Thomas Mann (1875–1955) belonged to a family of the Hanseatic League, which he portrayed in the novel Buddenbrooks (1901) about the decadent German bourgeoisie.

In sociology and in political science, the noun bourgeoisie (Fr.: [ˈbuʁʒwazi] | Eng.: /bʊərʒwɑːˈziː/) and the adjective bourgeois are terms that describe an historical range of socio-economic classes. As such, in the Western world, since the late 18th century, the bourgeoisie describes a social class “characterized by their ownership of capital, and their related culture”; hence, the personal terms bourgeois (masculine) and bourgeoise (feminine) culturally identify the man or woman who is a member of the wealthiest social class in capitalist societies.^[1]

In contemporary academic theories, the term bourgeoisie usually refers to the ruling class in capitalist societies. In Marxist theory, the abiding characteristics of this class are their ownership of the means of production.^[2]

Etymology[link]

In Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (1670), the 17th-century French playwright Molière (1622–73) catalogued the social-class essence of the bourgeoisie. (Portrait by Nicolas Mignard, 1658)

The Modern French word bourgeois derived from the Old French burgeis (walled city), which derived from bourg (market town), from the Old Frankish burg (town); in other European languages, the etymologic derivations are the Middle English burgeis, the Middle Dutch burgher, the German Bürger (burgess), and the Polish burżuazja, which occasionally is synonymous with “the intelligentsia”.^[3] In English, “bourgeoisie” (a French citizen-class) identified a social class oriented to economic materialism and hedonism, and to upholding the extreme political and economic interests of the capitalist class ruling class.^[4] In the 18th century, before the French Revolution (1789–99), in the French feudal order, the masculine and feminine terms bourgeois and bourgeoise identified the rich men and women who were members of the urban and rural Third Estate — the common people of the French realm, who violently deposed the absolute monarchy of the Bourbon King Louis XVI (r. 1774–91), his clergy, and his aristocrats. Hence, since the 19th century, the term “bourgeoisie” usually is politically and sociologically synonymous with the ruling upper class of a capitalist society.^[5]

Historically, the mediæval French word bourgeois denoted the inhabitants of the bourgs (walled market-towns), the craftsmen, artisans, merchants, and others, who constituted the bourgeoisie, they were the socio-economic class between the peasants and the landlords, between the workers and the owners of the means of production. Resultantly, as the economic managers of the (raw) materials, the goods, and the services, and thus the capital (money) produced by the feudal economy, the term “bourgeoisie” evolved to also denote “the middle class” — the businessmen and businesswomen who accumulated, administered, and controlled the capital that made possible the development of the bourgs into cities.^[6]

Contemporarily, the terms “bourgeoisie” and “bourgeois” identify the ruling class in capitalist societies, as a social stratum; whilst “bourgeois” describes the Weltanschauung (worldview) of men and women whose way of thinking is socially and culturally determined by their economic materialism and philistinism, a social identity catalogued and described in drame bourgeois (bourgeois drama), which satirizes buying the trappings of a noble-birth identity as the means climbing the social ladder.^[7][8] (See: Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, 1670)

History[link]

The 16th century German banker Jacob Fugger and his principal accountant, M. Schwarz, registering an entry to a ledger. The background shows a file cabinet indicating the European cities where the Fugger Banker conducts business. (1517)

Origins and rise

In the 11th century, the bourgeoisie emerged as an historical and political phenomenon, when the bourgs of Central and Western Europe developed into cities dedicated to commerce. The organised economic concentration that made possible such urban expansion derived from the protective self-organisation into guilds, which became necessary when individual businessmen (craftsmen, artisans, merchants, et alii) conflicted with their rent-seeking feudal landlords who demanded greater-than-agreed rents. In the event, by the end of the Middle Ages (ca. AD 1500), under régimes of the early national monarchies of Western Europe, the bourgeoisie acted in self-interest, and politically supported the king or the queen against the legal and financial disorder caused by the greed of the feudal lords. In the late-16th and early 17-th centuries, the bourgeoisies of England and the Netherlands had become the financial — and thus political — forces that deposed the feudal order; economic power had vanquished military power in the realm of politics.^[9]

From progress to reaction

During the 17th and 18th centuries, the bourgeoisie were the politically progressive social class who supported the principles of constitutional government and of natural right, against the Law of Privilege and the claims of rule by divine right that the nobles and prelates had autonomously exercised during the feudal order. The motivations for the English Civil War (1642–51), the American War of Independence (1775–83), and French Revolution (1789–99) partly derived from the desire of the bourgeoisie to rid themselves of the feudal trammels and royal encroachments upon their personal liberty, commercial rights, and the ownership of property. In the 19th century, the bourgeoisie propounded liberalism, and gained political rights, religious rights, and civil liberties for themselves and the lower social classes; thus was the bourgeoisie then a progressive philosophic and political force in modern Western societies.

