The French. They are known for their wine, their style, and most of all, their unrelenting belief in their cultural superiority. For over four hundred years, France succeeded at exporting not only their people, but also their culture to every part of the globe. Yet in the past fifty years, France has seen nothing but a reversal of this policy. Prized Indochinese and African colonies rebelled during the 1950’s and quickly won their social and national independence. France became as vulnerable to the corporate culture as any other country as America’s influence spread across the globe. The French have seen an increased reliance on American and English culture, even developing the word “franglais,” a combination of “French” and “English” in French, to satire the numerous English-like words in the language.
Increasingly, France has become more exposed to outside influences and, therefore, more fearful of these influences. Instead of expanding, it has been contracting, slowly moving back into its shell since the height of its power during the Napoleonic Empire. Similarly, immigrants France once welcomed from its colonies are now being turned away and those who do make it are treated harshly. Last week in the first round of voting for President a fascist right-wing politician, Jean-Marie Le Pen, won the popular vote through a campaign which promised to halt immigration (Why France Lurched to the Right). France has been inclined to much xenophobia, especially toward the Algerians and Vietnamese with whom the French army engaged in fierce battles over independence. Though it is not a popular ideology, racism and xenophobia can alter how well one is received in France, especially in areas like music and entertainment.
Patrick Bruel is a perfect antithesis to the cultural values that have been warped in France in the 20th century. Bruel, an Algerian-born French immigrant, began his entertainment career as a soap opera and cinema actor in the early 1980’s (Yahoo Music Biographies: Patrick Bruel). Soon he tried his hand at a music career and rapidly developed a massive following among the young girls of France. His immense popularity became known as “Bruelmania” (Yahoo Music Biographies: Patrick Bruel). His first album, “Alors Regarde” (Come Look) quickly sold over two million records and Bruel embarked on a tour of over150 French cities.
Struggling to find his own cultural identity, his albums mixed American, French, and Middle Eastern influences. His musical successes, however, often stemmed from the two or three songs on his album that showed only French and American influences. Bruel hated this image; and, in an attempt to come across as more faithful to his origins, he tried to evolve beyond the pop music sound. Critics routinely, and perhaps unfairly, disparaged Bruel for abandoning his past. As he has matured as an artist he has moved successfully beyond pop music (Tout sur Patrick Bruel). Once one of the most popular and best-selling French artists, Bruel has seen his popularity decline as he records more diversified and complex music. (Yahoo Music Biographies: Patrick Bruel). Thus he represents the ever-present hegemony faced in musicians of mixed backgrounds: get westernized or get out.
“Qui a le Droit” (“Who Has the Right”), a symbolic song of Bruel’s early career, investigates the rigid social traditions he sees around him. Using only a piano and his voice, the song is slow with easily understood lyrics and absent of any non-Western influences. Becoming the featured single on a live album entitled “Si Ce Soir” (“If Only Tonight”), which eventually sold over three million records, “Qui a le Droit” turned into a fan favorite of the young girls who poured into his shows (Tout sur Patrick Bruel). Examining the unquestioned patriarchal structure of family, he begins the song with “One is always told to listen to his father “ and “Mother told me that I was too little to understand” (Patrick Bruel – Qui a le Droit). In the following lines “Who has the right, who has the right / Who has the right to do that / With a child who really believes / What a parent says,” he scrutinizes the effects of a parent’s absolute sway (Patrick Bruel – Qui a le Droit). It is ironic that a song detailing the lies adults create to hide the truth of life to children that children (or the young girls in the audience) drown out the adult, Patrick Bruel, throughout the recording. Yet this live album was among his most popular, largely because of this live version of “Qui a le Droit” (Yahoo Music Biographies: Patrick Bruel).
The adoration of thousands of young girls shouting his name and overwhelming his voice did not satisfy his artistic desires. As his success mounted, Bruel endeavored to shed his pop star image by reinventing his sound back to his Middle Eastern roots. “Au Café des Délices,” a single released from his 1999 album “Juste Avant,” indicated the changes his music would encompass during the late 90’s. The song begins with a woman singing in a Middle Eastern fashion and utilizes a lute The refrain is his voice and, in the background, one hears a woman singing similar lyrics. Paroles.net identifies the refrain as “Yalil yalil abibi yalil yalil yalil abibi yalil,” which are nonsense words in French. Absent of an overt political or social message, “Au Café des Délices” instead relies on the ideas of love, seemingly making it a more pop-style song. It appears that while Bruel exchanged popular methods for his own style, he fell back upon pop song messages. Unlike his preceding albums, “Juste Avant” did not gross over one million units. It sold just one-sixth the amount his live album had sold only three years before.
