Volume! #12-1 – Avec ma gueule de métèque

If France is a land of immigration, what about its variété genre? This issue of Volume! aims at tracing the French paths of artists of foreign origin—those who integrated the legacy of chanson française, and those who left a mark on their community by singing exile. As a protean form of expression, variété is an ideal object to observe the ways in which immigrant and foreign identities have been moulded in post-1945 popular music.