Spreading out blankets while snacking on cheese and crackers, students and professors alike enjoyed live French music on the evening of Saturday, Sept. 28 on the lawn in front of French House.
“Musique à la Maison,” as the event was called, allowed student performers to bring together their talents in both music and the French language, as they sang French songs accompanied variously by violin, guitar, drums, keyboard or backing tracks. Maddie Church `27, Cirene Mourad `27, Oliver Wolfe `25, Sophia Ramalli `27 and Eva Rousseau `27 all performed at the event.
The atmosphere of the event was casual, with snacks and drinks available and French flag garlands fluttered on the walls of French House. Some attendees brought their pets, who idled around in the grass, begging for cheese.
The event was co-hosted by French House and the French Student Education Policy Committee (SEPC). Hamilton Peacock `25, a member of the French SEPC, said organizing the event involved “cobbling together a bunch of people who were willing to sing a couple of songs, and then it was also coordinating with Freesound.”
“We went grocery shopping, bought a pile of snacks, set everything up, taped some flags to the house and sent out a bunch of emails,” Peacock said.
Maddie Church `27, house coordinator of French House, undertook much of the event planning. She said of her role as house coordinator — “I think it’s a great way to have one foot in the department, and one foot in campus life.”
“The French House is a monument or symbol of French learning and Francophone culture in general on campus,” Church said. “Being the coordinator, I’ve been working with the SEPC and the department and other student orgs like Freesound to put together events like this that bring French a little closer to other Grinnell students.”
Musique à la Maison is in its second iteration. Last year, students sang music in both French and English, but this year the event’s requirements stipulated choosing songs exclusively in French.
Discussing this decision, Church, who also performed at the event last year, said, “I realized that there are so many French-speaking musicians on campus, enough that we would have people to do an entire show in French. I thought that it would be kind of an interesting challenge to have people perform in a language that maybe not everyone in the audience speaks.”
Octavia George `25, a non-French-speaking audience member, said— “Besides La Vie En Rose, I haven’t really heard the songs before. But there’s something about not understanding the lyrics but still understanding the music that’s beautiful.”
Hadley Galbraith, visiting assistant professor in the French and Arabic department, is acting as faculty advisor for French House this year. She joked that her role in the event mostly involved putting in Amazon orders and sending out emails to the department to advertise the event.
“It was a really nice turnout for the audience. I saw lots of faces that I haven’t seen before, so I think that means folks are here from the department, and then also from all over campus, which is fun,” Galbraith said. “And the performances were so great.”
Galbraith also said she sees music as playing a role in language-learning.
“I think for people who enjoy music, it’s such a great way to get connected to the language because it connects to your emotions. And there’s a story that’s told in lyrics, and then learning those lyrics as a motivator for learning vocab, learning about structures of not only sentences, but poetic writing in the other language. So, I think it’s a great in, not just to the language but to another culture,” she said.
Of her experience performing at the event, Church smiled and said, “We all enjoy doing something we love so much in a language that we love so much.”
