Anyone who knows me knows that I am a lover of French variété — the pop-music genre specific to France, and as unlike the rock music of the US and UK as France’s politics are unlike ours. Yet those same people also know that I abhor the hypocritical, opportunistic course that France adopted toward the American/British war on Saddam Hussein. I can think of at least 40,000 reasons for an American to be angry at France — that’s the number of American soldiers who lie buried in the sands of Normandy, sacrificed to free France from Hitler — and I am no exception. It boggles the mind to think that a nation of such culture, such dedication to liberty, and such a history of enterprise would stand in our way as we moved to free the Iraqi people of their long Saddam nightmare. So the question always arises: how can I continue to enjoy French music, even troubling make regular trips to Montreal to acquire hard-to-find imports?

A better question might be, why should I permit my politics to rule my taste in music? Or my taste in music to rule my politics? As it happens, a reporter from WDET-FM in Detroit called to interview me about Patricia Kaas, who was at that time (this in mid March, just as the war began) touring the US in support of her new Piano Bar (Sony International). She asked what has become a constant question: " Why do you, thinking as you do, listen to French music? " And I gave her my stock answer: " Because I look to artists for artistry, not for politics! "

I felt the same way during the years when well-intentioned Western people took out their disgust at South Africa’s apartheid on the artists and athletes of that country, barring American performers from performing in South Africa and refusing to compete with South African sports teams. What has music or sports to do with politics? Music exists for its own sake; sports as well. Artistic expression knows no boundaries, no agendas other than the human spirit. When a French or Arabic or Tibetan singer sings, he or she is usually expressing something that transcends political boundaries. The human heart and its feelings know no homeland.

I opposed the boycotts of arts and sports that were such a blight upon the anti-apartheid point of view. I opposed President Carter’s boycott of the Moscow Olympics. I will always oppose attempts to make artists or athletes pay for the mistakes of political leaders, and equally attempts to credit those artists and athletes for the triumphs of their political leaders. As for French variété, it stands alone and, perhaps now more than ever, deserves a long and abiding listen.

Variété — which is the word the French use for pop music in general, excluding rock and jazz — is, of all the genres that flourish in the so called First World nations, uniquely French. It derives from multiple sources: cabaret, Dixieland, bal musette, Mozart, Haydn, and sometimes even Beethoven are part of the mix. The Velvet Underground, who themselves were influenced by French variété, have fed the music, as have disco, movie music and show tunes, and even Delta blues. As reworked 40 years ago by Serge Gainsbourg, variété ingests parts of musics from just about everywhere. In contrast to American and British rock, variété is soft, diffuse where our pop is precise. It is pensive rather than active, rhythmic more than melodic, and it is orchestral rather than guitar-based. Variété is quizzical; it seeks answers but rarely reaches conclusions. Rock and roll knows what it wants and how to get there; variété is a music of unrealized possibilities, of open-ended vistas — a music of tomorrow.

In variété, text matters. It tells a story and — as reworked by Jane Birkin, France Gall, and Mylene Farmer — involves other arts. In variété, one may recite a Baudelaire poem, or sing about painting (Gall sings of Cézanne, Farmer of Egon Schiele) and film. Farmer’s 1995 hit " Californie " is about roadside billboards and the streaks of jet airplanes taking off from airports.

Variété dominates the tastes of Eastern Europeans; it holds sway in parts of the Arab world and Latin America and almost all of Asia. The biggest star of French variété, Mylene Farmer, has a huge and passionate following just about everywhere except in the US and UK. It seems doubtful that variété will ever become a popular form here in America; still, to ask fans to boycott it because they disagree with France’s politics is to ask too much. I treasure the great music that comes my way, just as much as it satisfied me to see our troops, and those of the British, blasting the hell out of Saddam Hussein and his gang of rapists and torturers and bringing — I hope — some freedom to the Iraqi and Kurdish peoples.