Brel

I have admired Jacques Brel for a long time, but I’ve been afraid that maybe it was a passing crush I would be ashamed of later. He seems like the kind of singer only old women would like. (Why should that stop me, I suppose I should ask?) And he was ugly. The perpetual cigarette may have been charming to his misguided contemporaries, but it doesn’t work on me. And besides, his songs are so melodramatic. But still, I persist in my admiration of this monkey-faced, chain-smoking, philandering dead Belgian. I must try to explain why I am certain he is great. I must confess my love.

“As poetic as Bob Dylan, as introspective as John Lennon, as virile as Bruce Springsteen,” said the program for Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, which I dragged my mom to see with me in Fort Worth a couple years ago. Unfortunately, this musical was a false gospel. The English translations of the songs lose all nuance. “If all you have is love” becomes “All it takes is love.” The change of emphasis in the song shocked my tender, Brel-trusting heart when I heard it. Had I misunderstood the song? Had the fact that French is not my first language made the words seem more mysterious and subtle than they were?

Yes, Brel is dramatic. Most of Jacques Brel’s songs drive me crazy, they’re so frantic. Maybe you know his famous song “Madeleine,” which takes you on a riotous ride from hope to obsession to bitterness to despair. You have to give him points for his energy and enthusiasm. But our era is so fond of understatement that he just seems over the top.

By all means, don’t listen to the cheesy “If you only have love.” It talks about healing all our wounds, rebuilding Jerusalem, making the desert bloom, drinking from the Grail, melting all the guns... none of which is in the French. The original song talks about having no other riches than our love and our belief in each other, about offering love in prayer for the evils of the world, simply, like a troubadour. I suppose you have to have a certain tolerance for cheesiness to like it too. But it is still much more subtle.

Let’s leave the humanist manifestos — soit en anglais, soit en français — aside, and analyze one of Brel’s most subdued songs. I’m not sure how legal this is, but it looks like you can download it here.

“Le plat pays” describes a modest subject, Belgium. Its melody is the same three or four notes repeated in a monotonous pattern. Some kind of hokey flute accompanies dear Jacques as he intones his plotless, characterless description of a landscape. He repeats the same word four times in the first three lines, nearly every line begins with “with,” and the second-to-last stanza makes four statements about the sky and even repeats both attributes it is mentioning twice.

In the last stanza, after line by plodding line of landscape features, he begins to show emotion. The volume builds slightly. There is life in his voice, and, finally, a smile breathed into the word “chanter” — singing.

I tried translating it, but am not fully satisfied with my translation. If I manage to make it acceptable, I will share it. The words are simple. Each word is important. And when Brel sings, each word lives. Listen to it even if you don’t know French.

For a fascinating variation (which you don’t have to download), you can listen to him singing the same song in Flemish.

It takes on a different rhythm and color. His love for the words themselves is evident. I don’t care if he is overdramatic. How could you want him not to do what he does?