{"id":17041,"date":"2024-11-19T13:27:17","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T13:27:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=17041"},"modified":"2024-11-19T13:27:17","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T13:27:17","slug":"the-greatest-troubadour-jacques-brel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/11\/19\/the-greatest-troubadour-jacques-brel\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatest Troubadour: Jacques Brel"},"content":{"rendered":"

In search of the my favourite troubadour all roads lead to Flanders, Belgium, then on to France and French Polynesia. There, in the obscure cemetery of Atuona Hiva Oa<\/span><\/a> \u2013 alongside the impressionist Paul Gaugin \u2013 rests the mortal remains of Jacques Brel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Aged just forty-seven, Brel had been under a settled expectation of death for some time, as a legendary smoker, and been commuting back and forth to the French mainland to finalise his last album.<\/p>\n

Belgiums regularly hail Brel as their greatest fellow citizen in opinion polls. For good reason.<\/p>\n

I greatly admire the French chanteuse tradition from Maurice Chevalier to Edith Piaf, and on to Juliette Greco. There\u2019s Serge Gainsbourg too, and the recently deceased Charles Aznavour. Yet I regard Jacque Brel as the culmination of that tradition.<\/p>\n

It is the sheer volume of great songs that is most remarkable about Brel, and, unlike Gainsbourg, they translate easily, although they are often traduced.<\/p>\n

Thus, Les Moribund<\/a><\/em><\/span> (1961) is about the ruminations of a dying man: \u2018I want them to dance when it\u2019s time to put me in the hole.\u2019 In the Terry Jack version<\/span><\/a>, however, which sold five million copies this becomes: \u2018Goodbye my friend it is time to die when all the birds singing in the sky\u2026. We will have joy, we will have fun, we will have seasons in the sun.\u2019 Westlife even covered it. Yet it is a Brel song translated word-for-word with an identical riff. One can only assume copyright was secured.<\/p>\n

David Bowie was a huge fan of Brel, and most notably covered the iconic song Amsterdam<\/a><\/em><\/span> (1964), as did Scott Walker who penned an album in English called Walker Sings Brel (1981). Brel was above all a performer. Thus, with sweat dripping and emotional grotesquerie to the fore, nothing in performance art history is quite like his live version of Amsterdam at the Olympia Amsterdam 1964. Ms Abramovich eats your heart out.<\/p>\n