The association, and its resulting site, intends to aggregate all the popular and traditional songs of France. However, it harbors controversial songs. The video of Emmanuel Macron singing “Le Refuge” was particularly shared and commented on by far-right sympathizers.
“Only the mafia and the Canto project can blackmail a head of state”. The association and the application of the same name benefited from a spotlight. This Monday evening, after his televised address, Emmanuel Macron was filmed in the streets of Paris singing alongside a group of young people.
On the videos broadcast on social networks, we see the president resume The shelter, a traditional song from the Pyrenees. Indeed, the objective of the Canto project is to “save, bring to life and transmit the memory of popular and traditional song”.
However, the content of its repertoire and the proximity of certain founders to the extreme right place Emmanuel Macron in a delicate position.
A “singing book” application
The association, and its site, intends to aggregate all the popular and traditional songs of France to save them digitally and prevent them from falling into oblivion, in particular through a collaborative and participatory system through which members can propose titles.
The Canto project “provides all users with a ‘singing book’ application which lists all the popular songs of France, from children’s rhymes to saucy songs, including regional songs and traditional evening songs”, explains he.
Launched in 2020, the site now includes around 1700 songs. In the fall of 2022, our colleagues from Release highlighted the presence of several highly controversial songs in the Canto project.
Very controversial songs
Release indeed revealed that military tunes in vogue during the Third Reich were accessible on the application, such as the Panzerlied where the Green is our paratrooperthe song of the paratroopers of the Luftwaffe written in 1941. Today, these two songs cannot be found on the site.
However, it is still possible to access The Face to the Sunanthem of the Spanish Phalanx, the fascist movement of Primo de Rivera, and symbol of Francoism, or to Click christianity banners who intones: “France belongs to the French, work, family, homeland, our currencies are fixed”.
Asked about this, General Manager Gauthier Brioude told Release that “political song is part of the history of song, and it is as such that it is listed. Some are akin to the extreme right, others to the extreme left”.
Links to the far right
It is in particular the political acquaintances of several prominent members of the Canto project that are controversial after this sequence showing Emmanuel Macron. One of the co-founders was, for example, a member of the GUD, a far-right French student organization, and a radical right-wing activist.
In addition, the video of the Head of State was particularly shared and commented on by far-right sympathizers like Stanislas Rigault – president of Generation Z and close to Éric Zemmour – without the young people who challenged the president are necessarily identified as belonging to this movement. According to several messages on social networks, it would be the Chœur Saint-Longin, in Paris.
According Releaseactivists from small groups of the radical far right occasionally socialize in the “Canto aperitifs” organized by the association.
“The Banker Sings”
The group, which seems almost exclusively made up of men, most of whom wear berets, rejoiced on Facebook “that the President of the Republic has used our application”.
“The banker sings with them, it means he has a soul. Nothing is lost,” he continues in a comment.
As the association highlights on its website, the Canto project is supported by the Ministry of Culture and benefits from a grant of €40,000 from the National Center for Music.
For its part, the Élysée, confirming the authenticity of the video, affirms that Emmanuel Macron has agreed to sing a Pyrenean song “that he likes and knows” and that he “could not know at that time. the background of every person he was talking to”.
Traveling to Alsace, the Head of State also justified himself: “If I had said no (to sing with them), you would have said that it’s not nice, not democratic and that it’s contempt”.
