And then we were at a hootenanny...

*Jane in Paris*

Last night I met my friend Christine, who is on a Fulbright as a UNESCO intern in Paris, for a drink. We met at the Republique metro stop and then headed down Avenue de la Republique, to an area favored by young Parisians (I don't think it has a name, really). We stopped at the first place we saw that seemed enticing and calm enough that we could carry on a conversation, an unassuming place on a corner named Downtown Cafe. We sat on a couch and drank Belgian beers, catching up on Christmas and life in Paris. Meanwhile, a charismatic woman kept coming over to us and asking if we were doing alright, and then she told us to go downstairs because there would be something "very nice to listen to." We didn't obey, and she returned 20 minutes later, took our hands, and lead us down a spiral staircase to the basement. Immediately we heard music, but it was strange because there seemed to be several voices singing together. The lights were dim, the ceiling was low and arched, and benches lined the wall of a small room. There was a woman performing, playing the cello and singing, looping cello parts on top of each other. Her performance in itself wasn't strange, because from what I can tell looping and the use of unconventional instruments is in right now among Parisian musicians. What was strange was that other people were singing with her. Eventually another mike appeared, and a woman improvised a countermelody to the cellist's chorus, and then more mikes appeared and a circle formed and all of these guys started rapping. And this wasn't trivial corporate rap a la Jay-Z, this was a discourse about deep social issues. The singing and the rapping was sometimes in French, sometimes in English. At first the rappers were who you would expect - super cool looking black guys. But then white guys began to take turns too, and they were all so ordinary in their appearance that I never would have guessed that they rapped. By day they probably work behind a desk at some bank. By the time another girl had assembled her flute and begun to play along everyone in the room was standing (except for Christine and I - we weren't sure what to do with ourselves). Then the crowd parted to let in a woman playing a tenor sax, who went to go stand by the flutist, and the two began improvising in tandem. I couldn't predict what would happen: sometimes many people would start to sing and loudly, other times no one would even be clapping while one of the guys rapped. The woman who had made us come down to the party came over one more time and made us start singing along, which I did gladly because to me the situation felt a lot like worship in church. It didn't matter though, we had to do it. Next to us were some older women who mostly danced to the music but would occasionally sing. On the floor a little toddler was attempting to break dance.

I was struck by how in this situation personal identity was insignificant - the crowd was diverse in many ways (class, race, age) and from appearances not the kind of people I would expect to associate together. Everyone was free to act how they wanted, and no one else in the room was going to judge them or lay down boundaries. The diverse appearances of the rappers especially impressed me. For the past few days I had been ruminating over Jesus' words that "when two or more are gathered together in my name I will be in their midst." I had been thinking that maybe the verse can be taken as a comment on the strongly social nature of humans, and of the powerful effect that communal experiences have on us, especially when we come together in a loving and humble way. Then I found myself in this hootenanny last night, which seemed to strongly support this notion. After awhile Christine and I went back upstairs. Around 11pm the gathering stopped, and on their way out some of the participants said goodbye to us. It seemed like before the music began the bar was handing out a free dinner on paper plates - this made more sense after we witnessed such a communal eruption. I asked a guy standing near the bar if this had been a planned event (obviously these people knew each other, so it was somewhat planned). But no, he said, it wasn't planned, it just happened.