During the Belle Epoque - the golden age of the French café-concert - the comic character of the Englishman was a firm favourite of French audiences, with more than 80 songs and skits making merry at the expense of the English from 1870-1904. Hannah Scott presented her paper 'Singing the English: comic songs about England in the Belle Epoque' exploring this forgotten song tradition, with its musical jokes, its barbarized folk jigs, and its deeply unflattering costumes and comedy accents. Hannah's research explores that though musically simple in many ways, these songs reveal that they are a melting pot of the complex social and cultural tensions at work in French society. - riven as it was by increasing colonial ambition, the recent crushing defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, fears over violent class conflict, and a sickening and shrinking population. This paper will question the long-lasting appeal of this genre through close readings of a selection of songs, placed alongside reviews, contemporaneous musical critiques, and ethnographic texts about the English, seeking to understand the ways in which these hugely-popular songs perform, mediate, and problematize national identity at the turn of the century.

We heard about Hannah's research questioning the long-lasting appeal of this genre through close readings of a selection of songs, placed alongside reviews, contemporaneous musical critiques, and ethnographic texts about the English, seeking to understand the ways in which these hugely-popular songs perform, mediate, and problematize national identity at the turn of the century.

About Hannah Scott

Hannah Scott is a NUAcT Fellow in the School of Modern Languages. Her current project explores the role of popular music in communicating and responding to experiences of disease, medicine, and public health in the Parisian Belle Epoque. More broadly, her research interests embrace music, performance, and popular culture, especially in nineteenth-century France. Her latest monograph, Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow 1870-1904 (Routledge, 2022), examines the role of low-brow music in forming an idea of ‘Britishness’ for the French at the height of cross-channel rivalry