LA CHANTEUSE DE LA MAISON: CHANTEUSE OF THE HOUSE

Photo: Can Can dancers at “La Belle Epoque”. At the very beginning of the Parisian cabaret, almost all the Can Can dancers were "Diseuses", meaning singers, more precisely boite singers, cabaret singers.

CABARET CANNOT BE FRANCHISED OR DUPLICATED

WHAT IS CABARET?

CABARET is a French product. It cannot be authentically duplicated, franchised or Americanized, no matter, how talented and creative an American female artist is. It can be Americanized, Africanized, Middle Easternized or even “nationalized”, but it would never be the same, for it will loose its original cache and character. Cabaret is for the French what hamburger, ketchup, stocks, mortgages, Campbell Soup Cans, blue jeans, patriotism, politics,  college basketball, courage and football are for the Americans.

Historically: Cabaret as a popular term, (except in the United States) means all over the world: An intimate space for adults where striptease and nudity shows are offered; it is also a sleazy bar, a house of prostitutions,  or a nightclub  where  adults can smoke, eat, drink, dance with women readily available to them and where customers searching for a “woman of the night” might get lucky and find one for the right price. Epistemologically, CABARET derived from a 15^th century term meaning “taverne” tavern or even cellar, where artists, travelers and visitors from out-of-town, neighboring counties and distant cities could and would enjoy food and wine drinking. The term evolved throughout the centuries to include acrobats, jugglers, dancers, house singers (chanteuses de la maison), balladeers, fire eaters, magicians, stand up comics, satirists, strolling musicians, comedians, striptease dancers, variety shows, elaborate attractions, extravaganzas and appearances by renown singers, actors, actresses and artists. In the late 19^th century and early 20^th century, Cabaret added a larger dimension to its aspect by focusing on “La Chanson” (song) and “Dance Des Femmes Nues” (Dance by Naked Women). 

Photo: Yvette Guilbert Taking a Curtain Cal, 1894, oil on photographic enlargement of a lithograph 48x25cm, Musee Toulouse-Lautrec.

THE FIRST KNOWN CABARETS
 

In the United States, the song became the major attraction of Cabaret, while in Europe and all over the world, sensuality, sex, eroticism, nudity, mingling with women, “catching the women of the night for a price”. Drinking and music remained or became the characteristics and predominant features of Cabaret. As simple as that! All these aspects were captured in time by the dawn of Cabaret in 1881. But, in addition to its sensual character, Cabaret became a center, a place, a circle for intellectuals, painters, artists, poets, writers, authors, composers, musicians, philosophers, dramatists and men and women of the arts, literature and humanities. In other words, Cabaret became a whole world for everybody. The first known cabaret or café-cabaret was “Les Hydropathes” (described in several parts of this work) followed by “Le Chat Noir” (also discussed at length in this work). Of course, there are some serious modern cabarets in France that exclusively offer a musical repertoire “Tour de Chant” by a well-known singer, a headliner artist as it is the case in the United States but, this kind of Cabaret is to be looked upon as Concert-Cabaret  rather than simply  Cabaret.  Later on, in history, the early Parisian Cabarets were copied in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Istanbul and a great number of Eastern and Western countries. In 1919, Berlin began to rival Paris. The German Kabarett was born. Similar in concept but more daring, the German Kabarett became cell and a heaven for political schemes, coups d’etats, espionage and conspiracies. To some, German Kabarett was heaven. To many others, it was hell! The German Cabaret movement was known as Dadaism. In postwar Germany, the German Kabarett’s political side became obvious and clear to everybody, including  the learned and  the ignoramus. In Germany, in 1897 Cabaret came to life with Yvette Guilbert in the form of social entertainment, political unrest and protest and accentuated radical satire. In the '20s, Berlin had 122 newspapers, 900 whorehouses, 876 gambling joints and 36  Cabarets of all kinds. The majority of German Kabaretts catered to sexually oriented and motivated clientele. Their kind of operations ranged from strip joints to dancing floors selling sex. They had nothing in common with the Parisian intellectual Café-Cabarets.  It is this very “sex business” and “pornographic enterprise” that gave birth to the name of Kabarett in Berlin. Kabarett became a “pleasure place”, a blend of music, smoking, satires and SEX!

Continues on the next page.