By the middle of the 19th century, subsequent to the Industrial Revolution (1750–1850), the great expansion of the bourgeoisie social class caused its self-stratification — by business activity and by economic function — into the haute bourgeoisie (bankers and industrialists) and the petite bourgeoisie (tradesmen and white-collar workers). Moreover, by the end of the 19th century, the capitalists (the original bourgeoisie) had ascended to the upper class (people whose money works for them), whilst the developments of technology and the technical occupations thereby engendered, allowed the ascension of working-class men and women to the lower strata of the bourgeoisie; yet the social progress was incidental. In the event, despite its initial philosophic progressivism — from feudalism to liberalism to capitalism — like all ruling political establishments, the bourgeoisie social class (haute and petite) became reactionary in their refusal to allow the ascendance (economic, social, political) of people from the proletariat (peasants and urban workers) in order to remain predominant, as the political Establishment of their society.^[10]

Denotations[link]

The 19th-century German intellectual K.H. Marx (1818–83) identified and described the bourgeoisie as an economic class of great societal influence.

The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie

In the Middle Ages (AD 500–1500), the bourgeois usually was a self-employed businessman — proprietor, merchant, banker, entrepreneur, et alii — whose economic role in society was being the financial intermediary to the feudal landlord and the peasant who worked the fief, the land of the lord. Yet, by the 18th century, the time of the Industrial revolution (1750–1850) and of industrial capitalism, the bourgeoisie had become the economic ruling class who owned the means of production (capital and land), and who controlled the means of coercion (armed forces and legal system, police forces and prison system). In such a society, the bourgeoisie’s ownership of the means of production enabled their employment and exploitation of the wage-earning working class (urban and rural), people whose sole economic means is labour; and the bourgeois control of the means of coercion suppressed the socio-political challenges of the lower classes, and so preserved the economic status quo; workers remained workers, and employers remained employers.^[11]

In the 19th century, the German economist Karl Marx distinguished two types of bourgeois capitalist: (i) the functional capitalist, the business administrator of the means of production; and (ii) the rentier capitalist whose livelihood derives either from the rent of property or from the interest-income produced by finance capital, or both.^[12] In the course of economic relations, the working class and the bourgeoisie continually engage in class struggle, wherein the capitalists exploit the workers, whilst the workers resist their economic exploitation, which occurs because the worker owns no means of production, and, to earn a living, he or she seeks employment from the bourgeois capitalist; the worker produces goods and services that are property of the employer, who sells them for a price. The money generated by the sale of the goods and services yields three sums (i) the wages of the worker, (ii) the costs of production, and (iii) profit (surplus value). Thereby, the capitalist profits (makes extra money) by selling the surplus value of the labour of the workers; hence is new wealth created through work.

Besides describing the social class who own the means of production, the Marxist usage of the term “bourgeois” also describes the consumerist style of life derived from the ownership of capital and real property. As an economist Karl Marx acknowledged the bourgeois industriousness that created wealth, yet criticised the moral hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie when they ignored the true origins of their wealth — the exploitation of the proletariat, the urban and rural workers. Further sense denotations of “bourgeois” describe ideologic concepts such as “bourgeois freedom”, which is opposed to substantive forms of freedom; “bourgeois independence”; “bourgeois personal individuality”; the “bourgeois family”; et cetera, all derived from owning capital and property. (See: The Communist Manifesto, 1848)

The state bourgeoisie

In the 20th century, communist states developed the nomenklatura, a state bourgeoisie constituted by the bureaucrats who administrated the country’s government, industry, agriculture, education, system of state capitalism, et cetera. Moreover, anarchism occasionally describes all important state leaders and functionaries as part of the state bourgeoisie who control the private and public means of production in a state.^{[citation needed]}

Modern history[link]

Fascist Italy

The Italian fascist régime (1922–45) of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini regarded the bourgeoisie as an obstacle to Modernism in aid to transforming Italian society.^[13] Nonetheless, despite such intellectual and social hostility, the Fascist State ideologically exploited the Italian bourgeoisie and their materialistic, middle-class spirit, for the more efficient cultural manipulation of the upper (aristocratic) and the lower (working) classes of Italy. In 1938, Prime Minister Mussolini gave a speech wherein he established a clear ideological distinction between capitalism (the social function of the bourgeoisie) and the bourgeoisie (as a social class), whom he dehumanized by reducing them into high-level abstractions: a moral category and a state of mind.^[13] Culturally and philosophically, Mussolini isolated the bourgeoisie from Italian society by portraying them as social parasites upon the Fascist Italian State and “The People”; as a social class who drained the human potential of Italian society, in general, and of the working class, in particular; as exploiters who victimized the Italian nation with an approach to life characterised by hedonism and materialism.^[13] Nevertheless, despite the slogan The Fascist Man Disdains the «Comfortable» Life, which epitomized the anti-bourgeois principle, in its final years of power, for mutual benefit and profit, the Mussolini Fascist régime transcended ideology in order to merge the political and financial interests of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini with the political and financial interests of the bourgeoisie, the Catholic social circles who constituted the ruling class of Italy.

The fascists argued that as a materialist creature, the bourgeois man was against religion. To establish a distinction between the supernatural faith of the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist faith of temporal religion, in The Autarchy of Culture: Intellectuals and Fascism in the 1930s, the priest Giuseppe Marino said that:

Christianity is essentially anti-bourgeois . . . A Christian, a true Christian, and thus a Catholic, is the opposite of a bourgeois.^[14]

In Bonifica antiborghese (1939), Roberto Paravese claimed that the:

Middle class, middle man, incapable of great virtue or great vice: and there would be nothing wrong with that, if only he would be willing to remain as such; but, when his child-like or feminine tendency to camouflage pushes him to dream of grandeur, honours, and thus riches, which he cannot achieve honestly with his own “second-rate” powers, then the average man compensates with cunning, schemes, and mischief; he kicks out ethics, and becomes a bourgeois.

The bourgeois is the average man who does not accept to remain such, and who, lacking the strength sufficient for the conquest of essential values — those of the spirit — opts for material ones, for appearances.^[15]

The economic security, financial freedom, and social mobility of the bourgeoisie threatened the philosophic integrity of Italian Fascism, the ideologic monolith that was the régime of Prime Minister Benito Mussolini. Any assumption of legitimate political power (government and rule) by the bourgeoisie represented a Fascist loss of totalitarian State power for social control through political unity — one people, one nation, one leader. Sociologically, to the fascist man, to become a bourgeois was a character flaw inherent to the masculine mystique; therefore, the ideology of Italian Fascism scornfully defined the bourgeois man as “spiritually castrated”.^[15]

Bourgeois culture[link]

The bourgeoisie in theatre, literature, and cinema

The comedy-ballet play Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-be Gentleman, 1670) by Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) satirized the nouveau riche businessman who buys his way up the social-class scale, in order to realise his aspirations of becoming a gentleman, someone who, in 17th-century France, was a man born to the social-class role, not a self-made social climber. The prototype bourgeois is Monsieur Jourdain, the protagonist who studies dancing, fencing, and philosophy, the trappings and accomplishments of a gentleman, in order to pose as a man of noble birth.^[16][17]

Buddenbrooks (1901), by Thomas Mann (1875–1955), chronicles the moral decay of a rich family through its declines, material and spiritual, in the course of four generations, beginning with the patriarch Johann Buddenbrook Sr. and his son, Johann Buddenbrook Jr., who are typically successful German businessmen; each is a reasonable man of solid character. Yet, in the children of Buddenbrook Jr., the materially comfortable style of life provided by the dedication to solid, middle-class values elicits decadence: The fickle daughter, Toni, lacks and seeks no purpose in life; son Christian is honestly decadent, and lives the life of a ne’er-do-well; and the businessman son, Thomas, who assumes command of the Buddenbrook family fortune, occasionally falters from middle-class solidity by being interested in art and philosophy, the impractical life of the mind, which, to the bourgeoisie, is the epitome of social, moral, and material decadence.^[18][19][20]

