Tuesday Tune Two-Fer: Ah Ouais, Manger

If you love tortured puns and have a dim memory of beginning French, have I got the Christmas post for you!

First up is “Ah Ouais” by Papa Wemba, a musician from the Congo who had an interesting career and helped popularize world music to wider audiences. Hearing this track makes me reminiscent for the optimism of the early 2000s, when it felt like we were building towards a global community.

Today we’re pairing it with “Le Festin” by Camille and Michael Giacchino, from the soundtrack to Ratatouille. I guess my prejudices are showing, because I just assumed that even with my very rudimentary understanding of the French language, it’d be trivial to find tons and tons of French pop songs about eating. I always thought that that was a big part of what being French was all about.

But I had no luck at all. The best I could find was “The Feast,” which as a Disney song composed by an American to sound French, seemed like a cop-out. But then I listened to it again, and I remembered that the reason it’s so familiar is because it’s just a really nice and evocative tune. And it works here because it’s à propos de manger. And in a larger sense, isn’t agreeing to things and enjoying eating things the true reason for the season?