Occitan-inspired hip-hop is rampant over the South of France. In Toulouse, the watchword of Fabulous Trobadors — writer/rapper Claude Sicre plus human-beat-boxer Ange B — is “Gardarem l’accent”: whatever your accent is (and they’re not just talking about the way you speak), you better keep it or you’re shit. Their latest, Duels de tchatche et autres trucs de folklore toulousain, makes reference to the tenso; the cover even shows Claude and Ange B going jaw to jaw. Down the road in Aude, the six trobairitz of La Mal Coiffée (loosely translatable as “Bad Hair Day”) combine traditional material and folk rhythms with contemporary arrangements and original harmonies, sounding like nightingales one moment and Finland’s feisty Värttinä the next. The Massilia Sound System offshoot Moussu T e lei Jovents hold forth in La Ciotat, east of Marseille; in Nice, there’s Nux Vomica.
But, mèfi (listen up), Marseille is the focal point. In the ’80s there was IAM as well as Massilia Sound System, an outfit that developed out of the Lively Crew of Akhenaton and Khéops. They played off the tendency of French highway signs to abbreviate Marseille as “Mars”; one explanation of their acronym was “Invasion Arrivée de Mars,” and their first major hit was the 1991 album . . . de planète Mars. Marseille itself didn’t object to being thought of as another planet. The city speaks two French languages (aside from all the international ones): français marseillais and provençal marseillais, the two more like each other than like French or Provençal. There’s the tchatche in Marseille, the chat, and the tendency to exaggerate, just a little, like the time Marseille humorist Patrick Bosso identified his city as the one “where the sun shines 453 days a year.”
Lo Còr de la Plana enter these lists as a male a cappella sextet who accompany themselves on bendir and tamburello and with foot stomping and hand clapping. Their name means “The Heart of La Plaine” (the bohemian quarter in Marseille), and their first album, 2003’s Es lo titre (“It is the Title” Magritte echoes intentional), updates traditional religious music; you can hear the raucousness of the songs 15th-century pilgrims sang on their way to Montserrat and Santiago de Compostela. The title of last year’s more secular follow-up, Tant deman, means “Maybe Tomorrow”; it’s what you tell your sweetheart, or your mother, or your boss, or the Devil when he shows up at an inconvenient time. Their appearance at Globalfest 2008 caught the eye of the New York Times’ Jon Pareles, who noted their “rich chordal harmonies and joyfully ricocheting counterpoint.” Their traditional dances — rigaudon, bourrée, rondeau — join hands with techno-groove and ragamuffin.
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