History of Anna Marly’s guitar, the musical soul of the Resistance

JI was assembled by a luthier from cedar, mahogany and spruce pieces . Despite the weight of my 95 years, the wear and tear of my flaws and the scratches on my harmony table, I remain a guitar in good condition: I have my frets, my keys, and my six strings are still sensitive enough to tell the meetings, hazards and circumstances that gave birth to Song of supporters, This “hit” of resistance.

It all started in 1930, the year of my manufacture . As soon as I left the workshop, I am offered to a young girl from the Russian aristocracy, Anna Betoulinsky, by her housekeeper, Matriochka. From then on, we do not leave each other almost anymore. Before making her ranges on my round, she played Balalaika, pinched string instrument ,, Since childhood. She was born in Petrograd (ex-Saint-Petersburg) in 1917, a week before the October Revolution. Her father, Youri, officer of the tsar, having been executed by the Bolsheviks in the process, she then fled to Menton (Alpes-Maritimes) in the arms of her mother and her housekeeper.

In 1934, my dear mistress was hired as a dancer in the Russian ballets of Monte-Carlo then settled in Paris, took courses at the Conservatoire and began a musical career under the name of Anna Marly . The occupation arrives. Without hesitation, taking me under her arm, she won the United Kingdom and London, via Spain and Portugal, in February 1941. She was then 24 years old.

Volunteer at the canteen of free French forces, it sometimes serves a hot soup to General de Gaulle. But his main activity, while I accompany him, consists in singing on various scenes, including that of the theater in the armies, for the soldiers allied in permission. Episodically, Anna performs at the BBC microphone in the program The French speak to the French.

In her rare free moments, the young Russian abandons me to take the news from the Eastern Front in the British press. Thus one evening, while the Luftwaffe planes pound the British capital and that it is confined to the room of her modest pension, Anna comes across an article which details the role of Soviet supporters during the Battle of Smolensk in Russia. For the first time in this conflict, the rapid advance of the Hitlerian army is slowed down, thanks to the determination and the supreme sacrifice of thousands of men, most of whom are simple Moujiks, peasants … My Anna feels the bitterness and nostalgia for her country. To pay tribute to these thousands of victims of the Wehrmacht, she grabbed me by the handle and, remembering the traditional tunes that Matriochka sang her in her early childhood, she caresses my strings. “Under sudden inspiration came out of me, ready -made, the Supporter “, She will say later. With three chords – do, fa, soil -Who support some notes, played with this so -called technique finger-picking (pinch the strings with her fingers), she improvises a simple, sad, but effective melody and accompanies her with words in her mother tongue. I translate:

“From forest in the forest / the road follows / the precipice / and far there up there / somewhere vogue the moon / which has been hurried / we will go there / where neither the crow / nor the wild beast / person, no force / will submit / will hunt us (…)”

A few days later, in front of the sailors of the Royal Navy, she stretched this piece. After the fourth verse, she abandons my ropes and begins to harmoniously type the back of my resonance box as if I was a vulgar Baraban, a Caucasus drum … Tap Tap Tap, to reproduce the sound of a moving squadron. After this rhythmic ostinato, the audience, dumbfounded for a few seconds, applauds everything. Immediately dubbed, renamed Guerilla Song By British soldiers, the song is integrated into Anna Marly’s repertoire. And every time she sings her, I witness – and actress – of a success that cannot be denied.

In this city of London, where thousands of French people converge qualified by Vichy as “legion of dissidents”, Russian exiles are also met.

Anna frequents them, including a certain Louba Krassine with whom she became friends. The latter happens to be the fiancée of Emmanuel d’Astier de la Vigerie, a former journalist who refused the defeat of June 1940 and set up one of the first resistance movements, Liberation-Sud. Between two clandestine missions in France, he regularly went to London to take his orders from General de Gaulle and blow a little.

A night in April 1943, the full moon being masked by the clouds, it could not embark on the plane which was to parachute it.

It is thanks to this competition of circumstances that Anna – and I in a shoulder – had the opportunity to meet him at Louba. After brief presentations, my dear mistress leaves me from my case. Around us, voices that whisper in French, muffled laughter, the smell of black coffee and cold tobacco. But when Anna’s fingers land on my strings, in an instant, everything is silent. Among the pieces played, Guerilla Song. By typing on her back, Anna whistles the last verse. Astier, who does not understand Russian, is seduced by the melody. He asks my mistress to sing it again, then exclaims: “It must be translated into French!” »»

The next day, we go to his older brother, General François d’Astier. Among those who listen to us to play Guerilla Song, is “a kind of hair giant”, in the words of Anna. He does not need to have the words translated because he is of Russian origin. His name is Joseph Kessel. Emmanuel d’Astier and him, who share the double profession of writer journalist, had known himself before the war during a treatment … of detoxification! Because they were both opiomanes, like a lot of their contemporaries in this environment, had revealed Louba to my mistress. They had sympathized before getting over sight. London exile had resources their friendship.

