Mon pays et Paris

As you’ve noticed, I’m in Paris, so seems like we should have something French for today’s earworm. Well, something Franco-American.

We’re having Josephine Baker, the Black woman who left the United States in 1925 to escape racism; she found her spiritual home in France and lived there the rest of her life. She was a fabulous star and served as a clandestine agent for her adopted country during World War II.

In 2021, after a years-long campaign to have her interred in the Panthéon, the resting place of France’s greatest heroes, a casket containing soil from places special to Baker (Saint Louis, Mo.; Monaco, where she’s buried; Paris; the South of France) was placed alongside Dumas, Voltaire, Curie, Jean Moulin and Zola.

This is one of her signature songs, “J’ai deux amours”