Danish artist Peder‘s “Daylight” has been getting air time on Radio Nova in France and is available through Fake Diamond Records everywhere. I’ve heard it described as trip-hop but would brand it Scandinavian jazz. The composition is slow, almost a dirge, with faintly accented vocals by Signe Marie Schmidt-Jacobsen.
Directors Thomas Daneskov and Alexander Topsøe, with cinematographer Jasper Spanning, have put together a remarkable and haunting music video for “Daylight”.
Imagine: a music video with adults and adult themes. The aesthetics are European, even Danish: the storyline is plainly sexual, with depth and unusual sensibilities. It’s a fairy tale. The images toy with what the viewer cannot see; references to time and night play with the vocalist’s references to daylight. The actors’ facial expressions are magnificent.
French singer-songwriter Jean Ferrat died last week (at age 79) and was laid to rest yesterday.
The French media have gushed with appreciation for Ferrat. More a monument than a star, Ferrat’s passing offers French people a possibility to affirm a shared cultural heritage. The commemorations are also tinged with nostalgia: Ferrat’s heyday was in the ’60s and ’70s, when his far-left politics were in vogue. The French mourn Ferrat because, with him, a whole world-view has passed into oblivion.
People often ask how I learned to speak French, born in America to anglophone Americans. I freely confess: Jean Ferrat was one of my teachers. He was one of the best. I collected his albums and listened to them often. They were unlike music I’d heard elsewhere: prominent vocals, clearly sung (only with decades’ hindsight do I realize that his diction, which I remember as lightning-quick, actually is languorous), with retro orchestration and obviously subversive politics.
“Watch out, the cops are everywhere!”, “¡ Cuba sí !”, “Potemkin”, and “Maria” (the Spanish mother whose sons fought on opposite sides of the Spanish civil war). To my ears, this was heady, subversive stuff, and I was thankful it wasn’t sung in English (because I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if it were).
But Ferrat also sang about camaraderie and love and “what would I be without you?” and “how little it is to say I love you” and “how beautiful life is!” Ferrat even sang of dying from love or loving until you lost your mind. Wow. To adolescent ears, this may have been more subversive –and more seductive– than Ferrat’s openly political songs.
Jean Ferrat was a great French teacher. I’m sorry not to have gotten to know him better, and I will miss him.
Aurélien Cotentin, a young man from Normandy, wanted to create some buzz before the release of an album of rap songs.
Cotentin turned to the Internet and posted a music video about his girlfriend, "Sale Pute" (Dirty Whore). The lyrics are vitriol:
"I want you to die slowly"
"We'll see how you suck after I dislocate your jaw"
"You're just a sow; you've earned your place at the slaughterhouse"
"You're a dirty whore", repeated twenty times (Among French profanities, I'd wager that "whore" ranks as most offensive).
The Cotentin video is otherwise completely derivative and uninspired, unbalanced by social commentary or humor. The effect is deeply disturbing, and many were troubled. For this viewer, Cotentin even adds insult to injury by aping a tough from the housing projects, trying to mimic North African parentage.
France takes violence against women (increasingly) seriously, as demonstrated by a public service announcement by Jacques Audiard ("Read My Lips", "The Beat My Heart Skipped") that illustrates how verbal abuse is an insidious form of domestic violence.
The Cotentin video takes a "that was just the liquor talking" posture (that recalls Mel Gibson's unfortunate, antisemitic tirade while drunk), but almost everyone can agree that Cotentin's video is out of bounds, beyond the limits of poetic license. A disclaimer about hurting the feelings of "adulterers" falls flat. Were he ranting about a "dirty Jew", a "dirty black", or a "dirty Pakistani", Cotentin's career would have been permanently sidelined, forever relegated to the fringes.
But in this case, "Sale Pute" was an exercise in buzz, designed to draw attention to a basically mainstream French rap record. And it worked. Cotentin sold records, and was booked at concerts.
Then French politics intervened.
Cotentin had been scheduled to appear at various festivals, then declared persona non grata, his appearance canceled. This happened most recently at the Francofolies, a French music festival now going on in La Rochelle.
Ségolène Royal, the presidential candidate defeated by Nicolas Sarkozy, never shies from publicity and is prone to grandiosity: she has apologized repeatedly for France's colonial wrongs to Africa, and has claimed that she "inspired" Obama, whose team "copied" her campaign. The latest news about Royal alleges that she used her authority as regional president to pressure the Francofolies to cancel Cotentin.
