ARTE RADIO – ON DEMAND – PODCAST
Once upon a time, Arte Radio, after celebrating its 20th anniversary (in 2022, at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris), launched its first daily fiction (The Fall of Rabbitvilleimagined by Benjamin Abitan, Wladimir Anselme and Laura Fredducci) and brought the report to the taste of the ear (Gonzo Paranoby Jack Souvant), inaugurated its youth flow.
Born just before summer, “Polissons” (name of the said stream) began with the best that one could dream of for little ears: The Blabla Islanda podcast written and imagined by Claude Ponti (the enchanting author of children’s books) and his daughter Adèle Ponticelli, broadcast by the very talented Sabine Zovighian. It is also she (and, as Perrine Kervran confirmed to us, who succeeded Silvain Gire at the head of Arte Radio in 2023) who oversees the fiction side of this youth stream − which has also offered, since the beginning of August, a documentary side (in reality, these are more first-person testimonies that can be found under the banner “Le jour où”).
A naughty idea well thought out while “Arte Radio’s audience has grown and aged”as Perrine Kervran explains. A desire also of the team members (notably Chloé Assous-Plunian, production manager) to offer high-quality audio content to the youngest. A more than laudable desire when some, having understood that audio was an alternative to screens that was easier to make parents swallow, now flood toy stores with storytellers with sometimes mediocre content.
Invitation to daydream
In short, this youth stream stamped “Arte Radio” is excellent news, and knowing that Sabine Zovighian is at the head of the fiction division is the assurance of a quality that is rarely equaled – when we consider its exceptional Cornebidouille or to The Last Night of Anne Bonnywonderful finds and delicious to the ear.
Today she offers Jean-Chat sees in the darka story she imagined in words (illustrated by Nathaniel H’Limi, the album has just been published by L’Ecole des loisirs) and in sounds. And it is absolutely marvelous − a miraculous tendency and true talent − how she manages to take us along for the duration of a story. And we must say “we”, because even the biggest ears enjoy listening to her.
But, precisely, let us listen. The music, as soft as a night light, invites us to abandon ourselves and to daydream. It begins one evening, when, “Soon the sky will be completely black”. It’s time for the children to brush their teeth before going to bed. It’s also time for the hatches to wake up to the sounds of a concert of vitamin gargles. However, tonight, Hector doesn’t feel like brushing his teeth: he’s lost Jean-Chat, his very gray, very sweet and rather fat cat. That it’s all because of a fly (“flies make cats stupid”). The voice of the narrator (Sabine Zovighian herself) becomes soft: she says that Jean-Chat protects Hector from monsters, nightmares and bad guys in the stories.
Meaning and emotions
But here we are, once again, the pace accelerates: disruptive, it even becomes adventurous when Hector decides to find Jean-Chat. And the listeners imagine (or even take themselves for and become, for the duration of this well-told story) this little boy who grabs his pirate telescope and his lasso and sets off, barefoot and in his pajamas, in search of his beloved cat.
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Let’s say then how beautiful and poetic it is. That there is a clever mix of twists and turns and breaths. That with rare intelligence, rigor and talent, Sabine Zovighian will have succeeded in making us live a beautiful adventure (even on the street corner, but with a guinguette), in scaring us (a little) and in reassuring us (a lot). That, through a particularly sensitive understanding of the sound material (with, at sound design and singing, Grégoire Terrier and Michael Liot), she manages to produce not only meaning but emotions, and that it is a whole world (and some memories) which unfolds when listening to this story.
We listened to it again and again, while waiting for the fiction collection of “Polissons” to be enriched thanks to The Envol d’Osvaldoby Thomas Baas (published online on October 2), and The Ballad of the Whale, by David Lescot (early December) − which Sabine Zovighian had already adapted The Rumbling Glaciers for France Culture.
Jean-Chat sees in the darkSabine Zovighian’s podcast, hosted by Sabine Zovighian and Samuel Hirsch (Fr., 2024, 18 min).
