Brassens ou la liberté the thirtieth anniversary of the disappearance

…And here we are again with the war. The bombers start bombing. Hospitals are hit again, "collateral damage" of economic and political interests and blind idiots.

For the disabled in our house the other side of the coin
is not the fact that it can not keep up with the girls, by God,
But it can not go back on the battlefield.
Definitely the sprig of olive will never be our symbol !

La copertina del catalogo della mostra su Brassens in corso a Parigi

Meanwhile, in recent months in Italy, the ridiculous celebration of that troubled time in our history known as the Risorgimento reinvigorates the mutual hatred of the King of Savoy unlikely supporters or supporters of the Bourbon King anachronistic.

Ah, you can not really say that has taken root in the sand
that dynasty ...
We have little chance to dethrone the king of the assholes

It may well stay that sovereign
between two pillows, peaceful ... We
is little chance to dethrone
the king of assholes.

Besides, the leader of the anti-unitary culture, research the local roots, the claim of the dialects are - poor us! - The most vulgar partisans of racism, xenophobia, the deniers of every elementary solidarity. And so do we hear speeches against the war for humanitarian reasons, but God forbid ... beast for fear of being overrun by desperate refugees then. The chauvinists of all time, who doth loops and nooses, expulsions and bless those who invoke the anti-immigrant patrols, now in their Inania, before returning conquerors, we rediscover cowardly soul..

Cursed are the children of each
impalateli homeland once and for all on their steeples (...)
fools happy to be born somewhere.

My God, how much better the land of the
if there are meeting this race incongruous
this race bothers swarming everywhere:
the pure breed of the place, people with DOC.
How would life beautiful as it is
if not I pulled out of nowhere these cretins,
ultimate test of your absence:
fools happy to be born somewhere.

In short, the ugliness of our times do not let us forget how to Georges Brassens! Do not let his songs grow old, never ceases to be topical, the refined ferocity highly individual world's favorite, who died exactly 30 years ago, namely 29 October 1981, just sixty years of age.
What is the miracle of music that makes a shy man, unwilling to align itself to any ideology, even the anarchist, not prone to judgments, unable to believe in collective solutions, the moralist and nicest present that there is? The man was a man of another era, with literary tastes which stopped just beyond the romance and passion with music without swing of the '30s. Comrade George was so anarchic that they have stopped making the early activists and writing for Le Monde libertarian (and the glorious old newspaper that was of Louise Michel) to cultivate a "little philosophy - these are his words - in some cases to limits of minimalism.

Glory to hit the brakes not to overwhelm
the hedgehog lost, dazzled the toad. (...)

Glory to the stranger who passes by and
the crowd goes silent when "all hang him!" (...)

Glory be to the good nun the coldest day
thaw in his hand the penis of the maimed. (...)

Glory to those who had not sacrosanct ideals
merely not to break my balls to the neighbors!

The attitude of playful but not deception, the rhythms that make your foot tap, the air natured, calm voice, staring who can not rest where not cheat. Underneath it all, beneath the dust of years that rested on her hair more gray, under the terrible harm to the kidneys which will make it more than ever closed and familiarity with that death will soon take him away then too, has always Brassens retained his truculence, his ferocity on appeal. The bear was never tamed. Brassens did his best to appear very balanced and peaceful, but not deceived, for example, look fine as that of director François Truffaut once wrote that not to have too much sympathy note to her neck, her tendency to see everything well on one side and all the evil other. Brassens universe of good and evil is the individual order and his emissaries, with the exceptions that prove the rule.
Needless to say, Brassens was nice to me exactly the same reasons that Truffaut does not love him, I love that deep contradiction that Brassens wants to appear so balanced, but he left the world by leaving two songs - including his latest, published posthumously in 1982 - that under the apparent bonhomie conceals the most absolute ... Manichaeism is a declaration of an extreme hatred for power:

When the balls are nothing
like me, like you, like us, like you
is not a serious
who commit it will allow
nonsense, wickedness
giving off crazy:
do not piss anyone.
Unfortunately the earth three-quarters of
crazy people are very bad, stupid sectarian
that move, excite
Flex, their zeal
and break all around the world.

