Georges Brassens

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Image:Georges Brassens, plaque commémorative, Paris.jpg

Georges Brassens (French IPA: [bʀa'sɛ̃s]) (October 22, 1921 - October 29, 1981) was a French singer-songwriter.

Georges Brassens was born in Sète, in southern France, thirty six kilometres south of Montpellier. An iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his simple, elegant songs and articulate, diverse lyrics; indeed, he is considered one of France's best postwar poets, and won the national poetry prize. In addition, he set to music poems by many well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon (Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux), Victor Hugo, Jean Richepin, François Villon, Guillaume Apollinaire and others.

During World War II, he was obliged to work for the Germans at an aircraft engine plant of BMW in the Service du Travail Obligatoire, (STO, enforced labour), in Basdorf near Berlin in Germany (march 1943). There were many other celebrities, and celebrities to be. Here Brassens met some of his future friends, such as Pierre Onteniente, whom he called Gibraltar because he was steady as a rock, and who would become his closest friend. After being given ten days leave in France, he decided not to go back to the labour camp. He took refuge in a little slum called "Impasse Florimont" where he lived for several years with the owner of the place, Jeanne Planche, who was a friend of his aunt. Jeanne lived with her husband Marcel in a dead end, without gas, water or electricity. Brassens would remain there 22 years. He had to remain hidden there until the end of the war (which occurred five months later). She was the inspiration for Brassens to write La Jeanne.

1 The beginning of his career
2 Songs
3 Nowadays
4 Heritage sites
5 External links

[edit] The beginning of his career

His friends who heard his songs and liked them urged him to go and try them out in a cabaret, café or concert hall. He was modest and had difficulties showing himself in front of people. The owner of a cafe told him that his songs were not the type he was looking for. But one time he met a singer called Patachou in a very known cafe, Les Trois Baudets, and she brought him into the music scene. Several famous singers have come into the music industry this way, such as Jacques Brel, or Léo Férré.

[edit] Songs

He rarely performed outside his own country, and his lyrics are hard to translate, though attempts have been made. He began his career in the 1950s. He was performing with a guitar; most of the time, his only musician was his friend Pierre Nicolas with a double bass, and sometimes a second guitar (Barthélémy Rosso, Joël Favreau).
Among his most famous songs:

Les copains d'abord, about a boat of that name, and friendship, written for a movie Les copains (1964) directed by Yves Robert;
Chanson pour l'Auvergnat, lauding those who take care of the downtrodden against the pettiness of the bourgeois and the harshness of law enforcement;
La cane de Jeanne for Marcel and Jeanne Planche, who befriended and sheltered him; and others
La mauvaise réputation - "the bad reputation", semi-autobiography;
Les amoureux des bancs publics - about young lovers who kiss each other publicly and shock self-righteous people;
Le gorille – tells, in a humorous fashion, of a gorilla with a large penis (and admired for this by ladies) who escapes and, mistaking a robed judge for a woman, forcefully sodomizes him; the song contrasts the wooden attitude that the judge had when sentencing a man to death by the guillotine, with his cries of mercy when being assaulted by the gorilla; this song, considered pornographic, was banned for a while; the song's refrain (Gare au gori – i – i – i – ille, "beware the gorilla") is widely known; (translated by Jake Thackray as Brother Gorilla).
Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète, describing his wish to be buried by the Gulf of Lion in his hometown.

He died of cancer in 1981, in Saint-Gély-du-Fesc, having suffered health problems for many years, and rests at the Cimetière le Py in Sète.

[edit] Nowadays

He never suspected that one day he'd have an international renown, because his idol, Paul Misraki, a singer who sang everywhere, never became famous among the general public. Now more than 50 doctoral dissertations have been written about Georges Brassens, and many artists from Japan, Russia, United States (where there is a Georges Brassens' fan club), Italy and Spain made cover versions of his songs. There are even some translations of his songs in Esperanto. His songs have been translated into 20 languages.

Many singers covered Georges Brassens' lyrics in other languages, for instance Fabrizio De André (in Italian), Graeme Allwright and Jake Thackray (in English), Sam Alpha (in creole), Yossi Banai (in Hebrew), Jiří Dědeček (in Czech), Mark Freidkin (in Russian), Paco Ibañez and Javier Krahe (in Spanish), Jacques Ivart (in esperanto), Ralf Tauchmann (in German) and Piotr Machalica (in Polish). Nowadays, there is an international association of Georges Brassens fans. There is also a fan club in Berlin-Basdorf which organizes a Brassens festival every year in September.

Brassens composed about 250 songs, but only 200 were recorded. The other 50 were unfinished.

Renée Claude, an important Québecois singer, dedicates a tribute-album to him, J'ai rendez-vous avec vous (1993).

His songs have a major influence on younger French singers (Maxime le Forestier, Renaud Séchan, Bénabar...)

[edit] Heritage sites

A lot of schools, theatres, parks, public gardens, and public places are dedicated to Georges Brassens and his work, and are called after him, for instance:

A park, that Paris's council wanted in the former Vaugirard slaughterhouses site, has been called parc Georges Brassens. Brassens lived large part of his life closed in this place, about hundred metres from it, at the 9 impasse Florimont and then at the 42 rue Santos Dumont.

The Place du Marché of Brive-la-Gaillarde was renamed Place Georges Brassens, as a tribute to women that had had a clash here with the French gendarmerie, a clash he evoked in one of his songs, Hécatombe.

In the Paris subway station Porte des Lilas (line 11) there is a mural portrait of Brassens along with a quote from his song "La Porte des Lilas", written for the 1957 film "Porte des Lilas" by René Clair. In this film, Brassens had a supporting role, practically playing himself.