A place of entertainment, serving food and drink, where songs were performed by professional musicians. The term came to encompass a whole style of French popular song, especially during the second half of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. The history of such amusements is bound up with the laws of censorship. Popular song was often perceived to be subversive, not only because of the content of the lyrics, but also because it served as a cloak to disguise gatherings of radical or revolutionary political groups.
In the late 18th century the fashion for singing gained strength through the Caveau, in the basement of the Café Italien near the Palais Royal. Successive regimes banned public singing houses, or reinstated them. Napoleon is said to have frequented the Café des Aveugles, but it was not until the construction of the Champs-Elysées that the café-concert came into its own. With tables set out under the trees, lit by lanterns in the evening, the tradition gradually developed whereby a group of female singers, sitting in a semicircle, would take turns to deliver their songs, accompanied by an orchestra.
As the practice grew in popularity, so many of the cafés acquired winter quarters elsewhere; thus there were different venues with the same proprietors (Alcazar d'Hiver, Alcazar d'Eté, etc.). Different types of singers became categorized by their styles, with such names as gommeur, diseur, gambillard, chanteur-réaliste and fantaisiste. After 1867 a change in the law allowed café singers to appear in costume rather than evening dress; this led to further distinctions and characterizations. Among the most famous 19th-century performers were Darcier (Joseph Lemaire), who was admired by Berlioz, Paulus (Paul Habans) and Thérésa (Emma Vallandon). The fashion for using a single name continued into the 20th century with such singers as Fréhel (Marguerite Boulc'h), Damia (Maryse Damien), Mayol and Polin.
The music typical of the café-concert included sentimental ballads, for instance those by Paul Delmet, patriotic songs such as those of Théodore Botrel, songs of passion and crime (one of the most famous being La veuve by Jules Jouy, which depicts a public execution) and many different styles of comic song. With the rise of Cabaret in the late 1880s, and the construction of large-scale music halls with elaborate stagings, the influence of the café-concert spread well beyond its early small-scale format.
Although the cafés themselves largely ceased to exist after World War I, the musical form, with its typical orchestration employing cornet, accordion, piano and guitar, continued to be used by later composers, among them Marguerite Monnot, Barbara, Leo Ferré and Charles Trenet.
V. Monnier: Célébrités parisiennes: Thérésa et ses mémoires (Paris, 1865)
E. Audray-Deshortes: Les cafés-concerts (Paris, 1866)
A. Chadourne: Les cafés-concerts (Paris, 1889)
Paulus: Trente ans de café-concert (Paris, c1908)
F. Fosca: Histoire des cafés de Paris (Paris, 1934)
Y. Guilbert: Autres temps, autres chants (Paris, 1946)
Romi: Petite histoire des cafés-concerts parisiens (Paris, 1950)
F. Caradec and A. Weill: Le cafés-concerts (Paris, 1980)
R. Courtine: La vie parisienne, i: Cafés et restaurants des boulevards (Paris, 1984)
C. Condemi: Les café-concerts: histoire d'un divertissement, 1849–1914 (Paris, 1992)
PATRICK O'CONNOR