See original version here, radically different.
Nourith is a singer from Israel, who’s made two albums already, a new one coming up.
Video
Edith de Camargo
Edith de Camargo is a Swiss-born singer, currently operating from Brazil. Her new, third, album is out featuring lavishly arranged chansons. There’s a video for Comme Un Rendez-Vous that’s either an ode to, or a parody of the nouvelle vague films. You decide.
Piaf
October 11th marks the 50th anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death. A few days ago, a bunch of great French singers paid tribute to La Mome in New York. Anyone’s who seen the movie La Vie en Rose or read about Edith, knows about her ties to the big apple. See an introduction to that show here. Below, a few performances by Elodie Frégé, Olivia Ruiz and Coeur de Pirate on that tribute night:
Cécile McLorin Salvant
Tomorrow she performs on Later…With Jools Holland. CMS is born in Miama, has a Haitian dad and a French mum and has put a Haitian poem to jazz music:
More on Cécile here, and here.
Mark/ Gérard (See Below)
When it comes to oblivion and bereavement, Washingtonian singer/ songwriter Mark Lanegan can be considered an expert on the matter. His last album was titled Blues Funeral, and on his recent one, Imitations, he’s covering Gérard Manset’s Elégie funèbre, with a tongue heavier than those of four exhausted pallbearers. That’s what French language does to Americans.
Gérard/ Mark (See Above)
Gérard Manset could have been the French David Bowie. Instead, he’s become a myth. Elégie funèbre is the last song on his landmark second album »La Mort d’Orion” (1970), his so-called »oratorio rock-symphonique«. For more about Manset and the album, see here. It’s all about sound and vision.
Détroit
Betrand Cantat is tragic soul. Best known for the black heart processions that were his songs with Noir Désir, but probably even better known for the killing of his girlfriend, actress Marie Trintignant, now 10 years ago in Vilnius. Was it an accident, was it murder? Is three years in prison enough? Big questions. Cantant was released, his house was burned down, his first wife and the mother of his two children commited suicide, his former band called it quits. Now, Cantat is back with former Sixteen Horsepower-member Pascal Humbert, as the duo Détroit. Droit dans le soleil is the first track of an upcoming album, Horizons. A more suitable title could’ve been ‘melancholy and the infinite sadness’.
More Greco
Guestposter Mark has an update on Juliette Gréco this summer:
Juliette Gréco does not do retirement. ‘Retraite, c’est un terme militaire pour moi’ she retorts. And she can suddenly lose 40 years, as here at the Festival de Ramatuelle on the Côte d’Azur on 7 August.
At the end of a typically sharp performance of Leo Ferré’s ‘Jolie Môme’, the white light on her fades and for a second she loses four decades from her face – looking not 86 but perhaps 44, La Grande Sophie’s age today. Freeze the Youtube film and click forward slowly from 2min 42sec and what no still photograph could capture is on Filles Sourires.
Juliette also sang ‘La Javanaise’, and we can see the stress that caused her to retire after an hour suffering from heat stroke, as reported in ‘Le Figaro’ the next day.
In her heyday JG only sang for 45 minutes plus encore. So to perform for hour in August heat would tax anyone at 26, let alone 86. Yet a week later she was back on stage at the Festival Musicalarue de Luxey, in Les Landes.
One impressive yet little-known Gréco song, difficult to do on stage because it needs an orchestra, is now on the web : ‘Et là, t’y crois’, from a 1993 album. The magnificent arrangement of Etienne Roda-Gill and Julien Clerc’s lyric is by Jean Claude Petit. The lyrics are not long, but stretch wonderfully for 4 minutes. I have used my Youtube channel to put them into two comments boxes below the Youtube screen picture.
Elsa Kopf
If a gorgeous, husky-voiced blonde says she wants to marry you, while holding a big black gun in her hand, what would you do? Flee? Come along on a shopping spree? One thing’s for sure, the blonde isn’t afraid to use the gun, as you can see in Elsa Kopf‘s video for Sugar Roses. A Mazzy Star-ish, folksy song that is one of the highlights on her new album Marvelously Dangerous. Strasbourg-born Elsa sings in French, Spanish and English, this song’s taken from her second album that was produced and co-written by Pierre ‘Peppermoon‘ Faa. Elsa was in Amsterdam last week, where she did a few small shows with her extended Peppermoon family. She was brilliant, funny, beautiful and really demanding attention – even without her gun.