Babbitt (1922), by Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), satirizes the American bourgeois George Follansbee Babbitt, a middle-aged realtor, booster, and joiner in the Midwestern city of Zenith, who — despite being unimaginative, self-important, and hopelessly conformist and middle-class — is aware that there must more to life than money and the consumption of the best things that money can buy. Nevertheless, he fears being excluded from the mainstream of society more than he does living for himself, by being true to himself; thus, his heart-felt flirtations with independence, dabbling in liberal politics and a love affair with a pretty widow, come to nought, because he is afraid. Yet, Babbitt sublimates his desire for self-respect and does encourage his son to rebel against the conformity that results from bourgeois prosperity, by recommending that he be true to himself: “Don’t be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I’ve been.”^[21]

The cinema of the Spanish director Luis Buñuel (1900–83) examines and analyses the bourgeois mentality and the life it provides for its practitioners:

• L’Âge d’or (The Golden Age, 1930) illustrates the madness and self-destructive hypocrisy of bourgeois sciety.

• Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, 1972) explores the timidity instilled by middle-class values.

• Cet obscur objet du désir (That Obscure Object of Desire, 1977) illuminates the practical self-deceptions required for buying love as marriage.^[22][23]

The pejorative “bourgeois”

In the U.S., beyond the realms of political economy, history, and political science, the sociological terms bourgeois and bourgeoise are colloquially applied to describe the social stereotype of the nouveau riche man and woman who is a politically timid conformist who is satisfied with a wealthy, consumerist style of life that is characterised by conspicuous consumption and continual striving for prestige.^[24][25]

See also[link]

• Beurgeois (rich French Muslims of North-African descent)
• Bildungsbürgertum
• Burgess
• Conspicuous consumption
• Conspicuous leisure
• Cultural hegemony
• Economic stratification
• Gemütlichkeit
• Great Burgher
• Habitus (sociology)
• Homo economicus
• Occupational prestige
• Political class
• Rational-legal authority
• Social environment
• Social structure of the United Kingdom
• The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions (1899)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Burton J. Bledstein and Robert D. Johnston (eds.), The Middling Sorts: Explorations in the History of the American Middle Class. Routledge. 2001.
• David Brooks, Bobos In Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Simon & Schuster. 2001.
• Frank J. Byrne, Becoming Bourgeois: Merchant Culture in the South, 1820-1865. University Press of Kentucky. 2006.
• Margaret R. Hunt, The Middling Sort: Commerce, Gender, and the Family in England, 1680–1780. University of California Press. 1996.
• Marsha Kinder (ed.), Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Cambridge University Press. 1999.
• David Lockwood, Cronies or Capitalists? The Russian Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeois Revolution from 1850 to 1917. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2009.
• Molière, and Frederick Morris Warren (ed.), Molière's Le bourgeois gentilhomme. D.C. Heath & Co. 1899. (full text)
• Jerrold Seigel, Bohemian Paris: Culture, Politics, and the Boundaries of Bourgeois Life, 1830–1930. The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.
• Robert W. Stern, Changing India: Bourgeois Revolution on the Subcontinent. Cambridge University Press. 2nd edition, 2003.

External links[link]

Look up bourgeoisie in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Bourgeoisie

• The Democratic State – A Critique of Bourgeois Sovereignty

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2012)

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.^[1]

History[link]

The earliest recorded use^{[citation needed]} of the term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to a letter written by a young Alexander Hamilton in September 1772, when he was 15. In a letter to his father James Hamilton, published in the Royal Dutch-American Gazette, he described the response of the Dutch governor of St. Croix to a hurricane that raked that island on August 31, 1772. "Our General has issued several very salutary and humane regulations and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man." ^{[2][dubious – discuss]} In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

It was also used as a term for a drug dealer in the 1950s and 1960s and can be seen in such media as Curtis Mayfield's "No Thing On Me", William Burroughs's novel Naked Lunch, and in the Velvet Underground song "I'm Waiting for the Man", in which Lou Reed sings about going to Uptown Manhattan, specifically Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, to buy heroin.

The use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies, which, according to a May 19, 1969 article in U.S. News and World Report, had the "avowed aim ... to destroy 'The Man', their term for the present system of government". The term eventually found its way into humorous usage, such as in a December 1979 motorcycle ad from the magazine Easyriders which featured the tagline, "California residents: Add 6% sales tax for The Man."

