Search - Barbara :: Les Indispensables

Excellent reprint of an old vinyl record from the 1960s

Professor E. Knight | Miami, Florida | 09/28/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I woke up one morning a few months ago with a tune in my head: "Il pleut sur Nantes, donne-moi la main / Le ciel de Nantes rend mon coeur chagrin" ~ "It rains over Nantes, give me your hand / the sky of Nantes makes my heart very sad".



Is it because I went to Nantes last year in order to spend a few days with my son Elden, who is a tenor, and was performing in "Pirame et Thisbé" at the Nantes Opera house? I don't know.



This is the beginning of a very beautiful and very sad song that I had discovered around 1965 when I was living at the Cité Universitaire de Paris. Words and music written by a famous singer called Barbara, whose real name was Monique Serf (1930-1997). A young woman receives a message enjoining her to go to Nantes, "25 rue de la Grange-au-loup" saying "hurry up there is little hope; he asked to see you". She remembers that since he had gone away, she had waited long time the return of "this vagabond, this missing man" but that he had come back to her heart at last: "At the time of his last hour, after many years of wanderings, he was coming back to my heart; his yell tore the silence apart." But as she arrives, she sees four well dressed men with grave expressions stand up in a cold, white light. She then understands that she arrived too late and that "he died that same night" "sans un adieu, sans un 'je t'aime'." ~ "without a good bye, without an 'I love you'". She buries him on a path along the sea, in a garden of stones under a rose, so that he will rest in peace. She then screams "Mon père, mon père" and we understand only then, at the very end of the song, that she was talking of her father, who had disappeared longtime ago.



I got up right away that morning and went straight to my old French collection of vinyl records that I started when I was a student in Paris. One of the few things that I salvaged when I left France and moved to Miami four years ago, with only one third of my books and no furniture. I looked for my old 30 cm with the intention of converting it immediately to mp3 in my computer, thanks to an excellent program called "Spin It Again". But, although I was certain that I had bought it in Paris forty years ago, I couldn't find it. I then remembered that I had left that record to my ex-wife when we divorced in 1983 because she loved Barbara. I hadn't even thought of it ever since. So I had to buy it again in CD and I now have five mp3 backups of it.



This CD has the 12 same songs that I had in my vinyl record from the 1960s but it has eleven extra numbers that I didn't have. Songs 1 to 11 correspond to my original record plus the last one, number 23.



Song number 1 is "Dis, quand reviendras-tu"? I think this was also the title of the 30 cm. Barbara wrote the words and the music in 1961. She keeps asking "Say, when will you return" and repeating that the time which passed away cannot be recaptured. She feels alone and threatens her lover to make the most beautiful souvenir of their mutual love if he doesn't return fast.



"J'entends sonner les clarions" (also words and music by Barbara) evokes "le temps des amours mortes" "the time of dead loves". "You wanted to play war, against whom? What for?" is song number 2.



"Tu ne te souviendras pas", song number 3, is also a very beautiful and sad song, words and music also by Barbara. "You won't remember that night when we loved each other." "You won't remember my face or my name. The puppets here below make three small turns then go away." This is a very poetic song and I studied it several times with my high school students in the 1970s because of its beautiful images like the scenery of their night of love: "Doucement la nuit s'est penchée / Traînant dans son manteau de soie / Des morceaux de ciel étoilé" ~ "Softly the night bent herself / dragging in her mantel of silk / morsels of starry sky"



Song number 4, "Le Verger de Lorraine" (words by J. Poissonnier, music by Barbara), is devoted to all those who shed their blood in Lorraine and made of this orchard "a tender niche where to love when the seasons return". Those who know European history know that the French regions of Alsace and Lorraine were conquered by Bismark in 1870 and belonged to Germany until they returned to France in 1919 after the end of WWI. Then they became German again when Hitler invaded France in 1940 and finally returned to France in 1945. This explains the choice of Strasbourg (in Alsace) for the seat of the European Parliament as a symbol of reconciliation in the heart of that region so often battered by human stupidity.



"Ce matin-là" is song number 5. Barbara wrote the words and L. Gnancia the music. A woman sings to her lover that she left early that morning in order to pick strawberries and give them to him at his awakening.



Number 6 is "Chapeau bas". Words and music were written by Barbara. "Is it God's hand or the Devil's hand who came together to make that beautiful morning?" "For all that beauty, thank you and 'hats down' (= Bravo!)" "Chapeau bas" (now we just say "Chapeau!") is a French expression meaning that you must take your hat down when you admire something. This expression goes back to the seventeenth century when people took off their hat instead of making a reverence in order to show respect.



"Le Temps des lilas" (number 7, another 100% Barbara's song) evokes the time of love and vows until it flies away and then comes the time of war between two lovers. In the meanwhile, you must take advantage of the time of lilacs.



"Liberté" (Freedom, dated from 1960) follows the time of lilacs and has a graver subject. The words were written by Maurice Vidalin and Charles Aznavour wrote the music. Barbara asks what Freedom has done for those who defended her. Tomorrow the executioner is going to hang them. The singer remembers that when they were sentenced, they screamed "Vive la liberté!"



