Music and Memory, Part 15: Sons Of

The video clip in the post two down that uses the song "Carousel," from the musical Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, has made me revisit this musical, whose original cast recording (along with that of the 1976 Joseph Papp revival of Threepenny Opera) was a formative influence in my adolescence.  The musical, a plotless revue, can be directed so as to suggest various settings and narratives, and is often performed by college music and theater departments, since it needs only four singers and a very small musical combo (a single piano, in fact, will suffice).

My favorite song from the show is the poignant "Sons of . . . "  Isn't it everybody's?  When the show was first staged at the Village Gate in 1968, the line "Some went to war, some never came home," was no doubt heard as a pointed reference to the Vietnam War, in protest against which Jacques Brel himself refused to come to America to see what turned out to be a wildly successful revue of his work.  Indeed, the song's final chord, coming at the end of a rhythmically-accelerated phrase and cut off before resolving to the tonic, underscores the sense of childhood truncated, and of a desperate search for children who will never come back.

I could not find a Youtube video of the incomparable Elly Stone singing the song from the original cast recording, but did find something perhaps even better:  Jacques Brel singing it in the original French.  It is really quite wonderful. 

The lyrics, in translation:

Sons of the thief, sons of the saint
Who is the child with no complaint?
Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own
The same sweet smiles, the same sad tears
The cries at night, the nightmare fears
Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own...
So long ago: long, long, ago...

But sons of tycoons or sons of the farms
All of the children ran from your arms
Through fields of gold, through fields of ruin
All of the children vanished too soon
In tow'ring waves, in walls of flesh
Among dying birds trembling with death
Sons of tycoons or sons of the farms
All of the children ran from your arms...
So long ago: long, long, ago...

But sons of your sons or sons passing by
Children we lost in lullabies
Sons of true love or sons of regret
All of the sons you cannot forget
Some built the roads, some wrote the poems
Some went to war, some never came home
Sons of your sons or sons passing by
Children we lost in lullabies...
So long ago: long, long, ago

But, sons of the thief, sons of the saint
Who is the child with no complaint?
Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own
The same sweet smiles, the same sad tears
The cries at night, the nightmare fears
Sons of the great or sons unknown
All were children like your own.