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Culture in France

Give me my World Cup with some music and chilli

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The World Cup is underway and the fever has been spreading beyond the borders of South Africa. Several venues in Paris mix football with music and good food. Here’s a glimpse to a few of them.

Reuters
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As can be expected, Château Rouge, the African neighbourhood in northern Paris, is wearing World Cup colours of fun and passion. Six of the 32 teams qualified are from Africa: Algeria, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa.

Most of the restaurants and bars in Château Rouge are open every day showing the matches amid shouts of joy and misery from supporters following what’s happening to their team on the pitch.

Of course, poisson braisé (chargrilled fish), meat on skewers, cola nuts and beer are de rigueur.

Pierre Olcese

Belleville, another north African neighbourhood, will also be bubbling with excitement as Algeria qualified for the World Cup for the first time in 24 years. Couscous, kebabs of all sorts, mint tea and raï music are served.

The good thing about Paris is that the various communities are spread all over the city. You can as easily tumble across an African maquis (the equivalent of an off licence) near Châtelet. One just needs to know where to look.

Concert venues are also undergoing slight transformations to accommodate football and music fans. As Frederic Rollat, the lead singer of the French band Karpatt, pointed out, sport and music have this in common: no borders or prejudice can stop them and both “fuse” races and influences gracefully.

The “rainbow coalition” of football and music is present at the Cabaret Sauvage, a concert venue in north-east Paris that will show all the matches until 11 July on three giant screens. It’s free on weekdays but an entrance free is required on weekends as concerts are on after the last match on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

South African MC Ben Sharpa and Brasilian singer Adriana Cancanhotto are among the various artists invited. The passion for football and music is such that at the Cabaret Sauvage its director even set up an Algerian band on this occasion. The Super Raï Band will play on days matches involving Algeria’s Les Fennecs (Desert Foxes) are on.

There is also the Fifa fan fest at the Trocadero across from the Eiffel Tower, where fans can follow all the matches each day on a giant 50 m2 screen. They can also play football on either of the two pitches specially laid out for the event or learn the moves of diski dance, created by South Africans for the World Cup.

On 22 June K’nan and Fefe are due to play free concerts for the France-Mexico game at Paris's Place du Trocadéro over the river from the Eiffel Tower.

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