This week Cyril and Marie-Hélène turn Le Sound into a musical duel, one plays a track, the other has to find something that answers it, and explain why.

It kicks off with a song that landed straight in their inbox: Simon Ferrante, raised in Roubaix in a family of Sicilian artists, sent his track "Vrai" through the website himself.

From there it only gets better. Belgian-Congolese artist Nsangu brings a feminist edge that's hard to match, until 4Nouki answers with a hyperpop cover of a 2000s KYO hit.

A Michel Berger classic gets covered twice in one battle, once tender by Vincent Delerm and Voyou, once turned into pure French-Belgian rock joy by NAEVI.

And the final round goes all the way back to 1979, Jacques Higelin, still searching for the song to match it. Thirteen tracks, two very different ears, zero agreement on who wins. You don't need to speak French to pick a side.

• Songs played
• Simon Ferrante - Vrai
• Zélie - être moi-même
• Noé Preszow - Y'a un monde
• Alain Bashung - La nuit je mens
• Nsangu - Zizanie
• 4Nouki - je saigne encore
• Vincent Delerm, Voyou - Evidemment
• Naevi - Evidemment
• Ornette, Mike Laad - Sur le sable
• White Corbeau, Nsangu - KOMELO
• Ezechiel Pailhes - Pas tant d'chichi pompon
• llan Sellouk - Indigo
• Jacques HIgelin - Je ne peux plus dire je t'aime

This episode is a tavern crawl across the francophone world. A drunk man swears down the phone on Valentine's Day that he's not drunk anymore. A woman in a cigar lounge sips scotch like it's the only thing that understands her. A punk band from Paris turns the drinks cabinet into fake military divisions. A Belgian brass band from Brussels plays New Orleans jazz over bagpipes and bombard. A rapper from the Congo flows about mint and sugar like they're a love story. A Quebec hockey captain turned singer screams about beer like it's poetry.

Then it gets tender. A tavern in Quebec where the Cowboys Fringants know everyone by name. A traditional folk song about kissing the cook in a dark corner on New Year's. A saxophone player from Marseille spilling tea about love being war. A Breton rock band mixing rock with bagpipes, singing rum and women like it's an anthem that sold 750,000 copies in 1988.

Some songs are silly on purpose. Some are lonely. Some are celebrations. All of them know what a drink tastes like when you need it most.

Tune in Tuesday 7pm on 4ZZZ. Stream anytime at lesound.live.
#lesound #4zzz #beverage #alcohol #beer #champagne #tea #musicinfrench #francophones #quebec #belgique #marseille #radiobrisbane #drinkingsongs #independentradio #freeflow

• Songs played
• Ludwig Van 88 - Bière & Punk
• Bérurier Noir - Commando Pernod
• Suzane - Champagne
• Luce Dufault - Soirs de Scotch
• Jul - Pic et pic alcool et drame
• Tawsen - Sokkar
• Soldat Louis - Du rhum des femmes
• Les cowboys fringants - Le shack à Hector
• Krewe Du Belge - On a soif
• Miossec - Non non non non (Je ne suis plus saoul)
• Bob Bissonnette - Toune de bière
• La Bottine Souriante - Ah que c'est bon, bon...
• Ajar - LE THÉ

A reggae king from Ivory Coast covering Gainsbourg's heartbreak. A Belgian rock rebel making summer nights unforgettable. A blind couple from Mali singing patience in electronic beats. A young French poet whispering about loss and small mercies. A Quebec actor turning breakthrough into tenderness. A Cairo jazz collective with a poet's voice.

This episode follows the alphabet to the letter. Alpha Blondy carries a stent in his heart, just like Gainsbourg carried one when he wrote the song Blondy remakes. Arno pays homage to Adamo, another Belgian legend. Axel Bauer smashed guitars on MTV in 1984 and never looked back. Amadou and Mariam met at a school for the blind in Bamako and haven't stopped making music. Arthur Ely writes about the bare minimum it takes to survive loss. Alexandra Désilets sings everything is lost and means it.

