Chanson réaliste

Origins and influences#

Chanson réaliste grew out of the cafés-concerts and cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris during the 1880s. Although chanson réaliste was a musical genre dominated by female vocalists, one of its earliest performers—and credited by some as “the creator” or “the father” of genre —was cabaret singer and comedian Aristide Bruant. Bruant began a career at Le Chat Noir in 1885 and his vaudeville-inspired mix of song, satire and entertainment became very popular with the bourgeoisie slumming in the poorer Montmartre district. His compositions were novel for the time because they included the everyday language and slang used by the commoners. Borrowing elements of the comédie en vaudeville, the chanteuses réalistes (realist singers female ) often wore black dresses, red lipstick and white face makeup—their faces highlighted with stark lighting, set against a modest, almost bare backdrop—all done to draw audiences’ attention to the singers’ emotive facial expressions. In contrast to the picturesque chanson which was popular in post-World War II France—with its songs of love, cobbled Parisian streets, and the sound of the accordion—the chanteuses réalistes sang songs of loss, hopelessness and abandonment; their songs dealt with life in the poorer Parisian faubourgs, and the thugs, pimps, prostitutes, and orphans who called them home; its themes of poverty and the criminal underworld, as well as its sociopolitical commentary, were influenced by the works of such literary realists and naturalist writers as Émile Zola, Jean Richepin and Paul Bourget.

The performers#

The chanson réaliste sentimentalised the plight of poor and dispossessed women, such as prostitutes, waitresses, failed singers in cheap bars, orphans, single mothers and the like. Some of the performers of the genre were also known to have lived the part—both Édith Piaf and Fréhel sang in the streets as children, were teenage mothers and lost their children very young—and many shortened their lives with drugs, alcohol and illness: Yvonne George lived an excessive lifestyle and died at the age of 34; Fréhel became an alcoholic at an early age, attempted suicide at 19 and eventually died in poverty; Piaf suffered from addictions to morphine and alcohol and died of cancer. she was, however, critical of the style: * Lucienne Delyle

Selected recordings#

• La java d’un sou (Maris Dubas, 1935)
• Une femme (Suzy Solidor, 1934)
• J’ai soif (Nitta Jo, 1936)
• Il n’est pas très distingué (Fréhel, 1935)
• C’est un mauvais garçon (Berthe Sylva, 1936)
• Maison louche (Germaine Lix, 1935)
• Une femme, un accordéon, un caboulot (Lys Gauty, 1938)

See also#

• Chanson
• Belle Époque
• Realism in theatre
• Realism in the visual arts