セルジュ・ゲンズブール没後３０年、音楽界に今なお強い影響

【パリＡＦＰ＝時事】フランスの歌手・作曲家のセルジュ・ゲンズブールの死から、2日で30年を迎える。新しい試みに挑戦し、また退廃的な響きのあるゲンズブールの音楽スタイルは、今なお米英のアーティストたちにとってよりどころとなる存在である。（写真はセルジュ・ゲンズブール）
　ゲンズブールの音楽は１９９０年代、ナズやウータン・クランなどの米国のヒップホップアーティストの曲でサンプリングに使用され、その後もマッシヴ・アタックやポーティスヘッドといったトリップ・ホップ勢、ビーチ・ハウスやテーム・インパラといったドリーム・ポップのバンドなどに影響を与えた。
　ゲンズブールを継承する多くの人たちにとって、１９７１年リリースのアルバム「メロディ・ネルソンの物語」は指標となる重要作品だ。
　ゲンズブールの娘、シャルロット・ゲンズブールは「一般的にゲンズブールといえば『ジュ・テーム・モワ・ノン・プリュ』だけど、音楽通にとっては『メロディ・ネルソン』こそすべて」だと語る。
　米ミュージシャンでインディー界スターのベックも、自身の２００２年の傑作「シー・チェンジ」で「メロディ・ネルソンの物語」のサンプリング音源を多用した。
　ベックは「シー・チェンジ」のリマスター版のライナーノーツで、「野心とコンセプチュアルな深み、それらを引き出すのは本当に難しいけれど、ゲンズブールは『メロディ・ネルソン』でそれを完璧にこなしている。ロックバンドとオーケストラの最高のマリアージュの一つだ」と書いている。
　２０１６年、米雑誌「ピッチフォーク」はゲンズブールの影響力について、さまざまなミュージシャンがさまざまなインスピレーションを作品から得ていると指摘。
　最近のＡＦＰのインタビューでも、英グループのジャンゴ・ジャンゴやインディー・ソウルの新星アーロ・パークス、有名映画監督を父に持つシンガー・ソングライターのバジー・リー（本名サーシャ・スピルバーグ）が影響を公言している。
　シャルロット・ゲンズブールにとっては、どれもが感動的な賛辞だ。
　「きっと誇らしかっただろうと思う」
　「生前には知る由もなかった称賛が、こんなにもあふれている。とても遅咲きだったこともあって、父は自分の成功を当たり前のものだと思っていなかった。（今の影響について）とても心打たれたことだろう」【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】

〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/03/02-13:59）

Three decades after his death, French singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg remains a go-to reference point for British and American artists trying to tap his distinctive blend of musical risk-taking and louche style.
Strands of Gainsbourg's music proved as popular in 1990s US hip-hop -- cropping up in songs by Nas, the Wu Tang Clan and Busta Rhymes -- as they have with his more obvious, singer-songwriter successors of recent years.
The ball was already rolling just before his death on March 2, 1991, when De La Soul used two samples from his oeuvre for their album De La Soul is Dead of that year.
Gainsbourg's wounded ennui and Gallic swoon soon cast a spell over everything from trip-hop (Massive Attack and Portishead were explicit about his influence) to later dream pop bands such as Beach House and Tame Impala.
Pop stars, too, have been known to inject a little European class into their set lists: Kylie Minogue reworked his duet with Brigitte Bardot, Bonnie And Clyde, for her 2007 single Sensitized.
For many of Gainsbourg's indie heirs, the key touchstone is his seminal 1971 album Histoire de Melody Nelson.
Abroad, he's often reduced to 'Je t'aime... moi non plus', but for connoisseurs of music, it's all about 'Melody Nelson', his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg told AFP.
US indie star Beck sampled heavily from that album for his own low-key masterpiece Sea Change in 2002.
There's an ambition, a conceptual depth to Melody Nelson that's incredibly hard to pull off but which Gainsbourg does completely... It's one of the greatest marriages of rock band and orchestra that I've ever heard, Beck wrote in the liner notes for a reissue by US label Light in the Attic.
- 'Signifiers of sophistication' -
For others, Gainsbourg helped define their entire approach to music.
When you're young and you start a pop band, you think that it all works around guitar-bass-drums. And then you come across 'Melody Nelson' and you're plunged into a film, said Jinte Deprez, of Belgian group Balthazar.
Listening to that album, we started to arrange our music differently. We were always influenced by Air but we didn't know where their sound came from until we realised it was Gainsbourg under its skin, he added.
In a 2016 article on his influence, US magazine Pitchfork noted the striking way in which different musicians drew different inspirations from his work.
Some acts are attracted to the sheer sound, others to the roiling undercurrent of sleaze, others find inspiration in the arch appreciation of pop art or perhaps Gainsbourg's underpinnings in poetry and jazz as signifiers of sophistication, it said.
It's a reference that keeps cropping up.
In recent interviews with AFP, his name has been cited by British group Django Django, up-and-coming indie-soul star Arlo Parks and singer-songwriter Buzzy Lee (real name Sasha Spielberg, daughter of the famous director).
He has a great honesty, his way of showing respect and understanding to the language and to music, said Parks.
It was also the try-everything, louche-to-the-point-of-anarchic that made him popular among punks long before he was rediscovered by the indie cognoscenti in the 1990s.
When you write pop songs, at some point you have no choice but to look at this iconic guy, who said 'fuck you' to everything, laughs Deprez.
For the great man's daughter, these are moving tributes.
He would have been so proud, she told AFP.
There's all this admiration around him that my father never knew in his lifetime. Success came very late for him so he never took it for granted. He would have been very touched.