It’s a typical French class, until the teacher nears the board and gets out the slideshow clicker. It’s finally time to see who you chose won the round, gaining you more points and setting you above your fellow classmates. It’s time for Manie Musicale. 

In 2017, Manie Musicale was created by two middle school teachers as a way for French teachers to showcase French music to their students. 

Manie Musicale utilizes a round-robin bracket system, similar to that of the  NCAA March Madness, except for music. In its first year, only the two founding schools participated in the competition. Since then, however, Manie Musicale has grown in popularity, with over half a million students participating in over 20 countries.

 The eighth Manie Musicale has just concluded at Loy Norrix. French students nervously placed their votes on a paper bracket for different songs based on their opinions of the lyrics, music videos and beat, hoping to win first place by constructing the bracket that gets the most wins. Friends fought over songs, bizarre music videos were laughed at and brackets have been destroyed by a single vote.

French teacher, Rachel Larner, believes that this event has a positive impact on students’ interest in the language.

“I think someone can find a little bit of everything,” Larner said. “It’s interesting to see if students like something and then that leads them to pursue the language outside of the class.”

As a tradition, Larner hands out special prizes for the winners who are those with the most points after the competition ends. Points are accumulated each time a student correctly predicts the placement in a bracket. Last year, the grand prize was a baguette. This year, a croissant will be awarded to the 2025 winners in each class. For those with the worst scores, Band-Aids are awarded to “heal their broken bracket.”

However, making it to the end with as many points as possible is difficult. The brackets are made just like March Madness, and the chances of making a perfect bracket are very low. Students can only listen to a few seconds of each song before making their decisions for the winners, which makes it easy for song choices to be eliminated and brackets to be ruined.

Junior Thomas Shockey, a French student, found it so difficult to choose between songs that he left the decision up to chance.

 “I flipped a coin because I don’t really like the genre of music in Manie Musicale,” Shockey said. 

Shockey ended the tournament with 17 points based on the songs he picked and at what point in the bracket the songs won. For instance, when a song wins in the first 8 rounds, it accumulates one point. As quarter and semifinals happen, those points go to 3, then 5, then 8 for choosing the overall winning song. Shockey’s picks put him in second place, just short of the prize croissant, but ending with an overall successful bracket.

If a song is eliminated, then any instances of the song later on in a student’s bracket will be nullified, and no more points will be awarded. For instance, if a bracket has picks that all end up being eliminated – an unfortunate reality for multiple students this year – the bracket receives no points and is entirely out of the competition.

 “My bracket was so bad, by the second weekend, there were no chances for me to get anything,” junior Jazmyne Miner-Kingston said. “Most everything was crossed off.”

But it isn’t all tragedy in Manie Musicale. Despite the surface-level bracket challenge, the purpose of the event on a deeper level is to help students discover French music. Some even leave the experience with some new favorite songs, like the upbeat “Plus Fort” by Julien Graniel that made its way onto many French students’ playlists in 2023. Sometimes, there’s one song that’s disliked by everyone, except for a few who vote for it to win. 

“Usually, there’s at least one song that I hate, and I have to listen to it four times a day,” Larner continued, “and if it wins, I have to listen to it more.” 

In addition to introducing students to new music, Manie Musicale also fosters students’ important language skills as they critique and praise the songs. Students use short phrases to describe their opinion of the song, such as “Je pense que la chanson est trop commercial” (I think that the song is too commercialized) or “Je trouve que les paroles me met de bonne humeur” (I find that the lyrics put me in a good mood). These sentences can be applied to many other aspects of life, like food, books, and movies.

Students also find themselves analyzing the biographies of the artists that they listen to. In French 3, the difficulty of assignments progresses where students write biographies of the singers and judge other songs by the artist they have chosen.

Recently, a Spanish version called Mania Musical has also come to light. This year was the first time it debuted in Norrix’s Spanish classes, and while it hasn’t yet reached the popularity that Manie Musicale has, it still develops interest among students for cultures outside their own.

“I think it’s good to focus on something fun and cultural aside from the whole reading and writing, the boring arbitrary stuff,” Spanish teacher Marta Grabowski said. “We have something cool to look forward to, and we can look at the artists and where they’re from. It leads to a bunch of different discussions to be had.” 

While Manie Musicale offers a fun challenge for developing class culture, it also fosters a deeper interest among students on the applications and culture of the language they learn.