11/14/2007
Petit garçon -Nana Mouskouri ,again, Dailymotion
de Graeme Allwright
PETIT GARÇON
Dans son manteau rouge et blanc,
Sur un traîneau porté par le vent
Il descendra par la cheminée, petit garçon,
Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher
REFRAIN:
Tes yeux se voilent,
Écoute les étoiles,
Tout est calme, reposé
Entends-tu les clochettes tintinnabuler
Et demain matin, petit garçon,
Tu trouveras dans tes chaussons
Tous les jouets dont tu as rêvé, petit garçon,
Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher
Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher
Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher
Petit garçon -Nana Mouskouri
by LuzCMoi
de Graeme Allwright PETIT GARÇON Dans son manteau rouge et blanc, Sur un traîneau
porté par le vent Il descendra par la cheminée, petit garçon, Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher REFRAIN: Tes... de Graeme Allwright PETIT GARÇON Dans son manteau rouge et blanc,
Sur un traîneau porté par le vent Il descendra par la cheminée, petit garçon, Il est l'heure
d'aller se coucher REFRAIN: Tes yeux se voilent, Écoute les étoiles, Tout est calme, reposé
Entends-tu les clochettes tintinnabuler Et demain matin, petit garçon, Tu trouveras dans tes
chaussons Tous les jouets dont tu as rêvé, petit garçon, Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher Il est
l'heure d'aller se coucher Il est l'heure d'aller se coucher
11/13/2007
Nana News from arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews
Nana News from arts.independent.co.uk/books/reviews
13 November 2007 15:09
Memoirs, by Nana Mouskouri with Lionel Duroy, trans. Jeremy Legatt
Honest reflections on a life in music from Greece's first lady of pop
By Liz Thomson
Published: 12 November 2007
Expelled from the Athens Conservatoire for singing jazz, Nana Mouskouri was heartened by kindly words from Maria Callas: "It's better to be a great popular entertainer than an unknown opera singer. The important thing is not what you do but how well you do it."
Mouskouri had been terrified at the sight of her idol, at a table in an Athens nightclub, but had shyly obliged with requests. Callas came back several times with Aristotle Onnasis, eventually summoning the teenager for a chat.
The great soprano's advice was prescient. Mouskouri probably wouldn't have made it to the Met but, for 50 years, she has provided great entertainment, a crossover artist before the term was invented, singing in a dozen languages and selling 400 million records.
She soon acquired a reputation in Athens' burgeoning circle of musicians, among them Manos Hadjidakis. He summoned her at four in the morning to assist at the birth of "Never on Sunday", a song that came to exemplify the new Greece; and he wrote her passport to international success, "White Rose of Athens".
Mouskouri has recently said farewell to the British stage with a series of emotional concerts. At 73, she has also published a memoir which tells us something of her remarkable life. She grew up in Athens, a witness to the horrors of German occupation and civil war. Her father gambled away what little he earned and made it clear he'd wanted a son.
Nana was 12 when glasses enabled her to see herself clearly for the first time, and she felt all was "hopeless". Music was her solace and she studied for eight years. The story of these formative years is well told, painfully honest and without self-pity. But what a shame that, instead of the details of endless tours, she doesn't tell us more about her work for Unicef and her five years as an MEP, engaged with a range of issues including copyright and the Ariane Programme that supports small publishers and "minority" languages.
A passionate European, she stood down in 1999 with a voting record of 70 per cent and the conviction that life would be better if morality and culture occasionally prevailed over economics and expediency. Mock her if you must – but you can't argue with the ideals that drive her. If only she'd told us more about them.
11/11/2007
Nana News from entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
Nana News from entertainment.timesonline.co.uk
From The Sunday TimesNovember 11, 2007
Memoirs by Nana Mouskouri with Lionel Duroy, translated by Jeremy Leggatt
Reviewed by Helena Frith-Powell
I have always been fascinated by Nana Mouskouri. She is the singer with the strange name and the big black glasses. I can’t name of any of her songs, but I picked up her book, called simply Memoirs, with a feeling of anticipation. Now I might finally get an answer to the question that has been puzzling me for years: why does she always wear those big black glasses?
