Georges Brassens
Encyclopedia
Georges Brassens 22 October 1921 – 29 October 1981), was a French singer-songwriter and poet.

Brassens was born in Sète
Sète
Sète is a commune in the Hérault department in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Its inhabitants are called Sétois....

, a town in southern France near Montpellier
Montpellier
-Neighbourhoods:Since 2001, Montpellier has been divided into seven official neighbourhoods, themselves divided into sub-neighbourhoods. Each of them possesses a neighbourhood council....

. Now an iconic figure in France, he achieved fame through his elegant songs with their harmonically complex music for voice and guitar and articulate, diverse lyrics; indeed, he is considered one of France's most accomplished postwar poets. He has also set to music poems by both well-known and relatively obscure poets, including Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon , was a French poet, novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt.- Early life :...

 (Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux), Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

 (La Légende de la Nonne, Gastibelza), Jean Richepin
Jean Richepin
Jean Richepin , French poet, novelist and dramatist, the son of an army doctor, was born at Médéa, French Algeria.At school and at the École Normale Supérieure he gave evidence of brilliant, if somewhat undisciplined, powers, for which he found physical vent in different directions—first as a...

, François Villon
François Villon
François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...

 (La Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis), and Guillaume Apollinaire
Guillaume Apollinaire
Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki, known as Guillaume Apollinaire was a French poet, playwright, short story writer, novelist, and art critic born in Italy to a Polish mother....

, Antoine Pol
Antoine Pol
Antoine Pol was a French poet .As an artillery captain, he fought in the First World War, and later worked at the Houve mines in Strasbourg in 1919....

 (Les Passantes).

During World War II, he was forced by the Germans to work in a labor camp
Arbeitslager
Arbeitslager is a German language word which means labor camp.The German government under Nazism used forced labor extensively, starting in the 1930s but most especially during World War II....

 at a BMW
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...

 aircraft engine plant in Basdorf
Wandlitz
Wandlitz is a municipality in the district of Barnim, in Brandenburg, Germany. It is situated 25 km north of Berlin, and 15 km east of Oranienburg...

 near Berlin in Germany (March 1943). Here Brassens met some of his future friends, such as Pierre Onténiente, whom he called Gibraltar because he was "steady as a rock." They would later become close friends.

After being given ten days' leave in France, he decided not to return to the labour camp. Brassens took refuge in a slum
Slum
A slum, as defined by United Nations agency UN-HABITAT, is a run-down area of a city characterized by substandard housing and squalor and lacking in tenure security. According to the United Nations, the percentage of urban dwellers living in slums decreased from 47 percent to 37 percent in the...

 called "Impasse Florimont," in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where he lived for several years with its owner, Jeanne Planche, a friend of his aunt. Planche lived with her husband Marcel in relative poverty: without gas, running water, or electricity. Brassens remained hidden there until the end of the war five months later, but ended up staying for 22 years. Planche was the inspiration for Brassens's song Jeanne.

Apart from Paris and Sète, he lived first in Crespières (near Paris) and latterly in Lezardrieux
Lézardrieux
Lézardrieux is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Bretagne in northwestern France.The village is situated near the mouth of the estuary of the Trieux river - the suspension bridge across the river at this point is a French national monument...

 (Brittany).

Childhood

Brassens grew up in the family home in Sète
Sète
Sète is a commune in the Hérault department in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Its inhabitants are called Sétois....

 with his mother, Elvira Dagrosa, father, Jean-Louis, half-sister, Simone (daughter of Elvira and her first husband, who was killed in the war), and paternal grandfather, Jules. His mother, who came from southern Italy (Basilicata province), was a devout Roman Catholic, while his father was an easy-going, generous, openminded, anticlerical man. Brassens grew up between these two starkly contrasting personalities, who nonetheless shared a love for music. His mother—whom Brassens labelled a "missionary for songs" (militante de la chanson), Simone and Jules, were always singing. This environment imparted to Brassens a passion for singing that would come to define his life. At the time he listened constantly to his early idols: Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet
Charles Trenet was a French singer and songwriter, most famous for his recordings from the late 1930s until the mid-1950s, though his career continued through the 1990s...

