Red & Black Lyrics – Les Miserables

Song Overview

Song Credits

• Featuring – Les Misérables International Cast
• Producer – David Caddick
• Composer & Lyricists – Claude-Michel Schönberg; Herbert Kretzmer; Alain Boublil; Jean-Marc Natel
• Release Date – 1988
• Genre – Pop; Musical Theatre
• Language – English
• Track # – 18
• Album – Les Misérables: The Complete Symphonic Recording
• Label – Nonesuch Records

Song Meaning and Annotations

Annotations

“The ABC Café / Red and Black” drops us into Place Saint-Michel’s crumbling medieval alleys — the haunt of Paris’s poorest, forced aside by Baron Haussmann’s grand boulevards. The beggars’ chant,

“Look down and see the beggars at your feet,”

Founding Members of Les Amis de l’ABC

Combeferre is the Revolution’s mind, tempering Enjolras’s fervor with philosophy. As Hugo puts it:

“…Enjolras expressed its divine right, and Combeferre its natural right.”

*aside* He may not soar as high, but his motto—“Revolution, but civilization”—offers a peaceful horizon beyond conflict.

Feuilly, the orphaned fan-maker, is the one true working-class insurgent. Earning three francs a day, he taught himself history to fuel his passion for global freedom — from Greece to Hungary. Hugo dubs him “the man of the people.”

Courfeyrac brings contagiously youthful bravado. He jettisoned his bourgeois “de” particle and became a “paladin in student form,” rallying friends with charm and wit.

Marius drifts in as outsider, drawn more by friendship than politics. His shy request —

“I have come to sleep with you.”

Joly, the group’s hypochondriac doctor, arranges his bed for optimal magnetic flow and checks his pulse during storms. Yet his eccentricity lightens even the darkest plans.

Grantaire, the cynic, cares for little more than his next drink. His axiom,

“There is but one certainty, my full glass,”

Jean Prouvaire, gentle poet-scholar, divides his days between social theory and stargazing. His soft voice finally rings out in a defiant “Vive la France!” at the barricade’s end.

Lesgles (aka Bossuet) is cursed by misfortune yet greets calamity with laughter. He’s known to toast fate by name — “Good day, Guignon.” — turning every disaster into a resourceful jest.

The Call to Arms

When Gavroche bursts in with news of General Lamarque’s death, planning turns to action. Their banner—“Red – the blood of angry men / Black – the dark of ages past”—becomes a promise of sacrifice and renewal. The students believe:

“It’ll come, it’ll come before we cut the fat ones down to size.”

The barricades will rise. Their faith in the people’s power — captured in “They will come one and all / They will come when we call” — binds them to a fate both glorious and tragic.

Revolutionary Resonance

The anthem “Do You Hear the People Sing?” serves not just as a rallying cry but as a meta-ode to song itself — a reminder that every revolt echoes in hearts long after the guns fall silent. And when the barricade becomes their tomb, their final chorus transforms into phantom voices surrounding Marius, whispering that true revolution lives on in every note.

Similar Songs

1. Overture / Work Song
   Both share a stirring orchestral motif that binds prison labour to street poverty. The repetitive rhythm underscores injustice in Toulon and Paris slums alike, using ensemble voices to transform individual suffering into a collective outcry. The musical echo ties Valjean’s early heartbreak to the students’ revolutionary zeal, showing how oppression can forge both chains and barricades.
2. Do You Hear the People Sing?
   Emerging later as the revolution’s anthem, it takes Enjolras’s “It’ll come” promise and turns it into a mass rallying cry. Where “The ABC Café / Red and Black” plots rebellion in whispers and planning, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” explodes in marching drums and choral power, calling every citizen to arms and cementing the students’ ideals into action.
3. Cell Block Tango from Chicago
   This cellblock ensemble and Les Amis de l’ABC both use dark humour and brisk rhythms to expose marginalised lives. In “Cell Block Tango,” incarcerated women recount crimes over sharp percussion; here, the beggars and students hurl barbs over lively melody. Both songs blend satire and sorrow, critiquing systems that commodify people and make survival itself an act of defiance.

Questions and Answers

What earlier tune does “Look Down” reference?

It parallels the “Overture / Work Song,” linking labour camp suffering to urban destitution.

Who is Gavroche in relation to the Thénardiers?

He is their forsaken son and Éponine’s younger brother, surviving on Paris’s streets rather than at home.

What does “swells” mean in this context?

It was once slang for fashionable elites, here mocking those who ignore the poor.

What does the repeated “It’ll come” herald?

Enjolras’s promise that the people’s uprising and barricade will soon arrive.

Why mention Place Saint-Michel?

It situates the scene in one of Paris’s oldest, now dilapidated districts, underlining historical neglect.