street-singer

25 October

The outdoor market near my quartier,  the Edgar- Quinet,  happens twice a week.  On Wednesdays I go there because I'm hungry, but on Saturdays I try to work up a hunger just so I can go and hear the street-singer. He is quite a performer, with his traditional costume and his high, almost operatic baritone, and he positively preens for the many like me who take his picture. His repertoire, cranked out on a wonderful old hurdy-gurdy machine, includes all the old bal musette standards. Grandmothers often pause so their young charges can breathe in this air of an older Paris as it blows past. I don't recognize the tune he is playing when I enter the market this morning, but as I make my way down the stalls I hear 6, 8, a dozen mostly older folks still singing the tune long after the sound of the hurdy-gurdy has faded away.