Record Review: Annabelle Chvostek “String of Pearls”

 

An album for those who reckon there’s just not enough singer-songwriters celebrating the French and Weimar cabaret era, the former Wailin’ Jennys member Annabelle Chvostek digs into her East European heritage alongside her Canadian background and marital Uruguayan influences for this gloriously ebullient sixth album ‘Strong of Pearls’. Co-produced, from Montevideo, by composer and multi-instrumentalist, Fernando Rosa who assembled an array of tango and classical musicians to evoke the days of 30s tango and jazz swing while, back home in Toronto, David Travers-Smith recruited members of the gypsy jazz scene alongside regular drummer Tony Spina. Added to all this, Chvostek drew on her time as artist-in-residence with the city’s Echo Women’s Choir to work on the vocal arrangements.

She raises the curtain, singing in both French and English on the frisky brushed snares flapper shuffle Je T’ai Vu Hier Soir (I Saw You Last Night),  keeping the swing sizzling with the double bass, clarinet, mandolin and classical guitar feline slinkiness of the title track, not the Glenn Miller number but certainly evoking a similar vintage. Continue reading “Record Review: Annabelle Chvostek “String of Pearls”” →

Commemoration begins of the bloody weeks of the Paris Commune of 1871

Paris has launched two months of events commemorating a radical experiment in people power, which continues to divide and inspire in equal measures 150 years later.

The 1871 Paris Commune, an uprising against a conservative government by working-class Parisians that was brutally crushed after 72 days, is one of the lesser-known chapters in French history.

But its memory still looms large in left-wing rebellions worldwide and in Paris with the towering Sacre-Coeur basilica in Montmartre, built by the victors on the ruins of the crushed Commune.

The revolt erupted after the Franco-Prussian war and ended in a bloodbath, with government troops massacring between 6,000 to 20,000 people during la semaine sanglante (bloody week) that ended the Parisians’ brief flirtation with self-rule.

Last week, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo inaugurated a programme of 50 events commemorating the Commune, including exhibitions, plays, conferences and debates.

But with public sympathies still divided been the “Communards” and the “Versaillais” government, trying to rally Parisians around a shared reading of what Karl Marx described as “France’s civil war” is proving difficult. Continue reading “Commemoration begins of the bloody weeks of the Paris Commune of 1871” →

Comme une Française: Avoir L’air Meaning

Avoir l’air is an everyday French expression meaning “to look like” or “to seem.” It works like a verb, and it’s much more commonly used than its alternatives! How does this expression work? What does it mean? And how can YOU use it when speaking French? We’ll explore all that and more in today’s lesson. Let’s dive in!

Take care and stay safe. 😘 from Grenoble, France.

Géraldine

The most radical viewing on TV right now? ‘Call My Agent!’

Stefi Celma and Fanny Sidney are among the stars of Call My Agent! on Netflix.

By Latham Hunter

Wherever you live, there’s a Facebook mothers’ page. They are so geographically specific that you can belong to multiple pages at once — in my case that means the local village, the local town and of course the greater municipality.

Posts during the pandemic have been revealing: never have I seen so many desperate requests for recommendations about affordable printers and printer ink. My favourite lockdown post so far: “Can someone please get me excited about air fryers?”

But by far the most common COVID-19 post has been the request for new things to watch on Netflix. With so many of us at home day and night, we’re ripping through TV offerings like there’s no tomorrow. Because in many ways, as one day feels much like the next, there isn’t. Starting a new TV series is one way of charting some kind of progression through the stasis. So we ask for suggestions.

And here is what I write, over and over again: “Call My Agent! Call My Agent! CALL MY AGENT!!!”

I’ll admit I was hesitant to try it at first because it’s French and … you know … subtitles. It’s that extra layer of neurological processing when my neurons are fully booked as it is. That stopped being a concern about five minutes into the first episode.

The show (called “Dix Pour Cent” in France) is about the people working at a Paris talent agency: the agents and their assistants are constantly scrambling to negotiate the vagaries and machinations of actors, directors, screenwriters and other agents, not to mention their own missteps and desires. It’s about many things but its particular genius is the way it depicts women.

Consider this: according to a 2015 study of 6,000 American actors, the women have slightly more roles than the men up until they turn 30, when things quickly and steadily decline. At their peak, the women average four roles per five years. For the men, their roles continue to increase until they’re 46 years old (an extra 16 years of career growth and maximized income), and their peak is five roles per five years. Men’s roles continue to outstrip women’s for 34 more years, until both reach 80 years old.

Even Sandra Bullock’s roles peaked at 29.

Continue reading “The most radical viewing on TV right now? ‘Call My Agent!’” →

Francis Cabrel: “I have been on the extreme left for a long time”

At 61 years old, Francis Cabrel released “In extremis”, a record which speaks for the most part about the time that flies. The occasion for the hermit of Astaffort to react on the policy and the rumors which run about him.

By Sophie Delassein [Google translation]

As every spring, every seven years, a new Cabrel arrives in the bins. “In extremis” (Sony) is a mixture of concerned songs and sentimental refrains. But what is striking about this album, today more than yesterday, is the awareness of the time that flies. Meeting with Francis Cabrel, who came from Astaffort to Paris, to tell the story of the genesis of this disc, to give some explanations of texts, to talk about the career of his daughter Aurélie. And to respond to the rumors that are currently circulating about him. They obviously stunned him.

You are already 61 years old. We are very far from “Petite Marie” …

– I even go on my 62. “Petite Marie”, I was 24 but I had started the song 4 or 5 years before. I wrote my first song when I was 19. Time flies normally, I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time or that it has gone so quickly.

Time flies is the central theme of your album.

– Yes. First I don’t want to hide it. Then, that’s what concerns me and then it allows me to play down. It is not dizzying. I don’t want to quote anyone, but trying to convince teens that we make interesting songs doesn’t ring a bell, I just want to say who I am at that point in my life. All of my albums, in fact, are photographs, snapshots that show who I am as I write them. Who I was at 24, 27, 31, etc. When I look back, I care about who I was. I don’t want to be fasting.

Why ?

Continue reading “Francis Cabrel: “I have been on the extreme left for a long time”” →