"I have two loves, my country and Paris, through them always, my heart is delighted."
Sung for the first time at the Casino de Paris in 1930, these words tell of Joséphine Baker's love for her adopted country, France.
Born in 1906 in Missouri, in 1925 she left segregated America to dance in the casual Paris of the Roaring Twenties.
She then became a star of the inter-war music hall and performed at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, at the Folies-Bergère then at the Casino de Paris.
Joséphine Baker was also a figure of resistance and counter-espionage during the Second World War, thereby showing her devotion to her adopted country.
After the war, she joined forces against segregation in the United States, thus embodying, beyond her art, a figure of freedom and emancipation.
But it is ultimately in music that she will always find her strength:
"To live is to dance, I would like to die out of breath, exhausted, at the end of a dance or a chorus."
(
The memories of Joséphine Baker
, collected by Marcel Sauvage).
Can you find the lyrics to his cult songs?