It is in a small shop in the 18th arrondissement that nestles Chez Sauviat, the oldest record store in the Barbès district. To capture the uniqueness of this place, Tewfik Hakem handed the microphone to music producers and journalists: Michel Lévy, Kamel Hamadi, Zoulikha Guellil and Raoul Belaïche.
Studying the place occupied by cultural and unusual places, such is the purpose of “Spirit of places”, a weekly program produced by France Culture. In an immersive thirty-minute format, Tewfik Hakem offers living and embodied testimonies.
In Barbès, we rush into the intimacy of Chez Sauviat. Lined with CDs and posters of North African singers, the store, created in 1947, very early on specialized in oriental music. In 1958, the Constantine plan, an economic program that seeks to develop Algerian resources, was launched by Charles de Gaulle and Paul Delouvrier (in the midst of the Algerian war). Music is one of these resources.
The Parisian record companies, to capture subsidies, produce Algerian music. Léa Sauviat, a fine connoisseur of the genre, directs them towards the most prominent artists of the moment. A savvy music lover, “Madame Sauviat,” as 86-year-old singer-songwriter Kamel Hamadi calls her, had a record store in Paris’ 13th arrondissement before opening her store on Boulevard de la Chapelle in 1947.
Ambiance
Another issue of “Esprit des lieux” immerses us in the boiling of the Stade-Vélodrome. Any Marseillais will tell you: much more than a sports arena, it’s a real piece of Marseille history. Several academics, attending a football match that looks like a Mediterranean derby (Marseille-Nice), paint a portrait of this effervescent place where the identity and collective memory of the Marseille city are built, two weekends a month , on the pitch and in the stands.
“The Stade-Vélodrome is a place of socialization, fusion and communion which celebrates the Marseille identity”, underlines Christian Bromberger, professor of ethnology at the University of Provence Aix-Marseille. The architectural evolutions of the building, renovated over the course of the major French sports competitions, change the atmosphere of the arena: “Before we built a roof, the atmosphere flew to the sky. Now that there is one, the atmosphere resonates,” analyzes journalist Mourad Aerts.
In “Esprit des lieux”, the atmosphere resonates every week in the ears of listeners. Here, the songs of supporters interrupt the words of a researcher, there, a raï producer is interrupted by an acquaintance who greets him in the middle of the street…
