Belleville, Paris
Belleville is a neighbourhood of Paris, parts of which lie in four different arrondissements. The major portion of Belleville straddles the borderline between the 20th arrondissement and the 19th along its main street, the Rue de Belleville; the remainder lies in the 11th arrondissements. It was once the independent commune of Belleville, annexed by the City of Paris in 1860 and divided between two arrondissements. Geographically, the neighborhood is situated on and around a hill which vies with Montmartre as the highest in Paris; the name Belleville means "beautiful town". Belleville was a working-class neighborhood. People living in the independent village of Belleville played a large part in establishing the Second French Republic through their actions during the Revolution of 1848. In 1871, residents of the incorporated neighborhood of Belleville were some of the strongest supporters of the Paris Commune; when the Versailles Army came to reconquer Paris in May of that year, it faced some of the toughest resistance in Belleville and in neighboring Ménilmontant.
The bloody street fighting persisted in the two eastern districts, the last of the barricades is said to have been in the Rue Ramponeau in Belleville. During the first half of the 20th century, many immigrants settled there: German Jews fleeing the Third Reich in 1933, Spaniards in 1939. Many Algerians and Tunisian Jews arrived in the early 1960s. Belleville is home to one of the largest congregations of the Reformed Church of France; the Église Réformée de Belleville has been in the area since shortly before World War I. Today, Belleville is a colourful, multi-ethnic neighbourhood and home to one of the city's two Chinatowns, the other located in the 13th arrondissement near the Place d'Italie. Since the 1980s, an important Chinese community has been established there. There are associations as well as stores offering Chinese products. A large and popular outdoor market is held there every Tuesday and Friday along the Boulevard de Belleville, where many local Île-de-France farmers sell their produce.
During the 1980s Parisian artists and musicians, attracted by the cheaper rents, the numerous vacant large spaces, as well as the old Paris charm of its smaller streets, started moving there. Many artists now live and work in Belleville and studios are scattered throughout the quartier; some abandoned factories have been transformed into art squats, where several alternative artists and musicians, such as the band Les Rita Mitsouko began their careers. The demographics of the neighbourhood have undergone many changes throughout the decades. While Armenians and Ashkenazi Jews were once the predominant ethnic groups, North Africans, more sub-Saharan Africans have been displacing these others. Within the neighbourhood there is a cemetery and park, the Parc de Belleville, which ascends the western slope of the hill and offers, in addition to a panoramic view of the Paris skyline, a strikingly modern contrast to the classical gardens of the city centre and the eccentric nineteenth century romanticism of the nearby Parc des Buttes Chaumont.
A School of Architecture is located in Belleville. The iconic French singer Édith Piaf grew up there and, according to legend, was born under a lamppost on the steps of the Rue de Belleville. A commemorative plaque can be found at number 72. A true Bellevilloise, Piaf sang and spoke the French language in a way that epitomised the accent de Belleville, compared to the Cockney accent of London, although the Parisian dialect is nowadays heard. Belleville is prominently featured in the 2007 biographical film of La Vie En Rose. Other famous Bellevillois include film director Maurice Tourneur, legendary French can-can dancer Jane Avril and popular singer and actor Eddy Mitchell; the filmmaker Maïwenn lives there now. Belleville has featured in several films including director Jacques Becker's 1951 Casque d'or, starring Simone Signoret and Serge Reggiani. Albert Lamorisse set and filmed the 1956 Oscar-winning short film Le Ballon Rouge in Belleville and featured many parts of the region that the Parisian government demolished in the 1960s as a slum clearance effort and replaced with housing projects.
The Malaussène Saga, a series of crime novels written by contemporary author Daniel Pennac, is set in Belleville. Belleville is the subject of several French songs, including Eddy Mitchell's "Belleville ou Nashville?" and Serge Reggiani's "Le Barbier de Belleville." Belleville was the location of the book La Vie Devant Soi by Romain Gary. Belleville has undergone much gentrification over the years, similar to that of certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn, New York, Belleville Bistro in Park Slope, Brooklyn was'named after the raffish hilltop Paris neighborhood.' As a result of such gentrification, Belleville was named one of the most unique neighborhoods in the world in 2016. In The Sopranos episode 76, Rosalie Aprile dates a much younger, motorcycle-riding Frenchman named Michel, who comes from Belleville, Paris, she feels a particular sense of kinship with him as Belleville, New Jersey is where members of her inner circle live and work. Belleville is commemorated as the title of one of the most famous of the works of Django Reinhardt.