Then it lifts. Amélie-les-crayons opens a stage piano that sprouts flowers. 

Twelve artists. Twelve worlds. One letter. All of them saying something you need to hear.

• Songs played
• Alpha Blondy - Je suis venu te dire que je m'en vais
• Arno - Les filles du bord de mer
• Brigitte Fontaine, Areski Belkacem - C'est normal
• Dominique A - Le courage des oiseaux
• Arthur Ely - La moindre des choses
• Aaron - U-Turn (Lily)
• Axel Bauer - Cargo
• Amadou et Mariam - Sabali
• Alexandre Desilets - Tout est perdu
• Veronique Vincent, Aksak Maboul - Je pleure tout le temps
• Le cri du Caire, Abdullah Miniawy - Pearls for Orphan
• Amélie-les-crayons - Ta petite flamme

What does freedom sound like?

A bird taking flight. A woman doing exactly what she wants. Someone who refuses to fit in a box. A father furious watching his son forgotten in prison. A gypsy captivating children. A vote without fear.

This episode is sixteen visions of freedom, one for each artist.

Hervé Cristiani sings Max who couldn't care less what anyone thinks.
Inna Modja and Angèle embody a woman who takes power.
Jean-Jacques Goldman celebrates a mother choosing to raise her child alone.
Alpha Blondy rages against electoral violence.
Kofs and Youssoupha speak of freedom earned through struggle.
Some songs dance and laugh.
Others break your heart.

Voices from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Congo, Mali, Belgium, France, Quebec. They all say the same thing a thousand different ways: freedom is being yourself, no permission needed, no guilt allowed.

You don't need to speak French to feel what they're saying.

Tune in Tuesday 7pm on 4ZZZ. Stream anytime at lesound.live.

• Songs played
• Ben L'oncle Soul - Fais comme l'oiseau
• Angèle - Libre
• Uzi Freyja - Oulala
• Inna Modja - French Cancan
• Hervé Cristiani - Il est libre Max
• Big Flo & Oli, Bon Entendeur, Edouard Baer - Libre
• Jean-Jacques Goldman - Elle a fait un bébé toute seule
• Yuri Buenaventura - Ma liberté
• Kofs, Yousoupha - L'affranchi
• 3 minutes sur mer - L'alouette en colère
• Alpha Blondy - Sacrifice électoral
• Zebda - Le manouche
• Susanoo - Lacrimosa

Not a tourist postcard, the real thing!!

Gilles Vigneault's "Mon pays" defines an entire nation.
Les Cowboys Fringants critique their own society with love and rage.
Plume Latraverse's raw poetry makes you laugh and wince in the same breath.
Montréal haunts three different artists three different ways.
A rural farmer watches his land disappear.
And we end with a subversive cover of the national anthem that says everything about who Quebec really is.
This is what identity sounds like when artists refuse to simplify it.
Identity isn't one song. It's Héron's lakeside folk, and Beau Dommage's Sunday nights.

It's fierce, it's tender, it's complicated, and it's unmistakably Quebec.

No French required. Just listen to what a people sound like when they're telling their own story.

• Songs played
• Stéphane Archambault - Pays
• Gilles Vigneault - Mon pays
• Les Cowboys fringants - En berne
• Plume Latraverse - Jonquière
• Héron - Bonaventure
• Treizième étage, - Le Coeur de Montréal
• Robert Charlebois - Je reviendrai à Montréal
• Karkwa - Le tour de l'île
• Les colocs - La rue principale
• Beau Dommage - Harmonie du soir à Chateauguay
• Philippe Brach - Ôk Canada

Rocé's rage and poetry from his new album.

A 78-year-old street storyteller from Toulouse remixed by a beatmaker from the same city—two generations, one song.

Belgium's Camille Yembe on her raw debut.

Luc de Larochellière's folk poetry.

Sens Unik's Swiss 90s rap legacy, back with fresh material.

Mitsou's sensational return as Quebec's answer to Madonna.

Ezéchiel Pailhès adapting Shakespeare into electropop.