Song number 9 is "Attendez que ma joie revienne", another sad and poetic song due entirely to Barbara, words and music. A woman asks her new lover to wait until joy returns once she will be able to forget her previous lover. But it is too soon to say "I love you" because it's his voice that she hears. At the end she says: "Pardon me, it's him that I love. The past doesn't want to die."



After this sad song, "De Shanghai à Bangkok" (1956) is a joyful one that presents a sailor who had promised plenty of precious stones to his girl friend but he had failed and lost all his money. Nevertheless, she says that it has no importance, since he is coming back at last from Shanghai to Paris. Words by Georges Moustaki (born in 1934) and music by Claude Henri Vic.



Here comes finally song number 11: "Nantes" that I already analyzed; a 100% Barbara's song.



Songs 12 to 22 are borrowed from the repertoires of two other famous singers that I have in audio cassettes: Jacques Brel (a French Belgian singer 1929-1978) and Georges Brassens (1921-1981). These songs are:



No. 12: Litanies pour un retour (Brel). Litanies for a return. Not the best in Brel's repertoire



No. 13 : Les Flamandes (Brel). Song about Flemish women. Not the best either.



No. 14: Je ne sais pas (Brel). A man says that he doesn't know a certain number of things and keeps repeating "But I know that I still love you". A very sentimental song.



No. 15 : Ne me quitte pas (Brel). A famous song from 1959, considered as Brel's masterpiece (for me, it would rather be "Le Plat Pays" or "Une Ile") and that the author himself didn't like because it symbolizes "l'amour lâche": coward love! In here, a man begs a woman not to leave him and let him become the shadow of her dog, instead of calling a taxi and saying "bon voyage ma chérie..." Brel was right. How can a person go so low? You love me, I love you; you don't love me, "bon voyage!"



No. 16 : Il nous faut regarder (Brel) is a very poetic song : "Beyond the dirtiness spreading out in front of us [...] farther than frontiers which are barbed wires, we must look at the faithful friend, the sun of tomorrow, the flight of a swallow, the ship that returns" etc. etc.



No. 17 : La marche nuptiale (Brassens). The narrator has seen many marriages but he will never forget the day when his father married his mother after a very long engagement. This is typical of Brassens' repertoire because he loved to shock "les bourgeois" and established values, still well alive in France in the 1950s. Let's be aware of the huge evolution of western societies. If more than 30 percent of children are born today from non married parents in France and in the US, remember that until the end of the 1960s it was a big tragedy for a woman to have a child without being married (and in some countries, it will cost her life even today!) Just remember the problems that Fantine had to face because of Cosette in Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables" (1862)



No. 18 : Pauvre Martin (Brassens). Martin is a miserable peasant who works hard from dawn to dusk and digs his own grave at the end.



No. 19 : La légende de la none (Brassens) is another famous song of Georges Brassens. A nun falls in love with an ugly bandit. Again, this permanent need to « choquer les bourgeois ». In fact, this is a very long poem of almost 200 verses written originally by Victor Hugo in 1828 and that you may find in his "Odes et Ballades". Brassens only keeps the first part and forgets the long second part devoted to the punishment after both lovers have been stricken by a thunder.



No. 20 : Penélope (Brassens). The author asks faithful Penelope if she has never been tempted by a sinful love.



No. 21: La femme d'Hector (Brassens). The most beautiful woman is Hector's wife. Eternal importance of beautiful women for French male singers: is she a friend's wife? No problem, they're not jealous...



No. 22: Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux (Brassens). "There is no happy love" is the refrain of this song, which reflects Schopenhauer's pessimism that invaded Western Europe (but also South America: think of José María Vargas Vila and the "Modernismo" movement!) since the second half of the XIXth century.



No. 23 : Vous entendrez parler de lui (100% Barbara) is the only song that I had heard Barbara sing of this list after "Nantes" because it was part of my original vinyl. A woman explains that a man had to leave the village because he was a stranger. "Some will say that he was blond, others darker than coal. I don't care. People said so much that he had to leave the country. He disappeared in the night and tried to smile."



Although I love Barbara, I confess that I prefer numbers 12 to 22 interpreted by the original singers. Not because of the sentimental souvenir attached to the twelve original songs in her old vinyl, but because I really think that Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel sing their songs better than she does. That's my opinion and "I approve this message" as they say nowadays every ten minutes on TV...



Nevertheless, the twelve original songs from my old record are really beautiful and deserve the purchase of this CD. With other numbers from Barbara's traditional repertoire like "L'Aigle Noir", "La Solitude", "Ma plus belle histoire d'amour", "Marienbad" or "Göttingen" instead of the 11 songs borrowed from Brel and Brassens, I would have certainly given five stars to this very good disk.



Those who understand French and would like to find the text of other French songs, may look for them in this site, that I always put in my Syllabus for my French students: http://www.paroles.net/lyrics



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