At the Django Reinhardt Festival

It was Thursday night, just after 10pm. Cyrille Aimée was approaching the end of her (despite the first name, she’s a woman) wonderful performance, her first at the festival, which is staged in Samois where she grew up.

Thus far she had just been singing and occasionally say a few words about what the next song would be about, and introduced the band (mentioning where she was from then). But with a couple of numbers to go –and to my everlasting regret I was not taking a video at the time- she began with “Here’s for a little story. I was coming to this festival as a child, to listen to the music and eat some churros…” and went on to tell everyone –having said that half of the audience was her family, which would mean a rather inclusive definition of the term as the venue was packed, with many people standing- about the first time she’d sung in public, which because of the rain ended up being in a bus (the gipsies’ caravans were too small), and how seeing the changed looks on peoples’ faces she had come to understand what music was all about. She could just about manage to thank “you” (probably meaning the alleged half of the audience who she claimed as her family, namely the people of Samois) as the reason why she could be there now, as surging tears of emotion were making it very hard for her to talk.

Rapturous applause rescued her, which kept going for long enough to endanger her final numbers (there was another act, Thomas Dutronc, shortly after). The moment was so wonderfully genuine. When she managed to talk again, it was to dedicate the song to the Gipsies, who had brought her so much (Samois is a Gipsy stronghold, which brought Django there where he lived and died, and thus now the festival), not only their music but their outlook on life, with their everlasting joy from exploring the new things that life constantly brings. At a time where many politicians in Europe seem willing to rubbish them, it was a lovely message to hear. Festival schedule prevented an encore. The crowd try to make the point that rules were welcome to go take a bath in the surrounding river Seine. She did come back, and it was clear that the question had been asked during her time backstage, but she had to confirm that, really, it would not be possible.

Two hours later (and maybe beyond, but I had to catch the last shuttle), she was still chatting away on the island, telling many a kid that she had known them as toddlers, asking questions about how things had developed for them, while Thomas Dutronc, not the most paranoid about safety cordons, was filling his stage with random members from the audience that he invited to come and dance to the sound of his music. Samois during the festival is one place where you can go and hug one of the main acts in congratulation and be invited by a virtuoso to jam away with total disregard for your claims of incompetence. It lives at the beat of a music that is not so much anachronistic as achronistic –timeless. Meanwhile, after having engaged in some duet scatting with an American jazz singer I met in the shuttle with Dutronc’s concert as backing, I was leaving the island with a CD that looked like I had, in a spout of megalomania, signed it myself (though she sings as Cyrille Aimée, she signs “Cyrille”), and a strong determination to be back. 

Come to think of it, she must have underestimated the composition of the crowd. If one half of it were maybe not family then, most of them surely are now.

Billy and the miners

I haven’t seen the movie (yet), but I would thoroughly recommend Billy Elliot the musical. And, my, is the kid gifted (I’m not talking about the fictional one, but the very real kid who plays the lead character).

Still, I’m not going to try and write a critique for which I would lack the words, not to mention a deep understanding of the form. Rather, I’d like to mention the depiction of the secondary plot: the miners’ strike.

There are times in the musical when some of the own-goals that the working class (like it or not, and in my case mostly not, but the UK’s is a class system) sometimes scores, but to me, on the catchy and powerful tune of “Solidarity, solidarity, solidarity forever!” it was hard not to side with the miners. You’d see Billy’s family coming home with injuries caused by the police –what, you’d almost think that striking was no longer a right in the UK. And as the musical progressed, it was clear that it was not only their jobs being destroyed (as if that wasn’t massive enough), but themselves.

I don’t know how the British people received it, having been sat next to a French boy who was having the context explained live by his mother (which is fine by the way, you don’t need absolute silence to enjoy a musical). I don’t know to what extent it would make them think. What I know is that, in the South East where I live, I have long noticed how most of the people would describe that period as a heroic fight to bring the UK out of decadence and into a shining modernity in which it would strive. The country had to be grasped from the clutching hands of the unions that wanted to strangle it to death.

I’ve even had a young man (who is not rich and, as a person, rather kind and generous) explain to me that he did not see any reason for a union to exist, as he had a strong belief in markets. Presumable the reasoning goes “the company is an individual (well, has personhood rights in some jurisdiction), so is the employee, so they should interact one to one or it’s not fair”. I mean, surely employment is the epitome of market distortions…

Don’t get me wrong: the coal mines had to close. In fact, considering their terrible environmental impact, it’s a shame that they had not closed long before. But how has much of the UK (and certainly USA, too) descended into a culture of blaming the victims? Why should the necessary closure of an obsolescent industry mean that people who were employed in it should be thrown in misery, that entire regions should be deprived of dignity and a significant livelihood? Three decades later, media report (fancifully, for the most) on families having lived on (very meagre) benefits for generations, you get helpful advice such as “get on your bike and find work” from politicians who were born into wealth.

Well, even though some economic models assume immediate transfer from one occupation to the next, however different, and ability to relocate at no cost (financial or otherwise), the reality is that if you destroy the main industry in a region, you had better give that region a lot of support or you’ll destroy the region and its people with it. And they would deserve sympathy, not the recurrent accusation of laziness that they get. As the musical kept going, I had the strong feeling that, while they’d never see me as one of them, I’d definitely feel like one with them.