Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel: Personal and Social Narratives in Post-War French Chanson (review)

This comparative study of two of the cultural heroes of post-war French chanson is the first of its kind to be undertaken in an English-speaking academic context. It is timely in that, despite the ephemerality of popular music, these two figures seem well on the way to immortality, their records and videos still available and apparently selling well in most French record stores over a quarter of a century after their deaths, in 1981 and 1978, respectively. Their fame has scarcely diminished and their work is widely known and often revered, even by subsequent generations who never knew them as live performers. Their quasi-literary status as singer-songwriters is confirmed by this study, which draws extensively on quotations from their lyrics, while not ignoring the contributions of musicians, arrangers and record producers in the complex, hybrid form which is French chanson. Their reputation makes them analogous to major writers of the post-war years and indeed, their influence was probably greater, amplified as it was by the mass media of the time and by their subsequent legendary aura. Chris Tinker's study well illustrates the reasons for this consecration, highlighting the seriousness and the subtlety of their lyrics and questioning the natural identification of the narrators of the songs with the persona of the artists. Their mediated lyricism is examined through the themes of their existential preoccupation with death and happiness, their relations with others and in particular the opposite sex, and their flirtations with political commitment and social satire. Chris Tinker is to be congratulated on successfully navigating the minefield of copyright permission from music publishers, which has allowed him to quote extensively from the published lyrics of these still highly commercial bodies of material. His comparative analysis is not limited to the two major figures, however, but often embraces others of a similar status, such as Léo Ferré, Jean Ferrat and Serge Gainsbourg, and even some much more obscure ones such as Pierre Louki. The result is a satisfying and complex study which goes a long way towards explaining the reasons for the sustained interest in the two principal figures while at the same time situating them in the context of the years of the Fourth Republic and Gaullism.