SE CHANTA
Traditionally attributed to Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix, and viscount of Bearn (died in 1381). Se Chanta is considered by both historians and musical critics as being a love song, a nostalgic serenade to a woman far away. It was common in Linguadoc, and was said to have conveyed to distant places by the sailors of Toulouse, and each Occitan town and area made it its own by adding a different variant to it, which was often highly romantic and poetic.
So that while the original song talked of a mountain setting, in Nantes the setting is the bridge of the town. While at in the Nimes version the songbird praises the light skin of the ladies: if skin of his love one was darkened by the sun he would wash it with rose water or dew.
This song was already popular in the Waldensian valleys and gradually became known throughout the Occitan valleys in 1977 thanks to the musicians of the Occitan conservatory of Toulouse. The valley peoples immediately fell in love with it and the mountain version of Phoebus with the odd variation seemed the most appropriate. The most famous musical group of the valleys, Lou Dalfin, made it into an authentic anthem symbolic of a populace which seeks to find its own roots.