Mon légionnaire

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Mon légionnaire ( French for My Legionnaire ) is the title of a 1936 chanson dedicated to the French singer Marie Dubas . The text is by Raymond Asso and the composition by Marguerite Monnot . The chanson was interpreted by Édith Piaf , Arlette Guttinguer, Ellen Foley , Serge Gainsbourg , Ute Lemper , Raquel Bitton and Michel Hermon , among others . Piaf's interpretation made the song popular; it is included in most of their samplers .

History of origin

At the end of 1935, Asso, himself a legionnaire in Turkey and Syria from 1919 to 1923 , offered the text to the debutante Piaf, who rejected it because of its essayistic form, but she then put the composer Marguerite Monnot on for him.

Asso and Monnot created the chanson in January 1936, which was dedicated to Marie Dubas and which she recorded on May 20, 1936 for the Columbia record company. On this recording, Dubas was accompanied by a traditional orchestra with winds and strings under the direction of Marcel Cariven. Dubas sang the chanson and also Le Fanion de la Légion on their American tour in 1939.

In her autobiography, Piaf wrote that it was she who gave Asso the idea. She told him the story of "her legionnaire", "a real man" with whom she "cheated" on her then partner and child father P'tit Louis. When she had to end the affair because of her child, the legionnaire was transferred to Africa and was killed there. She remembered that in addition to Le Fanion de la Légion, Le grand voyage du pauvre nègre, Je n'en connais pas la fin , Asso had also written Mon légionnaire for her, among others . In fact, in late 1936, Asso took Édith Piaf under his wing to make it big. She recorded the song for the first time on February 28, 1937 with Polydor and sang it on March 26, 1937 in the Music Hall A.BC. Another interpretation from this early period in her career is from November 12, 1937. Piaf also took the Dubas dedicated song Le Fanion de la Légion , but it did not achieve this notoriety. 30 years later, in 1961, Piafs was also dedicated to the Legion, Non, je ne regrette rien, and became a real hymn for the French military and civil actors involved in the Algerian war (1954–62). The Foreign Legion's first paratrooper regiment, involved in an attempted coup in 1961 against the de Gaulle government , was disbanded. The Foreign Legion was relocated from Algeria to France and radically reduced in size, the legion's connection to Piaf through the songs was retained.

content

The text takes up the motif of the legionnaire and motifs of exoticism . In 1930 France celebrated the centennial colonization of Algeria , and in 1931 a colonial exhibition was held in Paris . In the text, the narrator reports on a romance with a Foreign Legionnaire who does not reveal his name after the night of love and goes from her life, but not from her memory. The action takes place in an undefined location in North Africa on the edge of a desert. The text consists of three couplets , each followed by a refrain , twice the first and at the end a variation of the first refrain in which the reminiscence of the night of love completely gives way to the light of day.

The song is quite long for the record technology of the time with 4:30 minutes, due to this length there is no space for the singer for an additional instrumental introduction and no musical interludes , the singer has to start immediately and sing "non-stop". Piaf compressed her version to 3:57 minutes by omitting the chorus after the second couplet. In addition, she modified the text in the second stanza, including Que lorsqu'il était sur mon cœur , she made Que lorsque j'étais sur son cœur . With this small change, the song became more lyrical and the erotic references clearer. Piaf's interpretation is dominated by desire, that of Dubas by despair.

Further interpretations

In the 1980s, the social situation had changed again. Serge Gainsbourg reinterpreted the chanson. In 1987 he took over the text version of Piaf, whereby he returned the text to the original version in one small detail. Instead of singing, he recited the text in a spoken chant accented with gestures, provoking with a homoerotic interpretation of Mon légionnaire . The musical interpretation is also radically different. The chanson is interrupted by instrumental parts, the total length is now 5:34 minutes, the speaking part is 2:51 minutes. The instrumentation was changed, a drum kit was introduced. The strings were replaced by synthesizers, guitars and bass guitar. The rhythmic instruments dominate the musical events, the saxophone and a female choir are only used for brief decorations .

