Georges Moustaki

Biography

Georges Moustaki was born Giuseppe Mustacchi. He became “Georges” only in Paris, and the explanation is simple: that was the name of Georges Brassens, whom he called the only master he had in song.

He was born on 3 May 1934 in Alexandria, into a family of Greek Jews of the Romaniote community, originally from the island of Corfu. His father, Nessim Mustacchi, and his mother, Sarah, ran a bookshop, the Cité du Livre. At home they spoke Italian, in the street Arabic, and the children, Giuseppe and his two older sisters, were sent to a French school. French song began for him there and on the radio: he recalled Piaf, Charles Trenet, Henri Salvador, Yves Montand.

In 1951, after school, he left for Paris. He lodged with his sister Marcelle and her husband, the poet and bookseller Jean-Pierre Rosnay, and went from door to door selling books of poetry. Then he worked as a journalist and as a barman in a piano bar, where he got to know people from the musical world of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. One evening he heard Brassens. Brassens took the young man under his wing, introduced him to artists and poets, and gave him advice.

In 1958 the guitarist Henri Crolla introduced him to Édith Piaf. By his own account, he picked up a guitar and played dreadfully, but Piaf still invited him to the Olympia that evening and asked to hear his songs later. For her he wrote the lyrics of “Milord” (music by Marguerite Monnot), a song about a girl from a poor district who falls in love with an English traveller; in 1960 it reached number one in Germany. He and Piaf had a short love affair, and the French newspapers wrote about it every day. Over the next decade he wrote for others: for Piaf, Dalida, Reggiani, Montand, Juliette Gréco, Barbara. “Sarah” was written for Reggiani, and “La Longue Dame brune” (“The Long Dark Lady”) for Barbara, with whom he later sang it as a duet. In all he wrote about three hundred songs for other performers. His first album, “Les Orteils au soleil”, came out in 1961. In 1968 Barbara fell ill, and he went on stage alone for the first time. In 1969 he wrote “Le Métèque”: the French word is a contemptuous name for a swarthy Mediterranean outsider, and he applied it to himself, a “wandering Jew” and a “Greek shepherd”. Reggiani rejected the song, and the record companies refused to release it. Moustaki recorded it himself on a 45 rpm single, and it spent six weeks, not consecutive, at the top of the French charts. At about the same time he wrote the music for Jean-Pierre Mocky's film “Solo”, and in January 1970 he gave his first solo concert at Bobino.

Then came “Ma liberté”, “Ma solitude”, “Joseph”, “Hiroshima”. In 1971 he adapted Ennio Morricone and Joan Baez's “Here's to You” into French as “Marche de Sacco et Vanzetti”. In 1972 he sang French versions of two songs by Mikis Theodorakis; from 1967, after the coup of the Greek colonels, he performed alongside the Greek diaspora in France. In 1970 he appeared in Roviros Manthoulis's short film “Nous sommes deux”, singing in French the songs Theodorakis had written in prison. In May 1968 he sang for striking workers at the Citroën factory. The album “Déclaration” (1973) grew out of Brazilian popular music: it included French versions of Jobim's “Les Eaux de mars” and “Le quotidien”.

He sang in French, Italian, English, Greek, Portuguese, Arabic and Spanish, and he acted too: in 1998 he played Abbé Faria in “The Count of Monte Cristo” with Gérard Depardieu. He wrote books, among them “Fils du brouillard” (1999), written with Siegfried Meir, who as a child was sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz. Moustaki received French citizenship in 1985. He was a Knight of the Legion of Honour and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.

In January 2009 in Barcelona he told the audience that he could not give the concert. In 2011 he announced that he would sing no more. His last album, “Solitaire”, had come out in 2008.

Moustaki died on 23 May 2013 in Nice. He was buried on 27 May according to Jewish rites in Père Lachaise Cemetery, a few metres from Piaf's grave. In 2017 a square named for Georges Moustaki opened in Paris, near the church of Saint-Médard.