Belle-Île-en-Mer is an island off the south coast of Brittany and Marie Galante is an island off the coast of Guadeloupe, itself an island in the Carribean. Belle-Île-en-Mer - Marie Galante is also the title of a song by the French singer/songwriter Laurent Voulzy. I don't know whether he is well known outside the confines of France: he actually lives with his family in Haselmere and is heavily influenced by British music of the 'sixties. He is in my opinion, and in so far as one can judge these things, one of the nicest and most unassuming of French pop singers.
So much for the background.
Laurent Voulzy is about the same age as me and the songs he has written over the years, many of them in collaboration with his friend Alain Souchon, are in some ways an accompanying soundtrack to my time in France. The funny thing is that, as a true Anglo-Saxon, I don't usually bother to listen to the lyrics of songs, being content to let the music wash over me. And so it came as quite a shock recently to discover that this song is actually about Voulzy's early life. The son of a mixed marriage, he moved as a child to France where he suffered from the usual racial prejudice - "café au lait". It's a beautiful song, though not perhaps one of his very best, but I had always thought of it as a pleasant sort of travelogue. How wrong I was!
And if you like that, you might like this too:
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