5 thoughts on “Mon Pays- Faudel”

1. The line he repeats the most is Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays. In English this means My country is not a country. He also says the word l’hiver a lot which means the winter. He usually follows the statement Mon pays ce n’est pas un pays with l’hiver, and la neige (the snow). He usually says statements that are negated like ce n’est pas, the only time he did not do that was when he said Ma maison c’est votre maison which means my home is your home. In that verse where he says my home is your home, he talks about how he is preparing the fire, le feu, and the place, la place, for the people on the l’horizon and les humains sont de ma race, the people of my race.

2. When he speaks of perfume and burned sand, I believe he is writing about being forgotten. “Sous les rouleaux de l’ocean” that soggy sand that is constantly wet and never really touched by the sun. He also might be referencing a religious theme about god, ” me trouves un peau mat pour ces rues bordees.” Someone has thrown him a life raft or a mat that leads to the road. That road is what he probably feels like is the road to acceptance.

3. When I see the lyrics, I only recognize few words which help me to guess what he is saying. The words that I recognize are “je,” “desert,” “Paris,” “amis,” “graves,” “l’ocean,” “voyager,””amour,” and “abandonne.” These words help me to think that the man is talking about his experience of immigrating to Paris. This song has a strong message about immigration, traveling, and old memories of his country.

4. The lines I first noticed when he was first singing were when he said, “Je n’connais pas” He doesn’t know this sun, another earth, this perfume but what he does know is where he was born and his country. “Moi qui suis né près de Paris
   Sous tout ce vent, toute cette pluie
   Je n’oublierai jamais mon pays”
   He repeated the phrase ” Je n’oublierai jamais mon pays” quite often which means I’ll never forget my country. There will be a lot of memories he’ll forget but his country is something he will never forget. The phrases that I understood were the ones he repeated the most. For example, “Trop de souvenirs gravés” which he repeated a few times throughout the song.

5. the line that I noticed when looking and listening to the lyrics was when Faudel sang, “Trop de souvenirs gravés”. at first look, i thought he was saying something about souvenirs and graves but the translation of this sentence is closer to really graved memories. In ” Mon Payes”, Faudel sings the lot about all the things he’s going to forget, leave, and does not know such as: is amis, ce soleil, and ce parfum. but the one thing he is going to never forget, ton payes, Je n’oublierai jamais mon pays. he says in the song, “Que c’est ici que je suis né”, translating into That is the place that I am born. his songs messages go deeper then just nationality. Faudel is saying that I might not fit into the ideal box of what a Parisian may look like or act like but this is my home and no matter where I go or who I become I will always be from here and nobody can take that away from him.