And the synth pioneers who shaped Daft Punk before anyone knew what they were doing.

What binds it all is this: artists everywhere refusing to fit neatly into a box, and four people across continents who refuse to agree on anything except that good music deserves to be heard.

Discover francophone culture. No French required. Just curiosity.

Tune in now on lesound.live or catch us Tuesday 7pm on 4ZZZ. Tuesday 7pm on Zed Digital, or stream anytime at lesound.live.

• Songs played
• Rocé - En pas sautés
• Claude Sicre, Al 'Tarba - Are you a Tamborine Girl
• TeddyBear - Chaussures roses
• Jean Leloup - La vallée des réputations
• Sens Unik - 37,2
• Ezéchiel Pailhès - Eternel été
• Camille Yembé - Rien à fêter
• Luc de la Rochelière - La route est longue
• Télex - En route vers de nouvelles aventures
• Mitsou, Ya Cétidon - C'EST CHAUD (+HOT)

We took our mics to Le Festival 2026. Live recordings, artist interviews, and the sound of a whole francophone weekend in Brisbane. This week's episode is that weekend, captured as it happened.

Elya, a young Belgian singer currently in Australia, gave us her voice. Heilani brought Polynesian dance and everything that comes with it. Avalon Swing had people moving before they realised it. Fanfare Malawi travelled from New Caledonia and turned the place into a brass parade. Chantefique and Jardin d'hiver reminded us how far French song can travel. Mzaza, with Pauline Maudy, gave us that unmistakable border-crossing sound. Celine Mathis from Soul Sound took things somewhere quieter and deeper. Creative Brisbane and Class Act Creative kept the whole thing alive, on stage and off.

To every artist, volunteer and organiser of Le Festival 2026: merci. You made a francophone weekend feel like home in Meanjin.

• Songs played
• Elya - Heart of the Night
• Mzaza - L'Homme à la Moto
• Shelley Burns, Avalon Swing - Moon River
• Michel Jonasz - La boite de jazz

One country, fourteen songs, and a whole lot of personality.
We open with a Dutchman singing in French about a tiny absurdist king: Dick Annegarn's "Ubu," based on Alfred Jarry's Ubu Roi.

Then Jacques Brel, but not the Brel you know. Instead of "Ne me quitte pas" we play "Mon père disait," all coastline and North wind and the last line about London being nothing but a suburb of Brussels lost at sea. Arno takes us to Ostend with "Oostende bonsoir," the seaside town where he became close friends with Marvin Gaye while Gaye recorded "Sexual Healing" there in 1982.
 

Then a Go Belgium block: Bob Doug's "Bleu Blanc Belge," a cheeky nod to a Belgian cattle breed, and "Kiss The Grass," Roméo Elvis and Sylvie Kreusch's official anthem for Belgium's World Cup run.
 

Roméo Elvis returns with "La Belgique Afrique," a reflection on Belgium's colonial past. Lubiana's "La Blanche" sits alongside it, on growing up mixed race and never quite fitting either box. And Baloji reworks "Indépendance Cha Cha," the song that soundtracked Congo's independence negotiations in Brussels in 1960 and helped birth Congolese rumba.
 

At the end, three love letters to Brussels: Angèle's homesick "Bruxelles je t'aime," Ana Diaz's "BX," a declaration she'll never leave, and Scylla's "BX Vice," all shadowy streets and street-level poetry.

We finish in Liège with Le Dé's "Liège, Liège," torn between love and frustration for his hometown.

• Songs played
• Dick Annegarn - Ubu
• Arno - Oostende bonsoir
• Jacques Brel - Mon père disait
• Sylvie Kreusch, Romeo Elvis - Kiss the grass
• Bob Doug - Bleu blanc belge
• Baloji - Le jour d'après
• Lubiana - La Blanche
• Romeo Elvis - La Belgique Afrique
• Angèle - Bruxelles je t'aime
• Ana Diaz - BX
• Scylla - BX Vice
• Le Dé - Liège, Liège