Helen Andrews Connects Viral Québécois Folk Clips to America's Own Musical Roots

Helen Andrews posted two notes on Oct. 12 for people enjoying the clips. Andrews’s first note read: “If you are reading this, you also have folk music.” Her second suggested viewers of “A Complete Unknown” might be more sympathetic to Edward Norton’s Pete Seeger because “Mr. Square had a point.” She wrote both notes in a single post on X as @herandrews¹.

Andrews’s post quoted an Oct. 10 post by the X user Rad, who asked, "Who could have imagined Québécois music going viral on the X timeline?" In that post, Rad called the music “beautiful kind of rustic village music” and said it was “well overdue for a comeback”¹; Rad’s X post displayed 232K views. Jean-Sébastien Rioux recalled that on a field trip while he was a student in Québec City in the 1970s or ’80s, someone would start a chanson à répondre as the bus left school grounds, and he and the others would join in².

The revival predates the X moment. In June, Émile Beauséjour reported that videos of song gatherings and call-and-response songs were drawing thousands of views and a younger audience on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. Beauséjour wrote that the platforms now showcase a culture that was once passed on mainly within families and at village events. Xavier St-Aubin Pelletier, a content creator and chansonnier known as Le Père Tobin, told Beauséjour that the atmosphere is the strength of the gatherings: "Souvent, on chante avec 200 personnes qui répondent à une chanson traditionnelle." He said he was surprised by how far his videos spread, and that he had not expected them to catch on so much³.

The crowds are real. Jean Desrochers of CRAPO in Saint-Félix-de-Valois told Beauséjour that several recent song evenings had sold out. CRAPO, which has existed for more than 20 years and holds traditional song evenings every month, now draws people from beyond its region, and Desrochers said some attendees book hotel rooms to come. The article adds that new groups of teenage and young adult musicians are appearing in the Lanaudière region³.

The form also has a long broadcast history: a 1980 Soirée canadienne episode shows a singer leading La Boiteuse while the audience repeats the lines and claps along⁴.

This is a cultural item, not a policy fight.

Sources

1. @herandrews on X, 2026-10-12: Two quick notes for those who have been enjoying these clips: 1. If you are reading this, you also have folk music. 2. Maybe next time you watch “A Complete Unknown,” you’ll be a little more sympathetic to Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, because Mr. Square had a, 2026-10-12
2. Rad on X: "Oh these Quebec folk songs keep getting better and better! Who could have imagined Québécois music going viral on the X timeline?
3. Le folklore québécois trouve un nouveau public
4. Excerpt from the program “Soirée canadienne” in Saint-Eustache | Come and Celebrate as One of Us: The History of the Fêtes du Vieux-Saint-Eustache