Le Mur tombé du ciel #3: Barbara

One of Barbara's most well-known songs is 'Nantes', where her runaway father Jacques Serf led a marginal existence and where he died. The first line of the song is 'Il pleut sur Nantes', probably not meant literally but hence the umbrella.* See my other post on La Rue de la Grange au Loup.

*Yes, she meant it literally: it was raining when she arrived in Nantes, as I've just read in her (unfinished but published) book.

Barbara and Jacques Serf in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique (44)

'Nantes' is one of Barbara's most famous songs, not the least famous for the lines 'Pourtant j’étais au rendez-vous / Vingt-cinq rue de la Grange aux Loups'. The words relate to an at the time fictional street in Nantes where Barbara states that her father died, although these words conceal as much as they reveal. Her father sexually abused her from when she was ten years old and he left home when she was nineteen, to lead a vagabond life-style existing on odd jobs such as a dock worker. He died in hospital in 1959 in Nantes, living at the time in Beaujoire, a suburb in the north-east of Nantes. He was buried anonymously in a communal grave in the Cimetière Miséricorde.

In 1964 the song was published in Barbara's album Dis, quand reviendras-tu ?, being the final one on it. In 1986 La Rue de la Grange au Loup became a reality in Saint-Joseph de Porterie next to Beaujoire, during an inauguration in which Barbara and her friend Gérard Depardieu were present. Barbara died in 1997, leaving behind an unfinished book Il était un piano noir, which was published the following year. In it, she says 'I've forgotten all the harm you have done me, and my biggest disappointment is not having been able to say to the father I have hated so much: "I forgive you, you can rest in peace."' (My translation.) Several writers have also suggested that Barbara's song 'L'Aigle noir' is a symbolised version of her father's sexual abuse of her.

In 2000 an allée was created in La Rue de la Grange au Loup, with a small statue of Barbara on a concrete base. A plaque in the allée suggests that the expression 'La Grange au Loup' relates to Barbara's father living near an area of land where a wolf prowled, and that it was recommended that young girls avoid the place. Um.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #7: Barbara

'MONIQUE SERF

DITE BARBARA

1930 – 1997'

The family plot of Barbara, one of France's greatest singer-songwriters. She was born Monique Serf, the surname of her father, and in the early days of her career she sang as Barbara Brodi, Brodsky being her mother's maiden name. In 1998, the year following her death, her unfinished memoirs were published as Il était un piano noir… (lit. 'It Was a Black Piano...'). In them, for the first time, she publically revealed her father's incestuous abuse of her at a very early age. Barbara's most famous song was 'Dis, quand reviendras-tu ?' (incidentally covered several years ago by Martha Wainwright), and this clip of her singing it gives a very good idea of the emotion she put into a song: Dis, quand reviendras-tu ?.