True or not, this report has gained traction, and won over Cotentin supporters from an unlikely corner: Sakozy's political party, the Union for a Popular Movement. Party spokesman Frédéric Lefebvre deems Cotentin's cancellation "intolerable". And Jack Lang, a labor party notable since Mitterrand's presidency and an opponent of Royal, calls the cancellation "an infringement of freedom of expression" and "an act of moral censorship". Mainstream artists vow solidarity with Cotentin and dedicate their concerts to him. Cotentin, for his part, seems delighted to play the victim and has requested an audience with newly appointed culture minister Frédéric Mitterrand (nephew of the former president).
As an exercise in buzz, Cotentin's exploit has succeeded beyond expectations: Cotentin's act is now a household name, discussed at length in the media; and Cotentin has a wide circle of new friends.
The Société civile des producteurs de phonogrammes en France (SPPF) brought suit before the Paris tribunal de grande instance (superior court) against YouTube. SPPF seeks 10 million euros in damages. for alleged copyright infringement by YouTube.
SPPF is a collecting society. It has about 1,300 members, all French independents. In 2008, it collected € 14.53 million euros, up from € 12.67 million in 2007, a one-year increase of about 15%.
SPPF contends that more than 100 music videos by its members were available on YouTube in 2009, after having been removed from that site at SPF’s request in 2008. SPPF seems to have crafted its complaint to follow prior cases finding sites negligent for failing to remove content after request by a right-holder representative. I’m puzzled by the factual circumstances here, because YouTube has a system in place to avoid precisely this problem.
More generally, I’m puzzled because music videos are essentially promotional. Broadcasters pay royalties when they air videos, and there exists a limited consumer market for them. But they remain a promotional tool. Do SPPF members really not want promotion via YouTube and other sites?
I love brilliant ideas, especially when they work.
FM3 is a group of two Beijing-based musicians, Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, who produce electronic ambient music. A few years ago, they hatched an idea that brought their creation to a worldwide audience, far from the walls of trendy art galleries: the Buddha Machine.
The Buddha Machine looks like a transistor radio. It sounds like one, too. Except that the sound from its speaker isn’t a radio signal, but instead one of nine FM3 ambient audio compositions. All the pieces are under a minute; some under ten seconds. Once selected, a composition repeats indefinitely.
The compositions are best described as quiet and contemplative. It’s ambient music. It’s more than white noise, and it frees you from urban distractions: the unwanted sounds of traffic and office machines. The compositions differ from whale songs or wave sounds; much as I love the seashore, recorded or synthetic sounds from nature strike me as out of place in the bustling city.
The Buddha Machine is a marketing masterpiece.
It’s a content-delivery system: it allows FM3 to monetize their compositions. I doubt that even ringtone enthusiasts would pay for the ambient compositions, but many will gladly pay $20 –even €20– for the Buddha Machine.
It’s also a self-selling system. You can’t help but notice a Buddha Machine or to ask, “What’s that?” And once you’ve become acquainted with the Buddha Machine, you want to get one for yourself and to tell others about this nifty device.
And it’s global in scope. The composition and boxes are made in China, but win over consumers everywhere.
New incarnations of the Buddha Machine recently appeared.
FM3 came out with a version 2.0, with new compositions, softer colors, and pitch control (whatever that is: the Buddha Machine is emphatically lo-fi).
A Buddha Machine app for the iPhone diversified the product offering: you can have a Buddha Machine on your iPhone (if you have one).
And Zendesk came out with the FM3 Buddha Machine Wall. This is a web-based, virtual wall of 27 Buddha Machines. It won me over with its ability to play several compositions simultaneously. This is a great effect because the compositions vary by length, so there’s both repetition and novel combinations. (Apparently Buddha Machine users have been doing this for years with the physical Buddha Machines.)
Finally, FM3 made available downloads of its loops, for free: you can pick up the compositions, put them on a music player set to repeat, and enjoy the sounds of the Buddha Box anywhere.
From this happy customer, best wishes to FM3 and the Buddha Machine for continued success! (And praise too for FM3′s beautiful web site, in Chinese and in English.)
FM3
The Buddha Machine is a marketing masterpiece.
New incarnations of the Buddha Machine recently appeared.