In Puccini's opera "Il Tabarro" the lovers sing of their shared longing for the place where they both grew up, "
Fred Chichin
Frédéric "Fred" Chichin was a French musician and songwriter. He was the lead member of the band Les Rita Mitsouko, along with Catherine Ringer, whom he met in 1979. Prior to his work in Les Rita Mitsouko, Chichin had been active in the rock bands Fassbinder, Taxi Girl, Gazoline. Chichin died on the morning of 28 November from heart failure, following complications of the cancer the doctors had diagnosed two months earlier, he was buried 6 December 2007 in a private ceremony at the Parisian cemetery of Montmartre. Obituary
Argentina
Argentina the Argentine Republic, is a country located in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Drake Passage to the south. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the fourth largest in the Americas, the largest Spanish-speaking nation; the sovereign state is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires, the federal capital of the nation as decided by Congress. The provinces and the capital exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; the earliest recorded human presence in modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The Inca Empire expanded to the northwest of the country in Pre-Columbian times; the country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century.
Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The declaration and fight for independence was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861, culminating in the country's reorganization as a federation of provinces with Buenos Aires as its capital city; the country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with several waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest nation in the world by the early 20th century. Following the Great Depression in the 1930s, Argentina descended into political instability and economic decline that pushed it back into underdevelopment, though it remained among the fifteen richest countries for several decades. Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, ascended to the presidency, she was overthrown in 1976 by a U.
S.-backed coup which installed a right-wing military dictatorship. The military government persecuted and murdered numerous political critics and leftists in the Dirty War, a period of state terrorism that lasted until the election of Raúl Alfonsín as President in 1983. Several of the junta's leaders were convicted of their crimes and sentenced to imprisonment. Argentina is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America, retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America, membership in the G-15 and G-20 major economies, it is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Union of South American Nations, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Organization of Ibero-American States. Despite its history of economic instability, it ranks second highest in the Human Development Index in Latin America; the description of the country by the word Argentina has been found on a Venetian map in 1536.
In English the name "Argentina" comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, but Italian. Argentina means in Italian " of silver, silver coloured" borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine " of silver" > "silver coloured" mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the feminine form of argentin and derives from argent "silver" with the suffix -in; the Italian naming "Argentina" for the country implies Terra Argentina "land of silver" or Costa Argentina "coast of silver". In Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said l'Argentina; the name Argentina was first given by the Venetian and Genoese navigators, such as Giovanni Caboto. In Spanish and Portuguese, the words for "silver" are plata and prata and " of silver" is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin.
The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region. Although "Argentina" was in common usage by the 18th century, the country was formally named "Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata" by the Spanish Empire, "United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" after independence; the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name "Argentine Republic" in legal documents. The name "Argentine Confederation" was commonly used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the country's name as "Argentine Republic", that year's constitutional amendment ruled all the names since 1810 as valid. In the English language the country was traditionally called "the Argentine", mimicking the typical Spanish usage la Argentina and resulting from a mistaken shortening of the fuller name'Argentine Republic'.'The Argentine' fell out of fashion during the mid-to-late 20th century, now the country is referred to as "Argentina".
In the Spanish language "Argentina" is feminine, taking the feminine article "La" as the i
Chanson
A chanson is in general any lyric-driven French song polyphonic and secular. A singer specializing in chansons is known as a "chanteur" or "chanteuse"; the earliest chansons were the epic poems performed to simple monophonic melodies by a professional class of jongleurs or ménestrels. These recounted the famous deeds of past heroes and semi-historical; the Song of Roland is the most famous of these, but in general the chansons de geste are studied as literature since little of their music survives. The chanson courtoise or grand chant was an early form of monophonic chanson, the chief lyric poetic genre of the trouvères, it was an adaptation to Old French of the Occitan canso. It was practised in the 13th centuries. Thematically, as its name implies, it was a song of courtly love, written by a man to his noble lover; some chansons were polyphonic and some had refrains and were called chansons avec des refrains. In its typical specialized usage, the word chanson refers to a polyphonic French song of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.
Early chansons tended to be in one of the formes fixes—ballade, rondeau or virelai —though some composers set popular poetry in a variety of forms. The earliest chansons were for two, three or four voices, with first three becoming the norm, expanding to four voices by the 16th century. Sometimes, the singers were accompanied by instruments; the first important composer of chansons was Guillaume de Machaut, who composed three-voice works in the formes fixes during the 14th century. Guillaume Dufay and Gilles Binchois, who wrote so-called Burgundian chansons, were the most important chanson composers of the next generation, their chansons, while somewhat simple in style, are generally in three voices with a structural tenor. Musicologist David Fallows includes the Burgundian repertoire in A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs 1415–1480; these works are still 3 voices, with an active upper voice pitched above two lower voices sharing the same range. 15th- and early 16th-century figures in the genre included Johannes Ockeghem and Josquin des Prez, whose works cease to be constrained by formes fixes and begin to feature a pervading imitation, similar to that found in contemporary motets and liturgical music.
