It’s a song that resembles us. Georges Moustaki, a lover in French

Georges Moustaki, a singer with a plural identity and rooted in the French language, has established a unique relationship with Brazilian music and artists throughout a career marked by the pleasure of travel and the discovery of distant music.

In partnership with the exhibition It’s a song that resembles us – Worldwide hits of French-language popular music At the Cité internationale de la langue française in Villers-Cotterêts, these chronicles look in detail at each of the stories presented there.

Many French speakers learned, in this song by Georges Moustaki, the name of Bahia – the name by which we have become accustomed, here in France, to calling the city of Salvador de Bahia. But no matter, it is Brazil, the beautiful Brazil that Georges Moustaki celebrates.

Georges Moustaki sings and speaks the language of Brazil, in this song and in a few others, like here in a live recording from 2003. We know that he was born in Alexandria, Egypt, in a Greek Jewish family where he was spoken to mainly in Italian, while he learned Arabic in the playground and French in the classroom.

So, whether he writes for others or for himself, Moustaki already wanders in a generous and sensitive geography before becoming a star in 1969 with The WogFor example, for Edith Piaf, he wrote a song in 1958 set somewhere in California or New Mexico, or recalled the Arabic music of his childhood in 1960 under the pseudonym Eddie Salem.

In this episode of This song reminds me of usyou hear excerpts from:

Georges Moustaki, Bahia, 1977

Georges Moustaki, Bahia (in public in Berlin), 2003

Edith Piaf, Eden Blues, 1958

Eddie Salem (Georges Moustaki), I already said no, 1960

Georges Moustaki, Give your man your rum (in public at Bobino), 1970

Antonio Carlos Jobim, Water of março, 1973

Georges Moustaki, The waters of Mars, 1973

Toquinho and Vinicius de Moraes, Daily No. 2, 1973

Georges Moustaki, The Daily, 1973

Georges Moustaki, Bahia (in public at the Olympia), 1977

You can also extend this column with the book This song reminds me of us published by Heritage Publishing.

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