La musique française pt 7: La Marseillaise

One can’t write about French music without mentioning the French national anthem – La Marseillaise! Especially not when it’s so beautiful. If you want to learn any French song that is probably the one, so I thought I would. Or I have thought that I will try for quite a while, but I haven’t fully got to it yet. Maybe putting it up here will give me a little push, at least it will remind me of it, so here I go.

At first I thought I would put up a video with the full song, but I then came to my senses and realized that it is more important (and more encouraging if you want to learn it) to put up a clip of how beautiful it may be than of how extremely long it is. If you’ve seen La Vie en Rose/La Môme you know what I’m talking about. It’s a young Edith Piaf singing it, and she does it really well!

Here are the entire lyrics, the part in bold is the chorus:

Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
Contre nous de la tyrannie,
L’étendard sanglant est levé, (x2)
Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Egorger vos fils et vos compagnes !

Aux armes, citoyens,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !

Que veut cette horde d’esclaves,
De traîtres, de rois conjurés ?
Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
Ces fers dès longtemps préparés ? (x2)
Français, pour nous, ah ! quel outrage
Quels transports il doit exciter !
C’est nous qu’on ose méditer
De rendre à l’antique esclavage !

Quoi ! des cohortes étrangères
Feraient la loi dans nos foyers !
Quoi ! ces phalanges mercenaires
Terrasseraient nos fiers guerriers ! (x2)
Grand Dieu ! par des mains enchaînées
Nos fronts sous le joug se ploieraient
De vils despotes deviendraient
Les maîtres de nos destinées !

Tremblez, tyrans et vous perfides
L’opprobre de tous les partis,
Tremblez ! vos projets parricides
Vont enfin recevoir leurs prix ! (x2)
Tout est soldat pour vous combattre,
S’ils tombent, nos jeunes héros,
La terre en produit de nouveaux,
Contre vous tout prêts à se battre !

Français, en guerriers magnanimes,
Portez ou retenez vos coups !
Epargnez ces tristes victimes,
A regret s’armant contre nous. (x2)
Mais ces despotes sanguinaires,
Mais ces complices de Bouillé,
Tous ces tigres qui, sans pitié,
Déchirent le sein de leur mère !

Amour sacré de la Patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs
Liberté, Liberté chérie,
Combats avec tes défenseurs ! (x2)
Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire
Accoure à tes mâles accents,
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire !

Nous entrerons dans la carrière
Quand nos aînés n’y seront plus,
Nous y trouverons leur poussière
Et la trace de leurs vertus (x2)
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre

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La musique française pt 6: La lettre

From time to time I find my self walking around (at home) singing La Lettre by Renan Luce. Though, I haven’t really known all of the lyrics, only a few words in the chorus, so I thought I’d look it up and share it with you!

I found this beautiful and well done video which highlights the story of the song, and it makes me like it even more. A plus for us learning French is that it also seems to contain some good vocab!

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La musique française pt 5: Je veux

I’m not sharing this song because I’m particularly fond of it at the moment, but just because… I think I might have liked it in the beginning, and it’s fairly easy to hear how the lyrics go. The song is Je veux by Zaz, and it’s part of my homework for the French course. The exercise was to listen to the song and transcribe the lyrics solely by listening to the song – and not by looking it up on the internet (at first). Then when you’ve done that you are allowed to correct it of course.

What you might not think about when you get this assignment is the number of times you have to listen to the song before you’ve got the entire lyrics. I’m not sure how many times I paused it and rewound it before I thought I got it all. Therefore I know at least the first verse and the refrain by heart now, and I must say, I was pretty tired of it at last. Still, I think it was a good exercise and I’d recommend those of you trying to learn/improve your French to do it as well! I got the majority of the words right, and they were all words I knew, which makes it a whole lot easier. In case you want to do this, I’m not going to publish the lyrics for once – I don’t want to risk you peeking ;) Good luck, and let me know how it goes!

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La musique Française pt 3: Alors on Danse

I’m still looking for good French music , and one song you don’t have to look very far for is Alors on Danse by Stromae. That’s probably one of the most popular French songs nowadays, but I thought I’d bring it up anyhow because of the lyrics. It’s nearly impossible to hear what Stromae sings, except for the three words Alors on danse. And since I don’t want to leave anything with the label impossible, I decided to look up the lyrics and learn them. And teach them to you. So here we go, start practising.

 

 

The best thing about doing all this is that it, besides being fun, actually can be classified as studying for me. My new French teacher has given us for homework to look up French lyrics, watch French TV and do lots of such non-hard stuff. Couldn’t all studying be like that?

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La musique française pt 2: Désenchantée

As mentioned in an earlier post I’ve been looking around for good French music to improve my French.

