Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities and Pop Music, 1958-1980

by Jonathyne Briggs

Sounds French examines the history of popular music in France between the arrival of rock and roll in 1958 and the collapse of the first wave of punk in 1980, and the connections between musical genres and concepts of community in French society. During this period, scholars have tended to view the social upheavals associated with postwar reconstruction as part of debates concerning national identity in French culture and politics, a tendency that developed from political figures' and intellectuals' concerns with French national identity. In this book, author Jonathyne Briggs reorients the scholarship away from an exclusive focus on national identity and instead towards an investigation of other identities that develop as a result of the increased globalization of culture.

Popular music, at once individual and communal, fixed and plastic, offers an illuminating window into such transformations in social structures through the ways in which musicians, musical consumers, and critical intermediaries re-imagined themselves as part of novel cultural communities, whether local, national, or supranational in nature. Briggs argues that national identity was but one of a panoply of identities in flux during the postwar period in France, demonstrating that the development of hybridized forms of popular music provided the French with a method for expressing and understanding that flux. Drawing upon an array of printed and aural sources, including music publications, sound recordings, record sleeves, biographies, and cultural criticism, Sounds French is an essential new look at popular music in postwar France.

244 pages, Hardcover

First published March 2, 2015

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

A scholarly study (based on the author's Ph.D. dissertation) of five different forms of pop music in France from the 50s through the 70s: (1) early rock and ye-ye music, (2) the 'chanson' singers like Brel and Ferré, (3) progressive rock from the early 70s, (4) the Breton folk/folk-rock revival/reinvention led by Alan Stivell, and (5) and French punk from the late 70s. Briggs' overall interest is socio-musicological, seeking to unpack how each form of music served as a focal point for the articulation and negotiation of different types of cultural communities (post war youth culture, Breton regional identity, etc.) by its fans and critics and in some cases, the musicians themselves. Briggs is highly attentive to the fact that postwar French pop music existed in a contact of globalization and that the music-based communities that were associated with these musics paradoxically, both local and global in definition, and he is keen to some of the contradictions inherent in that (for instance, Stivell's use of distinctly American folk-rock idioms to articulate a Breton identity through his music).

Overall, I enjoyed the book and thought it thought-provoking. I thought the chapters on early French rock, the chansonniers, and Breton folk were the strongest and most compelling. (I was a pit perplexed though, that he stopped his discussion of Stivell's albums at "Before Landing".) The chapter on French prog-rock.... not so much, and in fact, Brigs account of the French prog scene seemed to me to miss the mark some of the time, particularly in its minimal discussion of theatrical rock bands like Ange and Mona Lisa. (That said, I'm always happy to see Magma and Heldon get their due.)

That said, I should note that the book is very academic in its style and scope, and is filled with lots of references to prior studies, sociological theorists, and economic/political/historical context. I appreciated this greatly, but readers who are put off by scholarly writing and moderate amounts of jargon might be turned off.

[Jehnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Academic - writ large.
But exactly what I wanted. An analytical discourse on the rise of rock and pop music in France from the 1950s to the early-1990s.

[Montgomery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very readable. Scholarly but without being bogged down in theory or historiography. Great work, Jonathyne!