The Other Barbara

 

For my bat mitzvah project I choose to focus on a French Jewish singer. I choose to focus on music because music has been very important to every part of my life since I was about five. You can ask my parents; they had to hear me singing random songs I made. I don’t like when things are quiet, so I always have music on in the background. Ask anyone I live with–if I’m in my room, there’s almost always a song playing. And if the music isn’t coming from Spotify, it’s coming from my record player. My headphones have never been fully charged and my life has never been quiet.

 

I chose a French singer specifically because France is my favorite country. I love how French sounds, I have French heritage from my great-great-grandma on my dads side, and I’ve been there. In my opinion, France is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. And it is beautiful in so many ways. I’m confident that I could go on about how much I love France for days.

 

My main subject of my bat mitzvah project is a singer who goes by the name Barbara. Born Monique Andreè Serf, Barbara is the stage name she took on when she started performing. It was inspired by her grandmother, whose name was Varvara Brodsky.

 

Barbara started making music in the late 1940s, which is around the time World War II ended. Her first songs were released in the late 1950s. She released her last song in 1997, which was also the year she sadly passed because of respiratory failure. However Barbara was and is still very famous in France. One of her hit songs, “L’Aigle noir”, is said to have sold over 1 million copies in just twelve hours.

 

I chose to focus on Barbara specifically because of her Jewish background, her life story, and her music. I discovered Barbara about six months ago and have put a lot of her songs on my many playlists, including “Ma Plus Belle Histoire d’Amour” (1967). The name of this song translates to “My Most Beautiful Love Story” or “My Greatest Love Story.” I think this title matches the song perfectly.

 

One of the lines in this song is translated to “on the long road that led to you; on that long road my heart was going crazy. The winds of December chilled me to the bone, but I never worried about December if it was for you.”

 

After looking at the whole song translated this line stood out to me the most because I think it summarizes the song well in just a couple sentences. It shows the song is about love and longing for the person she is singing about. But that’s not the only reason I chose those lyrics. I also chose them because that’s my favorite quote from the song. I like this quote because I think it can be interpreted as a metaphor or literally. Barbara could literally be talking about surviving December, or she could be talking about how she isn’t worried about anything because she loves the person she is singing about–or it could be both.

 

Barbara lived through World War II. This was the time that Nazis were killing Jews, but not just Jews. They were also killing queer people, people with disabilities, Romani people, Mormons, and other minorities. Barbara was only nine when the war broke out, and she was 15 when she could finally stop hiding. She spent six years hiding from Nazis as a child. She and her family had to move quickly and hide in a lot of different places, but they mainly hid in the French countryside. She and family spent two consecutive years completely hidden in the French countryside to survive.

 

Living through World War II had a big impact on her music. A lot of her songs were about trauma and loss from the war, and the effect the war had on her. Her style of singing sounds very emotional, even in her happy songs. Barbara also mentions wanting peace in some of her songs.

 

One of Barbara’s most famous songs about the war is called “Göttingen,” which is a German town. In 1964 Barbara was asked to perform in Germany, specifically a German town called Göttingen; initially she wanted to refuse the invitation because of her trauma from the war, and also because they had an upright piano and not a grand piano. But she ended up accepting. She wrote the song “Göttingen” about her experience visiting that specific town in Germany.

 

Some of the lines that really stood out to me after I translated this song were “But the children are the same, / In Paris or Göttingen. / Oh, may they never return / Those days of blood and hatred. / For there are people that I love / In Göttingen, in Göttingen.”

 

This song is one of my favorites because of the backstory. Barbara performed this song to the people in Göttingen while it was only half done. It was half done because she started writing it on that trip to Göttingen. I think it’s very interesting to think what it might’ve sounded like while the song was half done when she first performed it. It’s also interesting to think about the fact that the song was half finished because she had just started writing it that afternoon.

 

Barbara had a giant impact on chanson. Her lyrics were always very poetic. She picked this up from a big mix of French singers, but other French singers picked it up from her. Her vulnerable writing style made others feel comfortable to sing vulnerably, too. Barbara had piano accompaniment in almost all of her songs. This made a lot more people use her style of piano in their songs. Barbara was one of the first women in France and the chanson music style to both write and compose her own songs, so her music made a big impact on a lot of women. She didn’t only impact women in the musical sense. She also changed what physical appearance a woman could show up in with her bold makeup and short hair, which was not common at the time.

 

As you just heard, Barbara was a remarkable French Jewish singer and composer. I really enjoyed learning about her life and her music and I am glad I got to share about her with everyone here.