French songs presentation

Hi, Dear Comenius friends !

Here is a presentation of the songs French pupils have studied for the next Comenius Concert.

 


Ménilmontant                           

Picture a man with big blue eyes, a charming smile who’s wearing a boater and you can see  Charles Trenet. His 60-year-old career was made of creativity, fantasy, poetry and swing. In the song entitled Ménilmontant composed in 1938, he nostalgically evokes the neighborhood where he grew up. It’s a small village near Paris where he appears to have left his heart.

Le sud or The South

The South is a place that looks like Louisiana or Italy. There is laundry hanging out on the terrace, there are children playing on the lawn. It’s a good place to live in where we’d like time to last longer. Nino Ferrer, a song-writer and a composer born in Genoa in Italy wrote the lyrics of this song in 1973 and used         Brazilian melodies to compose the music.

Couleur Café
Serge Gainsbourg was a major song-writer and composer in the French Pop Music universe. All along his career, he was inspired by different mucical trends such as rock, reggae, classical music and jazz and he made the French language sound better than anyone. In the song Couleur café, composed in 1964, charm and caffeine mix together on an afro-Cuban beat.




La vie en rose

Edith Piaf is considered as the archetypal French singer and even 50 years after her death, she is still the most popular French singer all over the world. La vie en rose, composed in 1945, is THE love song and it’s rapidly become a standard. Famous artists like Louis Armstrong, Grace Jones, Donna Summer, and more recently Emilie Simon or even Iggy Pop have reinterpreted her songs in many different styles.

Les Champs Elysées (no translation needed but a little precision: it is the most famous boulevard in Paris)

The song Les Champs Elysées was created by Joe Dassin in 1969. As many other pop songs from this period, it is adapted from an English song : Waterloo Road in 1968. The French lyrics were composed by Pierre Delanoë. The song evokes the carefree state of mind of the post-May-68 era. Everything is possible on les Champs Elysées : Finding what we’re looking for, playing music, dancing and even finding love!

Greeting from the French Team
See you soon !
Gilles