Ooh La L.A! Festival brings best of French music

French food might often be seen as rich, but its music rarely gets the same reference or admiration as its cuisine. The Ooh La L.A! Festival, a three-day music event showcasing rising French music artists, seeks to shift the music palate of Los Angelenos toward developing a taste for French music culture.

Its third annual concert was held last weekend at Hollywood’s El Rey Theater, featuring a spectrum of French musical styles: a fun, indie mix of pop, rock, electronic and hip hop. When it comes to music, France’s strength lies in being able to absorb the popular styles of other cultures and embody them as their own.

This international echo of styles and genres is reverberated at Ooh La L.A! Festival. The opening Thursday night kicked off with a vocal performance by Hugh Coltman, an English songwriter and singer who found his fan base in Paris after breaking apart from his British band, The Hoax.

Coltman’s youthful voice is captivating. Although his vocal form seems effortless, his range as a tenor is impressive and soothing like cool brass, while his lyrics are soulful and melancholic. It’s the kind of sweet, sophisticated music you want to pair with French wine and cheese.

The curtain seemed to close too soon at the end of his performance, but it swung back open to a more in-your-face dazzling ensemble: Nouvelle Vague, an idiosyncratic band of vocalists and rock and classical instrument players.

Nouvelle Vague’s opening piece began with deep, darkly ethereal notes released from the blood-red lips of two jet black-haired women dressed in skeleton evening gowns. Behind them, an enthusiastic drummer and a guitarist rocked out the dominant notes punk-style, in curious harmony with the classical aural textures strung by a cellist and a violinist.

This glamorous, almost ghoulish musical collective is a representative of the kind of music that defines 1980s France — a rich incorporation of the 1960s Brazilian bossa nova arrangements of cool jazz and samba rhythms and the 1970s French “new wave” styles of punchy rock beats and poetic lyrics.

After the first night, Friday’s entertainment traveled down across the Mediterranean Sea into northern Africa, with Tuareg musicians Tinariwen and Morocco-born Berber singer Hindi Zahra.

Tinariwen, which means “deserts” in the Tuareq language, strumed out a rocky yet somehow melodious combination of West African-inspired guitar styles and raw, elegiac African blues. Meanwhile, Hindi Zahra meshed sultry, sexy notes together with passionate, romantic lyrics, her voice sometimes exceptionally clear and other times throaty and lush.

The last performance on Saturday hiked up the beats with a more modern remix of electronic music, techno and abstract hip-hop. It’s a wonderful, sensual juxtaposition of vintage melancholia and modern technologies by varied artists such as Entienne de Crecy, DJ Cam, Feadz and Chateau Marmont, and an optimistic finale to the future of the French music scene.

The El Rey Theater set the perfect stage for both artists and audience with its laid back yet elegant atmosphere. With a full-service bar at the back, a small stage upfront, and an open space for the attendees to either sit back or mingle with beer in hand, the venue is like a younger reinvention of a hip jazz lounge that a 1950’s couple would visit for a casual, romantic date.

The exclamation “ooh la la!” is meant to conjure up an image of a beret-donning, turtle-necked French person reacting to something exciting and thrilling, and when it comes to this festival, it’s aptly named. By presenting a different variety of music other than the stereotypical French opera and folklores, the Ooh La L.A! Festival has revealed the richness and youthfulness of the French spirit towards music.