In the third of our continuing series on labour history in song, Constance Bantman shares Massilia Sound System’s take on deindustrialization and gentrification in Marseille.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L–qVupHqXE%3Fsi%3DDuM9Vfsb0lv-5ayb

Des Métallos
Massilia Sound System (Massilia Sound System, 1995)

Trust the famously political Marseillais reggae band Massilia Sound System to write a song dissecting the deindustrialization and gentrification of France’s second largest city and make a joyful banger out of it. Marseille is undoubtedly having a moment: ‘Gritty Marseille is now a haven for creatives’, The New York Times announced (rightly) in 2022, in the wake of the transformations triggered by the city’s 2013 European Capital of Culture stint, which saw among others the launch of its now-iconic MUCEM.  Through the emblematic figure of the metalworker, Massilia Sound System’s song charts the earlier stages of this process, chronicling the loss of the city’s industrial sector and the corruption driving it. It looks back fondly – but without rose-tinted glasses – on labour processes in the shipbuilding industry and their meaning for workers, and on the city’s industrial geography. Marseille has since been reinvented as a touristic magnet; in both the economy and cultural representations, the area’s industrial ports are eclipsed by cruise ships and the glitzy Vieux Port. But as the June 2023 urban riots have shown, and as amply demonstrated in Philippe Pujol’s essays documenting the city’s devastating inequalities and costly political neglect, gentrification is only skin-deep, although its damage isn’t. Des Métallos had predicted this almost thirty years ago.

Constance Bantman is an Associate Professor in French at the University of Surrey, a specialist in the history of the anarchist movement and a Marseillaise at heart.

Translation by Constance Bantman (without the rhyme in –o throughout the song).

And if we must choose heroes, then let’s choose the métallos [metalworkers]
(x2)
We need métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pedalos!
We want métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pédalos!

This song is entirely dedicated to celebrating métallos ;
Whether they’re building cargos or toiling in blast furnaces.
They wear blue overalls, and they’re usually sturdy,
There were so many in the city when jobs were plenty.
Now our factories only exist in photos,
Our youth clears off or toils away in supermarkets

We need métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pedalos!
We want métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pédalos!

Special mention to La Ciotat, city by the sea,
There was the building site, they built ships there you see,
More than a thousand workers, day and night, hammering away
And flying sparks which the kids dreamt of.

Yes, it’s a tough job, a rotten job,
The morning siren, bloody hell! It rang so early!
We do know that work will never be funny,
Always the same people feasting at your expense.
Everything for the bosses, nothing for the proles,
But everyone felt so proud when the ship was set to sea!

We need métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pedalos!
We want métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pédalos!

And then, one fine morning, the rats escape with all the dough,
The radios explain that there won’t be any more ships,
That it’s cheaper to build them in Singapore, in Borneo,
That they should have been built, either smaller, or larger.
Those who are not keen are treated with tear gas,
The others are lured in with a bit of moolah,
‘Beaches are the future – we’re the new Rio!’
‘There’ll be upsides, we can open a resto’.
Six months after the bloodshed, the city has been knocked out,
The property crooks are quietly counting their bullion.

What have they done to my city? What have they done behind its back?
It was a quiet place, a seaside heaven,
Everything seems still – the cranes and the ships have gone,
A few shadows walk by. Is the plague back?

We need métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pedalos!
We want métallos, métallos!
We need métallos, fewer pédalos!

In Toulon, La Seyne, Marseille, it’s the same scenario.
In the European fair, we are the clowns.
They say our wealth is above all our weather
Think about it – from May to October, we’re all in our swimmers!

It draws in engineers, they’ll set up their labs there,
Ha, those are consumers; the right kind of people.
For them we’ll open shops, cinemas and expos,
Instead of the factories – you gotta admit it’ll be nicer.
Our kids will work at the beach or at McDonald’s.
If they fancy these jobs, up north, there is work,
In the summer they’ll be back south in long car queues,
To spend down here what they’ve earned up there.