Word: trenet
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...little more of every nation's characteristics every day," says Frédéric Lefebvre, spokesman for Sarkozy's ruling Union for a Popular Majority Party. Given such cultural erosion, Lefebvre called for a defense of our "cultural model and la Douce France" - an allusion to crooner Charles Trenet's famous 1943 song rhapsodizing about the villages, people and traditions of pastoral France. (See pictures of the Nazis in Paris during World...
...Trenet's song was meant to be an inspiration to his countrymen to withstand the brutal Nazi occupation of France. Some of Besson's critics say the national-identity debate, meanwhile, is rooted in modern-day xenophobia, not nostalgia. Perhaps a solution might be to inspire patriotism by asking French people to warble Trenet's ditty regularly rather than dutifully drone "La Marseillaise" once a year...
France does have composers and conductors of international repute, but no equivalents of such 20th century giants as Debussy, Satie, Ravel and Milhaud. In popular music, French chanteurs and chanteuses such as Charles Trenet, Charles Aznavour and Edith Piaf were once heard the world over. Today, Americans and Brits dominate the pop scene. Though the French music industry sold $1.7 billion worth of recordings and downloads last year, few performers are famous outside the country. Quick: name a French pop star who isn't Johnny Hallyday...
...band nonetheless managed to break through in 1986 with an Arab-accented cover of Charles Trenet's nostalgic Douce France (Sweet France), a wartime ballad extolling an insouciant, bucolic nation of villages, church bells and endless horizons. The ironic reminder of the less-than-sweet treatment reserved for France's immigrants and minority populations propelled Douce France into the charts, and set the tone for Taha's subsequent releases...
...Thereafter, Darin hopped from big-band treatments (a jaunty version of Charles Trenet?s "Beyond the Sea") to rock revivals of standards ("You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," "Lazy River," "Irresistible You") to original pop stuff ("I?ll Be There," "Multiplication"). A 1973 concert, available on video as "Bobby Darin: Mack Is Back," shows that Darin finally got his wish: if not to be Sinatra, then at least to do him. There he is in his tux, tie eventually unraveled in the Sinatra style, singing some of his old hits and a few of other people?s. Ladies...