Saturday in the rue Mouffetard
Like the rue de la Huchette and the rue Saint-Jaques, the rue Mouffetard is one of my favourite streets in Paris. Each are hustling, bustling places steeped in history.
The rue Mouffetard is to be found in the V arrondissement a stone’s throw from the Panthéon and a ten minute walk from the Jardin du Luxembourg. At its northern end, on top of the Mont Sainte-Geneviève, the rue Mouffetard becomes the rue Descartes leading to the Place Contrescarpe. At it’s southern end, at the bottom of the hill, is the Square Saint-Médard where there is a permanent open-air market. It was in this street that I chose to spend my Saturday afternoon.
Dating back to Roman Lutetia, the rue Mouffetard as it became was a major Roman thoroughfare which along with rue Galande, rue Lagrange, rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève and rue Descartes, ran from the Roman Rive Gauche city south to Lyon and on to Italy.
Before the fairly recent gentrification of the area, the rue Mouffetard had a less than glorious past. From the late middle-ages the area was associated with trade including tanneries, starch-makers and dyers some of which only disappeared towards the end of the twentieth century. By the eighteenth century the area had gained a reputation for violence and in the nineteenth century men from la Mouffe’ were always to be found on the Paris barricades at every opportunity from 1830 through to 1871. Balzac said that, “No neighbourhood of Paris is more horrible and more unknown”. Writing in 1920, Georges Duhamel noted that, “Mouffetard country has its own customs and laws which have neither meaning nor jurisdiction over the other side of the rue Monge”. Ernest Hemingway, a resident in la Mouffe’ in the 1920′s, gives a colourful description of the rue Mouffetard that he knew when wrote, “The Café des Amateurs was the cesspool of the rue Mouffetard … The squat toilets of the old apartment houses, one by the side of the stairs of each floor with the two cleated cement shoe-shaped elevation on each side of the aperture so a locataire would not slip, emptied into cesspools which were emptied by pumping into horse-draw wagons at night. In summertime, with all the windows open, we would hear the pumping and the odour was very strong …”
I am pleased to report that the rue Mouffetard is much improved today. It may be one of the oldest streets in Paris but it is also one of the liveliest with wall-to-wall restaurants, shops, cafés and the daily, open-air market which is one of the oldest street markets in Paris .
Join me for a walk along the rue Mouffetard:
… and a diversion into the only bookshop in the street:
… and, of course, a beer in the bistro Le Mouffetard:
These are binaural recordings. To get the best effect you should listen using headphones.
The ‘Manifestation’ – It’s a French Thing
Demonstrations, or “manifestations” as the French call them, are a way of life in France and particularly in Paris so if you live here you just have to get used to them. When I first came here eleven years ago I found this ‘leap to the streets’ at every opportunity quite mystifying. As time has moved on I have not only got used to it but I have come to respect the right of the demonstrators to protest and to enjoy the enthusiasm with which the do it.
Here in Paris manifestations seem to happen all the time except of course in the summer when even the most ardent demonstrators, along with everyone else, go on holiday. But come September and ‘La Rentrée’, that peculiar time of the year when everyone returns from holiday and life slowly gets back to normal, they will be back on the streets advancing whatever cause it is they support or are opposed to. And the causes are many and varied. I have seen demonstrations varying from opposition to pension reform to anti-globalisation to gay rights, to the regularisation of the ‘sans-papiers’ to more parking spaces for motorcycles and all points in between. It seems that nothing is too great or too small to take to the streets about.
At this point I should admit that I am not a natural demonstrator. I enjoy watching the demonstrations and I enjoy recording them but I am not a natural participant. I did though take part in one demonstration. It wasn’t planned, it happened by accident. I happened to be in the Place de la République one Saturday afternoon when I spied a demonstration approaching. It was a protest against ‘la peine de mort’ the death penalty, something I feel particularly strongly about and before I knew it I was joining in. It was the first and only time I’ve done it but I’m pleased I did.
Most of the demonstrations in Paris are peaceful if often enthusiastic. It is only on very rare occasions that any violence occurs and then only by a tiny minority. On the whole things are mostly good-natured. And just for once, a word in support of the police. At any demonstration in Paris the CRS (the French riot police) are present in force but, in my experience, they always seem to keep a discreet distance and never become visible unless things get hopelessly out of control which happens only very rarely. In all the time I have been watching demonstrations here I have never once seen the police be provocative in any way.
Love them or loathe them, manifestations happen here. People take to the streets to express their support for, or opposition against, a wide variety of causes. For the most part they do it peacefully, enthusiastically and with good humour. Long may it continue.
