulle needlepoint association produced designs for two French postal stamps marked Le Poinct de Tulle. Their sewing shop is in the old quarter of Tulle, and a neighboring five-story building dating from the early 1500s is the glory of the town. The Maison de Loyac sports corner turrets and window lintels carved with heraldic

beasts, richly evoking a bygone age.On both sides of the cathedral

are open spaces, closed off by rows of shops. In these spaces, in other squares, in cafes and bars, and along-side the narrow Corrèze River that flows through the town, each year a music festival explodes into life, celebrating that richly iconic instru-ment of French popular music: the accordion.

Accordion CentralFor what makes Tulle’s name ring out today, in France at least, and among many musicians around the world, is that this is “Accordion Central,” the place in the world where

this cheery and flexible instrument—dear to French culture—gets the most honor and the most love.

At Tulle, they have the only accordion-mak-ing factory in France and one of the few in the world; a foundation dedicated to the ac-cordion with a huge collection of historical instruments; courses for accordion playing at the local college; and most fun of all,

each year they hold Europe’s biggest accordion festival with acts

from all over the world.

Town of Fluid Tradition Dordogne River, at Argentat; Maugein brothers and associates, vintage photo; René Lachèze, Maugein manager for 30 years (until 2013); Tulle, hillside view; vintage Maugein instrument, Tulle’s National Accordion Centre. The Summer Rebellion duo’s Arthur Bacon plays “freak blues” (opening spread), © Thomas Poumier.

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“There’s no accident in Tulle hosting an accordion festival,” said Lau-rence Lamy, the festival’s long-time director until 2015. “This town is the accordion’s last bastion in France. Here we have the know-how and the heritage.”

With Tulle—the compact capital of the Corrèze Department (i.e., coun-ty)—squeezed into a narrow valley, it seems natural that the town should honor the squeezebox in all its forms.

It all began in 1919, when the Maugein brothers—who had been working at the Dedenis accordion factory in nearby Brive-La-Gaillarde, the biggest town in Corrèze—decided to set up a factory in Tulle making accordions. The Frères Maugein were in at the beginning of the accordion’s great popularity as a dance instrument in the bal-mu-settes—the dance halls where ordinary people enjoyed themselves after work and on weekends. The brothers were also building on a local tradition of folk music: the accordion was introduced into France in the late 19th century by folk musicians of the Auvergne region, who took it to Paris, where the squeezebox happened to become wildly popular.

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By the 1930s, the accordion had become a French icon, and at this apogee of its popularity, the Maugein factory even had its own band, featuring seven accordionists, that played at local dances, fairs, and weddings. But after WWII, the accordion lost its central place in French popular music, only to be revived since the 1980s by its use in multiple musical styles in France and across the world.

All in the MakingAwarded France’s Living Heritage Enterprise label, the Maugein company produces a wide range of diatonic and chromatic accordions. Inside the factory, on guided tours available from Monday to Thursday, you see the instrument’s frame and many of its parts are constructed of alder wood. On a personal tour given by a company salesman, I learned the following:

“The accordion consists of a keyboard and bass casing that are connected by a collapsible bellows. Within the instrument are metal reeds, which create sound when air, generated by the movement of the bellows, flows around them and causes them to vibrate.”

To demonstrate that very fact, there just happened to be two professional accordionists on hand, visiting the facto-ry for instrument repairs. For my benefit, Frédéric Buch and Franck Vilain formed an impromptu duo and did a nice little show of reed-vibrating, aka accordion playing.

But still, the highlight of a visit has to be the showroom,

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where shelves display a veritable kaleidoscope of instruments, their shiny colors—red and blue the favorites—dazzling to the eye. There is no doubt that the accordion only has the electric guitar as a rival for colorful decoration. Most are Maugein models, but there are others too, brought in for repair or adjustment. In one corner, a customer is trying out an instrument with a merry tune.

Active ArchiveDown the road apiece you find France’s National Accordion Centre, boasting Europe’s largest public collection of free-reed instruments, 440 in all. In a grand edifice, which used to be the head office of an arms-making business, once a major employer in Tulle, you find shelves and shelves of all types of squeezeboxes: accordions, concertinas, bando-neons, melodeons, and harmoniflutes, dating from 1832 to 1999. There are even the extravagant dresses designed by Jean-Paul Gaultier for the veteran accordionist, Yvette Horner, a French national icon.

Blonde, blue-eyed, and in blue jeans, Karine Lhomme is the director of the center. By special arrangement, she shows groups around, and gives a

Melodious Crafting Superb Maugein accordion, shown in the factory; Karine Lhomme, National Accordion Centre director, with diatonic instrument; Maugein artisan prepares wood pieces for an accordion while another works on a wood frame; wood frame, diatonic accordion.

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potted history of the instrument, starting with this: “The accordion was invented in Vienna and patented in 1829. Around the same time, a German instrument maker named Buschmann put some expanding bellows onto a small portable keyboard, with free vibrating reeds inside, creating probably the first true accordion.”

Things have moved on a lot since then in looks and sophisticated sound, but the basic principle remains the same: you contract and expand the bellows, play the keys, and out comes a sound that can be immense-ly jolly or beautifully melancholy, according to the tune. To enjoy all the varieties of musical styles and instrument types, there is no better place and time in the world than the Nuits de Nacre (Pearly Nights) Festival held each year in Tulle.

Pearly NightsClassic accordions are coated with mother-of-pearl, and that’s how the Pearly Nights Festival got its name. A veritable feast of merry music, attended by enthusiastic crowds, the festival welcomes performers from every musical niche possible, so long as one of the band instruments is an accordion.

