Friday's French music break - Calogero, "Le portrait"

Friday's French music break this week comes from an artist who needs little or no introduction to the French.

It's Calogero (Calogero Maurici) with his latest single "Le portrait".

Calogero (screenshot live performance of "Un jour au mauvais endroit" le Grand Studio RTL)

The song is another melodic masterpiece from a man who has well and truly made his mark on the French music scene.

Once again, Calogero delivers an instantly recognisable tune which is more than pleasing to the ear with a voice that matches perfectly.

It's in the tradition of what he describes as pop-rock: another memorable and moving melody along the lines of  "En apesanteur", released in 2002, "Si seulement je pouvais lui manquer" (2004) "Pomme C" (2007) a couple of duos,  "Face à la mer" (2004 with rapper Passi) and "La débâcle des sentiments" (2008 with co Circus band member Stanislas), and, and, and.

Hit on the links to take a listen.

Now, there's a lot of material out there about Calogero and his career including inevitably Wikpedia in French and English (it's worth comparing the two, if you can).

From his beginnings as Charlie, lead singer of the 1980s band Les Charts, his re-emergence at in 2000 as a solo singer and the path which has seen him become an established member of mainstream French music scene.

So there's no need to repeat it all here.

You can simply search the Net, and you'll come up with something.

But it's worth perhaps pointing out just how respected and prominent Calogero has become over the years.

He has written for a number of artists including, Jenifer, Patrick Fiori, Françoise Hardy, Pascal Obispo, Florent Pagny and...of course (because just about every French composer has)...Johnny Hallyday.

And a fair number showed up for a recent edition of the France 2 Saturday evening entertainment programme "Le Grand Show", dedicated to to the 43-year-old and to celebrate 15 years (as a solo artist) as well as the release of his most recent album, "Les Feux d'artifice".

Which brings us back nicely to this week's Friday's French music break - "Le portrait" - the fourth track from the album to be released as a single.

Enough words.

Just listen - and enjoy.

Oh yes...and if you get the chance, try to see him live. He's on tour until April 2015.

Friday's French music break - Étienne Daho, "En surface"

Friday's French music break this week is from a singer who first broke on to the music scene back in 1981.

It's "En surface", the most recent single from Étienne Daho and taken from his 2013 album "Les Chansons de l'innocence retrouvée"

Étienne Daho (screenshot from official video of "En surface".

As you can tell, Daho has been around a while and has built up a firm and loyal fan base and has become (in the words of the promotional blurb) "one of the most influential personalities to have emerged on the French scene in the last 30 years"

Part of the problem (for those not quite so enamoured of his music) is that Daho seems to have been "singing"  (inverted commas entirely intentional as he has a "voice" that surely only the French could "love") variations of the same song since the 1980s.

And in fact, he appears to be well and truly stuck in that era, offering up little that is sparklingly different, not to mention tuneful and instead relying on a tried and tested recipe of electro-pop "synth-driven and rock-surf influenced" (his English language Wikipedia entry, so you know it must be right). music which has, admittedly, served him well over the decades.

Very well in fact with every album turning gold or platinum and a slew of successful singles.

Granted "the familiarity factor" could probably be said to be true for many artists who've proven their longevity, but in the process, Daho just sounds too moody and bored when he sings. Don't you think?

"En surface" is one of those songs that you hear and wish would be over quickly because the melody and the "low whispery voice" have a combined soporific effect (for some) which will simply send you off to the Land of Nod.

All right. That's not exactly fair - just an opinion.

There are plenty around who have enjoyed, and continue to do so, Daho's music. And the album from which this track was taken, received some pretty good reviews when it was released.

Writing in Le Journal du dimanche, critic Éric Mandel described "Les Chansons de l'innocence retrouvée" as an "ambitious and elegant album" and one that was "sumptuous with songs that stood out for their emotional power."

Oh well.

And then there are the diehard fans, some of whose comments on the "En surface" video on YouTube are equally gushing

"Magnifique chanson , magnifique clip, magnifique chanteur, magnifique voix !" for example. Really, you shouldn't need to run that throught Google translate.

Or

"Une très belle chanson."

And

"Ma chanson préférée de l'album.....octobre est encore loin  pour revivre la magie de ses concerts."

Ah October...and the "Diskönoir" tour which will, over the next few months, see Daho take the show on the road around France (with three dates at Olympia in Paris) Belgium and Luxembourg, plus a date in London on October 23.

Ready? Judge for yourselves.

Actually it's not so bad after a dozen or so hearings....

François Hollande renames Kobane, "Konabe"

Even if you're not especially interested in what's making the news, the chances are that you've heard of Kobane.

The town on the border of Syria and Turkey has been the scene of fighting between Islamic State militants and Kurdish defenders for the past month and has received extensive coverage internationally.


So you would think that leaders from around the world would not only be familiar with what's happening there but would also be able to say the town's name properly.

All right, there might be differences in spelling, accents and stress between different languages (and those helpful people at Wikipedia provide a few alternatives) but there's surely consensus as to the order in which both the letters and the three syllables come.

Right?

Wrong.

Not, apparently, if you happen to be the French president, François Hollande.

François Hollande at the Institut du monde arabe (screenshot from Le Petit Journal on Canal +)

Proving once again that he is a verbal law unto himself, Hollande managed to mangle the town's name not once, but twice, during and after a speech he gave at the Institut du monde arabe (Arab World Institute) on Tuesday.

