A tribute to Corinne Allal
Corinne Allal died today, and a string in me snapped. I am trying to understand why. I didn’t know her personally. She was a wonderful musician, for sure, and I always enjoyed her songs, but they were never pivotal on my playlist. Still, now, in retrospect, I realize they were closer to my heart than I previously imagined.
I am recalling the first time I listened to her songs. I was about sixteen, even more shy than now, partaking in the Gadna – our high school students were sent to spend a couple of days and nights in a military program meant to prepare us to serve in the IDF. I felt miserable most of the time. Allal’s 1989 album Antarctica was just out, starting with that title track’s line that most Israelis my age likely remember: “No horses speak Hebrew… seek them in Antarctica,” I doubt I truly listened to the lyrics, which proceeds to "Love is a light that comes and go; if you want it forever, go seel it in Antarctica." But Allal’s singing somehow helped me overcome a barrier: For the first time in my life, at the concluding party, I joined the dancing.
Some of her songs have become part of the Israeli canon, revealing the nation's changing face. One portrays Israel as "a little country with a mustache, half a pin on the world map... all the places are sacred, slim chances to build a dream, even the days are
harder, day by day." Another speaks of the society as "a rare breed, a strange bird, dreams up in the air, the head in the ground... We are afraid of our own shadow,
clinging to the walls of our houses, and most of the time we are ashamed of our
bodies, digging shelters," and so become "a sinking ship."
Another song, “I have no other country” (Ein Li Eretz Acheret), which Allal composed over forty years ago, has become the unofficial anthem of Israeli citizens resisting their increasingly ultra-nationalist governments. Allal's melody started with the personal, not the political: she wrote it after a breakup with her girlfriend, who left her a note that made for Allal's original lyrics: "Don't look at me like that, your suffocate my eyes." The lyrics made their way to Ehud Manor, a most gifted Israeli lyricist, who was watching a news bulletin on the First Lebanon War, and started writing, "I can't keep silent for my country has changed her face."
The message reverberated across the pond. In the wake of January 6, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quoted the song upon calling for President Trump's removal: “I can't keep silent in light of how my country has changed her face, won't quit trying to remind her, in her ears, until she opens her eyes.” With others, I was trying to open hers, and mine, and in the process joined the board of a magazine that bore that song’s title: Eretz Acheret.
When I was thinking about Allal’s songs, one cuts the deepest. I guess it’s the least known from her Antarctica album, the only non-Hebrew one. It’s a French poem by Jacques Prévert, and Allal, whose mother tongue is French - she immigrated from Tunisia when she was eight years old - rendered it hauntingly beautiful. Today was the first time I gave my full attention to the lyrics that tell a story that is so simple and too familiar. Prévert wrote these words in 1946, soon after the end of WWII. Here, amidst war, Allal’s warm voice makes it somehow better.
Déjeuner du Matin by Jacques Prévert
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuillere
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler
Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder
Il s’est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis
Son manteau de pluie
Parce qu’il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder
Et moi j’ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j’ai pleuré
ENGLISH
Breakfast by Jacques Prévert
He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He put the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
Into the coffee with milk
With a small spoon
He churned
He drank the coffee
And he put down the cup
Without any word to me
He lit
One cigarette
He made circles
With the smoke
He shook off the ash
Into the ashtray
Without any word to me
Without any look at me
He got up
He put on
His hat on his head
He put on
His raincoat
Because it was raining
And he left
Into the rain
Without any word to me
Without any look at me
And I buried
My face in my hands
And I cried.
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