Like that other great European female singer of the 20th century, Maria Callas, Mouskouri is Greek. I have no idea why Greece should produce such great voices. There must be something in the moussaka. This is the tale of how Nana went from poor-little-Greek girl to global success (her publisher claims that she is the world’s biggest-selling female artist).
The book starts with her first memory: German planes bombing Athens. It is April 6, 1941, and she is six-and-half years old. Her father, who works as a projectionist, is sent off to war. Soon afterwards, he returns. The Greek army has been defeated. Nana’s family has to sell its possessions to eat. When there is nothing left to flog, her father purloins some chairs from the cinema where he works. But the owner finds out, and ejects them from their small house. They rent a room. Her mother scratches a living. And her father? He takes the money his wife earns and loses it gambling. Nana and her sister Eugenia watch as German soldiers murder a Greek civilian. The message is clear: the music business is going to be tough, but war is tougher.
After the war, family life stabilises. Nana’s father gets another job as a projectionist, and his daughters start to sing. They join the Conservatory. But money is tight, and soon their mother has to explain to the headmistress that there isn’t enough to pay the fees. The head agrees to let Eugenia leave, even though she has the better voice, but says that the younger girl, Nana, can stay on a scholarship. Without singing, Nana, she thinks, would be lost. Nana starts to sings on Greek radio and in nightclubs. She performs old Greek songs and Ella Fitzgerald numbers. The Conservatory is shocked. She must choose between them and radio and nightclub work. She chooses to sing in public.
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Buy Memoirs by Nana Mouskouri with Lionel Duroy, translated by Jeremy Leggatt
Her big break comes when she appears in front of 4,000 American sailors to celebrate independence day in 1957. Soon afterwards, she is singing in a Greek nightclub in front of Maria Callas and Aristotle Onassis. Callas tells her: “It’s better to be a great popular entertainer than an unknown opera singer. The important thing is not what you do but how well you do it.”
Leaving aside the note of condescension from the divine Callas, Nana takes heart from this advice. Then she gets sacked from the nightclub.
The reason?
“She’s too ugly,” says the owner.
“And those glasses. ..”
She goes on to conquer Greece with her voice, if not her looks, then moves on to Barcelona, Berlin, Paris, the world.
The Parisians ? who else? ? make her change her looks, persuading her to lose weight and have a new hairdo. But they can’t get those glasses off her.
In New York, Quincy Jones, the famous music producer, falls in love with her voice. She meets Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, and all the royalty of Europe. But Prince Philip misses her concert in Buckingham Palace because he is carriage-driving.
Ghosted by Lionel Duroy and translated by Jeremy Leggatt, the memoir reads at times more like a discography than an autobiography. There are few personal details. George, the Greek husband, has to go. Too jealous ? he wants the family to live in Corfu and Nana to stop singing. Imagine! She can’t; without singing she would die. The children are brought up by him and a nanny called Fernande. Her mother passes away. Her father is finally proud of her. She is in touch with her sister, who gave up her place in the Conservatory all those years ago, but we don’t learn if she likes her. We do, however, find out about the specs: “Over the years, those glasses had become a mask which I felt shielded me from possible acts of cruelty. Shielded behind them, I felt in a sense untouchable, and they permitted me to sing with my eyes closed.”
Nana has been singing almost as long as I have been alive. She has also been an ambassador for Unicef (taking over from Audrey Hepburn) and, rather improbably, an MEP. She didn’t like politics. It affected her voice and stopped her singing. Now she is on her final world tour. I guess now I will never hear her sing, but at least I know why she wears those glasses.
MEMOIRS by Nana Mouskouri with Lionel Duroy, translated by Jeremy Leggatt
Weidenfeld ￡18.99 pp432
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