Blog Update
Two new things:
First, to let you know that I have added a new sound file to the “street music” page of this blog. This is a recording I made a few weeks ago of six jazz musicians having a lot of fun playing outside the gates of the Jardin du Luxembourg here in Paris. It’s well worth a listen. I have also included this as my “Sound of the Week”.
Second, I have added a link to the site of Vladimir Kryutchev under the “Links to other sound sites” segment. Vladimir is a journalist who lives in Russia and he specialises in binaural ambient recordings of his home town. I recommend that you click on the link to his site and have a listen.
A Strangely Quiet Saturday
Yesterday was a strange Saturday in Paris. I went out sound-hunting as usual. I left my apartment and went out into my little street to find it totally deserted – nothing, no people, one or two parked cars with no drivers and all but two of the shops resolutely shut. It occurred to me that this might be a public holiday that I had missed, it has happened to me before, but no, this was not a public holiday it was simply the weekend in the year when most people are away on holiday. It was quite an eerie feeling to see the streets here in my neck of the woods quite so deserted. And it was not only my quartier that people had deserted, the rest of Paris had the same air of emptiness.
Last week the temperature hovered around the low twenties with a tinge of autumn in the air. Yesterday, it was back to a summer thirty degrees making Paris hot and sultry.
I walked around the Véme and VIéme arrondissements from le Panthéon down to and then along the Boulevard Saint-Germain. For the most part, everywhere was deserted, a strange sight indeed. I paused outside Starbuck’s at l’Odeon as I always do. I couldn’t help wondering whether Mr Starbuck realises that his coffee shop is sited in one of the bloodiest historical parts of Paris. Somehow I doubt it. Not twenty metres from Starbuck’s once stood the home of the volcanic revolutionary orator, Danton, who came to a sticky end at the hand of Madame Guillotine. Just to the right, where now stands the Ecole de Médecin, was the house in which Marat was murdered in his bath by Charlotte Corday in 1793. The revolutionary group, the Cordeliers, met just up the street where a former monastery has been converted into a Cordeliers museum.
Some way on, in the Place de Saint-Germain, the street musicians were conspicuously absent for once, they too it seemed were on holiday. What a strange place Paris is in August. The tourists still come of course. In the shadow of the ancient abbey of Saint Germain-de-Prés both the Café Flore and Les Deux Magots were full as always mainly with tourists anxious to sit where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir once sat at the very heart of the existentialist movement. Not many branches of philosophy have such a very precise location.
More walking with the sun as strong as ever, more hunting for interesting sound which was proving to be more elusive than normal and a growing thirst that needed quenching. More deserted streets but none more so than the rue de Beaune, a street with art galleries end-to-end on both sides all of which were shut and not another human being in sight. On a regular Saturday it is difficult to move in this street with art lovers and the just curious either spilling out of the galleries onto the street or fighting to get in. Yesterday it was utterly deserted.
My meanderings eventually brought me to the Quai de la Tournelle where, opposite the statue to Saint Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, in one of the maze of side streets I found a charming little bistro, Les Degrés de Notre Dame. A delightful watering hole and the perfect place to sit down, rest my feet and put the world to rights.
Despite all my walking and my interlude in Les Degrés de Notre Dame I still hadn’t managed to hunt down any interesting sound. I always find it frustrating to go home empty-handed although it does happen sometimes. Yesterday I struck lucky but only at the very last minute. I was changing trains in the Metro Charles de Gaulle Etoille when I happened upon a lone busker, perhaps the only one not on holiday, playing the xylophone.
Somehow, it seemed to make the day worthwhile.
“Hot News” – Two New Blog Pages
I am currently building two new pages on this blog. One is entitled “Street Music” which will include some of the recordings I’ve made of street musicians mainly in Paris. The other is called “Sound Of The Week” which will include my choice of a Paris sound for the week. Over the coming weeks I will add more sounds to these pages so keep an eye on them.
Take a look and tell me what you think.
Nagra LB – An Update
It’s now some eight weeks since I wandered down to Le Microphone in the rue Victor Massé and bought my Nagra LB sound recorder and I thought that, having now given it a good workout, I might share my impressions of it.
I have always rather been in awe of the name “Nagra” and the reputation of their products and this is the first time that I have actually owned a grown-up Nagra. I have my hand-held Nagra ARES – M which has proved to be a real workhorse, but comparing the ARES-M to the Nagra LB would be like comparing chalk and cheese.
The Nagra LB comes from the Nagra tradition of designing and building audio recorders for the broadcasting and film industries. Following on from the ARES – C and the ARES – BB+, the Nagra LB is essentially a sound recorder designed for broadcast journalism, hence the on-board communications features via bluetooth, Ethernet and USB. It can of course be used perfectly well for any other type of high-quality recording as I have proved. The one that I have is the first model in the Nagra LB stable. According to Nagra, two more versions are coming up, one with a full SMPTE/EBU time code and another without the time code or the editing facilities. That’s the trouble with buying a new model early – you’re never quite sure what other versions might follow. Still, I’m perfectly happy with the version I have.
