Festival de musique émergente remains a fantastique and fraught francophone showcase

As a monoglot U.S. writer abroad, I smile when I hear Camilla Sparksss play “Backflip” at the free pre-festival show for Quebec's Festival de musique émergente. During of a set of playful and concussive electronic pop—the type where the beats reach into your chest and grab hold of your heartrate—a pre-recorded voice rings over the speakers: “Do you speak French?” “No,” the Canadian-Swiss artist responds, “but I understand it.” It’s an equally ironic and (for me) appropriate kick-off to the Festival de Musique Émergente en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, which closes out summer in Quebec with a showcase of underground music, especially from the province, and especially by French-speakers. The pregame at L’Escogriffe Bar in Montreal eases me into the scene: local punks Thee Soreheads scream anglophone feminist theses like “I’m Not Your Fucking Sex Doll”; Balaclava from New York City bobble through meathead motorik psych-punk tunes so distorted they’re hard to decipher in my own language; then Camilla Sparksss spins beats and guitar drones on twin turntables, singing in her native English until it’s time to bid the crowd farewell, by which, of course, I mean au revoir. As she directs people to...