Full Description
While music lovers from all over the world have tried to recreate the ambience of French cafes by playing music from stars such as Piaf, Trenet and Chevalier, intellectuals, sociologists and policy makers in France have been embroiled in passionate debate about just what constitutes 'real' French music. In the late 1950s and 1960s a wave of Anglo-American rock 'n' roll and pop hit Europe and disrupted French popular music forever. The cherished sounds of the chanson were sidelined, fragmented or merged with pop styles and instrumentation. From this point on, French music and music culture have been splintered into cultural divides - pop culture vs high culture; mass culture vs 'authentic' popular culture; national culture vs Americanization. This book investigates the exciting and innovative segmentation of the French music scene and the debates it has spawned. From an analysis of the chanson as national myth, to pop, rap, techno and the State, this book is the first full-length study to make sense of the complexity behind the history of French popular music and its relation to 'authentic' cultural identity.
Contents
Contents Acknowledgements ix French Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 Part I: Defining Authenticity 1 Popular Music before 1958 9 2 The 1960s: Authenticity and Barbarism 21 3 From 1968 to the Present: Authenticity and M'tissage 37 4 Chanson as National Myth: The Authenticity Debate 63 5 Denationalising Authenticity: The Sociological Debate 87 Part II: Politicising Authenticity 6 Music and Politics before 1981 113 7 Music and Politics 1981-93 131 8 Policy and the Music Industry at the End of the Millennium 151 9 Policy and Its Discontents: The Republican Debate 167 10 Techno and the State: The Cultural Debate 183 Conclusion 203 Chronology 215 Bibliography 223 Index 235
