page_title: Barbara (singer)
section_title: Musical development
hierarchical_section_title: Barbara (singer) / Musical development
caption_attribution_description: English: drawing commissioned by The New York Times
context_page_description: Monique Andrée Serf was a French singer. She took her stage name, Barbara, from her grandmother, Varvara Brodsky, a native of Odessa, Russian Empire. Her song "L'Aigle noir" sold 1 million copies in twelve hours.
context_section_description: A tall person, Barbara dressed in black as she sang melancholy songs of lost love. From 1950 to 1952, after her father's desertion of her family, she lived in Brussels, where she became part of an active artistic community. Her painter and writer friends took over an old house, converting it into workshops and a concert hall with a piano where she performed the songs of Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco and Germaine Montero. However, her career evolved slowly and she struggled constantly to eke out a living.
  Returning to Paris, she met Jacques Brel and became a lifelong friend, singing many of his songs. Later she met Georges Brassens, whose songs she began to use in her act and to record on her first album. In the 1950s, she sang at some of the smaller clubs and began building a fan base, particularly with the young students from the Latin Quarter. In 1957, she went back to Brussels to record her first single, but it was not until 1961 that she got a real break when she sang at the Bobino Music-Hall in Montparnasse. Dressed in a long black robe, she gave a haunting performance, but the Parisian critics said she lacked naturalness and was stiff and formal in her presentation. She continued to perform at small clubs, and two years later at the Théâtre des Capucines she succeeded with the audience and critics alike, singing new material she had written herself. From that point on, her career blossomed and she signed a major recording contract in 1964 with Philips Records.
caption: The New York Times portrait of Barbara by Reginald Gray
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