The audience(s) of an engaged popular artist. Bernard Lavilliers and the meaning of postmodernity

Abstract

In the French intellectual tradition, engaged social song has long been counter-power. With changes in artistic production, modern song engaged in an economic-industrial-technical-commercial process. Would the French tradition of engaged song have disappeared with the new media? Would the commodification of the song be expressed through a decline in the artist's political role? This article seeks to interrogate the social reception of the songs of an engaged artist, Bernard Lavilliers, in order to read art as it is experienced in concerts by its audiences. Based on sociological field research (questionnaires, interviews and concert observations), the aim is to develop a typology of audiences and to understand the symbolic function of the artist as a mediator of political messages, his imaginary role, his symbolic place, to capture music as a social fact and understand this “provisional fictional community” that constitutes the audience of a concert