Helvétiquement Vôtre Coffret

Description

The song by Michel Bühler is the opposite of the commonplace, of those insipid tunes that the faucets of showbiz and subservient media continuously spew out. Of what they no longer even dare to call "song" but "sound." Of this sound that feeds the donkeys.
This Helvetian draws his art from other origins, between Commune and Communal. Commune like those seventy-one days of utopia that imagined a direct democracy, alas fleeting, quickly repressed; communal like a common song, shared. Communal for the teacher he was, for still this idea of sharing, of transmission…
Bühler's song is, if not a battle cry, at least a commitment. Clearly of public utility. It does not exist to entertain frankly, although it does, but to testify, to educate, in the manner of a gazette. To properly situate it, we must bring back from oblivion this beautiful term of popular education which, in not so distant times, went hand in hand with song. Before it, through neglect as much as through intent, became predominantly a tool of dumbing down…
For fifty years now, with a fluctuating success worthy of the Swiss mountains, he has sung about people, the march of this world that really only knows how to retreat, the evils of globalization, the struggle of peoples to be self-determined. A song always reworked, woven with humanity, stamped with common sense.
More than ever, it clashes with silence, with indifference, and lives in the maquis where he shares the fate of his own, other artists of his caliber, of his character, rebellious and defiant simply because they dare to sing when nothing invites them to do so anymore.
What strikes at first glance about Bühler is the evocation of people, of the little people. Those who, precisely, have never had a voice in the chapter. In this, Michel Bühler is akin to François Béranger, Anne Sylvestre, Gilles Vigneault, Michèle Bernard and others, who give ample space in their verses to these anonymous lives, to the hopes and sufferings of the people, to the places where they live. Bühler is empathy, whose song gives justice to the marginalized, restoring the dignity that has been taken from them. In his verses, people exist. At least, there, they are not invisible. Bühler's song is not "modern" in the sense of the canons, the dogmas of the moment: programmers and journalists mock him for that. But he, like us, doesn't care: he is ageless and will survive the ridiculous and futile trends, the singers produced en masse, out of touch, the songs with planned obsolescence, barely sung and already forgotten. He is of a powerful song that has existed forever and will exist for a long time to come, that will always find the furrows, the paths, the maquis if necessary, to exist, to instill a difference that, if you really listen, is nothing but an expression of common sense.
Michel Bühler is of this tradition of news peddlers, of songs, of almost postmen who bring us news of the people. Who, by speaking of their own, speak of us. In this, Bühler is a bit of a journalist, certainly more than the card-carrying press members who misinform at every edition. I believe Bühler is necessary, even indispensable. He is a craftsman of life, of song, whose strength is matched only by his modesty.