Oriental Jane Birkin

Jane Pays a New Tribute to Gainsbourg.

Paris 

12/11/2002 - 

Jane Birkin took to the stage at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in March, reviving a series of Serge Gainsbourg classics with innovative Arab-style arrangements. The show, placed under the musical direction of Djamel Benyelles (leader of the group Djam & Fam), has now been released as an album, Arabesque. A couple of days ago, Birkin was in Beirut, kicking off her new international tour. So we felt this was the perfect time to look back at the Paris première of her show.

"I remember I arrived backstage ready to go out and do La Javanaise and all of a sudden my mind just went completely blank. It was terrible – I couldn't remember one single word of the song! Luckily, there was this fireman standing in a corridor backstage, smoking a quick cigarette next to a sand bucket and I turned round to him in a panic and shouted,'What's the first line of La Javanaise?' He took his cigarette out of his mouth and, without a moment's hesitation, reeled off the opening line 'J’avoue j’en ai bavé pas vous mon amour!' I couldn't believe my luck. I was saved by the fact that La Javanaise is as well-known in France as the national anthem is in the UK!"

Jane Birkin has never ceased to be amazed by the legendary status Gainsbourg's songs have acquired in France – and she herself has done much to keep the torch burning, recording tribute albums and performing her late partner's songs on stage. "This time round," she admits, "I kept asking myself what new spin I could put on Serge's repertoire? I'd already performed three different series of tribute shows which I felt had all worked pretty well in their own way. But this time I felt I had to take things in a completely different direction and give fans something new!"

The result is Arabesque, a four-night show at the Théâtre de l’Odéon which puts an interesting Oriental spin on Gainsbourg's best-known songs. The show finds Jane, France's favourite 'petite anglaise' teaming up with Djamel Benyelles, the gifted Arab violinist from Oran who has already worked with Raï stars such as Khaled, Cheb Mami and Cheb Kader as well as French popstars like Florent Pagny, Jacques Higelin, Enrico Macias and Yannick Noah. Djamel, the pioneering force behind the group Djam & Fam, studied the classical Arab violin at a prestigious music institute but he has devoted his career to weaving a rich and innovative mix of Eastern and Western rhythms.

Jane feels this passion for musical fusion means Djamel and Serge would have hit it off immediately. "Serge was very Jewish with a deeply Slavic soul," she says, "He had this intensely melancholic side to him which comes out so strongly in this kind of (Arab) music. He would have related to the way in which the melancholy is there one minute and then the next, the music carries everyone away and they're up on their feet dancing and clapping their hands! That's very much the philosophy of people who've been uprooted from their culture and their homes – you laugh instead of crying, that's the only way to go on! I think Serge would have been really into the idea of hearing his songs performed 'Arabesque' style. And I'm happy to feel that I'm taking him somewhere he never went himself!"

Arabesque was originally created at the Avignon Festival in 1999 as a special commission for Radio France Culture. And audiences watched the show in a particularly intimate setting, sitting in a beautiful tree-lined courtyard. "Originally, I thought this was the kind of show that could only work in a magic garden in Avignon," says Jane with striking modesty, "But then I realised that the magic in certain gardens is made by the people in them." Once Jane came to this realisation the next step was to take Arabesque out on the road – and this was precisely what she did, touring the show in several different places including Algeria where she performed two particularly memorable concerts in Algiers and Annaba. Performing on stage with Djamel (who comes from Oran in Algeria), Jane also enlisted the services of two Berber musicians from Morocco (Aziz Boularoug on percussion, Amel Riahi on the 'ud, the Arab lute and pianist Fred Maggi. And the Oriental versions of Gainsbourg classics such as Couleur Café, Elisa, La Chanson de Prévert and Comment te dire adieu went down a storm in North Africa. "It was really bizarre and yet at the same time wonderfully festive," recalls Jane with obvious pleasure, "hearing all these Arab women calling out 'youyous' to Serge's songs. I love performing the new Arab-style arrangements to the songs - but maybe I'm just happy to find another excuse to sing Serge."

Jane is more than aware of the special place Gainsbourg's work has on the French music scene. "I know I'm really lucky he left me so many classics," she says, "When he wrote things like Une chose entre autres/Que tu ne sais pas/Tu as eu plus qu’une autre/Le meilleur de moi it was actually very prophetic. There was never anything gratuitous about Serge's lyrics at all. And I know it's true that I had the very best of him and he was the one who gave me my big break. It's wonderful to see so many of the younger generation covering his songs. Personally, I couldn't imagine not having tried to pass the fame on myself, but it's heart-warming to see that the flame would have been passed on anyway no matter what I did. Of course, there's still a lot more that could be done – I mean, it would be amazing if someone like Daho were to sing Les Dessous chics, for instance!"
Jane also says she was extremely touched that young French pop diva Zazie gave her her own tribute song to Serge. "It's the best song anyone's ever written for me," she says with unfeigned pride, referring to C’est comme ça (Zazie's contribution to Jane's 1998 album A la légère). "And I'll definitely be singing C'est comme ça at the Odéon," Jane says with a smile, "because it makes me so happy to see that a young singer like Zazie couldn't avoid Serge's influence somewhere down the line."
The only drawback to performing tribute concerts to Serge, Jane admits, is that she suffers from terrible pre-show nerves and worries about being worthy of the affection and admiration her audiences so obviously give her. Then there's the eternal concern about whether she is just churning out the same old thing or not. "I think I would have got a bit bored if I hadn't tried to do something different this time round. And God knows if I'm bored there's a pretty big chance that audiences would have been bored too!" Getting to grips with the rudiments of traditional Arab music was no easy business either. "The thing is," says Jane with a rueful grin, "is that Arab music is in triple time and someone as stubborn, difficult and clumsy as myself has a hard time getting their head round that. I'm the sort of person who's always dropping things and bumping into the furniture. I'm the last person in the world suited to working in tr

Bertrand  Dicale

Translation : Julie  Street