Photo by Bogdan KonopkaVARIOUS ARTISTS
CUISINE NON-STOP: INTRODUCTION TO THE FRENCH NOUVELLE GENERATION
LUAKA BOP
According to Luaka Bop CEO/genius David Byrne's liner notes for Cuisine Non-Stop, “We take some liberty in including [various artists] in this compilation, but by grouping them all together, we make a point—that something new is happening, and it is something as yet unheard of or seen.” He's talking about this album's status as a primer of something called neo-realisme, a new French music scene that's the euphonic equivalent of the country's multiracial national soccer squad (without the first-round flameouts). Like Les Bleus, the influences presented by the various artists on Cuisine Non-Stop draw from all of France's former colonial wards, from quintet Lo'Jo's Gypsy-influenced funk on “Baji Larabat” to the jaunty dancehall/African beats of Le Tordue's “René Bouteille.” The best track on Cuisine, though, is Dupain's astonishing “Fèm Ren.” Besides the two hand accordions—one pumping a furious Algerian raï rhythm, the other an even more frenetic Middle Eastern beat—the lead singer sounds like the late qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan but is in fact singing in Occitan, a nearly extinct language from the south of France. Despite such diversity, all the artists on Cuisine Non-Stop still exhibit a certain je ne se quoi—whether it's employment of the traditional French chanson and musette rhythms or those five-packs-of-Gauloise-au-jour vocals. Neo-realisme c'estinexplicable, c'est Français, et c'est magnifique! (Gustavo Arellano)
