Music: Au revoir Marie-Paule Belle, who sang 'Jersey Guernesey' in her Paris farewell shows
The 1970s feminist icon died in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on July 25th after a long illness.
The singer and pianist, whose 1976 hit 'La Parisienne' made her name, played her 50-year-old little-known song of heartbreak, 'Jersey Guernesey,' released the same year, in her final Paris concerts.
Her passing has dominated the Parisian press, for Marie-Paule Belle was ‘La Parisienne’ – the singer who embodied the city and its cabarets, its liberty and its values: feminist and lesbian -Marie-Paule Belle refused to sing for the far right. Lesser known is her song of two islands, ‘Jersey Guernsey’, which the pianist played every night in her farewell to Paris. And which, like the hit song that made her name, was released back in 1976.
"Jersey, Guernesey, Vous n'étiez qu'une île dans notre passé
Jersey, Guernesey, Pourquoi vous êtes-vous, un jour, séparées ?
Je suis sûre que vous, que vous en souffrez."
In an art Deco-style theatre on the rive gauche one evening in May, Marie-Paule Belle, star of la chanson française was sat at the piano, singing ‘Jersey Guernesey.' Some of the audience, a who’s who of Belle's peers, actresses, cabaret artists, musicians, softly joined in to the chorus. “Jersey Guernesey, you were only one island in our past, Jersey Guernesey, Why did you go your separate ways? I’m sure you still suffer today."
“Ce sont les îles anglo-normandes,” "They’re the Channel Islands,” could be heard whispered as 'Jersey Guernsey' ended. “Elles étaient vraiment une île un jour ? "Were they really one island once?” asked a fan.
For ten consecutive nights, as Paris baked under 35 degrees in the city's first canicule (heatwave) in May, Marie-Paule Belle included her love song to the islands, first released 50 years ago this year, in her farewell shows for audiences of 200 at the Théâtre de Passy, in Paris’ 16e arrondissement. The singer, who passed away at the age of 80, chose ‘Jersey Guernesey’ from a back catalogue of more than 400 tracks, to feature among 20 on her final Best Of album.
“It’s the first time we’ve played it on stage in 30 years,” said the artist’s long-term assistant lighting director, William Prein. "It’s a song for her own separation from Françoise Mallet-Joris,” related a journalist for the magazine Telerama, referring to the love of Belle’s life.
The acclaimed Franco-Belgian author, a member of France's most prestigious literary body, the Académie Goncourt, with whom the singer shared a romantic relationship from 1970 to 1981, helping free other women to own their homosexuality in 1970s Paris, was also Belle’s lyricist. Alongside Belle's childhood friend, author and then cinema critic for the French newspaper Le Nouvel Observateur, Michel Grisolia.
"I976 was a whirlwind,” Belle said in an interview before her final concert appearances, two months before her death. “There were periods like that. We’d shut ourselves away in the countryside. I had a lovely house and from breakfast right through to evening, we were immersed in it. Because to write one good song, you have to write 50 that aren’t as good. Some we might never share. I even had a record sleeve with ‘horror’ written on it! But I didn’t get rid of anything—not even the drafts, not even pieces of paper with just three lines on them—I kept it all. There were some truly awful things. But just one word could inspire us.”
As far as Belle could recall the creative process for ‘Jersey Guernesey,’ was "as usual. We always worked in a trio. They would give me a draft of the lyrics, and I would be inspired for the melody. Once the melody was in place, they finished the lyrics. I never received a finished text, and I never gave them a melody already finished. We always worked by bouncing ideas off each other."
“Just phonetically, the sound ‘Jersey Guernesey’ captures the imagination, our minds start to travel," mused Belle, who did not visit any of the Channel Islands in her lifetime. On hearing the islands had separated ways on ferry services, "that's ridiculous!" she exclaimed. “Perhaps the rivalry resonated with Françoise. She was Flemish. Even within her own country there was a rivalry with the Walloons; she was used to living with a certain amount of tension. It’s a story about separation, so the question we can ask is, how was it before?"
Belle's hit 'La Parisienne,' the cancan-style celebration of a woman discovering sexual freedom at the height of the women’s rights movement would earn the singer a disque d’or, selling 100,000 copies, reaching audiences in Japan, in Finland and elevating Belle to star status in francophone countries like Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec. “I’d arrive, it was like I was Madonna. It was incredible. People really loved it.”
“I’d arrive, it was like I was Madonna. It was incredible. People really loved it.”
A parody of the French capital’s command for coolness, the song takes the listener on a wild ride through all the quirks of a newcomer from Provence seeking to become Parisienne; sung by an artist who herself had arrived in the French capital from her hometown of Nice in her early Twenties.
On stage, after launching into the hit, “Since we’re here to sing it, let’s sing it,” Belle stopped to interpret the lyrics for younger generations; “MLF was the movement for women's liberation,” she said. Adding later, “it was already “metoo.” “It was visionary,” she reflected of the song that became her “calling card," and covered by the artist Zaz in her album Paris. “Everything it talks about is completely relevant today; Psychoanalysis, chatting people up on a bike, today there’s the velib. It’s timeless.”
‘La Parisienne,’ still rings out from the capital’s cabarets; “We teach it to our students," related Julien Fanthou, who performs as the artist Patatchtouille.
It was 'La Parisienne's' success that gave the singer the creative freedom to explore the moodier style of ‘Jersey Guernesey.’ “It’s very different from the more upbeat ‘tac tac tac,’ songs, like ‘La Parisienne,’ or ‘Wolfgang.’ It’s more melancholic, more nostalgic, more poetic."
Back in 1976, as Belle released 'Jersey Guernesey' on her second album of the year, Abba fever took the UK and Johnny Hallyday racked up number ones in France, across the water in Guernsey, a group of musicians gathered in a castle for the first Festival of Folk, Country and Rock music, that would go on to become the Vale Earth Fair. “I love synchronicities like that,” said Belle, moved at the idea of islanders discovering her song. “It’s very touching, to reach strangers on the other side; to connect through a song, that’s the goal.”
In a France today where far-right extremism is being normalised, Belle had refused to perform for the far right, telling Telerama, “I have never sung for Le Pen. When the far right in Fréjus asked me to, I refused.” “Thankfully, there’s music,” she said of the role culture can play against attempts to divide. “Music soothes the soul – that’s nothing new… When it’s too literal, too militant, I don’t really like it. I prefer to say things through poetry.”
It’s her audiences that kept her performing into her eight decade. “I always remember, right at the very beginning, when my music was first playing on the radio. I left my apartment one day and there was scaffolding up on building opposite—the façade was being renovated—and I could hear one of the workers singing one of my songs. ‘J’ai l’âme à la vague’. (‘I’ve got the sea in my soul.’) So what I’d made at home with my piano and my friends, in my little music room, had crossed the street and was being sung by a complete stranger. It’s an unbelievable feeling. A song is no longer yours; it belongs to everyone.”
« J'ai connu des îles, dans le monde entier...J’ai l’âme à la vague’.
"I have known islands, all over the world...I’ve got the sea in my soul.’
Marie-Paule Belle's funeral service was held on Aug. 3 in Paris.