The Nagra LB is very sturdy whilst at the same time being easy on the eye. It gives me the feeling that one could drop it from a great height and it would survive although I’ve no intention of trying that particular experiment. It measures 175 x 65 x 85mm including the battery box and it weighs 1.4kg (3lbs) including the batteries of which 8 AA NimH or Alkaline cells are required.
I don’t propose to list all the technical specifications here except to say that the Nagra LB has the following key features:
- Two channel recording with two colour displays, one on the front and one on the top,
- Linear digital PCM, MPEG 1 layer 2 or MP-3
- 16 / 24 bit Broadcast Wave File BWF (WAV)
- Sampling rate: 44.1, 48 kHz, 88.2, 96 and 192 kHz
- +48 V Phantom power supply
- USB 2.0 communication Ethernet/Bluetooth
- Pre-recording buffer
- M/S decoder
- Internal flash and removable Compact Flash + Hot-Swapping
- Internal speaker
- Built-in audio editor
The technophiles can find the full technical specifications here.
The LB comes complete with:
- A battery box for 8 AA cells.
- A carrying case
- A carrying strap
- An AC/DC converter 100-240V AC, 15V DC, 0.7A including AC plug adapters
- A Bluetooth dongle
- A standard USB cable
- CD including the user manual
So, what do I think about the Nagra LB?
Let’s get one thing out of the way first. The carrying case supplied is pretty awful! It’s functional in the sense that the recorder fits inside it but it offers little real protection except perhaps from scuffing and it has no extra space for a microphone, spare batteries etc. I can imagine very few people will want to use it. It seems that, as usual, it’s left up to Portabrace to provide the proper carrying case. Sorry, but I just had to get that off my chest.
The first thing to say about the Nagra LB itself is that I am absolutely delighted with it. It does everything it’s supposed to do and it does it very well indeed. It’s robust, easy to use and everything is easily to hand.
Having bought it, got it home and installed the batteries I was able to switch it on and begin recording right away using the default settings. However, there is a full settings menu so that you can set up the LB appropriately for whatever is best for you. The full settings menu is accessed from the top panel and is easy to navigate and a shorter version of the settings menu can be accessed from the front panel. Of course, the first thing I did was to try it out with all my microphones which involved multiple settings of the menu which was a bit tiresome but for everyday use I use three microphones for the majority of my work, all stereo, and now that I have the settings in place I don’t have to change them at all.
The front panel, the business end of the recorder, is excellent. Everything is clear and easy to get at. I especially like the master switch used for record and playback. Yes, it really is a proper switch which you turn from the mid “off” position going clockwise through “Test” (standby prior to record) and then to “Record” and anti-clockwise through “Stop” to “Play”. The switch has a positive action and it means that you actually have to turn something to engage “Record” which I find reassuring. I find it’s so much better and so much safer than pressing a button. I also like the screens. The one on the front is bright even in strong sunlight although it can be dimmed if required. The screen contains a wealth of information including the level metres and everything is very easy to read.
The LB has a 2Gb internal hard disk and it accepts Compact Flash cards type I and II. It also has a “hot-swap” facility which means that an almost full CF card can be replaced by a blank formatted CF card without loosing any information without stopping the recording – very useful in high-pressure situations.
I could write at length about all the technical things that impress about the LB, but this is not that sort of blog. Suffice it to say that my short experience of it shows that the Nagra LB seems to live up to the Nagra advertising – it really does seem to be what it says on the tin!
I gave the LB it’s first serious outing recording the fly-past on the morning of La Fête National on 14th July followed by recording the end of the Tour de France in the Champs Élysée at the end of July. I’ve also used it for some street recording. On all occasions the LB behaved impeccably.
For broadcast journalists working in a fast-moving news environment, the Nagra LB with its on-line editing and sophisticated communications facilities just has to be the best recorder on the market. For radio features and documentaries it is ideal – reliable, compact and easy to use. For more relaxed, general recording, the on-board editing and the communications facilities are a luxury rather than a necessity but the performance is exemplary.
For the sound recording that I specialise in the Nagra LB has so far proved to be a very valuable tool.
Finally, I think it’s always worth remembering that the hardware, however good or sophisticated, is not an end in itself – it is only a means to an end. Memorable sound recording is a product of the imagination not of the hardware.
My Least Favourite Job
Sometimes things just don’t go to plan as I discovered yesterday evening when I went to dump some bottles in the rubbish place in my apartment building.
