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Popular Music in Contemporary France: Authenticity, Politics, Debate by David L. Looseley (review)

2004; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 99; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2004.a826661

2222-4319

Peter Hawkins,

Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis

MLRy 99.4, 2004 1061 just such texts: Marie-Claire Barnet's essay on Regine Detambel's 'anatomical writ? ing' is a fascinating and sophisticated account of Detambel's exploration of the body and deployment ofthe rhetorical figureofthe 'blason', while Michael Worton's often brilliantly written piece on Clothilde Escalle handles the politics of Escalle's harrowing and unredemptive writings with great firmness and sensitivity. Rye and Worton's introduction sets out in full the historical context of the writings explored in their book, and offers valuably up-to-date overviews of the theoretico-critical questions that have become indispensable to the study of contemporary women's fiction: sub? jectivity, the body, trauma, and identity. A succinct conclusion and extremely useful bibliographies of primary works and selected secondary criticism for all the writers covered complete the book: this is a wide-ranging volume of impressive scholarship, and one that will be indispensable to students, teachers, and researchers in the area of contemporary French women's fiction for a long time to come. University of Birmingham Kate Ince Popular Music in Contemporary France: Authenticity, Politics, Debate. By David L. Looseley. Oxford and New York: Berg. 2003. xii + 254pp. ?50 (pbk ?15.99). ISBN 1-85973-631-9 (pbk 1-85973-636-x). The title of David Looseley's fascinating book is a little misleading: it is not so much about recent French popular music in itself as about the discourses which it has generated. In this way it offersa profoundly ideological reading of the place of popular music in the broader context of French culture since the Liberation, and traces with admirable subtlety the shifts in public taste and in political positioning within the French context of this worldwide phenomenon of contemporary popular culture. Looseley traces this evolution in a firstpart called 'Defining Authenticity', whose title provides the central thread of his argument: the use of a notion of au? thenticity as a yardstick by which to measure the cultural significance of France's own output of popular music. This allows him to set up an opposition between the supposedly authentic tradition of French chanson, emblematically represented by the 'holy trinity' of singer-songwriters, Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, and Leo Ferre, and the apparently inauthentic importation of American-style rock music into French culture through figures such as Johnny Hallyday, Eddy Mitchell, and Sylvie Vartan: the 'ye-ye' generation of the early sixties. He then traces the contortions of the press, public figures,and sociologists in tryingto understand the tastes of the 'baby-boomer' generation who embraced international youth culture as represented by rock and pop music, as well as in identifyinga distinctive national characteristic in the older chanson genre. The second part ofthe book then examines the appropriation of popular music by the Ministry of Culture under the new Socialist government after 1981, as part of the celebrated shiftin cultural policy associated with the minister Jack Lang. This he defines as 'Politicising Authenticity', and documents the numerous initiatives by which the French state became involved in the popular music industry, tracing as he goes the complex debates that this gave rise to, between cultural conservatives such as Mare Fumaroli and Alain Finkielkraut, resistant to the new legitimacy of popular music, and a generation of sociologists fascinated by the influence of pop and rock, such as Antoine Hennion, Patrick Mignon, and Pierre Mayol. One ofthe most inter? esting chapters covers the fairly recent initiative by Catherine Trautmann, the first Minister of Culture in the Jospin government of 1997, in supporting the burgeoning French 'techno' genre, a style with which French popular music has established a growing export market. A further chapter on 'Policy and its Discontents' examines the strategies of the Ministry's administrators in reconciling this new openness with 1062 Reviews more traditional versions of republican values. All of this seems distinctively French, not to say exotic, when viewed from the perspective of British popular music and its very differentrelations with the state and its agencies. The value of David Looseley's book lies in providing an authoritative insight into this previously little-documented aspect of contemporary French culture, and one whose assumptions and practices stand in marked contrast to...