Difficulty: Beginner
Senegal
Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia are joined together by their love for music and each other. The pair met at the Institute for Young Blind People in Bamako, the capital of Mali.
Difficulty: Beginner
Senegal
Amadou and Mariam share singing duties with co-producer Manu Chao on a song with themes of migration and dislocation.
Difficulty: Beginner
Senegal
Amadou and Mariam reference a number of West African musical instruments, like djembes, dununs, balans, and tamas, in “Beaux dimanches”—a song about Sundays in Bamako.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Canada
From dreams to reality, putting forth “a little bit of energy each day,” Annie Chartrand, a vocalist who debuted singing behind her bathroom door, burst onto the music scene in 2006. Here is an interview with the singer of Ma blonde est une chanteuse [My Girlfriend Is a Singer]—a group that's actually part of a love story…
Difficulty: Beginner
France
Catherine shows us how to spot the differences between a seventeenth-century building and an eighteenth-century one in this introduction to the southern French city of Arles.
Difficulty: Beginner
France
Catherine continues her tour of Arles by taking us through the city's narrow streets lined with old houses, which offer some nice shade during the hot summer months.
Difficulty: Beginner
France
Arles is an interesting town to visit, well-known for its Roman amphitheater. At one point two hundred houses were hiding inside the arena itself.
Difficulty: Intermediate
France
Lucile, aka “B-Girl Frak,” has been dancing most of her life. But it wasn’t until she discovered hip-hop that she realized what dancing as an art form really meant to her.
Difficulty: Intermediate
France
Lucile talks about how her incredible flexibility and break-dancing skills led to her being known as “B-Girl Frak.” Find out what your true hip-hop name is here.
Difficulty: Intermediate
France
B-Girl “Frak” breaks down one of the most basic moves in hip-hop — the six-step. See if you can follow her body movements and her instructions in French at the same time.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
France
Babylon Circus, a ska band from Lyon, sings in this song about romantic regrets, missed cues, and lost opportunities. “J’aurais bien voulu” could well be translated as “Woulda, coulda, shoulda.”
Difficulty: Intermediate
France
In "J'ai plongé dans le bruit" (I Dove into the Noise), the French trio Baden-Baden depicts a relationship through impressionistic imagery and poetic language. The video's water-themed visuals might be a reference to the group's namesake, the German spa town Baden-Baden.
Difficulty: Intermediate
France
In this song, Baden Baden describes the process of saying farewell to a romantic relationship and softening the blows of separation. Despite the melancholy lyrics, the melody of this "soft descent" is catchy and uptempo.
Difficulty: Intermediate
France
Here's the trailer for La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast), a new French film based on the famous fairy tale first published in 1740. While some of you may be most familiar with the Walt Disney or Jean Cocteau versions, this recent release is an attempt to recapture the spirit of the original tale while also giving it more of a contemporary twist.
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