Fête de la musique + Chanson : "Parce qu'on vient de loin" par Corneille

Music Day, la fête de la musique, is celebrated on June 21st, the longest day of the year and the first day of Summer. In this video by FrenchPod101.com, Ingrid tells us everything about this special Holiday:

In class, we also studied the text "La fête de la musique" (with audio version) from Podcast Français Facile. I reformatted their pdf to create the class handout, which includes a fill-in-the-blanks exercise, vocabulary notes and comprehension questions.

We also took this opportunity to study a song in class: "Parce qu'on vient de loin" ("Because we Come from Far Away") by singer-songwriter Corneille. Here is the official music clip:

Here are the chords with guitar tabs I used for the class handout. You can also find here the French lyrics with English translation.

In order to fully understand this song, it is necessary to know the singer's story. Corneille grew up in Rwanda. At 17, his whole family was killed under his eyes during the genocide, but he managed to escape. He now lives in Quebec. Here is a short autobiography he wrote for Oprah.com, as well as another brief biography.

Here are other related videos:

Same audio as above with on-screen lyrics

Karaoke version, for the singers among you!

The same song covered by Kids United

To conclude this post, I'd like to add the videos I showed in class a year ago, in June 2018. I realized that I forgot to post them at the time! "Mieux vaut tard que jamais", as Mr. Brown says. 😉 

These videos illustrate different aspects of Music Day in France: small music groups in the streets of Périgueux (South-West) and Épinal (East); a children's choir recital in the presence of Education Ministry officials in Paris; and a huge concert in Nice (South-East).