And then one day a couple of years ago I suddenly realized that a song that I loved when I was maybe 9-10 years old was actually in French! Me and my best friend always used to perform on the Friday afternoons (dedicated by our teacher to doing fun things with the class), taking different songs we liked and lip-synching them toghether with some cool dance we’d made up in front of the class. The song we did the most number of times was Excellence’s Need To Know, but then togehter with a bunch of other friends (we were two or three who were always doing it, and then the rest of the members varied from time to time) . Oh and how many times did we do that one… We did it a couple of times on the Friday afternoons, and then almost at every birthday party (we were 30 students in the class so there were a lot of parties). Eventually the guys in our class knew the choreography (which by the way was exactly the same as Excellence did) as well as we did and they sat in their little gang imitating us each time.

Anyways… One song that me and my best friend did once was Désenchantée by Kate Ryan. I still remember how we stood in her living room practising it, and even though the lyrics was in a language we got nothing of, we tried to learn them to be able to lip-synch professionally. And well, I can’t say we did very well. The only part of the lyrics we were certain of was the first word in the chorus. It was Teckaoo. And then we figured from the title of the song that the last word in the chorus was désenchantée. In between and after it was all a mess, but nothing could stop us from performing it! And so we did, and I don’t think anyone commented on our lip-synching abilities.

But now back to present. Now that I know some French I’ve looked up the lyrics and it surprised me that I didn’t find any word similar to teckaoo in the chorus. In fact it was “tout est chaos” – everything is chaos. Though apparently it was not only us that misheard the lyrics, I just found an hilarious video on youtube where there’s some guy that has made alternative lyrics entirely in Swedish. It’s probably just funny if you know Swedish but I thought I’d link it anyway.

Here’s the original video. I couldn’t find any good video with lyrics included so I thought I’d post them beneath for anyone interested.

Nager dans les eaux troubles
Des lendemains
Attendre ici la fin
Flotter dans l’air trop lourd
Du presque rien
A qui tendre la main

Si je dois tomber de haut
Que ma chute soit lente
Je n’ai trouvé de repos
Que dans l’indifférence
Pourtant, je voudrais retrouver l’innocence
Mais rien n’a de sens, et rien ne va

Tout est chaos
A côté
Tous mes idéaux : des mots Abimés…
Je cherche l’âme, qui
Pourra m’aider
Je suis
D’une géneration désenchantée, désenchantée

Qui pourrait m’empêcher
De tout entendre
Quand la raison s’effondre
A quel sein se vouer
Qui peut prétendre
Nous bercer dans son ventre

Si la mort est un mystère
La vie n’a rien de tendre
Si le ciel a un enfer
Le ciel peut bien m’attendre
Dis moi,
Dans ces vents contraires comment s’y prendre
Plus rien n’a de sens, plus rien ne va.

Tout est chaos
A côté
Tous mes idéaux : des mots Abimés…
Je cherche l’âme, qui
Pourra m’aider
Je suis
D’une géneration désenchantée, désenchantée

Tout est chaos
A côté
Tous mes idéaux : des mots Abimés…
Je cherche l’âme, qui
Pourra m’aider
Je suis
D’une géneration désenchantée, désenchantée

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La musique française: Ce jeu

Ever since I started taking French I have been searching for fun ways to learn. I’ve bought several French girls magazines, searched frenetically for movies with either French subtitles or preferably French audio and subtitles and looked around on Spotify for hours trying to find some good French music.

The two latter have turned out to be very difficult. Swedish stores don’t sell many French movies and the only subtitles (almost) they make are in Swedish, Danish, Norweigan, Finish and sometimes English. It is oddly enough actually more probable to find a film with Portuguese or Croatian subtitles than one with French.

Finding some good music isn’t much easier. Sure, there are plenty of music in French, but most of it is pretty old and pretty… not my style.

That’s why I was so happy when I found a French singer doing modern pop music.

Her name is Yelle and she appears to be quite popular in the “Hexagon”. I particularly like one of her songs called Ce Jeu. It’s got a good melody and it’s quite easy to hear what she’s singing, which means I can follow the lyrics if I have it in front of me. I’ve even learnt the chorus by heart and I manage to sing along fairly well (when no one’s around. Of course).

This video contains some spelling mistakes but I thought it was cool, still, since it contains an English translation and apparently is a part of some kind of music video project for some students taking French 3. :)

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Hey, Coldplay day

I love it how you (that is, I) sometimes get in to a specific music mood. I start listen to a group or artist and a bit later find myself stuck with that specific one. Like now. I turned on Spotify and clicked on Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall. It somehow has a summerish feeling I think, and it’s a great way to start a warm morning like this. Then the next song went on automatically (Major Minus) without me thinking too much about it, but when the next song after that was Christmas Lights I felt it kinda spoiled my summer mood, so I put on shuffle and hit the next button. That’s when God Put A Smile Upon Your Face reached my ears and got me stuck into the Coldplay mood. I don’t neccesarily think God Put A Smile is their best song, there are many other songs that are better, but it has still got that Coldplay sound and it’s… enjoyable. Oh, and Yellow just went on. So here I go. I dedicate this day to Coldplay.

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