The first book of music printed from movable type was Harmonice Musices Odhecaton, a collection of ninety-six chansons by many composers, published in Venice in 1501 by Ottaviano Petrucci. Beginning in the late 1520s through mid-century, Claudin de Sermisy, Pierre Certon, Clément Janequin, Philippe Verdelot were composers of so-called Parisian chansons, which abandoned the formes fixes featured four voices, were in a simpler, more homophonic style; this genre sometimes featured music, meant to be evocative of certain imagery such as birds or the marketplace. Many of these Parisian works were published by Pierre Attaingnant. Composers of their generation, as well as composers, such as Orlando de Lassus, were influenced by the Italian madrigal. In the 20th century, French composers revived the genre. Claude Debussy composed Trois Chansons for choir a capella, completed in 1908. Maurice Ravel wrote Trois Chansons for choir a cappella after the outbreak of World War I as a return to French tradition, published in 1916.
French solo song developed in the late 16th century from the aforementioned Parisian works. During the 17th century, the air de cour, chanson pour boire and other like genres accompanied by lute or keyboard, with contributions by such composers as Antoine Boesset, Denis Gaultier, Michel Lambert and Michel-Richard de Lalande. During the 18th century, vocal music in France was dominated by opera, but solo song underwent a renaissance in the 19th century, first with salon melodies and by mid-century with sophisticated works influenced by the German Lieder, introduced into the country. Louis Niedermeyer, under the particular spell of Schubert, was a pivotal figure in this movement, followed by Édouard Lalo, Felicien David and many others. Another offshoot of chanson, called chanson réaliste, was a popular musical genre in France from the 1880s until the end of World War II. Born of the cafés-concerts and cabarets of the Montmartre district of Paris and influenced by literary realism and the naturalist movements in literature and theatre, chanson réaliste was a musical style, performed by women and dealt with the lives of Paris's poor and working class.
Among the better-known performers of the genre are Damia, Fréhel, Édith Piaf. 19th-century composers of French art songs, known as mélodie and not chanson, included Ernest Chausson, Emmanuel Chabrier, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, while many 20th-century and current French composers have continued this strong tradition. In France today "chanson" or "chanson française" refers to the music of singers such as Charles Trenet, Guy Béart, Jacques Brel, Jean Ferrat, Georges Brassens, Édith Piaf, Charles Aznavour, Yves Montand, Dalida, Serge Reggiani, William Sheller, Renaud, Léo Ferré, Mireille Mathieu and Serge Gainsbourg and more Juliette, Mano Solo, Dominique A, Matthieu Chedid, Benjamin Biolay, Jean-Louis Murat, Mathieu Boogaerts, Daniel Darc, Vincent Delerm, Zaz, Bénabar, Renan Luce, Olivia Ruiz. Chanson can be distinguished from the
Squatting
Squatting is the action of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land or a building residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use. Author Robert Neuwirth suggested in 2004. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is absent from policy and academic debate and is conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement."Squatting can be related to political movements, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist. It can be a means to conserve buildings or to provide affordable housing. In many of the world's poorer countries, there are extensive slums or shanty towns built on the edges of major cities and consisting entirely of self-constructed housing built without the landowner's permission. While these settlements may, in time, grow to become both legalised and indistinguishable from normal residential neighbourhoods, they start off as squats with minimal basic infrastructure. Thus, there is no sewerage system, drinking water must be bought from vendors or carried from a nearby tap, if there is electricity, it is stolen from a passing cable.
During the Great Recession and increased housing foreclosures in the late 2000s, squatting became far more prevalent in Western, developed nations. Besides being residences, some squats are used as social centres or host give-away shops, pirate radio stations or cafés. In Spanish-speaking countries, squatters receive several names, such as okupas in Spain, Chile or Argentina, or paracaidistas in Mexico. Dutch sociologist Hans Pruijt separates types of squatters into five distinct categories: Deprivation-based – i.e. homeless people squatting for housing need An alternative housing strategy – e.g. people unprepared to wait on municipal lists to be housed take direct action Entrepreneurial – e.g. people breaking into buildings to service the need of a community for cheap bars, clubs etc. Conservational – i.e. preserving monuments because the authorities have let them decay Political – e.g. activists squatting buildings as protests or to make social centres In many countries, squatting is in itself a crime.