Manau, a rap and hip-hop group, although on the other side of the musical spectrum, faced the same problems in partaking in ‘French’ music, as did Patrick Bruel. The three members of the group all hailed from Normandy, a section of northwest France that still has strong ties to its Celtic past. Though all French, they identified themselves with Celtic culture and, in fact ‘Manau’ means the “Island of Man” in Gaelic. Their first album “Panique Celtique,” released in 1998, sold over one and a half million records (Yahoo Music Biographies: Manau). The following year the group won the Victoire de la Musique award for best rap group, due to the credit they received for innovating ‘Celtitude,’ or the phenomenon of mixing hip-hop and Celtic styles (Yahoo Music Biographies: Manau). Their music, however, has never embraced a truly ‘French’ style, but rather relies on American innovation (hip-hop and rap) and experimenting in Celtic traditions.
Literally meaning the future is long past, “L'avenir est un Long Passé,” a song from “Panique Celtique,” reflects the cultural and political identity crisis that French generations face in modern life. The first verse examines the life of a teenager named Marcel on a battlefield during World War I. His hands begin to tremble as he sees his comrades in the trench dead. Realizing he too soon will die, he wonders what he is dying for and compares his situation to that of a dead animal being chopped up by a butcher. The comparison evokes the uneasiness many French feel when remembering World War I, a war which history regards as the fault of arrogant leaders willing to send millions to their death over petty diplomatic issues. The second verse begins with “A black pupil surrounded by white / A blank, waxed face with an endless glare / Only a few steps away are German troops / It is 1944. Jean-Marc is a resistant” (Manau). Jean-Marc saw French men who collaborated with the Nazis force his father and mother onto trains for the transportation of Jews. The verse ends with a final act of resistance that ends his life: destroying a train with explosives. The last verse develops an overall contemplation in the first person, as if the first two verses were a dream. The narrator wonders if he is caught in history. Is France too caught in one conflict after another, which the young and disbelieving are forced to fight? Will the youth of the country always be made to suffer for the mistakes of the past? The uncertainty of the world from the French perspective is summed up in the final three lines: “Is Jean-Marc my previous life? Is it a continuation of the present, a future long past? / I ask you to think of what has happened, the evil in the everyday Establishment / France is a train forever derailing / Has the future passed us?” (Manau).
While Manau’s lyrics may evaluate the obvious problems France faces in the 21st century, their musical style unintentionally reveals hegemonies in French music. Artists no longer look toward traditional or contemporary French music for inspiration; instead, they draw on global, especially American, influences to fuel their music. Their hip-hop influence comes from the streets of urban American cities, not France, which is particularly evident in their beats and their samples. “Un Mauvais Dieu” begins with a towering God-like voice and fades into the actual song with a musical quotation from an American rap song randomly placed throughout the song. “Le Chant des Druides”, literally meaning the “Song of the Druids” features Gaelic monk-like chanting Celtic style behind classic instruments. Many of the songs could be by Dr. Dre save for the language. French lyrics and American beats form the ambiguous nature of Manau’s songs, symptomatic of the problem most French rappers face when using in an American innovation.
France is entering a time period when it is in the unusual position of having little or no power in the global arena. This has left many French questioning the value and the identity of what they were always told was great. Many young French, unsure of what French culture is, are abandoning the roots created by their forefathers, no longer bathing in the arrogance of glorious years long past. With a lack of belief in country and culture, a growing population of immigrants, and the American consumer culture slowly creeping in, French music mirrors the change in French life and attitude. Critics may regard artists such Patrick Bruel and Manau as succumbing to an American culture that does not identify with the older generations and thus part of what dilutes ‘French’ culture. In truth, they represent the cultural hegemony that has overtaken France. Much like the McDonalds now on every street corner in Paris, American excerpts and musical quotations is a staple of French rap. ‘Frenchified’ American pop dominates the airwaves and record sales. Thus, French music has begun to give in to the American culture hegemony, slowly being fed into the Big Mac Machine of the McWorld.
Works Cited
“ Au Café des Délices.”
<http://www.paroles.net/t.php?11001>
Crumley, Brian. “Why France Lurched to the Right.” April 22, 2002.
<http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,232750,00.html>
“ Manau” <http://perso.club-internet.fr/szelag/manaupar.htm>
“ Manaufficiel” <http://www.manaufficiel.com/>
“ Patrick Bruel – Qui a le droit.”
<http://www.xs4all.nl/~verhelst/lyrics/qui-a-le-droit.html>
“ Tout sur Patrick Bruel.” <http://www.patrick-bruel.net/>
“ Yahoo Music Biographies: Manau.”
<http://fr.music.yahoo.com/biographies/manau.html>