I've failed to cover Les Ogres de Barback so far here, and I really should have done something sooner, so here they are with their own video diary of when they played at the Solidays festival in Paris, on June 24.
The festival is an anti-Aids solidarity event befitting Solidarité sida at the Longchamps racetrack that has been running since 1999. The three day event normally features around 150 artists, and this year over 155,000 festival goers got to see acts ranging from Mark Ronson, Cold War Kids, the Go! Team and Moby as well as plenty of French artists including Yael Naim, Têtes Raides and Stromae.
The event aims to raise awareness to the problem of Aids, particularly to a young audience.
Since they former in '94, Les Ogres have released a dozen albums, their most recent being this year's Comment je suis devenu voyageur.
The band fall right into that unclassifiable area of French music between traditional French chanson, gypsy and rock, the only reference point for the unfamiliar ear would be some of the work of Tom Waits, although with perhaps a bit more of a world music flavour.
Their work celebrates the outsider and the marginalised, with a hopeful poetry and popular spirit.
The band have followed a very individual career trajectory over the years, with releases including children's music and collaborations with other artists, and a commercial success that seems to have evolved organically along the way rather than one that seems to have been planned. Despite not toeing any line but their own, they've sold thousands of records and play to some of the country's biggest venues.
With an attitude more in common with punk pioneers like Fugazi, they organise their own tours, their own record label and their own distribution. It seems to be a policy that has served them well, and probably in better shape than those that hitched their wagon to the entertainment multinationals.
Les Ogres - Blog sur la route - Episode 13 by Les_Ogres_de_Barback
No comments:
Post a Comment