Property law and the state have traditionally favored the property owner. However, in many cases where squatters had de facto ownership, laws have been changed to legitimize their status. Squatters claim rights over the spaces they have squatted by virtue of occupation, rather than ownership. Anarchist Colin Ward comments: "Squatting is the oldest mode of tenure in the world, we are all descended from squatters; this is as true of the Queen with her 176,000 acres as it is of the 54 percent of householders in Britain who are owner-occupiers. They are all the ultimate recipients of stolen land, for to regard our planet as a commodity offends every conceivable principle of natural rights."Others have a different view. UK police official Sue Williams, for example, has stated that "Squatting is linked to Anti-Social Behaviour and can cause a great deal of nuisance and distress to local residents. In some cases there may be criminal activities involved." The public attitude toward squatting varies, depending on legal aspects, socioeconomic conditions, the type of housing occupied by squatters.
In particular, while squatting of municipal buildings may be treated leniently, squatting of private property leads to strong negative reaction on the part of the public and authorities. Squatting, when done in a positive and progressive manner, can be viewed as a way to reduce crime and vandalism to vacant properties, depending on the squatter's ability and willingness to conform to certain socioeconomic norms of the community in which they reside. Moreover, squatters can contribute to the maintenance or upgrading of sites that would otherwise be left unattended, the neglect of which would create abandoned and decaying neighborhoods within certain sections of moderately to urbanized cities or boroughs, one such example being New York City's Lower Manhattan from the 1970s to the post-9/11 era of the New Millennium. Adverse possession is a method of acquiring title to property through possession for a statutory period under certain conditions. Countries where this principle exists include the United States, based on common law.
However, some non-common law jurisdictions have laws similar to adverse possession. For example, Louisiana has a legal doctrine called acquisitive prescription, derived from French law. There are large squatter communities such as Kibera in Nairobi. An estimated 1,000 people live in the Grande Hotel Beira in Mozambique; the Zabbaleen settlement and the City of the Dead are both well-known squatter communities in Cairo. In South Africa, squatters tend to live in informal settlements or squatter camps on the outskirts of the larger cities but not always near townships. In the mid-1990s, an estimated 7.7 million South Africans lived in informal settlements: a fifth of the country's population. The number has grown in the post-apartheid era. Many buildings in the inner city of Johannesburg have been occupied by squatters. Property owners or government authorities can evict squatters after following certain legal procedures including requesting a court order. In Durban, the city council ro
Système D
Système D is the fourth studio album by French pop rock group Les Rita Mitsouko. It was reached number seven on the French Albums Chart. Système D includes the singles "Y’A D’La Haine", "Les Amants", "Femme d’Affaires"; the album was recorded and produced by Fred Chichin and Catherine Ringer at a large Moroccan house situated in Essaouira, where the group set up their studio. The group had intended to produce the album with veteran producer Tony Visconti, having worked together on the group's previous two albums. Ringer and Chichin chose to produce the album themselves to find a new sound; the album was completed in the Parisian studios of Studio 6, Studio Davout, Studio Mega. The album was mixed by American mixer Carmen Rizzo in Studio Davout. Receiving good reviews the album was released as a double-LP, Cassette and CD in November 1993; the artwork was photographed by Achay, Catherine Ringer and Sednaoui. All tracks written by Fred Chichin/Catherine Ringer. Système D release history
Paris
Paris is the capital and most populous city of France, with an area of 105 square kilometres and an official estimated population of 2,140,526 residents as of 1 January 2019. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, commerce, fashion and the arts; the City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2019 population of 12,213,364, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €681 billion in 2016, accounting for 31 percent of the GDP of France, was the 5th largest region by GDP in the world. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, ahead of Zurich, Hong Kong and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong-Kong, in 2018; the city is a major rail and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly.
Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily, is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015. Paris is known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2018, with 10.2 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe; the historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site. Popular landmarks in the centre of the city include the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris and the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, both on the Île de la Cité. Paris received 23 million visitors in 2017, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the UK, Germany and China.
It was ranked as the third most visited travel destination in the world in 2017, after Bangkok and London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris; the 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. Paris will host the 2024 Summer Olympics; the 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, the 1960, 1984, 2016 UEFA European Championships were held in the city and, every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes there. The name "Paris" is derived from the Celtic Parisii tribe; the city's name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. Paris is referred to as the City of Light, both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment and more because Paris was one of the first large European cities to use gas street lighting on a grand scale on its boulevards and monuments.
Gas lights were installed on the Place du Carousel, Rue de Rivoli and Place Vendome in 1829. By 1857, the Grand boulevards were lit. By the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps. Since the late 19th century, Paris has been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in French as Parisiens, they are pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the area's major north–south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité; the Parisii minted their own coins for that purpose. The Romans began their settlement on Paris' Left Bank; the Roman town was called Lutetia. It became a prosperous city with a forum, temples, an amphitheatre. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city.
Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. Fortification of the Île-de-la-Citie failed to avert sacking by Vikings in 845, but Paris' strategic importance—with its bridges prevent
