Le Chant d'un homme Volume 2 1988-2021 Coffret

Description

Bertin a poet? Bertin in love, not only with song, but with singing, including with his great lyrical flights. These are constants of the author and performer of Ma Vie, Mon Oeuvre, a title tinged with self-mockery for his 33-rpm album from 1984. In the 1990s, 2000s and beyond, they would not be denied. Bertin is a man of loyalties, in friendship ("I go to friendship as to inns", later "Mario") as in poetry (René-Guy Cadou, Luc Bérimont and the Rochefort school as standard-bearer) and in music (hymns, choral singing and jazz in particular).
Jacques Bertin has often repeated it: he got through the 1980s having, for better or worse, survived disenchantment, the disappointments of the left in power. He, who among many other artists and activists of song, helped bring about this change, suffered like so many of his peers from being despised, made obsolete, even ignored by the profession and the public, in this decade that saw the triumph of individualism, the tyranny of image and trendy fashion, most often to the detriment of substance. And, in passing, the disappearance of the associative fabric that had done so much for popular education. In favor of "national stages" and "current music" (the term "song" is even banned at the Ministry of Culture). In short, the exact opposite of what Bertin and his comrades fought for. At a turning point in his career, a difficult moment for the author of "Permanence du fleuve". And yet, it still flows.
Inspiration is painful, the vein too. But it is fruitful. Around 1988, 89, as a consequence of what has just been recalled, Jacques Bertin saw the number of his annual stage engagements decline. Yet fortunately, beyond song, he is also a prolific writer in other forms. Sometimes polemical (thus his book on show business "Chante toujours tu m'intéresses", Le Seuil, 1981); sometimes historical (his exemplary biography "Félix Leclerc, le roi heureux", Arléa, 1987, where he shows in parallel the life and work of this immense artist and the destiny of Quebec); sometimes journalistic.
After all, he attended the Lille journalism school from 1964 to 1967. One of his former student friends is none other than Bernard Langlois who, after being shown the door at Antenne 2, joined the founding team of Politis, a left-wing weekly outside any party. Langlois entrusts Bertin with the direction of the "culture" section. There he will write a column first titled, for reasons unknown, "Parallèles", then more aptly "Malin Plaisir", no doubt because of the pleasure he takes in denouncing the failings of state cultural policies, or the whims of fashion in the field. Out of rigor, he prefers to ask other journalists to write columns, especially those on song.
For Bertin remains, against all odds, a songwriter, composer and performer. Bertin then decides to create his own independent label, Velen, for his next albums on CD. Starting with the magnificent one from 1991: Le Poids Des Roses. Continuing with the moving La Blessure Sous La Mer (1993), then the surprising Hôtel du Grand Retour (1996). These three were made with the musical collaboration of his old friend double bassist and sometimes orchestrator Didier Levallet, then of Laurent Desmurs and Thibaud Couturier.
When Le Poids Des Roses appears, Bertin, after the Café de la Danse, returns to a large venue: for two evenings, he sings at the Casino de Paris. That is no small thing. So, is Le Poids Des Roses that of socialism now in charge of the country? Or rather, that of lost illusions, of that damned time that passes too quickly? Three years later, with Hôtel Du Grand Retour, the theme continues.
Through "C'est un amour ancien perdu" (Bertin's titles often say a great deal about the man and his life), or this poignant confession in "L'or pur": Forgive me for having spoken about myself/ Just yesterday I was so unhappy... Other bold moves, on this album, await the listener, such as "Pascaline" sung a cappella, or "La méchanceté", a long hallucinatory recitative lasting more than 8 minutes which, at times, resembles a crazy rap... "Rester fidèle" is a Bertin leitmotif that can be found from the very first song on the 1999 album Le Grand Bras, Les Iles. With its incipit, "Avoir la foi". Not only the Christian faith, in which the singer was raised; or that of scouting, of which he keeps a grateful memory, among other things for having helped shape his taste for singing AND for the collective.
But faith, whatever may be said of faith in God, in humankind and in a fraternal world. A "left-wing Christian" ideal, in short, the same one that led him to embrace the cause of the Resistance, that of the Second World War, with a capital R and, more generally, against oppression, all censorships, betrayals and conformisms. This is also shown here by "Les traces des combats": What is the point of goodness itself / If the world is what it is / If one humiliates those who love / If it is so cruel, so ugly? And then fidelity to Chalonnes-sur-Loire, which this native of Rennes discovered during his childhood vacations. He dedicates a song to it here again, after "Gens de Chalonnes" (in Permanence du Fleuve, 1975) and the more recent "Retour à Chalonnes".
Here too one encounters nostalgia, about the endless discussions of his youth ("Les étudiants au Café Rihour à Lille, en 1967"), and the meeting with Anne-Marie, the love of his life and future mother of his son. And yet, "Comme il est dur de vieillir". It is recalled against a backdrop of hurdy-gurdy, like a rural music of old. When, in 2002, La Jeune Fille Blonde appears, Bertin already has 35 years of career behind him and a substantial body of work.
He has just left the Politis editorial team and, no longer needing to live in Paris, he is going to settle for good in Chalonnes. It is this pivotal moment that the quarterly Chorus directed by Fred Hidalgo chooses to devote a 23-page dossier to him, under the pen of the late Marc Robine (no. 42, winter 2002-2003). After the biography and the analysis of the work, he speaks with Bertin in Chalonnes. Among many themes, including family, Catholic upbringing, writing, revolt, Parisianism, the media and song, our artist sums up and defines his work. Excerpt: "I also think that I do sung poetry rather than song; in the sense that I write regular verse, whereas, for me, song is characterized by the musicality of irregular verse.
The singing side very often comes from irregular verse and, in any case, the regularity of verse adds nothing more in terms of musicality. Except that I try to make poems in regular verse that, in my eyes, already sing on the page. Then I set them to music..." No Surrender, in 2005, would reaffirm the love of poetry, the fire of revolt, the fear of death, adding respect for those soldiers, mostly English and American, who landed in Normandy on "6 June 1944" (perhaps linked to the title of the album, which can be translated as "We do not surrender"?). From Comme Un Pays (2010) to L'Etat des Routes (2013), Bertin continues his own. With on the cover a Simca Aronde at 1/43 scale, a Norev plastic miniature (in real life it was his first car), Bertin returns to "La lampe du tableau de bord" and visits "Les grands châteaux abandonnés" while crossing "L'hiver en France". A horizon, all things considered, as vast as the world. Jacques Vassal (April 2025)