Three weeks later, on May 13, the team that prepares the new program of the French Resistance from London, Honor and homeland realizes that she has not planned a musical indicative.

There are only four days left. Emmanuel d’Astier who coordinates this project suggests choosing an already existing air. He directs his companions towards Anna and me, and their choice is on … Guerilla Song, Or at least his whistled version. Because, without words, it has the advantage of passing through the scrambling of the waves by the Germans. Thus from May 17, 1943 to May 2, 1944, the date of the end of this program, Guerilla Song is broadcast twice a day on the BBC waves and heard by the various resistance movements on the soil of France. It gradually becomes the sign of rallying of the maquisards.

Whistled a cappella, scratched on the guitar in instrumental version, percussive or sung in Russian…, no version completely satisfied Astier, who did not abandon the idea of ​​a text in French .

It is a bit for this reason that he had invited Joseph Kessel to come and listen to us, at the end of April 1943. Emmanuel d’Astier argues with his talented friend: “We only win a war with songs …” He prepares the first issue of the Clandestine newspaper Liberation Notebooks and wants to publish in this inaugural edition the text of Guerilla Song In the language of Molière, so that those who whistle it can finally accompany it with words which would strengthen the power of the melody.

At the time, Joseph Kessel’s girlfriend was Germaine Sablon, star of the music hall. In London, she was engaged with free French forces and wanted to appear in a film intended to raise funds in the United States for the benefit of resistance fighters. Several times, she had asked “Jef” – the little name she gave her – to write a song to her. But Kessel, too busy refining the writing of his book The Shadow Army had constantly put it back until later.

Was it this double friendly and love pressure that finally convinced him to get started? My guitar memory does not remember it. It is simply by hearsay that I knew that on Sunday May 30, 1943 -or perhaps another day, it depends on the versions -, the trio composed of Joseph Kessel, his nephew and companion of exile and writing Maurice Druon, and Germaine Sablon withdrew in a small hotel in Coulsdon, near London. On the lawn of this holiday resort, the two men write what I believe to be a masterpiece of lyricist. “The words came quickly and almost from themselves in a dialogue where we replied,” said Maurice Druon later. “Jef found ideas with Maurice and he had the genius to put them in verse,” will complete the singer.

Surprisingly, the working title is English: Underground Song – In the language of Shakespeare, “to go underground” means “to enter illegality”. But the first lines are in French:

“Friend, do you hear

The black flights of the crows

On our plains

Friend, do you hear

The deaf cries

Of the country that we continue »

The other stanzas will follow. All completed in barely an hour and a half … “This is what will perhaps remain of the two of us,” said Kessel that evening to his nephew.

The next day, Germaine Sablon recorded this French version at the BBC. The verses were imprinted clandestinely on September 25, 1943, at the modern printing house in Auch (Gers), in the first of Liberation notebooks. They are preceded by the following mention: “We prefer that this song is anonymous, it is so belonging to all the snipers. It must be sung on a heavy and hammered rhythm. The nuances, to be only indicated, come out more strongly. This clarification responded to Emmanuel d’Astier’s wish to suggest that this Guerilla Song emanated from resistance.

Directly, the whistled version, the one heard at the BBC, was a huge success. The French version accompanies the end of the war. It is taken up by the whole of the nation at the Liberation, then during the commemorations, to the point that it will be nicknamed “the Marseillaise resistance ”. But it is under the name of Song of supporters that, thanks to many performers, from Joséphine Baker to Yves Montand, passing through the Toulouse group Zebda, she continues in the memories.

The original manuscript – These words scribbled by the hand of Maurice Druon on three yellowed flying sheets – has been classified as historic monuments since 2006.

He is now exposed, just like me, at the Museum of the Liberation Order in Paris. Anna gave me this institution in 1990. I thus painfully lived in my wood the end of our companionship of sixty years. In the preface to Memoirs, From Anna Marly, Joseph Kessel recognizes my essential role, “The guitar, I was going to write that she was like all guitars. But no: she seemed to have, she had taken the going, the health, the gut, the exaltation of the one who played it … “Did we never paid a good tribute to a string instrument?

My dear Anna died in 2006.

I shed all the tears of my strings. Maurice Druon left this world three years later. His uncle Joseph Kessel had disappeared in 1979. From my point of view, these three deserve to enter the pantheon, and why not with me, if we think about it? However, I would have to be reduced to ashes … For the moment, at 95, I am the only survivor of this crazy adventure. If your heart tells you, then go a little visit to the Museum of the Liberation Order. You will have before your eyes a direct witness of the history of those who fought, singing, so that France regains its freedom.