CHANT DES PARTISANS, LE
Created on 21/05/2005Latest update on 02/08/2023
Artist: Claude Dauphin
Author: Anna Marly/Joseph Kessel/Maurice Druon
Label: l'Encyclopédie Sonore
Year: 1943
Written as a march in '42 following dramatic reports of the battle of Smolensk. Marly (born in St. Petersburg as Anna Betoulinsky but living in London) sang it in Russian in theatres. Russian speaking Joseph Kessel translated it in French along with his nephew Druon while they had joined Gen. De Gaulle. Official title: Le Chant de la Libération. Tune whistled in the dayly BBC radio program with hidden messages to French resistants, making it the French partisan hymn. Sometimes called "La Marseillaise de l'ombre". Although lyrics were published during the war (in the clandestine French newspaper Les Cahiers de Libération), they were only marginally known. Popularity grew after the war. The original manuscript is qualified as state property in France. It was classified as an historic monument and is permanently on display at the Musée de la Légion d'honneur.
Covers:
- 1945:
Germaine Sablon [the first to record it, as Le Chant de la Libération and in Alberto Cavalcanti's propaganda film Three Songs About Resistance]
- 1955:
Yves Montand [idem]
- 1964:
Anna Marly [author in Russian as Guerilla Song]
- 2004:
Zebda [as Motivés (Le Chant des partisans)]
Also by Catherine Sauvage, Leny Escudero, Cathérine Ribeiro, Jean-Louis Murat, Léo Ferré, Johnny Hallyday and Mireille Mathieu. See also: La Complainte du Partisan.
