Quebec music vibrates more and more to the rhythm of Franglais. And you can hear it on the airwaves of commercial radio, where songs that happily mix the two languages are still counted as French songs under the quotas, which allows them to play with high rotation. Enough to ” trigger », as we say in the language of FouKi and Loud, certain defenders of the French fact, where others see rather the simple reflection of a game in constant mutation.
“It was important for me to make music in the language that people speak. And everywhere I go in Montreal, whether in Montreal North, Côte-des-Neiges or at home, in Verdun, that’s how people express themselves. Language is something that evolves. By speaking of Franglais, we are imposing a duality between French and English that no longer has any place to exist,” says musician Mike Clay, who grew up in the west of Montreal with an English-speaking father and a French-speaking mother. .
Leader of the electro group Clay and Friends, he is the author of the hit Move your thanga clear example of a song where the languages of Shakespeare and Molière are one, as evidenced by the chorus: ” Get high to get down, come on / Move your thang /as if there’s no one else here/ Oh, I’m so glad you can stay now “. On French-speaking radio stations, Move your thang is, however, an integral part of the French content, which must represent 55% of the songs played during prime time, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
Francophone quotas
During this time, Monday, The dutynoted that the Montreal station CKOI broadcast about forty so-called French-language songs, including a dozen titles on which English was also audible. On the waves of the WKND station in Quebec, at the same time, again, a quarter of the songs in French were in fact in Franglais, or at least borrowed certain expressions from English.
Among the French-speaking hits of the summer, let us mention the singer from Terrebonne Jay Scøtt, who ” feel alive “even if he is” already dead ” in matusalem, in duet with the rapper Koriass. Or even Roxane Bruneau, who, in her new excerpt I don’t knowintones: Push your hands up in the air / I can’t sing right now / It smells like swing strong, strong / I think I’m gonna lose my mind / So, we start again”. Remember that a song is considered French on the radio when at least half of the sung part is in French.
“We never thought of imposing a quota for songs in Franglais, and I don’t think we will have to do it one day. There will always be artists to sing only in French. Our most popular artists remain Les Cowboys Fringants and Marc Dupré, and they will never get into that. There will always be artists who are proud to sing in French, like Ariane Moffatt and Patrice Michaud,” says Étienne Grégoire, musical director at Cogeco, owner of CKOI and Rythme FM, among others.
From bilingualism to Franglais
The mixture of French and English is not a new phenomenon on the radio waves in Quebec. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, English-speaking singers fully translated their songs in order to take advantage of French-language music quotas. Here I Am by Bryan Adams, soundtrack for the animated film Spiritthus became Here I am, despite the laborious French of the Ontario singer.
Then, ten years later, the tactic for complying with CRTC standards evolved somewhat. Quebec groups who normally pushed the note in English and artists from the rest of Canada began to translate their songs for the Quebec market, but only partially. Certain passages remained the same as on the original version, while a few verses were sung in French, most often in duet with a local artist. This was the case, among other things, for the success jet lag by Simple Plan, which was released here as a bilingual duet with Marie-Mai, in 2011.
Today, this bilingualism gives way to Franglais, which is not exactly the same thing. In Franglais, English is fully integrated into the original texts as if it were a single language. We can hear it especially in Quebec rap, a genre that enjoys mixing and deconstructing words and expressions, ignoring their origin.
“Yes, it shows that English is more and more present in our culture. But it is on this that we must act if we want to protect our language. We must not target the artists, who are only the mirror of what society is at the moment, ”adds Luis Clavis, member of Qualité Motel, who pours into Franglais on some of his songs.
Luis Clavis denies it: Franglais is not a crutch for songwriters. It is not synonymous with laziness or dumbing down, he stresses. “I don’t find that the use of Franglais in ‘queb’ rap is problematic, because it’s obvious that the people who use it in their songs know French well. When I hear Lary Kidd refer to Emil Cioran in one of his texts, I find it reassuring. »
Everlasting debate
Professor of musicology at Université Laval, Sandria P. Bouliane agrees. Franglais is not a threat to Quebec identity. And above all, this debate around the quality of language in popular music has an air of deja vu.
At the end of the 1960s, the coronations and anglicisms in the songs of Robert Charlebois were shocking. In France, it is the lyrics in rap and urban music that are disturbing at the moment. Less because of English, in this case, than because of the ubiquity of suburban slang, with its influences drawn from the spoken Arabic of the Maghreb and African dialects.
“Quebec songs, whether in French or in Franglais, must be given more prominence. It’s not normal that we only hear the latest Anglo-Saxon hits as soon as we go somewhere”, adds Sandria P. Bouliane, who prefers to conclude like this rather than throw stones at the artists.