, Tino Rossi
Tino Rossi
Tino Rossi was a singer and film actor.Born Constantino Rossi in Ajaccio, Corsica, France, he became a tenor of French cabaret and one of the great romantic idols of his time. Gifted with an operatic voice, a "Latin Lover" persona made him a movie star as well...

, and Ray Ventura. He was said to love music above all else: it was his first passion and the path that led him to his career. He told his friend André Sève, "[It is] a kind of internal vibration, something intense, a pleasure that has something of the sensual to it." He hoped to enrol at a music conservatory, but his mother insisted that he could only do so if his grades improved. Consequently, he never learned to read music. A poor student, Brassens performed badly in school.

Alphonse Bonnafé, Brassens's ninth-grade teacher, strongly encouraged his apparent gift for poetry and creativity. Brassens had already been experimenting with songwriting and poetry. Bonnafé aided his attempts at poetry and pushed him to spend more time on his schoolwork, suggesting he begin to study classical poetry. Brassens developed an interest in versification and rhyme. By Brassens's admission, Bonnafé's influence on his work was enormous: "We were thugs, at fourteen, fifteen, and we started to like poets. That is quite a transformation. Thanks to this teacher, I opened my mind to something bigger. Later on, every time I wrote a song, I asked myself the question: would Bonnafé like it?" By this point, music had taken a slight backstage to poetry for Brassens, who now dreamed of being a writer.

Nonetheless, personal friendships and adolescence still defined Brassens in his teens. At age seventeen, he was implicated in a crime that would prove to be a turning point in his life. In order to make a little money, Georges and his gang decided to turn to small thefts whose principal victims were their respective families. Georges stole a ring and a bracelet from his sister. The police found and caught him, which caused a minor scandal. The young men were publicly characterized as "high school mobsters" or "scum". Some of the perpetrators, unsupported by their families, spent time in prison. While Brassens's father was more forgiving and immediately picked up his son, Brassens was expelled from school. He decided to move to Paris in February 1940, following a short trial as an apprentice mason in his father's business after World War II had already broken out.

Apprenticeship

Brassens lived with his aunt Antoinette in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where he taught himself to play piano. He began working at a Renault
Renault
Renault S.A. is a French automaker producing cars, vans, and in the past, autorail vehicles, trucks, tractors, vans and also buses/coaches. Its alliance with Nissan makes it the world's third largest automaker...

 car factory. In May 1940 the factory was bombed, and France invaded by Germany. Brassens returned to the family home in Sète. He spent the summer in his home town, but soon returned to Paris, feeling that this was where his future lay. He did not work, since employment would serve only to profit the occupying enemy. Saddened by the lack of poetic culture, Brassens spent most of his days in the library. It was then that he set a pattern of rising at five in the morning, and going to bed at sunset – a pattern he maintained the greater part of his life. He meticulously studied the great masters: Villon
François Villon
François Villon was a French poet, thief, and vagabond. He is perhaps best known for his Testaments and his Ballade des Pendus, written while in prison...

, Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire
Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

, Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Paul-Marie Verlaine was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. He is considered one of the greatest representatives of the fin de siècle in international and French poetry.-Early life:...

 and Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....

. His approach to poetry was almost scientific. Reading, for instance, a poem by Verlaine, he dissected it image by image, attentive to the slightest change in rhythm, analysing the rhymes and the way they alternated. He drew on this enormous literary culture as wrote his first collection of poems, Des coups d’épée dans l’eau, whose conclusion foreshadowed the anarchism of his future songs:
Le siècle ou nous vivons est un siècle pourri.
Tout n'est que lâcheté, bassesse,
Les plus grands assassins vont aux plus grandes messes
Et sont des plus grands rois les plus grands favoris.
Hommage de l'auteur à ceux qui l'ont compris,
Et merde aux autres.

(The century we live in is a rotten century.
Nothing but cowardice and baseness.
The greatest murderers attend the greatest masses
And are the greatest favourites of the greatest kings.
Homage from the author to those who understood it,
And shit for the others.)


