Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel: Translation, authorship and the circulation of music

Abstract

By focusing on a set of Jacques Brel's songs as covered in English by the American singer Scott Walker, this article addresses the complexity of the production and circulation of cultural products, uncovering the important yet frequently obscured role of a range of agents. Combining approaches from sociology and cultural studies, it examines the ways in which “Brel” was integrated within Walker's work and artistic persona and this in turn exemplifies how an imported product can become the object of new strategic uses in the field of reception. The article also addresses the multiple operations involved in this process, which are not limited to textual translation, but include further discursive and non-textual practices. Finally, issues of reception and authorship are raised to show how the study of translation can become an exploratory tool in historical and cultural analysis.

Keywords:

• cover songs
• international circulation of cultural products
• sociology of translation
• translation of music
• reception

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Jonathan Evans and the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on previous versions of this article. Special thanks go to Maria-Pia Shuman, Charles Negus-Fancey, Catherine Thomas (Éditions Jacques Brel) and Jenifer Baptiste (Carlin Music Corp.) for their help with quotations rights.

Note on contributor

Fruela Fernández teaches at the University of Hull. He has been a visiting scholar at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne (CNRS-Sorbonne Paris) and has researched extensively on sociology applied to translation. His research interests also include gender inequality in professional translation, the international circulation of culture, and political issues in popular music. His monograph Espacios de dominación, espacios de resistencia was published in 2014 by Peter Lang.

Notes

1. During an interview in 1966, Walker mentioned that he was moving house every couple of days to prevent fans from constantly ringing at his door or phoning him up at night (Jopling 1966). In a 1967 interview he explained how fans would “climb over my back garden wall, so I hide in here all day and go out for walks only at night” (Altham 1967a).

2. In a contemporary interview, Steve Marriott (of the mod band The Small Faces) denied being a singer and called himself a “raver” (“Singers sing! … I go on stage and I just rave around”). His explanation of the dichotomy was based on a revealing opposition: “Tony Bennett sings. I don’t. Mick Jagger raves. John Lennon sings. Scott Walker sings; he’s probably the best singer on the scene at the present time. Singers are people like Frank Sinatra, whom I don’t dig” (Altham 1966a; emphasis added).

3. The B-side to the single “Jackie” (1967) – one of his Brel covers – was “The Plague”, a song written by Walker that shares its title with one of Camus’ novels. On the back cover of Scott 4 (Walker 1969b), Walker would include a quotation from Camus. Although no reference is given, the sentence appears verbatim in a translated collection of Camus’ (1968, 17) essays, published during the recording of Scott 4.

4. “I didn’t like it in America, and I’m not going back to live there. When I did live there it was terrible” (Jopling 1966).

5. In a 1984 interview, Walker would recall this period of his work, saying: “I can’t tell you what a fight it was to make those first records. Even though they were charting. It was like those people at Philips [Walker’s label from 1967 to 1973] were just waiting to say, no more of this shit!” (Cook 1984; emphasis in the original).

6. Of the nine songs recorded by Walker, six were translated by Shuman (“Mathilde”, “My Death”, “Amsterdam”, “The Girls and The Dogs”, “Funeral Tango” and “Next”), two by Shuman and Eric Blau (“Jackie”, “Sons of … ”) and one by Rod McKuen (“If You Go Away”). Most of my analysis focuses on the numbers translated by Shuman alone.

7. Discussing his more mature approach to singing, Walker would suggest a conflictual trait of his own voice that could minimize the impact of the lyrics: “sometimes with a baritone voice … it tranquillizes people, you know, it has that effect, so people stop listening to what they are hearing” (Kijak 2006; emphasis added).