Merry Music in the AirArnaud “Nano” Méthivier plays accordion while suspended from a tree, © Thomas Poumier; vintage Maugein poster; Divano Dromensa (below) as well as festive audience (opposite) enjoy Pearly Nights festival, Maugein Brothers Square; Les Poulettes, all-women band, performs in a Tulle bookstore.

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A regular at the fest is feisty Sonia Rekis, playing accordion in various groups, propelling a highly danceable mix of musette and gypsy jazz called swing manouche. “This is the most beautiful and biggest accordion festival in France, so I keep coming back,” Rekis enthused at a recent festival, play-ing in the little tree-shaded Place des Frères Mauge-in (Maugein Brothers Square), which honors the cherished local accordion makers.

As well as a gamut of ethnic styles ranging from France’s own musette to Jewish klezmer, from Brazil’s forró to Louisiana’s zydeco, and so on, there, too, are jazz, punk, pop, and rock bands. Just as the music is very varied, there is a whole variety of ven-ues and settings in which it’s performed, all quite close together in the town center, only five or six minutes’ walk—or 10 minutes’ stagger—between the farthest apart. Even better, most of them are free entry.

In a big marquee between the cathedral and the river, one festival swung into action with the superb French accent of the Super Swing Musette de Paris featuring Jean-Claude Laudat. In the spotlights, as Laudat expanded and closed his accordion’s multiple folds and his fingers danced on the button keys, the pearly motifs “Maugein” and “Tulle” glistened and sparkled.

Up the riverside at a crowded cafe, a duo was playing Cajun, the extended concertina like a blood-red snake, so long were the pleated bellows. Across the rushing river on another cafe terrace, reached via footbridge, a French duo of female accordionist and male guitarist was wowing a full house with clever wordplay and exuberant music-making in the chanson tradition.

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Region to RelishTulle lies in a steep-sided valley, the narrow alleys of its medieval old quar-ter clinging to one hillside. The town is surrounded by wooded hills and pastures in which stand some truly lovely villages, among which Collong-es-la-Rouge reigns supreme.

Dazzlingly built in the local red granite, on a sunny day the whole of Col-longes-la-Rouge—“Collonges-the-Red”—stands glowing against the wild

chestnut and walnut groves of the Corrèze hills. In the 15th to 18th centuries, locals became rich from the wal-nut oil and wine trades and built patrician houses and mansions with pointed turrets. Revived in recent decades with many tourist shops and cafes selling crafts and local foods like foie gras, its narrow streets and alleys of close-packed houses of red stone, often draped in green vines, Collonges-la-Rouge is a ruby among villages.

Set beside the lazily flowing Dordogne, Argentat is another gem, its half-timbered waterside houses host-ing charming little restaurants, while badlings of ducks quack about on its cobbled quays. The fine old town of Uzerche perches on a rocky outcrop in an oxbow of the Vézère River. Located at a medieval crossroads, Uzerche

has a long cultural heritage with many buildings displaying turrets built by the old Uzerchoise nobility.

The county’s grandest monument is the Château de Pompadour, a palace guarded by castle walls, given by Louis XV to his favorite mistress, the indomitable Madame de Pompadour. Corrèze is associated with many more influential French women: the novelist Colette lived with her third husband at the Château de Castel Novel, a huge rambling house that is now a luxury hotel; and groundbreaking feminist author Simone de Beau-voir spent every summer of her childhood on her grandparents’ beautiful country estate at Saint-Ybard, near Uzerche. Arguably the world’s most influential fashion designer, Coco Chanel passed her adolescence in an orphanage within the Cistercian convent of Aubazine, near Tulle. All these

places are open to visits by the public, though the Beauvoir estate opens only on special occasions (details at www.tourismecorreze.com).

Though Corrèze is a backwater whose charms are distinctly rural, in politics the county is some-how a powerhouse. Ask a French person what Tulle means to them, they’re quite likely to say, “François Hollande’s fief,” and those with longer memories will cite Jacques Chirac. In other words, two recent presidents of France had political springboards in Corrèze.

As recompense, Chirac set up a fascinating museum at Sarran, in

Village HarmoniesPoster of 2017 accordion festival on its 30th anniversary, © Thomas Poumier; accordionist of Délinquante, a French women’s duo; beautiful village of Collonges-la-Rouge, built entirely from local red granite stone; Chloé Lacan plays versions of French chanson.

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Getting ThereANA serves Paris with daily Wi-Fi flights from Tokyo (Haneda). Flight time is a little more than 1 hour from Paris to Brive-La Roche Airport, which is a 40-minute drive from Tulle.

Corrèze. In a forest clearing stands a modernist structure filled with all the gifts that he received from foreign dignitaries during his 12 years as French head of state, from scary African masks to antique Chinese vases. This be-ing France, you can get a good lunch there too, which many visitors relish.

Let the Good Times RollAfter the Pearly Nights, I could have gone away with an instrument—not an accordion but a gypsy violin. Paul Guta, Romanian violinist with the multinational group, Divano Dromensa—billed as Russian Gypsy Caba-ret—was desperate to sell.

“I gotta go back to Bucharest tonight to get a new passport. I need money. Only three-hundred euros for this, you can get five-hundred for it tomorrow, easy,” he pleaded, as I sat in the refreshment tent between him and Vassili Tcheretski, the group’s fiery Russian accordionist, who was try-ing to deter him.

“Buy it!” Guta urged. Unluckily for him, I wasn’t in need of a fiddle, but I was wild for his gypsy cabaret and their rollicking roster of music that slaloms through the Slavic and Mediterranean worlds.

At the Nuits de Nacre, you can be sure of musical surprises, and a very good time, especially now that the festival has been moved to the last week in June from its previous timing in mid September. As of 2018, good warm weather is much more assured.

“Laissez les bon temps rouler!”—“Let the good times roll!”—as the Ca-jun-French accordionists of Louisiana love to say.

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