… but not so good either!

The bad boys of the 16th have stuck. They’re not so bad* – they’re downright awful.

I feel a social responsibility to keep every Anglophone out there updated on the world of French novelty rap, so this instalment is devoted to the 2007 clip from the Dior Homme boys, Passy Mal, showing that even the gilded youth of the affluent Parisian 16th arrondissement can keep it real.

From Trocadéro to Passy, they’re the ones doing R’n’B…


The have some nerve though, going through the motions of a battle with the crowned sovereign of French “raparody”, Fatal Bazooka!

I guess the only reason this clip stirs a giggle from me is that they are from my ‘hood and some of the visual gags in the film clip are all too close to the truth. Their attempts at “hardcore” are pitiful though, as the only loaded weapons around here come in the form of stocks, bonds, trust funds and investments.

I’m here as an au pair, mind you. I’m not hereditarily stinking rich or shaking my stuff in finance. It’s eye-opening though and at times I have to concentrate on keeping a straight face when walking along Rue de Passy.

Guillaume and I saw some real, authentic basketball bad boys on 16th turf one night at a local supermarket though. But these Harlem Globetrotter hoodlums were buying a six pack of litre milk cartons and some cookies, so the cashier and queuing customers could only look on with doey glances from loving eyes and fond sighs at how it was just so adorable.

We hypothesised later that perhaps they were lining their stomachs before a heavy night of drinking, but the cookies were a little incongruous in that theory!

* The golden ghetto-wannabes Passy Mal play on the words pas si mal (not so bad) and their boutique-lined Rue de Passy origins.

After the first song it was question and answer time… and as the audience only contained three members – one woman who sang along to every word, my friend and myself – pretty soon the spotlight was turned to us: in 25 words or less, what is your definition of chaâbi?

Like fish out of water, we gulped a few times with stunned expressions on our faces, downed another slurp of lemon-infused beer and confessed that we really had no idea.

This wasn’t a university lecture, but an evening’s suggestion of entertainment. Last weekend I had my attention sparked by a small street press advertisement announcing a chaâbi concert, and thinking ‘Algerian Dockers blues from the 1920s’ might be interesting, I roped in a friend and off we went.

The gig was Hafid Djemai at Bab-Ilo, which is just over the back of the butte de Montmartre, and being a bit of a map-reading novice, I suggested that we just take the most direct route there – which unfortunately was charging straight up the hill to its Sacré-Coeur peak, and then charging straight back down again. But we made it, and made it to a modern-looking bar that seemed to be frequented by nothing more than old men, emptiness and silence.

Umm… the music is where?

Directed down to the basement, we encountered more sparse settings. Us. One barman. One woman. One drummer. Great…

The impromptu world music tutorial came into being when we responded with blank expressions to the fact that the next song would be ‘Ya Rayah.’ Incredulous that we were even there without knowing this song, we had the origins of chaâbi explained to us, we were given a brief run-down on the finesse and tone of the traditional Algerian mandolin-meets-guitar-meets-lute instrument and then told a little more about the song. Rachid Taha sings it. I’ve seen Rachid Taha play with Brian Eno in St. Petersburg. He does an Arabic version of ‘Rock the Casbah’, amongst other great songs. Turns out I even have an MP3 of ‘Ya Rayah.’ So it goes…


Rachid Taha performing ‘Ya Rayah’ live.

Luckily, more chaâbi fans turned up and we were spared anymore attention, until the interval came and we found ourselves telling our life histories to the assembled audience.

Do we speak any Arabic? (Ha, we’re struggling with French!)

Are we familiar with Algerian music? (Honestly, to sheepishly admit the truth, we’re not even all that familiar with Algeria…)

My friend let it slip that she was from Australia and we began to hear about cousins in Melbourne, a form of guitar/lute typical to Lebanese music, and the most famous Egyptian singer of the 1960s. We only managed to slip out when the musicians started with the opening notes of the second session… but it was well worth it!

…why not make men the object of desire in aggressive-style gangster rap? A round of thanks to the man of the moment, Michaël Youn, a.k.a Fatal Bazooka for this little egalitarian piece, J’aime trop ton boule. It may not be entirely politically correct, it may not be your cup of tea, but it is darn catchy and opens up the “why not?” possibilities (and after mentioning Les 11 commandements, I couldn’t resist!)

I’ll have this stuck in my head for the rest of the afternoon…

By far the most popular video on this blog has been the Yelle clip featuring those limber-limbed tecktonik dancers. (But don’t just email or tell me about it – there’s a comments feature! Leave your comments on the blog!) So here’s another - but this time a blatant parody of the already-laughable first. Entitled ‘Le cours de Techtonik’, it’s bound to have your hips swaying and hands swirling in no time with easy-to-follow (even in French) move descriptions such as “eczema style” and “vomit… and take it back…”. Have a look. You’ll see what I mean…

Come to think of it, that frog and roast beef cartoon isn’t going to do anything for cross-channel diplomatic zest.

Camille O’Sullivan, on the other hand, might just hold the key…

This cabaret singer, born in London to a French mother and Irish father as the oft-uttered story goes, is renowned for her passionate interpretations of dark songs by men who have musically lingered in the peripheral world of alcoholic depravity and misogynic sexual frustration – Tom Waits, Nick Cave and “Bettina, I’d like to introduce you to…” (she didn’t really say this, by the way) Jacques Brel.

