French Prog: 1st Album

Floydoid wrote: Psychedelic Paul wrote: I had an alternative alliterative title in mind for this series of French Prog polls, but politeness and good sense prevailed. Baguette Prog, or Frog Prog?

Le Prog

I'm reminded of the tourist who remarked upon seeing the big tower in Paris for the first time - "Blimey that's an eyeful!".

Hrychu wrote: Hrychu wrote: Psychedelic Paul wrote: Sean Trane wrote: Harmonium (74) is from Quebec, Canada So is Maneige, BTW I knew that, and so are French-Canadians Maneige. Anyways, lumping Frenchmen together with Quebeckers (and Belgians too) is doing a huge disservice to people from France. If you want to trigger somebody from Québec, call them French. 🤣

Indeed.... in the 60's/70's/80's, when being insufferably snobby, Québécois would call you "Maudit Français".

and given that the majority of Belgians (or Swiss) don't have the French language as their mother tongue...

Psychedelic Paul wrote: ^ I always thought French-Canadians were proud of their French heritage. That's why they insist on speaking French to English speakers who don't understand French.

They're very proud of their form of French and their accent (this was part of the Quebec cultural revolution - started by Robert Charlebois qith his album Quebec Love in 66/67. Later on, this pride became part of the Sovereignty crisis (independance) with Harmonium being politically involved (read the double-meaning lyrics in some songs).

Now their political insistance on the use of French takes birth in the economic dominance of the Montreal English-speaking minority - who spoke it (some rather well) but relunctantly so.

Trouble is that their accent is very heavy and usually made fun of in the old world and the French can't help feeling superior, which frowned upon by any non-French francophone (Swiss and some Belgian regions have also strong accent, as do some french provinces in the south). The Maudit Français insult can be read as "Parisians snobs", though it runs deeper than that, refering to France's abandon of their French colonies in North Am (from Acadia/New Brunswick to Missouri to Louisiana) to finance the wars in Europe.

While the 50/60/70's chansonniers from Québec (read singer/songwriters) toured across the planet, very few Québécois prog group toured Europe: there was Offenbach (and later Corbeau), Séguin, Harmonium (opening for Supertramp), but that's pretty well it. I don't think Maneige or Octobre ever did.


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