A little song and dance . . . Posted by Tim Hildreth on Nov 8, 2016 in Culture, Music, Vocabulary
Musicals are most commonly associated with Broadway and London’s West End, but France has produced it’s share of musicals too. Some of them like Les Misérables have known long-term success around the world, while others are more obscure. And while in the last 20 years France has seen a growing success at home and abroad for a growing number of comédies musicales, my favorite goes all the way back to 1979.
Le Palais des Congrès à Paris where many shows play.
Starmania is a dystopian tale of culture clashes in a “near future” mega-city. The Franco-Canadian production featured an impressive number of young singers – including Daniel Balavoine who was tragically killed in a helicopter crash in Africa in 1986 – who would go on to have brilliant careers in music outside of the theater. The story may be bleak but the songs are amazing and run the gamut from rock to blues to ballads. And since the lyrics in musicals carry so much of the story and have to be clear and easy (relatively) to understand, they can be perfect for language learners working on their listening comprehension skills!
J’m’appelle* Johnny Rockfort / My name is Johnny Rockfort
J’suis né dans la Banlieue Nord / I was born in the northern suburbs
J’ai grandi sur les trottoirs / I grew up on the sidewalks
J’ai pas choisi d’être un zonard / I didn’t choose to be a ‘zonard’**
Ma mère est devenue folle / My mother went nuts
Parce que mon père buvait trop / Because my father drank too much
À quinze ans j’ai quitté l’école / At fifteen I left school***
Et j’ai pris le premier métro / And I took the first metro
Sans foi ni loi/ Without faith or laws****
Je veux vivre et mourir / I want to live and die
Sans feu ni lieu / Without fire or place
J’veux pas rentrer dormir / I don’t want to go home to sleep
Dans ma banlieue/ In my suburb
J’ai tout cassé / I busted everything up
Avant d’partir / Before I left
J’ai pas d’passé / I have no past
J’ai pas d’avenir / I have no future
[Sans foi ni loi
Sans feu ni lieu
J’ai tout cassé
Avant d’partir
J’ai pas d’passé
J’ai pas d’avenir]
Y a plus d’avenir sur la Terre / There is no future here on Earth
Qu’est-ce qu’on va faire?/ What are we going to do?
Y a plus d’avenir sur la Terre/ There is no future hear on Earth?
Qu’est-ce qu’on va faire? / What are we going to do?
J’ai jamais travaillé / I never worked
Mais j’me suis bien débrouillé/ But I still managed to get by
Un jour j’me suis retrouvé/ One day I found myself
À l’Underground Café/ At the Underground Cafe
C’est là que j’ai rencontré / That’s where I met
Tous mes amis d’aujourd’hui/ All my current friends
Quand je sais pas où coucher/ When I don’t know where to go sleep*****
C’est là que je passe mes nuits / It’s there that I spend my nights
Sans foi ni loi
Je veux vivre et mourir
Sans feu ni lieu
J’veux pas rentrer dormir
Dans ma banlieue
J’ai tout cassé
Avant d’partir
J’ai pas d’passé
J’ai pas d’avenir
Sans foi ni loi
Je veux vivre et mourir
Sans feu ni lieu
J’veux pas rentrer dormir
Dans ma banlieue
J’ai tout cassé
Avant d’partir
J’ai pas d’passé
J’ai pas d’avenir
Pas d’passé
Pas d’avenir
Pas d’passé
Pas d’avenir
Et pour finir (and to finish) another great tidbit from ma chère tante Rose (celle qui aime le vin mais n’aime pas Facebook!) (my dear aunt Rose (who likes wine but not Facebook!)): It’s that time of year when many of us around the world change the time. Rose shared with me this moyen facile de savoir si on recule ou si on avance l’heure (easy way to know if you’re to turn back (reculer) or advance (avancer) the clock). En octobRE (ou novembRE) on REcule. En AVril on AVance. (In October (or November) “fall back”. In April, “spring ahead”.)
* It is quite common in spoken and sung French to see words get “smooshed” together like this. ‘Je m’appelle’ becomes ‘J’m’appelle’, ‘Je veux’ becomes ‘J’veux’, ‘de partir’ becomes ‘d’partir’, etc.
** ‘zonard’ is a slang term for disaffected youth from la banlieue (the suburbs), often living on the fringes of “proper society”. The term comes from ‘la Zone’, a region around the inner city of Paris that was inhabited by ‘les pauvres’ (the poor) at the beginning of the 20th century on the site of earlier fortifications that were torn down.
*** The word ‘quit’ comes to us via the French verb ‘quitter’. In English ‘quit’ is most commonly used in a work context, but at their root, both mean “to take leave of someone or something”.
**** The expression ‘sans foi ni loi‘ refers to individuals who generally don’t respect the standards and live by their own rules. It is generally applied to someone considered as dangerous and fearsome.
***** Generically, the verb ‘coucher‘ means ‘to lie down’. It is used idiomatically to also mean ‘to go to bed’ as in ‘Je vais me coucher.’ (I am going to bed.) and appears in the French for ‘bed room’, ‘la chambre à coucher’ (literally ‘the chamber to lie down in’). The verb for ‘to sleep’ is ‘dormir‘. ‘Dormir‘ is an irregular verb that is conjugated in the present tense as follows:
Image Credits:
By Laganart [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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About the Author: Tim Hildreth
Since my first trip to France at 16, I have been a passionate francophile. I love the language, food, music, art, people, and more that make France and la Francophonie in general such an amazing part of our global community. Having lived in France and studied the language and culture for over 35 years, it is my great pleasure to be able to share a little bit of my deep love with you through this blog.