1 Francophone Popular Music : a Report from Les Francofolies De Montréal Christopher M. Jones Carnegie Mellon University – BH
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1 Francophone Popular Music : A Report from Les Francofolies de Montréal [published in Contemporary French Civilization, August 2006] Christopher M. Jones Carnegie Mellon University – BH 160 Pittsburgh, PA 15213 [email protected] 2 Francophone Popular Music: A Report from Les Francofolies de Montréal Introduction Popular music is a multi-facetted and highly visible phenomenon, and increasingly an object of academic study. Musical and textual elements are insufficient to explain the meaning that popular music has come to embody. As Roy Shuker notes, this meaning can only be elucidated adequately by “…considering the nature of the production context, including state cultural policy, the texts and their creators, and the consumers of the music and their spatial location.” (x) The established history and practice of Les Francofolies and its Francophone context make the festival doubly attractive as an object of study, since the festival is clearly an instrument of cultural policy, as well as a concentrated display of aspects of the dissemination and promotion of popular music. 2004 marked the sixteenth year of Les Francofolies de Montréal, begun in 1988 with six acts to promote “la chanson d’expression française.” (Program 78) The founders Alain Simard, Guy Latraverse and Laurent Saulnier of l’Equipe Spectra 1 are still involved, though in 2004 a non-profit institution with a staff of nearly 1002 (not including temporary workers) spent $7.2 million dollars3 to put on over 200 shows by 158 acts over a period of ten days. As “the world’s largest festival of French-language music” (Bellerose) Les Francofolies can be subjected to multiple readings of interest to students of Francophone culture. The festival draws from several current myths, including that of Quebec as a multicultural national space, Canada as a bilingual nation, and the political/economic Francophonie as being de facto Francophone. The festival, while using the word “promotion” to describe its relationship to Francophone music, is subject to a multitude of contingencies that cause its role to fluctuate between interpreting and determining what is occurring in the Francophone musical space, especially within Quebec. Some of these contingencies include the context of Montreal and its perpetual festival environment, the influence of other Francofolies (there are many worldwide), sponsorship and support constraints, and the effect of a permanent festival organization on its ability to adapt to changes in this dynamic cultural domain. The performances were presented by categories, in concert halls, clubs and on outdoor stages that closed two blocks of St. Catharine Street in central Montreal for ten days. The author attended up to six concerts a day for the duration of the festival,4 and attempted to sample the broadest possible spectrum of musical expression. This represents less than 25% of the performers present, however, and even with prior knowledge of another significant percentage of the artists, my concert notes and conclusions about the health and variety of Francophone music as presented at Les Francofolies require the standard caveats about the personal limitations of the author.5 Foundation myths 1: A bilingual nation Les Francofolies in principle support Francophone expression in a bilingual nation—Canada. The concept of the bilingual nation was Pierre Trudeau’s, and in the years since his stewardship of Canadian national policy ended, the concept has failed to make headway. As Veltmann points out, the only true bilingual areas of Canada outside of Quebec today are the Acadian homeland in New Brunswick and the federal government in Ottawa, and—within Quebec--West Montreal, Hull/Gatineau and small 3 portions of the Eastern Townships (309). Of these areas, perhaps only Montreal and the federal government are maintaining bilingual practice; the other regions are sliding apparently inexorably toward regional monolingualism.6 As Quebec limits its “national” impetus to its own territory, Anglophone Canada becomes increasingly intolerant of the Quebec exception, and less likely to favor the institutionalizing of Trudeau’s vision throughout Canada, now considered quaint and outdated within Quebec. This is still an improvement from the Seventies, when nationalist Québécois greeted Trudeau’s notion with open hostility. Remaining artifacts of bilingualism in the festival include a small percentage of songs sung in English (the Frenchman Laurent Voulzy’s medley of Anglophone hits, for example) or even written in English (a Montreal band, Balthazar, ended their set with two songs in English). Most of these occurrences have less to do with Canadian bilingualism than