Alone in front of the microphone in a Radio France studio, Josiane Balasko is concentrated.
“I like to imagine that I fell from the nest on December 19, 1915. (…) My grandmother is Moroccan. We call her Aïcha. She worked in a circus where she did a jumping flea act! My mother, she sings in cabarets. It seems that she has a very beautiful voice. I don’t know, I don’t know her.”
From the outset, Josiane Balasko slips into the character of Édith Piaf. It even fades away. They don't have the same voice but their Parisian banter is identical. A few decades apart, these two popular artists lived in the same neighborhoods of Belleville and Montmartre.
“Édith Piaf reminds me of my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s. In my parents' coffee shop, his songs were often played on the jukebox
. Josiane Balasko was 13 when Édith Piaf died at 48. The sound of Piaf's childhood plunges us into the years 1915-1930. When…
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