Yann Paranthoën not only left his mark on a whole generation of radio people, but gave others the desire to follow in his footsteps. Died in 2005, he was the author of a radio work rewarded with the prestigious Prix Italia, which he won in 1980 for “Questionnaire pour Lesconil”. “On Nagra” will also be selected in 1987, his journey-tribute to the country of origin of this nomadic tape recorder invented by Stefan Kudelski.
This is how in 2018 Bastien Lambert visited Claude Giovannetti who, responsible for production at Radio France, was the partner of Yann Paranthoën – and his first ear since, each time he finished a sequence, it was her that he made her listen to. She then shows the documentarian three bags of magnetic tapes recorded during their travels in Corsica, between 1987 and 2004.
As memories resurface, Bastien Lambert has the idea for the following device: “We could get together around a tape recorder to take these tapes out of their box. » And that’s how, a few trips back and forth to Corsica later, this “Postcard from Centuri” reaches us today which naturally finds its place on France Culture in the Radiophonic Creation Workshop, this sound experimentation laboratory created in 1969 by Alain Trutat and Jean Tardieu in which a large number of programs by Yann Paranthoën were broadcast.
Leave a trace
And that’s what’s wonderful: how this sound archive of moments spent in Cape Corsica becomes both a subject and an opportunity for Bastien Lambert, through clever mise en abyme, to make the work of Yann Paranthoën heard , his voice and even more that of those he tirelessly recorded. The opportunity to also recognize – and here we must salute the delicate and fair gesture of Bastien Lambert – the importance and place of Claude Giovannetti. We understand that she cherished these moments with him in Corsica, far from his native Brittany – he was born in Ile-Grande, in Côtes-du Nord which became Côtes-d’Armor, in 1935. Far, too, from the Maison de la radio, where he spent a lot of time. In Corsica, no constraints, but always its Nagra.
“Radio completely occupies my life,” he confided to the writer and poet Alain Veinstein in 1985. For him, and his broadcasts are the most obvious proof, radio was an expression in its own right. A way, too, of engraving things, of leaving a trace. By imagining this show which, more than a tribute, resonates and extends the work of Yann Paranthoën, Bastien Lambert brings the latter’s work into a new era.
