Kendji Girac: UK headlines for the wrong reason

 It's still an unusual phenomenon for a French artist to make the news in the UK, and the circumstances surrounding the appearance of Kendji Girac are even more unusual.

The BBC report that The Voice France star was seriously injured in a shooting incident, apparently an accidental shooting caused by the singer himself while he was handling a pistol he had earlier bought in a junk shop.

His injuries were serious, with a gunshot wound to the chest, but while remaining in a serious condition he's no longer thought to be in danger. He was, reportedly, able to tell emergency services what happened when they arrived on the scene.

Girac has had four number-one albums in France, from 2014's Kendji to 2012's L'école de ma vie and he also performs as one of the members of Les Enfoirés, the charity group that raises money for the Restos do Coeur charity. Along the way, he's picked up a handful of awards. He's also become something of a representative of the French Gypsy community from the southwest of France, while his songs have made a significant impact in Spain, his Catalan-speaking upbringing winning him a receptive audience over the border.

While it's easy to assume a shooting incident involving a singer is somehow linked to serious or organised crime, Girac's always had a clean-cut reputation, and there doesn't seem to be anything sinister behind what happened. Police are obviously still investigating the circumstances of the incident.

Hopefully. he'll be back to health before too long. It's interesting that the UK media took an interest in this story, even if they did hang it on his The Voice France success rather than the fact he's been a massively popular artist for a decade. Still, a UK audience would know what The Voice was and are less likely to be familar with a singer who's not all that well known here. As usual, we're a very insular country when it comes to music, with anglophone artists always taking prominence with only one or two exceptions. Nice to see the BBC taking a broader view of things, even though it's in the most unfortunate circumstances.