they do with the market realities of rock and rap, and the Anglophone cultural origins of many of the music forms that now dominate world popular music. Foundation myths 2: A multicultural Quebec The birth rate of Québécois of French origin (Québécois de souche, or pur laine) has been in free fall since the Quiet Revolution, in part due to the collapse of Catholic social and moral constraints and the increase in divorce and abortion. This ethnic group now constitutes a minority within Quebec borders (Seymour). Subsequent population growth has been primarily among newer immigrant communities. The language laws of the Seventies succeeded in stopping the early movement toward English among allophones (non-English and non-French speakers) and immigrants, but large groups of immigrants with alternative cultural traditions continue to take root, especially in Montreal. Currently there are attempts to characterize contemporary Quebec as a multicultural space bound by the common language of French. This characterization shifts the definition of Quebec nationalism from a cultural basis (language and Francophone culture) to a civic definition (language and values/institutions where culture is a variable), as Seymour explains. A multicultural society is primarily evident in Montreal, however, in spite of attempts by Quebec Immigration to decentralize immigrant settlement patterns away from the metropolis. The gesture of Les Francofolies in this direction is a stage called Les Spectacles multiculturels, which presents acts from ethnic communities in North America and Europe as well as from North and West African Francophone countries. The stage is supported by Hydro-Québec, which is not without irony, given the giant state-owned power utility’s often stormy relationship with the First Nations (the term used for Native Americans in Canada), during the massive re-configuring of the natural environment of Quebec’s Great North to maximize its electrical power-producing capacity. The stage was well supported by Montreal festival goers, as well as representative numbers of the local communities (Haitian, West African). The musicians interacted with the audience in French, but sang in other languages (Creole, Wolof, Arabic). An article in the Montreal Gazette just prior to the festival offered a pessimistic appraisal of multicultural tolerance in Quebec. Entitled “Quebecers least accepting of minorities, poll shows” it offered statistics that indicated Quebecers were less willing than residents of Ontario to, for example, accept marriage of a son or daughter with a Muslim or Jew, though this point of view was mitigated by speculation that these 4 attitudes were the fruit of secular and feminist suspicion of organized religion generally (Heinrich). The poll highlights the crucial difference between “living with” as opposed to “looking at” or “listening to” people of other ethnicities. The primary examples of actual integrative practice at Les Francofolies occurred less on the Spectacles multiculturels stage than in the rap and hip-hop groups that could be found on other stages and in clubs. Foundation myths 3: La Francophonie La Francophonie is an international organization of states, territories and other entities intended in part to combat the economic and political hegemony of the Anglophone states on the world stage, as well as to preserve and promote aspects of culture issued from these spaces that have some Francophone or hybrid component. Its primary organs are a series of summits, now numbering ten after Burkina Faso in 2004, the Ministère de la Francophonie in France, and a series of international committees and initiatives in domains as diverse as telecommunications, trade and cinema. Quebec was an early and enthusiastic participant in summits, seeking to validate its national standing and priorities independent of Canada as a whole. Canada was lukewarm about Quebec’s participation, judging that a Canadian representative would be sufficient. Part of the mission statement of Les Francofolies makes mention of aims coherent with the goals of the Francophonie: “le but [est] de promouvoir la chanson d’expression française, de favoriser sa diffusion et de stimuler la circulation des artistes de toute la francophonie.” (Program 78) The evidence of this year’s festival, however, indicates that “la chanson d’expression française” and “des artistes de toute la francophonie” are not an easy match. Dan Behrman, responsible for programming Le Monde multiculturel stage, described the single criterion for inclusion in the festival: “All we ask is that our artists express themselves in French on stage, as this is a French-speaking festival.”(Rodriguez July 24) The artists with credible links to Francophone countries outside of France and Quebec that the current author was able to hear sang in Arabic, Spanish, Creole, Wolof,