Ne Me Quitte Pas: A Song by Jacques Brel and Interpreted by Nina Simone and Others [Kietas viršelis]

"Maya Angela Smith centers the 1959 song, "Ne me quitte pas" [ Don't Leave Me], written by Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, following the song's journey through adaptation, across borders, genres, and languages, to examine how recontextualization transforms the musical composition and text. Ne me quitte pas follows the eponymous song from the original context of Brel's version, to Nina Simone's introduction of racialized and gendered dimensions, to transformation and translation in the Rod McKuen-penned Shirley Bassey version, and beyond into modern media and performance. Smith's work privileges the song's effects on its listeners by analyzing archival materials and writings that reflect on audience experience, from journalism and scholarly writingto YouTube commentary. Moreover, the book emphasizes the song's capability to mirror personal affectation, emotion, and embodiment, following Smith's own encounters with the song in her life. By demonstrating the multiplicity and instability of an oft-considered singular piece of music, Smith shows how a song travels and takes on new meaning in different contexts, becoming a culturally significant and transcendent object"--

In 1959, Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel wrote and performed “Ne me quitte pas” (Don’t leave me), a visceral and haunting plea for his lover to come back. As a teenager, Maya Angela Smith was so captivated by Nina Simone’s powerful 1965 cover of the song that it inspired her to be a French professor. In Ne me quitte pas, Smith follows the classic song’s long and varied journey, from Brel’s iconic 1966 performance on French television to Simone’s cover to Shirley Bassey’s English-language version (“If You Go Away”) to its contemporary manifestations in popular culture. Throughout, Smith shows that as the song travels across languages, geographies, genres, and generations, it accumulates shifting artistic and cultural significance as each listener creates their own meaning.

Maya Angela Smith, follows the long and varied journey of Jacques Brel’s classic song “Ne me quitte pas,” showing how it gains shifting artistic cultural significance as it travels across languages, geographies, genres, and generations.