In
France, Yves Duteil is immense, a household name. Quite right, too.
His voice is dark brown, Ralph McTellish; he writes belting tunes
with sentimental-but-not-mawkish lyrics; he plays good guitar and
he has that rugged twinkle only the French can get away with. A photo
of him in bowler-and-pinstripes would still reek of garlic and Gitanes.
There are CD compilations of his around with full, printed lyrics,
which is great for those of us with my-auntie's-pen French. The arrangements
are huge: strings, brass, choirs, the works. Catch him if you can.
It seems to be received wisdom here that French popular music is pants.
It isn't. It's better than ours. Granted, their FM stations playlists
are literally half Yank and Britpop which aren't for me but then I
can't bear that stuff here either. French attempts to emulate it are,
indeed, arguably even worse and I can't think why they bother because
their own, homegrown stuff is far superior: better sung, better played
and necessarily better written in a language whose virtually every
word ends in a stressed vowel which provides a technically perfect
rhyme for every other word ending in that vowel. French was made for
singing.
A near-literal translation of an English song into rhyming French
might take, say, a morning. Working the other way, translating Tarantella
took weeks of circular effort: prose translation, paraphrase, deconstruction,
writing, rehearsal, re-write, kick the cat, go down the pub, re-re-write.
All to come to an English lyric which, although workable, is very
different from the French.
In the original, the singer (not the girl) is the seducer and there
are some tricksy puns which sadly had to go: Danse...........cadence;
dans ce, dans cet état-là; là ........là..........éclats
(etc. See what I mean about the rhymes?)
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In
prose, the Duteil lyric would go something like this:
1. Now that you've learnt the dance, the steps, well, here we go:
you count me in and dance it with me. Don't leave me to dance it like
that; come and teach me the dance and dance it with me.
2. You know the Tarantella, the way they danced it in the old days?
Well, I'll show you how they'll be dancing it tomorrow. You count
me in, I'll give you the note (le la) and I'll show you how, here
in this pretty little wood.
3. And if you like my new dance, the steps, we can dance it as long
as you want. So don't leave me in this state; think only of dancing
in this little wood.
4. So, when the sun shines low through the leaves, what do you say
we go dancing among the trees? And if your dress swings high, my heart
will miss a beat; and if you miss the beat, just squeeze tight in
my arms.
5. And there in the woods, I may let slip that I love you, which with
luck might give us a new note, and a new rhythm for your tiny little
foot............(A bit twee, that, but Yves' 6/8 phrase "ton
petit, tout petit pas" is alliteratively perfect.)
6. Did you learn the steps of the dance just to make people love you?
Well, I do already............And that's where the dance ends, there
in the shady wood. But our new love will never end; a love which begins
so immense can never end............
And if the Spice Girls (who I have come to believe really, really,
do write all their own lyrics: there can be no other explanation)
one day come up with anything as simultaneously charming and craftsmanlike
as that, I will eat Victoria Beckham's kecks on toast. Well, on a
Ritz cracker. |
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