Et si on célébrait ceux qui ne célèbrent pas

January 4, 2022 7:55 AM

Stromae is back, raising a glass to "the conquerors of the worst work hours" with Santé.

• Performing on The Tonight Show
• Adam Neely on Santé's rhythm
• Previously

posted by metaquarry (23 comments total)

Et si on célébrait ceux qui ne célèbrent pas
What if we celebrated those who don't celebrate

Man wish I had this right-click translation feature 40 years ago!

I'm generally surprised how easy the Romance languages are to grok [to read -- inflecting these foreign grammars on my own is Hard] when you know the common root words.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 8:36 AM on January 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

Genius English Translation.
posted by Pendragon at 8:51 AM on January 4, 2022

For what it's worth Santé has an English translation caption track available, like most of his videos. It's probably a decent marketing tactic, opening up his music to a non-Francophone audience in a way that, say, Yelle hasn't. (Not that it's hurt them...)

That said, I'm kind of curious who does the translations, because I think I remembered feeling like the translation for Racine Carrée is a little more natural than the album videos' individual translations.
posted by Kyol at 9:20 AM on January 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

I just compared the genius translation with the youtube subtitles, and I'm pretty sure that the english yt subs are more 'natural' translations.
Plus they got the "Céline, bataire" joke right AND they managed a rubbin' - scrubbin' (vs frotter - brosser) double language wordplay thing.
posted by Acari at 9:22 AM on January 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

If you were like me, and thought "gee did I just miss a bunch of releases from this guy, or what?" you might be interested to know that Multitude, out in March, will be his first album since 2013's Racine Carrée. (He's dropped a few singles in the meantime.)

He talks about his difficulties with fame, and his burnout in this interview (French audio). One of the comments has an English gloss of the interview.
posted by invokeuse at 9:28 AM on January 4, 2022 [4 favorites]

And just more fun facts about "Santé" because I love Stromae and I'm so happy this post is here:

• One of the dancers in the circle surrounding Stromae for the Tonight Show performance was the young boy in the Papaoutai video (he's 20 now).
• Per his Instagram, none of the people in the music video for Santé are professional actors.

posted by invokeuse at 9:39 AM on January 4, 2022 [7 favorites]

Adam Neely - What is that WEIRD rhythm in Stromae's Santé?
posted by dmh at 10:10 AM on January 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

This is rad.
posted by Wretch729 at 10:40 AM on January 4, 2022

I've been listening to this for a bit now -- Radio Canada's Ici Musique channel has unsurprisingly been all over it. This weekend though, I caught the Adam Neely short on the modified cumbia rhythm. I saw the FPP about Stromae and was racing to post the Neely link, just to see that it's already all covered.

Anyways, all the links are worth checking out, and, yeah, Stromae is a real treasure. Worth tracking down his interviews -- many are in English -- he's just a very thoughtful, very empathetic person.... and terrific musician, producer and performer.
posted by bumpkin at 11:11 AM on January 4, 2022 [2 favorites]

The Genius translation, though....is pretty bad.

Ce qui n'en ont pas: basically 'people who go without'. It's a common phrase for prayers, toasts, etc. acknowledging the less fortunate.
posted by bumpkin at 11:15 AM on January 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

Great video. Céline's dance at the end! Get it, Céline!
posted by solotoro at 12:00 PM on January 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

For what it's worth Santé has an English translation caption track available

I did not know that, thanks.
posted by Pendragon at 1:52 PM on January 4, 2022

I watch his Racine Carrée Live (Full Concert) a couple of times a year, so good.
posted by Pendragon at 1:53 PM on January 4, 2022

And I see Kyol linked the concert in his comment, now I feel foolish :-)
posted by Pendragon at 1:55 PM on January 4, 2022

Yeah, I mean I can usually use a language translation system to make sure a band isn't singing about the glories of the reich or whatever, but it's a far cry from having a translation that catches the subtleties and is still reasonably lyrically accurate. Like, a good translation you can also get some of the rhythm and wordplay in the translated language and Stromae's translator really seems to walk that line really well, and I appreciate it.
posted by Kyol at 2:24 PM on January 4, 2022 [3 favorites]

Thanks especially for the Adam Neely link - I was hearing the 'weird' beat and it's tasty but also... particular - though in a good way and it was nice to hear someone pull that apart,
posted by From Bklyn at 7:15 AM on January 5, 2022

Rade!

Strong (though unpsychedelicized) Daniels vibe to the video, but also amazing camera and choreography work for the Tonight Show performance - Stromae really is a consummate stylist, whether it be music, lyrics or visually…

(I also love that he seems to often be referencing some of his compatriot Jacques Brel’s language tics, that richly rolled r surely can’t be just a coincidence…)
posted by progosk at 8:31 AM on January 5, 2022

Ce qui n'en ont pas: basically 'people who go without'. It's a common phrase for prayers, toasts, etc. acknowledging the less fortunate.

Specifically, it's intended as a collective portrait and homage to a class recently briefly recognised/rechristened "essential workers".
posted by progosk at 10:25 AM on January 5, 2022

Thank you so much for posting. Love Stromae, I was lucky enough to see him live in Toronto many years ago, and all the links people are posting are great too!
posted by St. Peepsburg at 12:19 PM on January 5, 2022

Stromae is so great. Something that I wanted Neely to add was the connection to Cesaria Evora from Cape Verde, the "barefoot diva" about whom Stromae wrote such a beautiful tribute earlier in his career. The rhythm is Andean cumbia, but the vocal melody isn't at all--it's much closer to Cesaria Evora's gorgeous French Cabaret singer meets African/Afro-diasporic rhythms sound. Evora's band features a cavaquinho (brazilian/portuguese uke), that isn't exactly like the traditionally armadillo-backed charango, but shares an upper-register harmonic/rhythmic role. So Stromae did something really interesting, that makes the song sound familiar to a wide range of listeners. He took an Evora-style tune, and replaced one mini-guitar with another so that there is a sound that is part Indigenous, part African, and part European.
posted by umbú at 7:27 AM on January 6, 2022 [7 favorites]

wow, umbú, thanks for adding a further layer of complexity to this seemingly simple little tune! And: another virtuoso video, made to feel impromptu but so littered with little narrative nuggets, it reminds me of something Jacques Tati might have dreamed up. Ave, Stromae!
posted by progosk at 8:15 AM on January 6, 2022

Stromae is one of my son's very favorite performers. He ran out of French classes at his high school, so self-teaching with francophone music and podcasts is how he keeps his language skills sharp. He is so excited by this release!
posted by wenestvedt at 7:07 PM on January 8, 2022

Also, he came running to show me Stromae's video because it includes a Charango, which we are always in the lookout for.
posted by wenestvedt at 7:10 PM on January 8, 2022