Sounds French: Globalization, Cultural Communities, and Pop Music in France, 1958–1980 by Jonathyne Briggs (review)

Briggs's Sounds French offers an expansive overview of French popular music from 1958–1980—a historical period that allows the author to study the ways that musical culture served as a site for negotiating the transformations and anxieties of postwar modernization, the legacy of May 1968, and contemporary dynamics of globalization in France. In five chapters, Briggs covers: 1) the French rock and roll scene in the 1950s, 2) the rise of modern chanson from the mid 1950s into the 60s, 3) French progressive rock of the late 60s and early 70s, 4) the Breton folk revival of the 1970s, and 5) the French punk scene of the late 70s. Briggs illustrates how the emergence of "global" genres did not simply lead to the homogenization of popular music and the erasure of French difference. Instead it led to the dialogic formation of transnational and transregional solidarities and to the creation of dominant and subcultural styles anchored in complex and unique ways in France. Briggs contends that we can speak of "communities" of French popular music because "the capacity of music to foster participation—in its creation, diffusion, and enjoyment—gives it its power to form communities" (4).

Briggs emphasizes the ways everyday fans consumed musical culture and shared special moments in musical history. Through attention to monthly music revues, radio history, performance venues, and key performances and recordings in France, Briggs demonstrates how genres gained meaning in the French cultural imagination. Each chapter opens with an iconic moment in French popular music history: Johnny Hallyday's 2009 farewell concert in the Stade de France; the 1963 rock and roll outdoor concert at Nation featuring Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, Richard Anthony, and les Chaussettes noires; French chansonnier's Jacques Brel's 1964 concert at Olympia Theater; Afro-futurist Sun Ra's October 1970 concert at the Cirque Jean-Richard in les Halles; Alan Stivell's 1972 performance at Olympia Theater; the 1976 punk festival in Mont-de-Marsan (southwestern France) that brought together groups from the United Kingdom (Eddie and the Hot Rods, the Damned, Dr. Feelgood) and France (Bijou and Little Bob Story); and the performance of Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" by Pharrell Williams, Nile Rogers, and Stevie Wonder at Staples Center in Los Angeles for the 2014 Grammy Awards.

The first chapter, "Sounds Young," focuses on the emergence of rock and roll youth culture in France and specifically on les copains—a French term ["the friends"] used to designate French teens who followed the popular new sounds and dances coming from the United States and the United Kingdom in the 1950s. Briggs situates les copains as an imagined, inclusive community of youth invested in narratives of social mobility within the context of postwar modernization and the transformation of French leisure culture, but he points out that les copains discourse "ignored the demographic shift of the French populace and asserted a normalcy that was young, urban, and white" (18). The chapter highlights the recording artist Richard Anthony and the popular radio show "Salut les copains." Chapter two, "Sounds Traditional," considers how modern chanson responded to increased anxiety over musical authenticity and the Americanization of youth culture. The chapter focuses on the holy trinity of modern chanson—Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens, and Léo Ferré—in addition to a concluding section on Serge Gainsbourg. While the first chapter describes les copains as a "youth community," this chapter considers the "national community" imagined through chanson. Briggs investigates the mythological quintessential Frenchness of the genre, and its concomitant lack of clearly defined musical characteristics, by tracing the emergence of discourse on modern chanson in several key mid-century studies. In "Sounds Revolutionary," perhaps the book's strongest chapter, Briggs moves to the progressive rock genre. He explores the ways groups like Red Noise, Komintern, and Maajun turned away from the individual star system in order to experiment with the new forms of...