Ma France is a song by the singer-songwriter Jean Ferrat.
-Released in 1969, it has become a classic of his work and is one of his greatest hits.
It is a committed song, a political song, which is first of all a declaration of love to the physical France, of which the first two stanzas evoke the landscapes, with some close-ups on loved places (Provence and its sun, Brittany and its furze, Ardèche and its heather).
-But it is also and above all an ode to a people who fight for their freedom since Robespierre and Victor Hugo until May 1968.
-Jean Ferrat opposes the France of the workers and the republican values of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity to that of Mr. Thiers, who repressed the Paris Commune in 1871.
-He reproaches the rulers of the time, to whom he addresses an anonymous "you" but behind which one guesses the head of the state of the time, Charles de Gaulle, to appropriate the prestige of France, model of freedom for the world.
-Sympathetic with the French Communist Party, he pays tribute to its activists, sellers of the Huma and posters, through this verse: "For the stubborn struggle of this daily time / From the newspaper that we sell on Sunday morning / To the poster that we will stick on the wall tomorrow".
-Of Ma France, the singer Jean Vasca said: "Political songs, when they are not successful, look like leaflets, but when they are successful, like this one, they are full of human truth."
-Ma France is banned from the ORTF for two years. Ferrat promised not to return to television until the day he could sing it.
