Music in France

Hi all. Mom and I are headed to France next month and I'm looking for music to put in a France playlist (or maybe a Paris one and a country one). Any suggestions?

The only music I have in French is Christmas carols or rai. We don't like country or opera (generally; is Bolero technically an opera? Was I hallucinating that Ravel was French?) and mom hates rap, but I've heard some French stuff I sort of liked. Of course, I've no idea who they were or where to even start looking.

Anyway, any suggestions are welcome.

some Louise Attaque? a bit peculiar but worth trying.
Raphaël: easy listening.
Zazie has some good tunes.
Indochine.
And you have the classics, Serge Gainsbourg, Jacques Dutronc, fun lyrics if you understand French. Georges Brassens as well. Edith Piaf if you're in for old songs.

you're not hallucinating, Ravel was French. The Bolero is not an opera though.

carla bruni, love her songs! I think she is italian though ( but sings in French)

yes she is but she got really successful with her songs here. her sister is an actress and they both speak perfect French.

Je suis le plus beau du quartier, j'suis le préféré....

I really like this guy:

MC Solaar

I guess it might be considered rap, but I personally know a couple of people who say they don't like rap who were ok with MC Solaar.

I guess my link didn't work too well. You could just search for his name on all music guide if you want more info.

MC Solaar is definitely the sort of hip hop you could play to your mum - mellifluous, chilled and jazzy. Saian Supa Crew are my favourite french hip hop outfit but probably not so mum-friendly.

What about Air? Moon Safari is a classic chillout album & very accessible. I'd recommend Daft Punk too, but that might be a bit too dancy for mum...

I think the absence of singers in Bolero might be a bit of a giveaway. My favourite Ravel (apart from all the Spanish stuff) is Daphnis & Chloe, but there's also a lot of piano music, much of which was orchestrated (Alborada del Graziozo being a particular favourite).

You could also try Debussy. La Mer and the Nocturnes are particularly good.

Darius Milhaud would give you a different sound. Suite Provencale is brilliant, and his ballets are rather different - La Création du Monde and Le Boeuf sur le Toit.

Others worth considering are Hector Berlioz, Edouard Lalo, Camille Saint-Saëns, Georges Bizet, Gabriel Fauré, Ernest Chausson, Erik Satie, Albert Roussel, Francis Poulenc and Jacques Ibert. Or, f you prefer earlier music, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin, Marin Marais, Josquin Desprez, Guillaume Dufay and Guillaume de Machaut...

I very much like the Putumayo Paris collection. A bit more classic is the French Cafe collection.

I like St Germain which is jazzy house sort of music. There is much more of interesting stuff released by Blue Note

At both FNAC and Virgin Megastore, you can scan the bar code of any CD to listen to samples of it. So you might just take a look at the top ten (or whatever) of the French music section and see what appeals to you.

Almost all French music is terrible. MC Solar is bloody awful. Daft Punk is about the only decent French band I know of, although a few people in Stereolab are French. If you like inane jazz, they do that quite well, or serious classical, not bad. But popular music in French, it doesn't really work. Get an iPod & a gizmo to let you play decent music through the car stereo. French radio is, well, quite unique, and made worse by my understanding of the presenters wittering away to get the French language content up the air. They have laws about the amount of non-French words used on the air.
The country is lovely. Forget music in France

Get your ears round this

Some oldies besides the aforementioned Piaf and Brassens: Charles Trenet, Juliette Greco, Yves Montand, Charles Aznavour.

And even older: Django Reinhart and Stephane Grapelli (jazz guitar and violin, 30s and 40s.)

And we mustn't forget Plastique Bertrand. No link provided. I will not taint my 'puter

Allow me then

The man is a legend.

He sings in French, but Plastic Bertrand is Belgian.

(Is my IQ dropping by 10 points for liking his song?)

Are Belgians allowed? Then add Jacques Brel to my list of oldies.

Brigitte Fontaine can be quite fun.

These guys rock

Last week I heard a song by Frida Boccara for the first time. Very good. (It could be that the rest of her oeuvre is awful and that this was just the single good song, but based on this, I want to hear more.)

If Bertand is a Waloon, it counts as French. I worked there for two years, and it was the appalling lack of decent music that made me not renew my contract, & scuttle back to London, and the joys of XFM . Fine, enjoy French public access music

I guess it's a good thing we're not driving and therefore dependent on french radio... Thanks for all the suggestions (the serious and the not-so-much). Mom knows no french (she might just nail 'Je ne parle pas francais' by the time we get there), but she likes music, so while I'm cramming to remember a language from over a decade ago, she can just listen and try to sing along by mimicry. Hmm, I think she might be getting the better deal, here...

Anyway, thanks again!

I think it's actually an Australian release, but there are some sets of cds titled So Frenchy So Chic: the unofficial soundtrack to the French Film Festival. I like most of them, with my favourite being disc 1 of the 2006 version, featuring Camille 'Ta Doleur', Albin De La Simone - J'ai Change and Renan Luce - Les Voisines.

I will be there next month and cannot wait to hear the song I still have in my head from a party in Paris when I was 16 - they kept playing the song over and over again... I couldnt sing it, but I'll know it when I hear it - and it was horrible! very pop.

my ipod is loaded with 30 dead shows and 8 new stringcheeses to compensate for the Club Med-esque music I'm so used to hearing in France/St Barth

http://www.myspace.com/wearephoenix