Barbara - France’s Best-Kept Secret
Iconic French singers tend to be known worldwide. Virtually everybody is familiar with the names, if not the music, of Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, Mireille Mathieu and Serge Gainsbourg.
But who has ever heard of Barbara?
In France she was, and still is, a legend. Alongside Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens, she was one of the pillars of chanson française in the 1960s, as well as the first woman singer to perform her own material.
Yet, she is barely known outside of her native country.
Born in Paris on 9 June 1930, Barbara, whose real name was Monique Andrée Serf, was only ten years old when she had to go into hiding during WWII. Her father was Alsatian, her mother Moldavian. They were both Jewish. She took her stage name from her grandmother, Varvara Brodsky.
In her autobiography, Il était un piano noir, assembled from notes found after her death, Barbara said that her father abused her when she was a child. After the war, he left the family.
As a teenager, she studied piano and voice, but at the age of 19 she dropped out of the Paris Conservatoire and started singing in cabarets.
In the early '50s she lived in Brussels, where she performed but struggled to earn a living. She recorded her first single in 1957, but it wasn't until the '60s, when she started singing her own songs, that her career blossomed.
Always dressed in black, she performed on the biggest stages in Paris, playing the piano and singing.
In her songs, Barbara expresses feelings of desolation and melancholy; but also of hope and humour. Her words and music are never intellectualised: they speak directly to and from the heart.
In Nantes (1963) she tells of a train journey to a town where she has been summoned to a loved one's deathbed. She arrives too late and only at the end of the song, when she cries "Mon pè...re!", we realise that the deceased loved one is her father.
La Solitude (1964) depicts the feeling of loneliness as though it were a human being: I found her outside my door, one night as I was going home...
L'aigle noir (1970) tells of a black eagle landing next to her when she is asleep. The symbolic reference to her father’s sexual abuse is apparent.
In Göttingen (1964) Barbara states that German children are no different from the ones in Paris. In 2003 the German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder referred to the song as the start of Franco-German reconciliation.
Perlimpinpin (1973) evokes war as the enemy of children's laughter. It was written two years before the end of the 20-year-long Vietnam War.
At the end of her concerts, Barbara would often sing to her fans Ma plus belle histoire d'amour, c'est vous [My greatest love affair, is you (1966)].
In the late '80s the poet-singer became active in the fight against AIDS, distributing condoms at her concerts and visiting dying men in hospitals and prisons. She recorded the song Sid'Amour à mort (SIDA being the AIDS acronym in French) at a time when mentioning the disease was taboo.
Health problems prevented her from performing on stage, but in 1996 she released her last album, selling over a million copies in just 12 hours.
Barbara died on 24 November 1997. Thousands attended her funeral.
Discover more music by Barbara on Culturethèque!
Having trouble accessing Culturethèque resources or signing up? Check out our Technical Support page or email us directly at: culturetheque@institutfrancais.org.uk
Discover more at: www.culturetheque.com