Street Musicians of Paris: Evolution of an Image

"Free spectacles on the boulevards, Foire Saint-Germain, charlatans, beggars, Savoyards, Auvergnats, Cries of Paris, travelling musicians, bell chimes, music of the French Guards, instrumental players, singers" from Mercier's Tableau de Paris of the end of the 18th century demonstrate an extraordinary soundscape offered daily in the French capital. Later on, street organs, orphéons and band music in the public gardens, balls in squares and suburbs, singers selling broadsheets, and one-man-bands, bring additional color to 19th-century streets. In the 20th century, the métro becomes an extension of the street. An evocation of musical Paris through the multiplicity of painted images, drawings and engravings, from the time of the Pont Neuf of Henri IV up to the present, enables us to reconstruct the decor, to define the instrumental ensembles, including voices, to determine the sex, age, social status and inventive power of the musicians, and also to plot a topography of their favorite places. Literary chronicles, archival documents (police regulations, trials, logbooks of journeys of travelling musicians), musical instruments and the printed song collections such as broadsheets all contribute towards bringing these practices to life and permit an interpretation of their musical and social importance. Combining images of power and antipower, realist vision but also panegyric, like caricature, the iconography of street music practices is seen to be a particularly rich kaleidoscope for capturing the contrasting image of a Parisian musical space which is rarely studied in its totality.