Brassens also published A la venvole in 1942, thanks to the money of his family and friends, and with the surprising help of a woman named Jeanne Planche, a neighbour of Antoinette, probably the first Brassens fan. Brassens later commented on his early works: "In those times, I was only regurgitating what I had learned reading the poets. I hadn't transformed it into honey yet."

Exile

In March 1943, Brassens was requisitioned for the STO (Service de Travail Obligatoire: Obligatory Work Service) and was taken to Basdorf
Basdorf
Basdorf is a small town to the north of Berlin, in the German federal state of Brandenburg....

, Germany. He found time to write, but he stooped to easiness. It was nevertheless in Germany that he wrote Bonhomme and Pauvre Martin, along with more than a hundred songs, that were later either burned or frequently altered before they reached their final form (Le Mauvais sujet repenti). He also wrote the beginning of his first novel, Lalie Kakamou. In Germany, he met some of his best friends like Pierre Onténiente, whom he nicknamed "Gibraltar", because he was "firm as a rock." Onténiente later became his right-hand man and his private secretary.

A year after he arrived in Basdorf, Brassens was granted a ten day furlough. It was obvious to him and his new friends that he wouldn't come back. In Paris, he had to find a hideout, but he knew very few people. He had indeed led quite a lonely life in Paris, seeing only a friend from Sète and the girls. Finally, Jeanne Planche came to his aid and offered to put him up as long as necessary. Jeanne lived with her husband Marcel in a hovel at 9 impasse Florimont, with no gas, water or electricity. Brassens accepted... and stayed there for twenty two years. He once said on the radio: "I was nice there, and I have gained since then quite an amazing sense of discomfort." According to Pierre Onténiente: "Jeanne had a crush on Georges and Marcel knew nothing, as he started to get drunk at eight in the morning."

Anarchist influences

Once put up at Jeanne Planche's, Georges had to stay hidden for five months, waiting for the war to come to an end. He continued writing poems and songs. He composed using as his only instrument a small piece of furniture that he called "my drum" on which he beat out the rhythm. He resumed writing the novel he started in Basdorf, for only now did he consider a career as a famous novelist. The end of World War II and the freedom suddenly regained didn't change his habits much, except that he got his library card back and resumed studying poetry.

The end of the war meant the homecoming of the friends form Basdorf, with whom Brassens planned to create an anarchist-minded paper, Le Cri des gueux (The villains' cry), which never came into being for lack of money. At the same time, he set up the "Prehistoric Party" with Emile Miramont (a friend from Sète nicknamed "Corne d'Auroch" –auroch's horn) and André Larue (who he met in Basdorf), which advocated the return to a more modest way of life, but whose chief purpose was to ridicule the other political parties. After the failure of Le Cri des gueux, Brassens joined the Anarchist Federation
Anarchist Federation (France)
Fédération Anarchiste is an anarchist federation in France and Belgium. It is a member of the International of Anarchist Federations since its establishment in 1968.- History :...

 and wrote some virulent, black humour tinged articles for Le Libertaire, the Federation's paper. But the extravagance of the future songwriter wasn’t to everybody’s taste, and he soon had to leave the Federation, albeit without resentment.

Brassens said in an interview: "I'm an anarchist, so much so that I always cross at the zebra crossing to avoid arguing with the police." He also said: "I'm not very fond of the law. As Léautaud would say, I could do without laws [...] I think most people couldn’t."

Career

His friends who heard and liked his songs urged him to go and try them out in a cabaret, café or concert hall. He was shy and had difficulty performing in front of people. At first, he wanted to sell his songs to well-known singers such as "les frères Jacques". The owner of a cafe told him that his songs were not the type he was looking for. But at one point he met the singer Patachou in a very well-known cafe, Les Trois Baudets, and she brought him into the music scene. Several famous singers came into the music industry this way, including Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...

 and Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré
Léo Ferré was a Franco-Monegasque poet, composer, singer and musician.Born in Monaco, Ferré mixed love and melancholy with moral anarchy, lyricism with slang, rhyming verse with prose monologues...

