Eurovision – France

France is one of the countries that has been in the Eurovision contest since it’s beginning in 1956. France has participated every year except for 1974 and 1982 and has won the Eurovision contest five times. In this years Eurovision contest, French singer and actress Patricia Kaas is representing France. Because of some rule called the big four, which includes United Kingdom, Spain, France and Germany. France is already qualified for the finals of the Eurovision Contest.

 More to come.  Here is a little bit on the judging within Eurovision, not only is the singer being judged on how they sing but also, the song that he/she is singing. In this years contest there is going to be a reintroduction of a national jury and there will also be televoting. The national jury is being used to help the contest be less politically swayed. This action has come about because of some criticism from some broadcasters regarding the fairness of the contest. Televoting is where people who are watching the show can call or text their vote in. Here is a sentence I found on Wikipedia regarding situations involving televoting. -(Immigrants in a given country will tend to bestow high points on their countries of origin. For instance Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium tend to vote massively for Armenia and Turkey, while the immigrants of France secure high points for Portugal and Israel. )     In other news here is a video of Maria Myriam who sang for France in 1977 with her song “L’oiseau et l’enfat” which means the bird and the child. Maria ended up winning the 1977 Eurovision contest for France.  France has won the Eurovision contest in 1958, 1960 and 1962. In 1969 the first tie occurred in the Eurovision contest, it was between France, The Netherlands, Spain and The United Kingdom. With this joint victory France became the first country to win the Eurovision contest four times. France also won the contest in 1977, this was also the last time they have won the contest to date. From what I can tell it looks like the orchestras and actual music played a bigger role in the earlier Eurovision contests. It seems to me that more time went into the actual orchestrations of each piece and less into the showmanship of each performance. For example, in the second clip below the conductor is introduced along with the song and the singer. But, this growing absence of an orchestra could just be showing the Eurovision Contest changing with popular music of the times.   France 1958: André Claveau – Dors, Mon Amour Eurovision 1960 – France – Jacqueline Boyer – Tom Pillibi    Check out change in presentation over the years in these two videos.   Eurovision – Sweden, ABBA 

ESC 2003 Winner * 04 Turkey * Every Way That I Can * Most French singers today are direct descendants of the chanson tradition. Patricia Kass sings a form of chanson but, she is known to sing it with more of a combination of pop and jazz.    (Patricia Kass) Here is a little bit about Chanson, in a direct translation from French to English it means song. someone who sings chansons is called a chansonnier. There are many types of chanson such as, “Chanson de Geste” based on epic poems with simple monophonic melodies, “Chanson Courtoise” which was practiced in the 12^th and 13^th centuries, “Burgundian” songs for three voices in the 15^th century and “Parisian” which came around in the late 15^th and 16^th centuries. The type of chanson I am most familiar with is the Modern Chanson, which is a French solo song this type of song was highly influenced by the German Lieder which had made its way into France during the 18^th century. Chanson today is different from the rest of French pop because it follows the rhythm of the French language instead of English. Also under the category of modern Chanson comes the style chanson realist. This style focused on the lives of the poor in France from the 1880’s until World War II. Edith Piaf is very well known for singing Chanson realist.  LA VIE EN ROSE – EDITH PIAF     On may 3^rd there were rehearsals by nine of the countries participating in the contest. The countries were Montenegro, Czech Republic, Belarus, Belgium, Sweden, Armenian, Andorra, Switzerland and Hadise from Turkey. Here is a clip of the very first rehearsal for the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest, it took place Sunday morning by Montenegro’s Andrea Demirovic. Montenegro First Rehearsal (Eurovision Song Contest 2009)                       

From what I can tell the selection process for France isinternal. It seems that Bruno Berberes the head of the French delegation makesthe decisions on who is going to represent France. The 2008 representative forFrance Sebastien Tellier created a great amount of attention for French showbusiness and for Eurovision. With this mass media attention having occurred in2008 Berberes decided that a big name should represent France in the 2009Eurovision Song Contest (such as Patricia Kass). This led to realization thatEurovision could be a very good tool for advertising. One instance is that thesong “Divine” sung by Tellier in 2008 was used for an advertising campaign bythe car company Renault.

The song Patricia Kass will sing in the Eurovision contestis called “Et S’il fallait le faire”. This song is a ballad composed by AnseLazio and Fred Blondin. “Et S’il fallait le faire” it is the first single offof her next album called Kabaret.

   (From Wikipedia ) Patricia Kaas, a French singer and actress was born December 5, 1966 in Forbach, France. Kaas is one of the most successful French-speaking singers in the world. Since the appearance of her debut album Mademoiselle chante… in 1988 Kaas has sold over 16 million records worldwide. She had her greatest success in, e. g., Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Canada, Russia, Finland, and Korea with her third album Je te dis vous. Kaas is almost constantly on tour internationally. In 2002 Kaas had her film debut in And now… Ladies and Gentlemen beside Jeremy Irons. Kaas is currently on a “Kabaret” world tour since the end of 2008. Kaas will represent France in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 in Moscow, Russia.