If Mr. Tom was an infant without degrees, leave alone the poor
comrades but alas it is a warmonger and general Matamoro
and just makes a gesture we count the dead.

The other attaches to the famous saying of Voltaire tolerance on a personal reading that reverses the moral..

By the innocent, the father of Candido
the brilliant Voltaire, in essence wrote
that tolerate willingly - for stunning complacency -
there to conform to his opinion.
"Lord, she speaks of the enormous nonsense
But I will fight to the death because the other
ve leave your say. And I expect under the elm tree! "
Those who do not think like us are balls.

Yet incredible sympathy and love, the unanimous admiration that such a gorilla, an elephant that is constantly pretend to be sorry that smashes the crystal, but good to see you enjoy a world, gives rise to generations of fans that continue to occur. We love Brassens because it is a simple man - we think - his songs are crystal clear, in a survey of the 70 was considered by his compatriots as "the happiest of the French."
The simplicity which is one of the constituent elements of his character is only apparent. It is an armor that abruptly to address the public in the theater, appearing without a greeting, guitar in hand, to insert one after the other words and in disentangling the tangle of agreements that play jazz too, too twisted to be refined and then so immediate. The gruff shyness does not hide the deep kindness of his eyes is the trace of a wound that remains at the bottom. The term of hunted animal bears the memory of when the sixteen Brassens, who still lived in Sète, was caught stealing with a group of peers and was sentenced to six months in prison, conquering the bad reputation among the villagers that the prompted him to emigrate to Paris.
Perhaps it is precisely this dialectic of the character and work, including a facade of simplicity and complexity of extreme skiing, to open a perspective that continues to captivate audiences without brassensiani historical and linguistic boundaries.
To revive the memory and refresh the image of the "good boy anarchist" (as defined by one of his earliest exegetes) thinks now a big project, coordinated by one of the best cartoonists of the last generation: Joann Sfar, born in 1971, which was Thus a child of just 10 years old when he stopped for ever to sing Brassens. Sfar, in addition to being one of the pillars of the new French comic scene, he had already bestowed a tribute to the history of song writing and directing a great biopic about Serge Gainsbourg ("Vie héroïque" 2010) where in a brief cameo in the role of Georges appeared that one, the director and designer Sfar. Bella identification!
There is therefore no wonder that he is the creator and the deus ex machina of the interactive exhibition entitled "Brassens ou la liberté" and the Cité de la musique in Paris dedicated to the songwriter, completely redesigning the character Brassens, overcoming distance with the present time, re-enactment ways and means to deliver content intact in the world that is. The exhibition is open from March 15 to August 21 is coming together, as well as an impressive catalog of 350 pages, several CDs and a DVD with several rare and unreleased material, including the full video recording of a concert in 1969.
All this supports the permanent exhibition that the city of Sète has for many years dedicated to its most famous son (well most of the poet Paul Valery) Espace Georges Brassens.
And then Paris and France in recent months will all be covered from concerts and shows that for every renewed where myth and poetry of this troubadour of the twentieth century, thirty years after his death does not cease to sing for us.

Alessio Lega
alessio.lega@fastwebnet.it

Letter sent by the Collective of Prostitutes of Paris, Georges Brassens June 16, 1976. "Dear Georges Brassens, we Hookers tell you thanks for your songs so beautiful that help us to live. Unfortunately we had your address too late. Here's an invitation. We embrace you all. Your Companions of the Collective with all my heart, always with you. "

I could go through gallons of coral...
to reach a place called Anarchy.

by Mariano Brustio

The Master who Fabrizio never wanted to know, contributor of the anarchic freedom, the great poet of the outlaws and whores.
Notes on Georges Brassens.

