New colors for the “Lady in Black”: Carla Bruni, JoeyStarr, La Grande Sophie or Fishbach take on Barbara’s repertoire in a tribute concert served by archive images from Ina, Monday at the Grand Rex in Paris.
Raphaël, Agnès Jaoui, Barbara Pravi, Tim Dup, André Manoukian, Bertrand Burgalat, Raphaële Lannadère (known as “L”), Cyril Mokaiesh, Birds on a Wire, Barbara Carlotti and UssaR complete the cast of this show called “Barbara.. . From the tip of the lips” (1968 song).
Extracts from the National Audiovisual Institute (Ina), reworked for the occasion, will punctuate this event. A system inaugurated in 2019, already at the Grand Rex, for the “Immortel Bashung” tribute concert. Jane Birkin (who died in July) and Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine were then part of the poster. Salvatore Adamo amazed the public by reprising Vertigo de l’amour.
Also read: Göttingen, My most beautiful love story… Barbara’s archives enter the BNF
“With Barbara, we wanted to celebrate a great woman, who moved the lines,” Bertrand Maire, head of territories and diversification at Ina, the institute at the origin of this creation, told AFP. “Barbara is one of those artists who continue to have a certain influence on song, it is at the heart of the concept of these heritage concerts”, adds Agnès Chauveau, deputy director of Ina, for AFP.
Pomme, crowned female artist at the Victoires de la Musique in 2021, dedicated a piece to Barbara, entitled B, in her third album Consolation. Say, when will you come back?, one of the standards of the “Lady in Black”, was taken up on his social networks by Zaho de Sagazan, a great emerging figure in French song this year. Tell me, when will you come back ? also appears in Waves and Streams, the 2009 album by La Grande Sophie, one of the singers on stage Monday evening.
“My parents had an album of Barbara’s, I found her quite mysterious, then I discovered her more when I was a student at the Beaux-Arts and I saw her on stage at Mogador, there was even François Mitterrand in the room,” remembers La Grande Sophie for AFP. “I loved her entrance on stage, she gave me the thrill, I remember her gestures, very light, she moved around a lot, like a giant insect, a praying mantis, she took possession of the space.”
Listening to the texts of the artist who died in 1997, “we discover a great lover, it spoke a lot to me,” adds the Great Sophie. Who also knows that the austere side did not sum up the character. During a lunch with Marie Chaix, who was the assistant to the interpreter from Nantes, La Grande Sophie learned that Barbara “liked to sing Sylvie Vartan”.
La Grande Sophie prefers to keep the surprise and does not say which song from the repertoire she will perform. Just like Fishbach, amazed by L’aigle noir, who just concedes to AFP that it will not be this standard. The long-hidden subtext of this song – the incest suffered by Barbara in her childhood – reveals to him “all of Barbara’s intelligence”. Fishbach, revealed by Another Than Me in 2017, arrived “rather late” in Barbara’s world, not listening to French songs before she was 18. “In my twenties, I became interested in voices – I’m in love with voices – and Barbara’s was something. She’s quite brilliant, she manages to make us believe that everything is simple when everything is so elaborate.” The tribute concert to Serge Gainsbourg, planned at the Grand Rex in Paris on September 17, the day before that for Barbara, was postponed indefinitely due to the disappearance of Jane Birkin.