RSS
Home
The Songs of Jacques Brel at Theo Ubique
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
The noted Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel may not be a household name in America but a current show presented by Theo Ubique at the No Exit Café titled Jacques Brel's Lonesome Losers of the Night is receiving rave reviews. This week on the Talk Theatre In Chicago podcast, co-creator of the show Arnold Johnston talks about the show and how he translated the songs to English.
Jacques Brel was born in Belgium in 1929 and left to seek his fortune in France as songwriter and performer and ultimately writing some 200 songs in the language that, with Flemish, animates the unique cultural blend of his native land. From his struggling early days in Paris as a coffeehouse chansonneur, Brel became Europe’s Troubadour of the Century. Before his untimely death in 1978, he and his songs were known and beloved all over the Continent through his many recordings and concerts.
According to an essay about Brel written by Johnston, far too few of Brel's songs-beautiful, funny, ironic- have been translated into English, and many of the earlier versions no more than loosely approximate the spirit and substance of the originals. As Brel's biographer Olivier Todd has noted for French-speaking readers, "No need to be a good student of English to grasp how the Brel soufflé collapses in his translations."
Of Arnold Johnston's own English lyrics, however, Paris-born language professor Dr. Paule Miller has said, “I have heard Arnie Johnston sing his translations of Brel's songs, and I have found myself forgetting that the language used was not French. To me, this is the mark of a successful translator." Johnston stated that around 1970, after seeing the popular musical revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (with lyrics by Eric Blau and Mort Shuman), he assumed that Brel's work had been thoroughly and competently translated into singable English. Over the next decade, he discovered that this was not the case.
Therefore, Johnston began in earnest translating his own versions of many Brel songs. By the late 1980s he had translated some 30 songs, had performed them in several concerts to considerable acclaim, and had written a musical revue focusing on his versions of the lyrics
On the Talk Theatre In Chicago podcast, Johnston talks about how he goes about translating Brel's songs and tries to capture the spirit of Brel. He states how he starts with a literal translation of the song and then, once that is done, he works on saying the same thing in meter and rhyme that will fit with the music. His goal of course is to stick as close to the original meaning as he can, and based on the reviews he has done a great job of accomplishing just that.
To listen to the entire interview go to the Talk Theatre In Chicago Podcast.
Related Articles:
Comments