In present day, the phrase has been popularized in commercials and cinema, featuring particularly prominently as a recurring motif in the 2003 film School of Rock.^[3][4][5][6]

Use as praise[link]

The term has also been used as an approbation or form of praise. This may refer to the recipient's status as the leader or authority within a particular context, or it might be assumed to be a shortened form of a phrase like "He is the man (who is in charge)." One example of this usage dates to 1879 when Otto von Bismarck commented, referring to Benjamin Disraeli's pre-eminent position at the Congress of Berlin, "The old Jew, he is the man."^{[7][dubious – discuss]}

In more modern usage, it can be a superlative compliment ("you da man!") indicating that the subject is currently standing out amongst his peers even though they have no special designation or rank, such as a basketball player who is performing better than the other players on the court. It can also be used as a genuine compliment with an implied, slightly exaggerated or sarcastic tone, usually indicating that the person has indeed impressed the speaker but by doing something relatively trivial.

See also[link]

• Absentee landlord
• Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)
• New World Order (conspiracy theory)
• Ruling class
• The Establishment
• Power elite
• Corrections officer
• YTMND

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Lighter, J.E. (Ed.). (1997). Random House Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House.

Kylian Mash
Kylian Mash
Background information
Born	(1983-02-14) February 14, 1983 (age 29)
Origin	France
Genres	Electro
Occupations	Disk Jockey, Music Producer
Instruments	Phonograph
Years active	2008-present
Labels	Universal/Barclay, France Sony BMG, France Time, Italy Columbia, United Kingdom Ultra Records, United States Megaliner, Russia
Website	http://www.kylianmash.net

Kylian Mash is a French DJ and multi-gold music producer, well known for his smash hits like 'Discobitch', 'Club Certified', 'Closer', or again 'No Tomorrow' and for feature and remixe alongside superstars like Akon, Coolio, Snoop Dogg, Timbaland & Missy Elliott..

Biography[link]

Kylian Mash earned his first gold record in 2008 with the project "Discobitch" and his huge hit "C'est beau la bourgeoisie" (# 1 Top Single and # 1 clubs for 13 weeks in France).^[1].
This popular success went worldwide up to America where the track was even reviewed by Perez Hilton,^[2] the Pussycat Dolls or Madonna^[3], which permits him to quickly feature as artist, producer, songwriter or remixer alongside the biggest names of the industry like Akon, Snoop Dogg, Glasses Malone, Lil Wayne, Flo-Rida, Coolio, JayKay, Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Mohombi as well as collaborate with top producers like Sandy Vee (Rihanna, David Guetta, Ne-Yo...).
Kylian's most confidential projects like his official remix of 'Rhythm is Dancer' or still 'Wicked Wow' produced for Carolina Marquez, nevertheless have reaches playlists of Top DJs like David Guetta, Joachim Garraud, Dj Chuckie or Eric Morillo...and since then, Kylian Mash is regularly solicited as DJ by the biggest clubs and also run his own radioshow broadcasted on numerous radio stations.
In the same time, Kylian Mash founded in 2010 his music label "Most Wanted Music" which working today with Universal, Sony, Warner, EMI, Ultra or again Ministry of sound.

Non-Exhaustive Discography[link]

Productions[link]

• 2008 : Kylian Mash & Emoblaster Funkster
• 2008 : Kylian Mash & XXII Bitch
• 2008 : Kylian Mash & Laurent Konrad pres. Discobitch - C'est beau la bourgeoisie Remixed by: Kevin Tandarsen, BodyBangers
• 2010 : NYX - Fly Away Remixed by: Arias - Yohann Simon - Austin Leeds
• 2010 : Madinshina - Rhythm Is a Dancer Remixed by: Jay Style - The Henchmen - Claude NJoya & Richard Bahericz
• 2010 : Kylian Mash & Akon & Glasses - Club Certified Remixed by: Gregori Klosman & Danny Wild - Fred Pellichero & Laurent Pepper
• 2011 : Kylian Mash feat Snoop Dogg & Ekow - Closer (Do It Well)
• 2011 : Carolina Marquez - Wicked Wow Remixed by: Dj Chuckie

Remixes[link]

• 2010 : Coolio Vs. Kylian Mash & Tim Resler - Gangsta's Paradise Remix
• 2010 : Ginuwine & Timbaland & Missy Elliott- Get Involved
• 2009 : Patrice Strike - One Day

References[link]

1. ^ N°1 des clubs télécharger Etude Yacast bilan 2008
2. ^ http://perezhilton.com/2008-08-20-listen-to-this-for-the-queen-bees
3. ^ http://www.fredflare.com/blog/?p=4605