So we have heard many times in concert singing his most personal song, written, he said, in one night, a bottle and a lot of accomplices "braves gens", the good people, his "muse" an evening of inspiring a bit 'too bourgeois.
The same good people who Brassens has so often described in his songs and sang: "But I do not do the wrongs to anyone, if I follow my way, but the people do not like so that you follow a route different from them" (Brassens, La mauvaise reputation).
"This is not good for the people affected if I do not withstand heavy chains" (De André, the idler).
It occurred to me many times of having to and wanting to understand why a path parallel to and distant location at different times by Georges Brassens and Fabrizio De André.
The first one almost exiled in Paris, then Germany, then again in Paris during the war years, the other a refugee with her family near Asti in the same year. The years in which exclusion chosen by Brassens and imprisonment at the desired friends Jeanne (Chez Jeanne) and Marcel (the Arverna) led him to conceive his proclamation, his praise of the anarchic, La mauvaise reputation " day of July 14 will stay in comfortable bed mo; the music to walking is not for me, but I do not hurt anyone but I listen to the horn rings. " "When I meet a hapless thief, chased by a clown, I tripped and the policeman finds himself on the ground, but I do not do wrong to none of let out a chicken thief." And again: "... one of those attacking him and the policeman shouting 'Death to the cops, long live anarchy' "(Hécatombe). The conflict with the authority becomes so obvious and does nothing but make public his thoughts, so much that he said that the basic principle of the anarchists is the same for all: freedom, but the means are more different: "Someone is conducive to violence, others do not: I am an individualist. " So consider it more useful and important to their identity of any occasion that move to the cancellation of the individual to the community.
Individualism in a solitary spirit: it is the same voice as De André, Faber heard in one, a splendid documentary Giuffrida Romano and Bruno Bigoni, which is given us to understand what was the consideration that De André had to any form of aggregation. And reread the style of Brassens want to quote "The pluriel" which roughly says: "Being in so many and just does not suit the man was a bit 'more than four has a team of assholes. Bande a part, damn, this is my rule and I keep: between those high-sounding names will not read mine. "

Fabrizio De André

What to say about similarities in both, and Fabrice Georges, we find with Villon's Ballade des pendus: "We must not be Jeremiah to predict the fate that awaits me: If you find a rope that goes well I will go around the neck" ( Brassens La mauvaise reputation) and again: "He was screaming as the guy whose mother the day before as a chicken, a sentence with a little 'original had cut the neck." (Brassens and De André, the gorilla). The gorilla as an instrument of revenge against the authority incurred. And in De André, such as La Hanging On "All we died with difficulty," ballad that was "forced" to put into song, "How do you say today in Gallura, 'chistu ponillo tap into song,'" for Fabrizio De André verbatim quote in the preface of François Villon, Poetry, Feltrinelli 1996.
The Brassens Brave Margot becomes the Bocca di Rosa De André, and we can find some similarities, "but the women of the country without their spouses, and their suitors, amassed their grudge with a lot of patience ... but then sacrificed the kitten, "" but the women of a village not shine some initiative ... Bocca di Rosa drew upon himself the wrath of the little dog who had taken the bone. "
And yet in the bistro: "In a dark corner of the Paris poor, on a square, an old local man held by a disgusting" In the districts where the sun does not give good god its rays ... " (Old Town). Here rhythm and melody are very similar, as well as to describe the situations. And to both a focus on the poetry of Jacques Prévert Embrassomoi: "The sun of God shines not here, has so much to do in the neighborhoods of the rich."
To cite also the translations of other songs, sign occasion De André - Brassens: Wedding March, Crime of the country, In the clear fountain of ideas for Dying, Death, to the splendid interpretation of both the poetry of Antoine Pol, Les Passantes. And the Legend of Christmas clearly inspired by Le père Noël and petite fille.
De André often said he never wanted to know Brassens, to avoid reducing it to the person, to avoid not being able to see more as a myth.
But many times, in many concerts, the last was devoted to his great teacher, Georges Brassens, bottom left, as they do with good wine.

Mariano Brustio
(from the booklet of the CD by Fabrizio De André ed avevamo gli occhi troppo belli, published in 2001 by Editrice A)