Serge Gainsbourg — singer with roots in the Russian Empire
Serge Gainsbourg was born Lucien Ginsburg in Paris in April 1928, to Russian Jewish emigres. His father, Joseph Ginsburg, was born in Constantinople in 1896 and was of Ukrainian Jewish descent; he trained as a classical pianist at the Petrograd and Moscow conservatories. His mother, Olga, was born Brucha Goda Besman in Feodosiya, in Crimea, in 1894, and sang as a mezzo-soprano. They met and married in Crimea in 1918 and fled Odessa in the years after the revolution, travelling through Georgia and Istanbul and reaching Marseille in 1921. In Paris, Joseph made a living playing piano in casinos and cabarets, and taught his son with some severity.
The family's second displacement came during the occupation. Gainsbourg was a Jewish child in occupied France, required to wear the yellow star, an experience he returned to throughout his life, usually obliquely and usually as a joke. In 1944 the family escaped to the Haute-Vienne on forged papers, and he was hidden at a boarding school in Saint-Leonard-de-Noblat under a false name; during one Gestapo raid he spent a night alone in the forest.
He began as a painter and moved into songwriting reluctantly in the late 1950s, spending most of the 1960s writing for other people - Brigitte Bardot, Juliette Greco, France Gall, Francoise Hardy. The 1969 recording of Je t'aime, moi non plus with Jane Birkin was banned by broadcasters across Europe and condemned by the Vatican, and made him internationally notorious. Histoire de Melody Nelson, released in 1971 to near-total commercial indifference, is now routinely listed among the most influential records in popular music. Aux armes et caetera, a reggae reworking of the Marseillaise cut in Kingston in 1979, went platinum and brought him death threats from French paratroopers.
He wrote over five hundred and fifty songs, covered more than a thousand times. He received the Victoire d'honneur in 1990 and, posthumously, the Cesar for best original music for Elisa in 1996. He died in Paris in March 1991.
"Parents fled Odessa via Georgia and Istanbul, reaching Marseille in 1921"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Feodosiya (Crimea) / Odessa
As a Jewish child in occupied France he was made to wear the yellow star; in 1944 the family escaped to the Haute-Vienne on forged papers and he was hidden at a boarding school under a false name.
His father Joseph Ginsburg, born in Constantinople in 1896 of Ukrainian Jewish descent, trained at the Petrograd and Moscow conservatories. His mother, born Brucha Goda Besman in Feodosiya in 1894, was a mezzo-soprano. They married in Crimea in 1918 and fled Odessa via Georgia and Istanbul, reaching Marseille in 1921.
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Feodosiya (Crimea) / Odessa. At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.