Monday, January 17, 2005 

Hearing Paris Combo's Belle du Berry croon in French over a backdrop of pattering drums feels like a trip to some timeless cabaret, where smoking is allowed, age brings no ravages and love is always on the menu. It soothes like a sweet and impossible nostalgia. Then you translate the lyrics.

"The rewards of labor/ Are no longer a worthy goal," du Berry sings, charmingly, in the anticorporate song "Baron de Chaise." "The important thing is doing deals/ And ripping off whoever I can."

Singer-songwriter du Berry and Paris Combo's music is as French as its name, which is to say it's both political and personal, a polyphonic melange that ranges from cabaret and chanson to Gypsy swing, experimental rock and Latin jazz. Equally influenced by Edith Piaf and Django Reinhardt, it infuses traditional Gallic elegance with irony and the edginess that come from a constantly shifting blend of cultures.

Fittingly, Paris Combo -- playing Tuesday at the Great American Music Hall -- starts its fourth studio album, "Motifs," on a sweetly defiant note. "Poor me!" du Berry laments, "Made of flesh and bones and song/ I'm not 'high, ' I'm not 'low,'/ I'm not 'in.' ... I'll turn my back on turbulence/ And retreat when faced with violence."

The song, "High, Low, In," sets the tone for the rest of the album. "It's a refusal of a certain violence that comes through the media," explains pianist and trumpet player David Lewis. "It's not a theory or a stance; she's just commenting on some of the alienating effects of what you see when you get up in the morning."

If "Motifs" has a unifying motif of its own, it's the celebration of fusion and camaraderie over isolation and conflict. Musically, Paris Combo has pursued just such a fusion since releasing its self-titled 1997 debut album and transforming itself from a swanky cabaret cover outfit to a band that performs original work imbued with a vibrant, and distinctly Parisian, multiculturalism.

Says Lewis: "Metropolises produce some interesting musical mixes. The scene in Paris sees musical fashions go by, but there's a tendency in the jazz and electronic scenes of merging different forms. The word 'chanson' just means song; it denotes any type of music, and the chanson tradition has gradually broadened to include any number of styles. In modern times, it has a whole panorama of influences that reflect French history and the melting pot of a city like Paris."

While American popular music concentrates on discrete genres, France -- and particularly Paris -- traditionally blends diverse sounds to create new hybrids: jazz fused with cabaret; dance music mixed with world beat. The result is an exciting melange of cultures that promotes universality while acknowledging underlying threads of tension.

That tension winds its way through "Motifs," with love and relationships reflecting the ups and downs of a tumultuous planet. External and internal worlds intertwine: In "Motus," du Berry urges listeners to speak up for both their romantic and political rights; while "Baguee," originally written about the millennium bug, transmutes into a song about a suffocating marriage. The isolation brought by technology is explored in tracks like "Tourist d'une vie" (about an armchair explorer) and "Aquarium" (about living life through television).

Lewis says the band isn't so much antitechnology as it is antitechnology addiction. "Obviously, we use studio technology, but we use it to create a sense of intimacy that starts with the sound of each instrument. We're an acoustic group and have a general attraction to acoustic sounds and textures."

Paris Combo's lineup is in many ways a microcosm of Paris, with members representing a panoply of cultural and musical backgrounds. Du Berry and drummer Francois Jeannin are French; bassist Mano Razanajato was born in Madagascar; and guitarist-banjo player Potzi, whose parents hail from South Africa, has variously described himself as Gypsy and Mediterranean.

Lewis, an Australian, had already been living and performing in Paris for a decade when he met the other members of Paris Combo in the mid-'90s. His background included African jazz and world folk; du Berry, Potzi and Jeannin had just finished a cabaret show called "Cabaret Sauvage." Together, Lewis and the cabaret veterans formed an unlikely collaboration that somehow worked perfectly -- maybe, one might suggest, because it happened in Paris.

Lewis thinks that might be true. "Music in general tends to reflect positive tendencies in a country or a city," he says. "And we're pretty typical of Paris."