I live on the fifth floor of the building and there is a chute on each floor which we can use for disposing of small items. The chute is just big enough to take a small Monoprix supermarket bag full of trash. However, we are supposed to separate our used glass bottles, plastic bottles, paper waste and garden rubbish and put each into separate coloured wheelie bins parked down in the basement of the building.
I don’t know why, but this is my least favourite job – well, this and standing in an interminable Monoprix supermarket checkout queue which deserves a whole blog to itself. Because I find disposing of my bottles such a drag I tend to let them collect for much longer than I should before disposing of them. Yesterday evening I excelled myself and did the job but, to make it more interesting, I thought I would take my recorder with me to record the sound of the bottles going into the bins for my sound effects collection.
I collected the bag of bottles from the kitchen, took the lift down six floors to the basement and then dumped the bottles into their respective bins. So far so good.
All that now remained was to take the lift back up the six floors to my apartment carrying my empty bag. Lifts are rather like computers, they’re wonderful things especially when they work – and this particular lift didn’t! Somewhere between me arriving and wanting to leave au sous-sol the wretched thing had died. Persistent button pressing failed to bring it to life, “Beam me up Scotty”, had no effect either and so there remained only one alternative – to climb up six flights of stairs! This wasn’t in the script and it shouldn’t happen to someone who only uses stairs if they’re moving. Climbing up one floor brought me into the lobby which I had to cross before making the ascent up the remaining five floors.
In my defence, it’s not just a question of being unfit. Whilst most people run on high-octane natural energy, I am battery-powered. Next time, I shall let the bottles pile up even higher before I embark on another expedition au sous-sol.
These recordings are binaural. To get the best effect you should listen using headphones.
Saturday Afternoon in Belleville
For some time now I have been aware that I have perhaps been spending too much time recording sound in the centre of Paris where the pickings are easier and not enough time further afield. Last Saturday I decided to do something about that.
I took this photograph, which I thought was quite amusing, when I arrived at my target for the day, Belleville, most of which lies in the XIX arrondissement.
There were two reasons for choosing Belleville. First, this is where Edith Piaf, whose singing I adore, was born, allegedly under a lamppost on the steps of N° 72 rue de Belleville, at least that’s what the plaque on the wall of N° 72 says. My second reason for choosing Belleville was for it’s colourful multi-cultural community.
There are some comparisons between Bellville and the East End of London. Both are in the east of their respective cities. Both are predominantly working-class areas, whatever that means, and both have, or in the case of Bellville, had, distinctive accents, Cockney in the case of the East End and the accent de Belleville which is rarely heard these days except in the recordings of Edith Piaf. Both have been homes for immigrant communities fleeing from persecution, the Huguenots and the Jews in the East End of London and, in Belleville, the Ottoman Armenians fleeing the systematic massacres by the Turks in 1915-1917, something still inexplicably denied by the Turkish government, Ottoman Greeks fleeing persecution in Anatolia around 1920, German Jews fleeing Nazi persecutions during the 1930s, and Spaniards fleeing civil war in 1936. Many Algerians and Tunisian Jews arrived in the early 1960s.
Today, Belleville comprises a large, multi-ethnic community comprising Chinese, North Africans and increasingly, sub-Saharan Africans. Belleville is home to one of the two “Chinatowns” of Paris, the other being centered around the rue de Chesy close to the Place d’Italie where I go to every year to record the Chinese New year celebrations. Chinese restaurants abound in Belleville and I enjoyed a delicious Saturday evening dinner in one of them, Cok Ming, which I can thoroughly recommend.
On an historical note, Belleville played a large part in establishing the Second French Republic during the Revolution of 1848, and in 1871, residents of Belleville were some of the strongest supporters of the Paris Commune. It was all a very bloody affair and the street fighting in both Belleville and the neighbouring Ménilmontant continued down to the last barricade in the rue Ramponeau.
Last Saturday there were no barricades and no street fighting I’m pleased to say but there was a North African street market on the Boulevard de Belleville which I was able to record, including the heavy rain shower that descended upon me.
This is a binaural recording. To get the best effect you should listen using headphones.
Beth Arnold’s “Letter From Paris” Blog
I have some good news.
Beth Arnold has invited me and several other people to contribute monthly posts to her very popular “Letter From Paris” blog starting in September. Together, we will be contributing articles on art, design, photography, sound (that’s my bit), fashion, decorating, reviews, talk of the town … and more. Take a look at the build up she has given us: http://www.betharnold.com/1/2010/08/letter-from-paris-requestingletters-to-paris.html
Beth is a very successful American journalist living in Paris with a host of credits to her name. Her site is well worth a visit: www.betharnold.com
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