Georges Moustaki, ‘Wandering Jew’ Who Sang With Piaf, Recalled at Memorial
Image by getty images
About 100 hundred people attended the opening of an art exhibition and a concert in Paris in memory of the Jewish French singer-songwriter Georges Moustaki.
The exhibition that opened Tuesday at the Borough Hall of the French capital’s 3rd Arrondissement was launched in the framework of the city’s ninth Festival of Jewish Culture. Carrying a Mediterranean theme this year, the festival features art, music and theater from Greece, Spain and North Africa. It ends on June 24.
The exhibition in Moustaki’s memory has dozens of colorful, optimistic paintings that he drew on his iPad — even in his waning days as he suffered from the lung disease to which he succumbed last month at the age of 79.
Dubbed by French media as “the Wandering Jew,” the Greece native was one of France’s best-known singers in the 1960s and 1970s. He also wrote songs for such renowned artists as Edith Piaf, Yves Montand and Juliette Greco.
The dedication of the exhibition was followed by a performance of some of Moustaki’s songs by the French Israeli singer Orlika, who in 2010 recorded a song with Moustaki in Hebrew.
“I met him a few years earlier and I invited him to one of my concerts, thinking he wouldn’t come,” Orlika recalled. “But he did come and even got up to sing with me on stage that night.”
Annie Grandjanine, a journalist and former Le Figaro columnist who knew Moustaki, said “people who only knew of George were often surprised by how accessible and unassuming he was.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
