Pierre de Gaillande Revisits the Poetry and Music ....

Pierre de Gaillande Revisits the Poetry and Music of French Folk Hero Georges Brassens on Bad Reputation Volume 2

A heaven-bound accordionist. A cuckolded lightning rod salesman. A medieval seductress bathing in the moonlight. The poet himself, offering vivid instructions of his deathbed wishes. These are just some of the characters, originally conceived by French folk-pop legend George Brassens, who've made their way into the Anglophone world via Pierre de Gaillande on Bad Reputation 2 (release; October 22, 2013).

Continuing the work that he started with the first volume of this project, de Gaillande dug deeper into the massive repertoire of the songwriting genius, taking Brassens' timeless songs, so beloved among French audiences, and translating them into English, all while maintaining meter and rhyme, not to mention the complex idiomatic layers of poetry hidden in the lyrics.

Brassens' lyrics -- desperately honest, darkly humorous, perennially poignant -- are considered masterpieces by the French. "His lyrics are taught in French schools as poetry," explains de Gaillande. "The French look at him as having done the most beautiful things you can do with the French language. He's like Shakespeare, in that he actually moved the French language forward."

And yet Brassens is still so largely unknown among English-speaking audiences. Says de Gaillande: "There's a black hole outside of French culture where Brassens should be. There's this secret, awesome gift that's just sitting there that nobody knows about." This mission presented itself several years ago when de Gaillande's father offered up his own translation of Brassens' "Le Mecreant." Trying his own hand at translations became something of an addiction for the younger de Gaillande, who says that as a son of a French father and an American mother, "Translation comes pretty naturally to me. I've been translating in my head every day of my life."

It's not only the poetry, though. Brassens was a masterful tunesmith whose songs are impossibly catchy, as well as a bit of a rebel. In the 1960s, when rock music was taking over the airwaves, Brassens doubled down on his own light, guitar-based folk and his crushingly true-to-life lyrics. Though the aesthetics are different, de Gaillande suggests that Brassens was something of a proto-punk. "Not musically, but his whole attitude. To play folk music in the way that he did at that time -- refusing to embellish his poet-singer form with any modern production techniques -- was, in and of itself, completely subversive."

As a former punk rocker himself (who also does soundtrack composition for film and television), de Gaillande feels a unique connection with Brassens -- an understanding of both the fringe of contemporary music and a familiarity with a level of mainstream success.

Bad Reputation 2 features a crack shot lineup of musicians, which notably includes Joel Favreau, a guitarist who played with Brassens himself in the 1970s, as well as Yves de Gaillande, Pierre's uncle and a well-known guitar player in France.

The album also marks the final recording project of virtuosic French accordionist Jean Jacques Franchin, who passed away a few months after the album was recorded and to whom the album is dedicated.

Read more: https://www.storyamp.com/dispatch/4630/9NBloqWFV_ud81-exbeu2A