As a genre, chanson is difficult to pin down. In French, it simply means "song," and for most of France's history the word described anything from madrigals to romantic poetry. Since the end of World War II, it has come to represent a pop style that places a premium on the fluidity of the French language. Though chanson enjoyed a brief spurt of popularity in the United States in the 1960s thanks to the off-Broadway revue "Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris" and Frank Sinatra's championing of Charles Aznavour, English-language chanson always sounded clunky, owing to the more angular rhythms of English speech. Chanson has made more of a lasting foothold in Japan, where the language seems better suited to its formal contours.
Dominique Cravic, who was first inspired to take up the guitar by the music of chanson god Georges Bressens, isn't really familiar with Japanese chanson. "I've been talking to Japanese journalists all week, and they like it because they think it's about people crying over lovers and such."
Cravic is sitting in the Tokyo office of his Japanese record label with singer Claire Elziere, who has just released an album of classic chanson for the Japanese market called "Chansons d'Amour de Paris," a title that can be taken two ways. "They're love songs that take place in Paris or love songs about Paris," says Cravic, adding that all were originally written between 1930 and the early 1960s, "before rock 'n' roll became dominant."