. He later on made several appearances at the Paris Olympia
Paris Olympia
The Olympia is a music hall in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Located at No. 28, Boulevard des Capucines, its closest métro/RER stations are Madeleine, Opéra, Havre – Caumartin and Auber....

 under Bruno Coquatrix
Bruno Coquatrix
Bruno Coquatrix, was born in Ronchin, Nord on 5 August 1910 and died in Paris on 1 April 1979, buried in the famous Père Lachaise Cemetery . He is mainly known as the owner and manager of the music hall Paris Olympia...

' management and at the Bobino
Bobino
Bobino at 20 rue de la Gaîté, in the Montparnasse area of Paris , France, is a music hall theatre that has seen most of the biggest names of 20th century French music perform there....

 music hall
Music hall
Music Hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment which was popular between 1850 and 1960. The term can refer to:# A particular form of variety entertainment involving a mixture of popular song, comedy and speciality acts...

 theater.

He toured with Pierre Louki
Pierre Louki
Pierre Louki, born Pierre Varenne on 25 July 1920 in Brienon-sur-Armançon in Yonne, died 21 December 2006, was a French actor and singer/song-writer....

, who wrote a book of recollections entitled Avec Brassens (éditions Christian Pirot, 1999, ISBN 2-86808-129-0). After 1952, Brassens rarely left France. A few trips to Belgium and Switzerland; a month in Canada (1961, recording issued on CD in 2011) and another in North Africa were his only trips outside France – except for his concerts in Wales in 1970 and 1973 (Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...

).

Songs

Brassens rarely performed abroad. His lyrics are difficult to translate, though attempts have been made. He accompanied himself on acoustic guitar. Most of the time the only other accompaniment came from his friend Pierre Nicolas with a double bass
Double bass
The double bass, also called the string bass, upright bass, standup bass or contrabass, is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra, with strings usually tuned to E1, A1, D2 and G2...

, and sometimes a second guitar (Barthélémy Rosso, Joël Favreau).

His songs often decry hypocrisy and self-righteousness in the conservative French society of the time, especially among the religious, the well-to-do, and those in law enforcement. The criticism is often indirect, focusing on the good deeds or innocence of others in contrast. His elegant use of florid language and dark humor, along with bouncy rhythms, often give a rather jocular feel to even the grimmest lyrics.

Some of his most famous songs include:
  • Les copains d'abord, about a boat of that name, and friendship
    Friendship
    Friendship is a form of interpersonal relationship generally considered to be closer than association, although there is a range of degrees of intimacy in both friendships and associations. Friendship and association are often thought of as spanning across the same continuum...

    , written for a movie Les copains (1964) directed by Yves Robert
    Yves Robert
    Yves Robert was a French actor, screenwriter, director, and producer.Born in Saumur, Maine-et-Loire, in his teens Robert went to Paris to pursue a career in acting, starting with unpaid parts on stage in the city's various theatre workshops. To support himself, he worked at a variety of jobs...

    ; (translated and covered by Asleep At The Wheel
    Asleep at the Wheel
    Asleep at the Wheel is a American country music group that was formed in Paw Paw, West Virginia, but based in Austin, Texas. Altogether, they have won nine Grammy Awards since their 1970 inception. In their career, they have released more than twenty studio albums, and have charted more than twenty...

     as "Friendship First" and by a Polish cover band
    Cover band
    A cover band , is a band that plays mostly or exclusively cover songs. New or unknown bands often find the cover band format marketable for smaller gigs, and these bands may be known as a wedding band, party band and function band. A band whose covers consist mainly of songs that were chart hits is...

     Zespół Reprezentacyjny as "Kumple to grunt" and included on their 2007 eponymously titled CD).
  • Chanson pour l'Auvergnat
    Auvergne (province)
    Auvergne was a historic province in south central France. It was originally the feudal domain of the Counts of Auvergne. It is now the geographical and cultural area that corresponds to the former province....