Alex Kapranos
Kapranos performing live in 2009
Background information
Birth name	Alexander Paul Kapranos Huntley
Born	(1972-03-20) 20 March 1972 (age 40) Almondsbury, Gloucestershire, England
Origin	Glasgow, Greater Glasgow, Scotland
Genres	Indie rock, post-punk revival, indie pop, art rock
Occupations	Guitarist, singer-songwriter, producer, writer
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, keyboards
Years active	Early 1990s–present
Labels	Domino
Associated acts	Franz Ferdinand, The Yummy Fur, The Karelia, The Amphetameanies, Handsome Boy Modelling School
Website	www.franzferdinand.co.uk
Notable instruments
Fender Telecaster Deluxe Gibson Les Paul Junior Double Cut

Alexander Paul Kapranos Huntley (born 20 March 1972 in Almondsbury, Gloucestershire), commonly known as Alex Kapranos, is a United Kingdom-based musician who is the lead singer and the guitarist of the Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand.^[1]

Early life[link]

Alex Kapranos was born in Almondsbury, Gloucestershire, England to an English mother and Greek father.^[2] He moved to the North East of England when he was three months old, spending his early childhood in Washington, Tyne and Wear and South Shields,^{[citation needed]} his mother's home town, and spent many summer holidays in his father's native Greece. Huntley is the name his father adopted from his father's aunt. He gets his middle name from Paul McCartney on whom his mother had a crush.

In 1980, he moved with his family to Edinburgh then to Glasgow in 1984 where he attended Bearsden Academy. At the age of seventeen, Kapranos attended the University of Aberdeen to study Theology. After dropping out, he continued his studies at the University of Strathclyde, eventually gaining a BA. He worked as a chef, barman, music promoter, driver, welder and lecturer prior to finding fame with Franz Ferdinand.^[3]

Early musical career[link]

From the early 1990s, he was a fixture of the Glasgow music scene, running live nights at the 13th Note, most notably The Kazoo Club.^{[citation needed]} While working as a chef, bartender, lecturer in IT at the city's Anniesland College, and other various jobs, he played in some of Glasgow's popular bands, including The Blisters (later known as The Karelia), The Amphetameanies, and The Yummy Fur. He is also known to have contributed to the noise act Urusei Yatsura and Lungleg recordings.^[1]

Franz Ferdinand[link]

After dropping "Huntley" from his name, he formed Franz Ferdinand in 2001. The band is composed of Alex Kapranos, Nick McCarthy (guitar, keyboard, backup vocals), Paul Thomson (drums, backup vocals, sometimes guitar) and Bob Hardy (bass). The band saw chart success after their second single "Take Me Out (released 12 January 2004)^[4] reached Number 3 in the UK Charts^[5] followed by their debut album Franz Ferdinand (released 9 February 2004)^[6] which debuted on the UK album chart at Number 3.^[7] The band went on to win the 2004 Mercury Music Prize^[8] and two BRIT Awards in 2005^[9] for Best British Group and Best British Rock Act.

Alex Kapranos performing with Franz Ferdinand

Alex Kapranos

Writing[link]

In September 2005, Kapranos began Soundbites,^[10] a weekly food column for G2 in the Guardian newspaper, which detailed his culinary adventures as Franz Ferdinand traversed the globe on their world tour. Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand, a book of the column and unreleased material illustrated by Andy Knowles was released in 2006.

Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand was read by Alex Kapranos on BBC Radio 4's Book of the Week for 4–8 December 2006, described as "his account about what he ate while touring the world."^[11]

Production[link]

Kapranos produced "Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever" - the third album by British indie rock group The Cribs in Vancouver BC, released on 14 May 2007. He also produced their single only track, "Don't You Wanna Be Relevant?", which was featured with "Our Bovine Public" (from Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever) as a Double A side.

Kapranos makes a cameo appearance in the video for Our Bovine Public.^[12]

His remix of the single, "New in Town", by British pop singer Little Boots was featured on various formats of the singles release.

Hobbies[link]

When not on the road, using his leather "jump rope",^[13] recording in the studio,^[14] Kapranos spends time in his carpentry workshop, crafting abstract furniture.^[15]

Narration[link]

Kapranos narrated the 2008 BBC Scotland documentary Edwyn Collins: Home Again on the recovery of Orange Juice singer Edwyn Collins.

Also in 2008, Kapranos narrated the BBC Radio One documentary 'The Story of Kraftwerk'.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alex Kapranos

• Franz Ferdinand official website
• Alex Kapranos talks about Sound Bites to stv.tv
• Alex Kapranos interview with World Hum
• Alex Kapranos interview with SPIN