THE COLLECTOR OF SONGS

More than a century ago, in the little village of Saint-Urcize in the Cantal region of France, a roadworker named Alexandre Dages was quietly preserving something remarkable. By day, he maintained the country roads. But in his spare moments, he collected songs — writing down their words in notebooks and decorating the pages with his own wonderfully expressive pen-and-ink drawings. Between 1906 and 1919, he recorded more than a hundred songs, capturing something of the humour, romance, hardship and everyday life of his time. Long after the voices that sang those songs had fallen silent, his handwritten collection survived. This original song, The Collector of Songs, is inspired by Alexandre’s extraordinary notebooks and the thought that an ordinary working man could leave behind such a beautiful record of his world. The video includes images of pages from his genuine manuscript, alongside imaginative reconstructions of his life. Historical source: Archives départementales du Cantal, reference 5 NUM 179. 🎵 An original song from Forgotten Stories — bringing forgotten lives and forgotten words to life through music. Forgotten lives. Forgotten words. New songs. #forgottenstories #acousticmusic #folkmusic #thecollectorofsongs #frenchhistory