    , 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" – a semi-autobiographical tune with its catchy lyric: "Mais les braves gens n'aiment pas que l'on suive une autre route qu'eux" (But the good folks don't like it if you take a different road than they do.)
  • 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
    Gorilla
    Gorillas are the largest extant species of primates. They are ground-dwelling, predominantly herbivorous apes that inhabit the forests of central Africa. Gorillas are divided into two species and either four or five subspecies...

     with a large penis
    Penis
    The penis is a biological feature of male animals including both vertebrates and invertebrates...

     (and admired for this by ladies) who escapes his cage. Mistaking a robed judge for a woman, the beast forcefully sodomizes
    Anal sex
    Anal sex is the sex act in which the penis is inserted into the anus of a sexual partner. The term can also include other sexual acts involving the anus, including pegging, anilingus , fingering, and object insertion.Common misconception describes anal sex as practiced almost exclusively by gay men...

     him. The song contrasts the wooden attitude that the judge had exhibited when sentencing a man to death by the guillotine
    Guillotine
    The guillotine is a device used for carrying out :executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which an angled blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the head from the body...

     with his cries for mercy when being assaulted by the gorilla. This song, considered pornographic, was banned
    Censorship
    thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...

     for a while. The song's refrain
    Refrain
    A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...

     (Gare au gori – i – i – i – ille, "beware the gorilla") is widely known; it was translated into English by Jake Thackray
    Jake Thackray
    John Philip "Jake" Thackray , was an English singer-songwriter, poet and journalist. Best known in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his topical comedy songs performed on British television, his work ranged from satirical to bawdy to sentimental to pastoral, with a strong emphasis on storytelling,...

     as Brother Gorilla, by Greek singer-songwriter Christos Thivaios as Ο Γορίλλας ("The Gorilla"), by Spanish songwriter Joaquín Carbonell as "El Gorila" ("The Gorilla"), by Italian songwriter Fabrizio De André
    Fabrizio De André
    Fabrizio De André was an Italian singer-songwriter.Known for his sympathies towards anarchism, libertarianism, and pacifism, he also was a convicted atheist , and his songs often featured marginalized and rebellious people, prostitutes and knaves, and attacked the Catholic Church...

     as "Il Gorilla" ("The Gorilla" – FDA included this translation into his 1968 album "Volume III"), by a Polish cover band
    Cover band
    A cover band , is a band that plays mostly or exclusively cover songs. New or unknown bands often find the cover band format marketable for smaller gigs, and these bands may be known as a wedding band, party band and function band. A band whose covers consist mainly of songs that were chart hits is...

     Zespół Reprezentacyjny as "Goryl" and by Israeli writer Dan Almagor as "הגורילה".
  • Fernande – a 'virile antiphon' about the women lonely men think about to inspire self-gratification (or to nip it in the bud). Its infamous refrain
    Refrain
    A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...

     (Quand je pense à Fernande, je bande, je bande..., `When I think about Fernande, I get hard') is still immediately recognized in France, and has essentially ended the use of several female first names.
  • Supplique pour être enterré à la plage de Sète
    Sète
    Sète is a commune in the Hérault department in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Its inhabitants are called Sétois....

    , a long song (7:18) describing, in a colourful, "live" and poetic way, his wish to be buried on a peculiar sandy beach in his hometown, "Plage de la Corniche".
  • Mourir pour des idées, describing the recurring violence over ideas and an exhortation to be left in peace (translated into Italian by Italian singer-songwriter Fabrizio De André
    Fabrizio De André
    Fabrizio De André was an Italian singer-songwriter.Known for his sympathies towards anarchism, libertarianism, and pacifism, he also was a convicted atheist , and his songs often featured marginalized and rebellious people, prostitutes and knaves, and attacked the Catholic Church...

     as "Morire per delle idee" and included in FDA's 1974 album "Canzoni" and by a Polish cover band
    Cover band
    A cover band , is a band that plays mostly or exclusively cover songs. New or unknown bands often find the cover band format marketable for smaller gigs, and these bands may be known as a wedding band, party band and function band. A band whose covers consist mainly of songs that were chart hits is...

     Zespół Reprezentacyjny as "Śmierć za idee" and included on their 2007 CD "Kumple to grunt").


Brassens 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.

