Posts tagged ‘indierock’
A lovely weekend in Lille (Hauts de France)
Lille, the capital of the Hauts de France region, is a lovely city in the northeastern tip of France’s “Hexagon.” Located very near the Belgian border, Lille has been a major center of government, higher education, art, culture, and commerce for hundreds of years. It was the capital of Flanders until Flanders became part of France in the late 17th century. Today it continues to be a thriving urban center, with convenient transportation links to Paris, London, Brussels, and Amsterdam.
I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Lille several times in recent years because one of my sons lives there. This weekend my other son and I went there again, this time to watch him perform with his new band, Samjo.
It was a very exciting night not only because this was the band’s first live performance, but because the energy was everything you could want for a first-time gig: a full house, an enthusiastic crowd, and talented musicians performing in perfect harmony, and in synch with one another. My son calls his niche “introvert rock.” His songs feature soulful, poetic reflections on life in a wide variety of its aspects, and from various points of view. As a lifelong lover of the French language, I am especially pleased that he’s mixing in some lyrics in French here and there. 🙂 Check out, for example, Night Lights. (The link provided is to Spotify, but you can access his songs pretty much anywhere music is streaming.)
There were other pleasures of course, and as always in France, one of those pleasures is eating.
We also had a lunch featuring galettes, which is a kind of thin buckwheat crépe (apparently Breton, not Flemish), in this case garnished with smoked salmon and filled with a hummus spread. It was delicious!
I also enjoyed reading, writing, and watching the world go by from a café while my sons worked, one at the school where he teaches, the other one at a café table not far away from me.
Of course for me the best of all was just being with my two sons and having some nice time together. That was, as the silly commercial goes, priceless.
Janet Hulstrand is an American writer/editor who lives in France. She is the author of Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France. You can also find her writing at Searching for Home.
Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road 