As early as 1936, Maurice Cloche's interpretation of Dubai was made, a film with a duration of 4:17 minutes, in which individual scenes of the text are illustrated. No filmic implementation is known for the interpretation of Piaf, but there are several film recordings of her vocal performance. Luc Besson produced a black and white video clip , length 3:51 minutes, for the interpretation of Gainsbourg , which represents a new interpretation: an eight-headed, dynamically acting male ballet beautiful body, first in uniform and military boots, enters the scene and then dances in jerseys full of energy in front of the camera. Gainsburg depicts an older, tired, run-down man on a park bench in a gloomy, indefinite scene. He is filmed in his recitation of the text in which he remembers the sexual encounter with the legionnaire, Gainsbourg does not look into the camera. At the end, the legionnaire enters the scene as a figure of light through a high door. He turns out to be a blond boy who is being defended by Gainsbourg against the attacks from the men's group and who goes back with him through the door into the light.

Recordings / notes (selection)

  • Marie Dubas: Mon légionnaire . Orchester dir .: Marcel Cariven. Shellac record. DNB
  • Martin Pénet: Intégrale Marie Dubas (1927-1945). Livret you CD . FA 053. Paris: Frémeaux et Associés , 1996 [The CD contains the recording from May 20, 1936]
  • Edith Piaf: Mon légionnaire: nouvelle version , Orchester, direction: Jacques Météhen DNB
  • Edith Piaf: Mon légionnaire , Kranzberg: Pilz Media Group, 1994 DNB
  • Serge Gainsbourg: Mon légionnaire , Polygram-Musik-Vertrieb, 1989 DNB
  • Ellen Foley : My legionnaire , Frankfurt am Main: Sony Music Entertainment, 1992 DNB
  • Viktor Lazlo : Mon légionnaire , in the album Loin de Paname , 2002
  • Michel and Jocelyn Schwingrouber: Mon légionnaire . Grades. Tallard: La Boîte, 2006

literature

  • Jean-Marie Jacono: Une chanson, plusieurs sens. Mon légionnaire par Marie Dubas (1936), Edith Piaf (1937) and Serge Gainsbourg (1987) . In: Doris Eibl, Gerhild Fuchs, Birgit Mertz-Baumgartner (eds.): Cultures à la dérive - cultures entre les rives: boundaries between cultures, media and genres; Festschrift for Ursula Mathis-Moser on her 60th birthday . Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2010, pp. 293–306
  • Edith Piaf: My life . Rowohlt Taschenbuch, Reinbek 1966
  • Monique Lange: Edith Piaf. The story of Piaf, her life in texts and pictures. Translation by Hugo Beyer. Insel, Frankfurt 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-32216-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arlette Guttinguer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  2. ↑ Monique Lange: Edith Piaf , 2007, p. 52
  3. ↑ a b c d e Jean-Marie Jacono: Une chanson, plusieurs sens , 2010, pp. 294–298
  4. ↑ Edith Piaf: Mein Leben , 1966, p. 11f
  5. ↑ Edith Piaf: Mein Leben , 1966, p. 23
  6. ^ A b c Jean-Marie Jacono: Une chanson, plusieurs sens , 2010, pp. 298-300
  7. ^ Cooke, James J. (1990). "Alexander Harrison, Challenging de Gaulle: The OAS and the Counterrevolution in Algeria, 1954-1962 ". The International Journal of African Historical Studies . Boston: Boston University African Studies Center.
  8. ↑ Porch, Douglas (1991). The French Foreign Legion: A Complete History . London: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-43427-7
  9. ↑ Carolyn Burke: No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, pp. 202 ff.
  10. ↑ a b c d e Jean-Marie Jacono: Une chanson, plusieurs sens , 2010, pp. 300–305
  11. ^ Serge Gainsbourg: Mon légionnaire (video).
  12. ^ Jean Garrigues: La France de la Ve République: 1958-2008 . Armand Colin, September 3, 2008, ISBN 978-2-200-24372-2 , p. 161.
  13. ^ Louis-Jean Calvet: Chanson, la bande-son de notre histoire . Archipel, June 5, 2013, ISBN 978-2-8098-1146-9 , p. 36.