Hélène Martin

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Hélène Martin (born December 10, 1928 in Paris ) is a French chansonnière .

life and work

Hélène Martin comes from the educated Parisian bourgeoisie. Her father was a historical geography scientist . According to her own words, she left her parents' home at the age of 19 with the determination to turn to singing. She began to compose the verses of poets like Louis Aragon , René Char , Jean Genet , Arthur Rimbaud , Jules Supervielle and Paul Fort in song form. She sang these songs with her alto voice to accompany the guitar .

In 1956 she made her singing debut in the nightlife of Paris' Rive Gauche , in music bars such as La Colombe , run by Michel Vallet , where Guy Béart , Anne Sylvestre , Pierre Perret , Jean Ferrat and Maurice Fanon also performed, and later at Milord l'Arsouille , a musical home of Serge Gainsbourg and Catherine Sauvage at the time . With her performances she embodied the literary chanson, a predominant musical genre in France of those years. Her lyrics were often provocative, sometimes suggestive, like these verses by Jean Genet:

«L'étiquette-au-cul - l'étiquette-au-cul, poétique-politique - ta vie prétendue - ta vie prétendue, soit pudique, soit lubrique - ta vie prétendue, sera mise à nu! - L'étiquette-au-cul »

"Fine life on the ass - fine life on the ass, poetic and political - your pretended striving - your pretended striving, whether shameful or slippery - your pretended striving, just bared naked - fine life on the ass"

- Jean Genet

In 1960 her first record was released, Récital N ° 1 , for which she received the Grand Prix of the Académie de Charles Cros , an association of music critics, the following year . “I live in the borderland between words and music”, she describes her art, “but where the music, which has its own place, gives way to the word and the love of the word.” In 1962 she caused a sensation with her Song version of the poem Le condamné à mort (The Condemned to Death) by Jean Genet. It deals with the actual story of a young man who was guillotine beheaded in 1939 - convicted of the murder of a young woman in a jealous drama. The poem deals with homosexual love between prisoners and the fascination for the beau voyou , the beautiful crook.

In 1966, at the suggestion and support of Jean Vilar , she appeared on the theater stage: at the 20th Avignon Festival , she performed the play Terres mutilées ( Injured Earth) , with which she staged texts by René Char.

Her texts, written by poets on the political left, often had a militant political content. She sang for the Communist Party , among others , without joining it. In her songs she sided with the blacks, the revolters and the Palestinians, for example in the song Quatre heures à Chatila in 1983 after the Shatila massacre .

In 1984 she directed Le condamné à mort as a poetic opera on the stage of the Théâtre Romain-Rolland in Villejuif . In 1996 , Étienne Daho added an excerpt from Le condamné à mort to his repertoire under the title Sur mon cou .

Her long-playing record Par amour was released in 1991, Lucienne Desnoues - Mes amis, mes amours in 1997 , La douceur du bagne in 2000 and Va savoir in 2006 . Martin continues to perform regularly on the concert stage. Starting in September 2009, her complete oeuvre from more than 50 years will gradually appear on 13 CDs in the Voyage en Hélénie collection ( Journey to Helenien ).

Honors

literature

  • Véronique Mortaigne: Entre les mots et la musique. In: Le Monde , September 9, 2009, p. 19.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Haut la main avec un choix définitif à 19 ans. In: Le Monde, September 9, 2009, p. 19.
  2. ↑ Je suis de ce pays frontalier entre let mots et la musique. Mais où la musique 'qui a sa place unique' donne priorité au verbe et à l'amour du verbe. Quoted from: Le Monde, September 9, 2009, p. 19.
personal data
SURNAME Martin, Hélène
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French chanson singer and author
DATE OF BIRTH December 10, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris