René Dupéré: ...My dream was to compose my own music. I didn’t have any idea where I was going. It was very similar to Cirque du Soleil’s adventure, but on a personal level. With the Cirque, we didn’t know the dimensions that the project would take on in a few years. When I quit teaching, I didn’t have any idea what I would do or where I would do it. I was living in Quebec, which isn’t the best place for a composer. Moreover, I arrived on the musical scene, unknown, at the age of 35... What I knew was that I wanted to make music, compose full-time. My dream was limited to that. I didn’t have any concrete projects, any contracts.

Q: So you decided to quit teaching. You wanted to compose your own music. But you didn’t end up at the École de musique or the Faculté de musique. You ended up in the streets. Was this part of some kind of social concern?

René Dupéré: No, I don’t believe there was a direct relationship. It was just a combination of circumstances. When I quit teaching in June of 1981, I met a group of street musicians, Fanfafonie. We worked together. But there wasn’t any concern or social message in what we were doing. We were there to entertain people... and to make a bit of money if possible!

Q: Fanfafonie. What exactly was it?

René Dupéré: This group had already existed since 1979. It was made up of eight musicians: two percussionists and six brass players. We did old jazz, old dixie music, a little jazz that was more modern with arrangements that one of the other musicians and I put together. We played in the streets of Quebec, in Montreal, and in summer festivals... When I met Fanfafonie, they asked me to do arrangements for them. The first summer, the rest of the troupe played during the summer Festival. It was only a bit later that I began to play tuba with them....

After the summer, we found ourselves on welfare again. That winter, we did the first part of a show with François Léveillé, who was a singer at that time. We played in the house, among the spectators. After the show, a Belgian came to see us. He ran a cultural center in Belgium, and wanted to plan a tour for us in his country the following summer. We accepted on the condition that he would pay our plane tickets and our expenses. He organized fifteen shows for us in a month and a half. So we went on tour in Belgium during the summer of 1982. The next year, 1983, we spent six months in Europe: in France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany.

Q: What was the relationship between the public and street musicians?... Between listening to a work in a concert and listening to a musician in the street, is there a difference in people’s perception?

René Dupéré: Yes. The work of the street musician is very demanding, because people are not obligated to hear us. If what we present to them is boring, they will go on to listen to someone more interesting. The street musician always has to offer a performance, to be full of energy.

Q: Your son was living with you...

René Dupéré: My son joined me in what I was doing. He even worked seven years with Cirque du Soleil; it was there that he completed his high school studies.

Q: How old was he when you were playing in the street?

René Dupéré: He was eleven when I joined Fanfafonie. At the age of twelve, he began to work with us. He even came to Europe on the second tour. He is very physically active. He rode the unicycle and juggled.

Q: So it wasn’t just music, but jugglers, entertainers as well.

René Dupéré: Fanfafonie, in Quebec, was part of a group of street entertainers. There was, among others, a cycling enthusiast who gave unicycling lessons. He showed Nico how to ride the unicycle. In 1982, a group of Belgians, the Sidewalk Circus [le Cirque du Trottoir], came to Quebec. We did shows together in the street. They were more street entertainers: a juggler, two musicians, a magician, acrobats, fire-breathers. Nico was there and learned a lot from them. Afterwards, we went to Belgium and it was with them that we did the six-month tour. There were sixteen of us altogether. We even had a set that we transported in a truck. We planted our set in the street; eight people entertained and we made the music.

Q: Like a mini-circus?

René Dupéré: Exactly. And Fanfafonie and the Sidewalk Circus were present at the beginnings of Cirque du Soleil in 1984.

Q: We broached the subject a few moments ago... You quit teaching to go play music in the street. Before this change of hats, what was the others’ attitude?

René Dupéré: It was above all an attitude of envy and of great sympathy. Nobody said to me, “You shouldn’t do this. Think of your pension!” Not at all. I was truly supported by my colleagues, by those around me, and sometimes even encouraged, with a little dose of envy.

Q: Certain people may have had the temptation to say to you, “Do it for the summer, but in the autumn, come back and teach!” How was the transition between the life of a teacher with a good paycheck and the life of a saltimbanque?

René Dupéré: What I have retained from it is a thing that has nothing to do with music or money: the discovery of my own personal rhythm. For thirty years, I had done the same thing, day after day: I got up, I left for school, with my backpack, when I was a student, or my briefcase, when I was teaching. For thirty years, I knew every day what I was going to do, where I was going to go. In the end, I lost my own rhythm. What was it really? Did I like to get up late? Go to bed late? I didn’t know. I had a fixed schedule and I held myself to it. What did I like to do in life? What would I have wanted to do if I didn’t have anything to do? I didn’t know. That’s what marked me the most in this transition. I suddenly discovered that I really liked to get up early in the morning, around six o’clock. I thought I was more a night person... that I would begin to live at night, to party, etc. Well! Not at all! Bit by bit, a new rhythm was installed in my life, my own rhythm.

Also, when one has a job, a check every fifteen days, when one is part of a system, many decisions escape us. At the moment when I found myself alone, to live my life, I lived deliriously with the many decisions, however small they were, that filled my days. I had the feeling of having lived all those years as if “programmed,” even if I had been happy in my work as a teacher. I discovered the importance of making decisions. Quitting my job allowed me these two important discoveries.

Q: This was really a new life.

René Dupéré: It was a new life from many viewpoints, including financial. Since that time, I have never accumulated debts, never borrowed from the bank -- well, I did one time, to buy myself musical instruments when I was with the Cirque. I have always tried to live according to my means as much as possible. I buy when I have the means to do it. I’m really not the model client for banks.

Q: You spoke earlier of the Sidewalk Circus, who did shows with you in the streets of Quebec. Were les Talons Hauts [the High Heels Club] part of the same environment?

René Dupéré: No, les Talons Hauts came from Baie-Saint-Paul. It was a group formed by Guy Laliberté, Gilles Ste-Croix and Serge Roy, and other people who still work today with Cirque du Soleil. These guys formed a stilt-walkers’ club and began to do numbers. They put on for example a show on Alexis-le-trotteur [a legendary Canadian character, supposed to have been capable of superhuman feats].

They also organized, at Baie-Saint-Paul, festivals of public entertainers, starting in 1980, I believe. Baie-Saint-Paul became the meeting place for Quebec’s public entertainers. La Fanfafonie participated there in the summer of 1981. I gave music lessons; others, make-up lessons, etc. Young people who wanted to become public entertainers learned there how to do musical arrangements, how to put on make-up, how to make costumes, etc. It was on this occasion that we encountered the Baie-Saint-Paul group. At the end of the festival week, we put on a huge show. There were about 150 people on the stage, in the Baie-Saint-Paul arena. I had composed a finale piece for a number where everybody participated. At the last note, there was an enormous crash of thunder followed by an electrical blackout. We knew then that something big would happen. I’m not one for legends, but there was something in the air that evening. We packed our bags by candlelight. As we left, the electricity came back.