Viens Poupoule ! (1902) / Come Karlineken ! (1871)

VIENS POUPOULE! / KOMM KARLINEKEN!
Hamburg,
a Saturday evening in the German Empire in 1871.
A policeman rushes with his sweetheart to the dance party ’20-Pfennig club’. A club where the working class has fun together with the bourgeoisie, the aristocracy and the church.
The policeman reminds his wife that he became a father to this music!
On the way, he sees two men arguing but he wants nothing to do with it,
he just wants to have fun!
This folk march by Adolph Spahn became the biggest hit at the ‘Moulin Rouge’ in 1902 in French! It is ‘Toulouse Lautrec’ live. You can hear it everywhere in France: at all evening parties, thousands of banquets and at military celebrations.
When I sing this song for French people and tell them the melody comes from Hamburg, they are disappointed, saying it must be a mistake: “’Viens Poupoule!’ a sa place dans le grand Répertoire de la chanson Française” – they explain to me.
The text is in French from the end of the nineteenth century. I sing it with a Belle Époque accent.
Pieter Van Kerckhoven