Legacy

In recent years, more than 50 doctoral dissertations have been written about Georges Brassens. Many artists from Japan, Israel, Russia, the United States (where there is a Georges Brassens fan club), Italy and Spain have made cover versions of his songs. His songs have been translated into 20 languages, including Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

.

Many singers have covered Georges Brassens' lyrics in other languages, for instance Pierre de Gaillande, who translates Brassens' songs and performs them in English, Fabrizio De André
Fabrizio De André
Fabrizio De André was an Italian singer-songwriter.Known for his sympathies towards anarchism, libertarianism, and pacifism, he also was a convicted atheist , and his songs often featured marginalized and rebellious people, prostitutes and knaves, and attacked the Catholic Church...

 (in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

), Alberto Patrucco (in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

), and Nanni Svampa (in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 and Milanese
Milanese
Milanese is the central variety of the Western Lombard language spoken in the city and province of Milan....

), Graeme Allwright
Graeme Allwright
Graeme Allwright is a singer-songwriter. Born in Wellington, New Zealand, he moved to France in 1948. He began to perform and write folk songs a few years later and was eventually signed by Sonogram. In the 1960s, he translated into French a number of songs written by Leonard Cohen, Tom...

 and Jake Thackray
Jake Thackray
John Philip "Jake" Thackray , was an English singer-songwriter, poet and journalist. Best known in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his topical comedy songs performed on British television, his work ranged from satirical to bawdy to sentimental to pastoral, with a strong emphasis on storytelling,...

 (in English), Sam Alpha (in creole
Antillean Creole
Antillean Creole is a creole language with a vocabulary based on French. It is spoken primarily in the Lesser Antilles. Its grammar and vocabulary also include elements of Carib and African languages. Antillean Creole is related to Haitian Creole, but has a number of distinctive features; they are...

), Yossi Banai
Yossi Banai
Yossi Banai was an Israeli performer, singer, actor, and dramatist.-Biography:Banai was born in Jerusalem, and grew up in the neighborhood of the Mahane Yehuda market...

 (in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

), Jiří Dědeček (in Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

), Mark Freidkin (in Russian), Loquillo, Paco Ibáñez
Paco Ibáñez
Francisco "Paco" Ibáñez is a Spanish singer and musician born in Valencia on November 20, 1934, before the Spanish Civil War.He went to France in 1952 during the Franco dictatorship in Spain and recorded his first album in 1964....

, Javier Krahe, Joaquín Carbonell and Eduardo Peralta (in Spanish), Jacques Ivart (in esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

), Franz Josef Degenhardt
Franz Josef Degenhardt
Franz-Josef Degenhardt was a German poet, satirist, novelist, and – first and foremost – a folksinger/songwriter with decidedly left-wing politics. He was also a lawyer, bearing the academic degree of Doctor of Law.Degenhardt was born in Schwelm, Westphalia...

 and Ralf Tauchmann (in German), Zespół Reprezentacyjny (they released 2 CDs of Brassens' songs in Polish) and Piotr Machalica (in Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

), Cornelis Vreeswijk
Cornelis Vreeswijk
Cornelis Vreeswijk , was a singer-songwriter, poet and actor born in IJmuiden in the Netherlands.He emigrated to Sweden with his parents in 1949 at the age of twelve. He was educated as a social worker and hoped to become a journalist, but became increasingly involved in music, performing at...

 (Swedish) and Tuula Amberla (in Finnish). Dieter Kaiser, a Belgian-German singer who performs in public concerts with the French-German professional guitarist Stéphane Bazire under the name Stéphane & Didier has translated into German language and gathered in a brochure 19 Brassens songs. He also translated among others the poem "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux" of the French contemporary poet Louis Aragon. Franco-Cameroonian singer Kristo Numpuby
Kristo Numpuby
-External links:* *...

 also released a cover-album with the original French lyrics but adapted the songs to various African rhythms.

An international association of Georges Brassens fans exists and there is also a fan club in Berlin-Basdorf which organizes a Brassens festival every year in September.

Brassens composed about 250 songs, of which 200 were recorded, the other 50 remaining unfinished.

