Do singers do yoga?

How does our popular culture view yoga and yogis? A paradoxical dive into the memory of the song, after the affair of the “Atman yoga federation”.

You didn’t expect to hear Elvis Presley in this column, and even less likely to hear him talk about yoga. We told you about it this week on France Info: the police arrested around forty people belonging to the Atman yoga federation, both a sect and a criminal organization, and we listen again with a curious impression to this refrain from a Hollywood turnip from ‘Elvis, who says: “Yoga is really yoga and there is no in-between.”

And it’s all the more amusing, in fact, because Elvis was furious to perform this song in 1967, in a scene that caricatured yoga lessons, while he himself practiced it and, at the time , was passionate about oriental spiritualities. Yes, these are the times – even the most unpredictable personalities in this role are passionate about yoga. Listen to Michel Fugain who describes his family in 1966.

In the second episode of These songs that make the news, broadcast this weekend, you hear excerpts from:

Elvis Presley, Yoga Is As Yoga Does, 1967

Michel Fugain, The Fugain Family, 1966

Tryo, As the days are long, 2003

Sadek, The laziness, 2016

Pierre Perret, The Jam Representative, nineteen eighty one

Marie-Paule Belle, The Parisian, 1976

Doctor Charles Claoué in Preface to silence (RTF), December 10, 1948

Jul, Guadalajara, 2020

Ninho, Talkative, 2018

Francoise Hardy, My inner life, 1988

Elvis Presley, Yoga Is As Yoga Does, 1967

You can also follow the news of this column on Twitter.

And you can also find the podcast on this link Behind our voices, with the writing and composition secrets of eight major artists of the French scene, Laurent Voulzy, Julien Clerc, Bénabar, Dominique A, Carla Bruni, Emily Loizeau, Juliette and Gaëtan Roussel.