The French Open starts tomorrow, Monday May 22, and since Roland Garros itself, let’s remember the big names in tennis… and especially a certain Swiss.
The Roland Garros aviator left his name to a stadium, and therefore to a Grand Slam competition, which begins tomorrow, May 22. This song, interpreted in 1978 by Brian Gulland, was composed by Hugues de Courson – who was one of the founders of the group Malicorne – and written by Patrick Modiano, in the 60s, before he became this immense novelist crowned by the Nobel Prize for Literature.
And, in a subtle way, Modiano reminds us that Roland Garros did not have a very pronounced taste for tennis, and that a tennis player has little to do with this hero of the First World War. In 2017, 99 years after the death in battle of Roland Garros, The Chanteuse – that’s his artist name, The Chanteuse – takes up the song by Modiano.
In the second episode of These songs that make the news, airing this weekend, you hear excerpts from:
Brian Gulland, The Complaint of Roland Garros, 1978
The Singer, The Complaint of Roland Garros, 2017
Alain Chamfort, tennis player, 1977
DaSilva, John McEnroe, 2016
Mr Moon, 1983, 2007
Serge Lama, The gesture of Roger Federer, 2022
Soprano, victory, 2008
Sofiane, man’s word, 2012
CHS, Marginals, 2022
Stavo, Federer, 2022
Lino, Requiem, 2014
The Singer, The Complaint of Roland Garros, 2017
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And you can also find on this link the podcast Behind our voices, with the writing and composition secrets of eight major artists of the French scene, Laurent Voulzy, Julien Clerc, Bénabar, Dominique A, Carla Bruni, Emily Loizeau, Juliette and Gaëtan Roussel.