Renée Claude, an important Québécois
French-speaking Quebecer
French-speaking Quebecers are francophone residents of the Canadian province of Quebec....

 singer, dedicated a tribute-album to him, J'ai rendez-vous avec vous (1993).

His songs have a major influence on many French singers across several generations, including Maxime Le Forestier
Maxime Le Forestier
Maxime Le Forestier is a French singer.He was born in Paris to an English father and a French mother who had lived in England. He had two older sisters, Anne and Catherine....

, Renaud
Renaud
Renaud, born Renaud Séchan, is a French singer, songwriter and actor.Renaud may also refer to:* Renaud , a male French given name* Renaud , a 1783 opera by Antonio Sacchini* Renaud, Quebec, part of Laval, Quebec...

, Bénabar
Bénabar
Bénabar is a French songwriter and singer, who could be compared to Vincent Delerm and other singers from his generation. As many of them he was influenced by Georges Brassens, Renaud, Jacques Higelin and also Tom Waits. His songs describe day-to-day life events with humour and a tender cynicism...

 and others.

In 2008, the English folk-singer Leon Rosselson
Leon Rosselson
Leon Rosselson is an English songwriter and writer of children's books. After his early involvement in the folk music revival in Britain, he came to prominence, singing his own satirical songs, in the BBC's topical TV programme of the early 1960s, That Was The Week That Was...

 included a tribute song to Brassens, entitled "The Ghost of Georges Brassens", on his album A Proper State.

The song "À Brassens" ("To Brassens") from Jean Ferrat
Jean Ferrat
Jean Ferrat was a French singer-songwriter and poet. He specialized in singing poetry, particularly that of Louis Aragon.-Biography:...

's album Ferrat was dedicated to Brassens.

Heritage sites

Many schools, theatres, parks, public gardens, and public places are dedicated to Georges Brassens and his work, including:
  • L'Espace Brassens in his hometown of Sète
    Sète
    Sète is a commune in the Hérault department in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France. Its inhabitants are called Sétois....

    , a museum to his life.
  • A park built on the site of the former Vaugirard horse market & slaughterhouses, was named parc Georges Brassens. Brassens lived a large part of his life about hundred metres from the slaughterhouses, at 9 impasse Florimont and then at 42 rue Santos Dumont. The park was inaugurated in 1975.
  • A nearby station of Tram line 3 is also named in Brassens' honour.
  • The Place du Marché of Brive-la-Gaillarde
    Brive-la-Gaillarde
    Brive-la-Gaillarde is a commune of France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Corrèze department. The population of the urban area was 89,260 as of 1999. Although it is by far the biggest commune in Corrèze, the capital is Tulle.-History:...

     was renamed Place Georges Brassens, as a tribute to women that had had a clash here with the French gendarmerie
    Gendarmerie
    A gendarmerie or gendarmery is a military force charged with police duties among civilian populations. Members of such a force are typically called "gendarmes". The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary describes a gendarme as "a soldier who is employed on police duties" and a "gendarmery, -erie" as...

    , a clash he evoked in one of his songs, Hécatombe.
  • In the Paris Métro
    Paris Métro
    The Paris Métro or Métropolitain is the rapid transit metro system in Paris, France. It has become a symbol of the city, noted for its density within the city limits and its uniform architecture influenced by Art Nouveau. The network's sixteen lines are mostly underground and run to 214 km ...

     station Porte des Lilas
    Porte des Lilas (Paris Metro)
    Porte des Lilas is a station of the Paris Métro. It serves Line 11 and is the northern terminus of Line 3bis.The station was opened on 27 November 1921 when Line 3 was extended from Gambetta to Porte des Lilas. The line 11 platforms opened as part of the original section of the line from Châtelet...

     (Line 11
    Paris Metro Line 11
    Paris Métro Line 11 is one of 16 Paris métro lines. It links Les Lilas in the North East of the city to Châtelet in the center of Paris. It is the shortest of the 14 metro lines having independent management...

    ) 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
    René Clair
    René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...

    . In this film, Brassens had a supporting role, practically playing himself.

External links

Espace Brassens museum in Sète Georges-Brassens.com AnalyseBrassens.com
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