Alternative Globalization in Southern France: Minority Language as a Creative Tool in Occitan Popular Music

This article observes how popular music groups singing in Occitan (a regional language) can continue to exist and create music in southern France. Choosing to sing in Occitan or/and to use traditional instruments in an unorthodox way, as theses groups do, reveals complicated relationships with the Occitan traditional folk scene. Nevertheless, even though new Occitan bands’ influences can be traced to global music genres (rap, rock, etc.), they also tend to find a compromise with the local identity that has been defined by Occitan activists. Thus they modestly – yet actively – participate in a global movement of new regional identities.