French Pop History

  The French music industry of the fifties - as elsewhere - was as full of chanteuses as it was chanteurs . True - most (but not all) of the musicians, songwriters and producers were men, as they were in thne rest of the world, but French music halls and cabarets had always been as open to the female voice as they had to male performers. Indeed, it was not uncommon for male singer-songwriters to make their initial breakthroughs thanks to the women who chose to sing their wares. This tradition went way back - think of the partnership between Rip and Jeanne Aubert in the twenties - and even recently emerged stars like L éo Ferré, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel owed their start to the support of Catherine Sauvage, Patachou and Juliete Gréco respectively. Rock 'n' roll though, was something else. When the new wave of teenage music first hit France, it was seen as just a fad and ripe for covering by music hall and cabaret performers, men and women alike. The results were, well, j

"  American singer April March once famously claimed that  yé-yé was the best music that there is, which might be overstating it although there is no denying the music's considerable appeal. For all that though, there is considerable debate about what yé-yé actually is - a problem compounded by the fact that the term has become decidedly elastic over time. There are plenty of things that  yé-yé is not - a mix of French chanson with rock 'n' roll, for example. Strictly speaking,  yé-yé is not even uniquely French - there were  yé-yé singers in other French speaking countries such as Belgium, Switzerland and - to a lesser extent - Canada, and a healthy  yé-yé scene developed in Spain as well. Nor is  yé-yé an exclusively, or even mainly, female phenomenon; there were plenty of male yé-yé singers too, from Richard Anthony and even Johnny Hallyday on through Frank Alamo and Hervé Vilard to lesser-known but still worthy names such as Jamy Olivier or Michel Paje. Still,