Kobane in Hollande-speak became Konabe.

And both he and his advisors seemed oblivious to the fact that he couldn't pronounce the town's name correctly.

You can hear Hollande's gaffe from 12 minutes 45 seconds until 13 minutes 45 seconds - the  "L'instant président" segment of the "Le Petit Journal" on Canal + with host Yann Barthès broadcast on Tuesday evening.

Classic Flanby...unless, as Barthès pointed out, Hollande really was referring to the village of Konabe in Japan (yes, it exists).

Now that brings back memories.

Wasn't it in Japan back in June 2013 that Hollande, while wanting to pay tribute to the 10 Japanese nationals who had died in the Algerian hostage crisis in January of the same year actually expressed his condolences to the Chinese?

Valls en déplacement pour un parking - Le Petit Journal du 14/10

French is the language of the future - really?

This sounds (or rather, reads) like an April Fool but it's apparently completely kosher.

The language of the future is...er...French.

Well, that's one way of interpreting a recent study carried out by the French (what else)  investment bank Natixis which indicates that there will be more people in the world speaking French in the year 2050 than any other language.

Ahead of Mandarin or English?

Cue that great French thinker of our time, TV reality "star" Nabilla Benattia (who, you'll doubtless be happy to know, has had her Wikipedia entry reinstated), "Allô ! Non, mais allô quoi!"

Apparently the Nataxis report predicts there'll be 750 million French speakers worldwide because that's the language spoken in countries with some of the fastest-growing populations - particularly sub-Saharan Africa.

A bit of a stretch for Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, writing in the business magazine Forbes, who questions the study's methodology because "it counts as French-speakers all the inhabitants of countries where French is an official language, which probably won’t be the case."

At the same time though, he concedes that "French is still a fast-growing, global language" and "will continue to be present on all continents by 2050."

Time to break out your "Bescherelle" and "Le Petit Robert"?

A top French interviewer gets a lesson in journalism from his (fellow journalist) wife

French broadcast journalists don't really have much of reputation for aggressive interviewing.

They often treat their political "guests" with proverbial kid gloves, allowing them to avoid the real question that has just been asked by refraining from posing a follow-up.

All right, let's be kind, It's hard to stop someone who clearly refuses to answer a question and chooses instead to read from the hymn sheet, ignoring the "facts" quoting statistics to bolster their argument and never, ever admitting they could be wrong.

And let's face it, there's nothing most politicians love more than pontificating...well, that and the sound of their own voice.

There are some exceptions of course among those actually "doing" the interviewing on the radio and the TV. And among them is undoubtedly Jean-Jacques Bourdin,

He has a daily radio programme on RMC, around 20 minutes of which includes a face-to-face interview with a guest,
 (usually, but not always a politician) on his or her views on some of the stories making the headlines.

The interview is also broadcast simultaneously on BFM TV, and the least that can be said is that the men and women who agree to sit across the table from Bourdin (and there are plenty of them) know exactly what to expect.

Jean-Jacques Bourdin (screenshot Nouvel Obs report)

Bourdin is direct, blunt, doesn't suffer fools and seldom allows his guests off the hook easily.

His somewhat intimidating style seems to bring out the best in many of his (political) guests and it's also an approach he uses throughout the whole of his four-hour radio programme dedicated to subjects making the headlines and during which he mixes interviews with "professionals" from whatever domain with 'phone calls, emails and text messages from listeners.

Nothing seems to faze the man and he appears to be the one in control.

Well most of the time that is.

Recently though he had his knuckles well and truly rapped, albeit briefly, by the only person really capable of doing so. His wife, Anne Nivat.

Bourdin called upon Nivat in her capacity as a journalist who has covered conflicts in Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan for her comments on the Volgograd bombings on December 29 and 30.

Nivat knows her stuff when it comes to Russian politics - if you have any doubts just take a look at her Wikipedia entry - and was clearly none too pleased with her husband's rather shoddy approach to the subject.

Right from the start of the interview it was clear that Bourdin was not exactly at his confident best, admitting that, as Nivat was his wife, he would tutoyer her but, habit getting the best of him, he slipped into the formal vouvoyer.

"After the first bombing the decapited head of a suicide bomber was found," he began, only to be interrupted by Nivat.

"A suicide bomber - that's what you say, because nobody knows anything at the moment,"

"You're simply repeating a newswire from Agence France Presse which is in turn repeating the propoganda of the Russian government," she continued.

"At the moment we don't have enough information. We don't know anything. It could also be a man who was an accomplice."


Jean-Jacques Bourdin se fait houspiller par sa... par Gentside

Bourdin continued his unintentional floundering by opening the door for another lesson on Russian politics by trying to move the interview along briskly with, "Nobody seems to talk much about the Caucasus. It has apparently all been 'settled'but nothing has been 'settled'..."

"No, but we no longer speak of the Caucasus because the media (in other words you and your colleagues) choose to talk about other things," replied Nivat.

"Just because we (the media) no longer talk about the Caucasus, doesn't mean that everything has been 'settled'."

Ah yes. There's nothing like being put in your place by your nearest and dearest.

Little surprise then, that Bourdin appeared to thank his wife a little too hurriedly before moving on to the next item.

There's a lesson in the tale somewhere - and it's not just one of journalism.

And, dear reader, just a reminder of how important independent journalism is and how dangerous it can be to fall into the trap of rehashing what politicians might want us all to believe...courtesy of the latest campaign spot from Reporters sans frontières.