Little-known to English speakers, Jacques Brel was a French-speaking Belgian singer-songwriter of the 1950-70s, whose works contain layer upon layer of tenderness, love, sentimentality, mockery, cynicism, insight, resentment and angst.

I had less-receptively heard some Brel before seeing Camille’s La fille du cirque show, painstakingly translated by my devoted (to Brel) boyfriend, but to see it performed live on stage, half in English to set the scene, and half in French to bring the house down.

Tears streaming down her face, it was hauntingly beautiful to hear her rendition of ‘La chanson des vieux amants’ (’Song for old lovers’):

‘From year to year, as all the seasons fall, I love you more, you know, I love you… still…’

But then, in the very next song, she emerged with PJ Harvey intensity, a heavy electric guitar riff and a military drumbeat to tear my world apart performing ‘Au suivant’ (’Next’).

A repeated call of “next!” punctuates this song about the loss of virginity in an ‘army mobile whorehouse’, with a hundred others in the same predicament. The song develops further as a reflection on how this experience and accompanying gonorrhoea forever scarred his future.

‘And ever since then every woman I’ve taken to bed
Seems to laugh in my arms, to whisper through my head…
you’re next!’

Camille took the audience along for the whole wild ride with her.

To see a woman perform this is absolutely amazing. Nothing better conveys the coarse cry of the rum-fragranced prostitute. Brel’s version seems to incorporate a technique of masking his abomination with a jaunty musical accompaniment (tango xylophones and sexy sax), and Mathieu Chedid’s (-M-) is musically experimental with angelic vocals.

I get all misty-eyed just thinking about it. A truly sensational show, and one that makes me so much happier about being in France to discover it all for myself.

Camille performing Nick Cave’s ‘God is in the house’.

Not only does Le Havre’s Musée Malraux proudly boast of holding the second most extensive collection of impressionist paintings in France after the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, but it is also a hub of youth culture.

Mid-afternoon on a Saturday, our attention was alerted to a growing throng of teenagers in the centre of town. We moseyed on over to check out the unfolding spectacle, only to be strangely surprised. What had initially appeared to be a concert was no more than hundreds crowded around a car with a sound system blaring electro. Fair enough, an impromptu rave. But the most astonishing was the style of dancing that everyone was adopting. I don’t know if I can explain it, but it was a frenetic swirl of arms, a lot of motion centred around the head, with occasional simultaneous horizontal thrusts of the hands. The feet remained more or less stationary, perhaps with some jumping that was blocked from the onlooker’s view by the rest of the crowd. I felt simultaneously superior to this silly group behaviour, but also aged. Was this the new trend, sweeping the world, and I hadn’t realised? I’ve found out subsequently that it even has a name – Tecktonik – one that adheres fully to the sub-cultural electronic music obsession with the letter “k.”

The strange thing is that no-one had any alcohol, and the party was dispersed by night-time. Wow, united by a love of beats? I thought that type of stuff only happened in ecstatic fairy-tales!

… And the Musée Malraux had an exhibition showcasing the work of Le Havre-born artist, Émile-Othon Friesz. Spanning thirty years and some 150 works, the exhibition was a fascinating portrayal of the development of Friesz as an artist. From impressionism to fauvism to expressionism – and the transitory stages in between – Friesz’s works indicate many shifting influences and also changes of geography from the north to the south of France. Very interesting, I can hear you all thinking, but where is more of that ludicrous dancing? Here, let me quench your thirst with a video…

The new single by French act Yelle A Cause des Garçons featuring Tecktonik dancers. Long live the Reebok Pumps! Also check out the linked video entitled ‘The Best of Tecktonik Dance.’ It’s too funny for words!

That’s it! It’s decided! I’m never going to leave my house again and interact with real people! I’m just going to learn French through karaoke! It might not be totally practical in that I won’t be able to hold a normal conversation, but everyone needs someone who can burst into a theatrical “hakuna matata, mais quelle phrase magnifique, hakuna matata, quel chant fantastique! Ces mots signifient, que tu vivras ta vie… sans aucun souci…” every so often… Thank you for opening my eyes to this magnificent new opportunity!

A few years ago, I was in Belize during election time. It was something quite different for me, with election slogans accompanied by steel drums, and the opposition party had a sausage sizzle on the beach, surrounded by the milky blue waters of the Caribbean. Quite the political party, I remember chuckling to myself…

Last weekend topped all that. I went to see a host of French and international bands (along with a crush of thousands of others, so it was hardly an intimate encounter) at La Fête de l’Humanité. Held in the outskirts of Paris at La Courneuve, the Fête de l’Huma (as it’s affectionately known) is an annual music festival organised by the Communist newspaper L’Humanité. This year the festival promised three-days of sensational music, with the leathery torso of Iggy Pop (+ Stooges) providing an intriguing headlining draw card.

I only, unfortunately, managed two late nights of it, because I had to work on both Friday and Saturday during the afternoons. A little over-indulgence on Saturday night, wrote off Sunday for me, and instead of the final sun-drenched day of the festival, I enjoyed the… umm… vistas of my bedroom. Ahem… it happens…

But aside from the music, the festival was something else. An installation of bars and restaurants on a phenomenally enormous site rendered a grid-like maze of white-tarpaulined havens of indulgence, frivolity and ruin. There were many times I had to stop and marvel at how “French” it all was, for in which other country could you find festival food venues offering 32€ menu packages, containing six courses, and paper-clothed tables with serviettes and wine glasses? Each regional communist party had a tent serving specialities of their region, which admittedly contributed directly to my downfall on Saturday night. More about that one later… with photos…