Changer la Marseillaise ? Oui ou Non ?
Change the French National Anthem ? Yes or No ?
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L’appel de Graeme Allwright
“En 1792 à la suite de la déclaration de guerre du Roi d’Autriche, un officier français, Rouget de l’Isle, en poste à Strasbourg, compose "Le chant de Guerre pour l’armée du Rhin". Je me suis toujours demandé comment les français peuvent continuer à chanter, comme chant National, un chant de guerre, avec des paroles belliqueuses, sanguinaires et racistes. En regardant à la télé des petits enfants obligés d’apprendre ces paroles épouvantables, j’ai été profondément peiné, et j’ai décidé d’essayer de faire une autre version de La Marseillaise. Le jour où les politiques décideront de changer les paroles de La Marseillaise, ce sera un grand jour pour la France.”
Graeme Allwright, octobre 2005.
Voice sa proposition:
La Marseillaise de Graeme Allwright et Sylvie Dien
Pour tous les enfants de la terre
Chantons amour et liberté.
Contre toutes les haines et les guerres
L’étendard d’espoir est levé
L’étendard de justice et de paix.
Rassemblons nos forces, notre courage
Pour vaincre la misère et la peur
Que règnent au fond de nos coeurs
L’amitié la joie et le partage.
La flamme qui nous éclaire,
Traverse les frontières
Partons, partons, amis, solidaires
Marchons vers la lumière.
Graeme Allwright, Sylvie Dien
Texte libre de droit, offert par les auteurs, à distribuer sans modération.
Si vous voulez les paroles de la Marseillaise telle quelle est chanté maintenant, cliquez ici.
Si vous voulez savoir un peu plus sur Graeme Allwright, néo-zélandais de naissance, cliquez ici.
"Folk singer’s
rewrite accused of lacking respect"
It was to be a moment of transcendent harmony — a pacifist version of France’s
bloodthirsty national anthem performed in a village hall by a folk singer with
a 180-strong amateur choir.
Instead, Graeme Allwright, a New Zealander who made France his home when he
fell in love with a woman half a century ago, has been accused of bringing La
Marseillaise into disrepute.
Jean-François Douard, the Mayor of Lagord on the outskirts of La Rochelle in
west France, where the concert is due to be held on March 26, is trying to stop
locals from joining the peace-andlove adaptation of the anthem. “There are
things on which I won’t compromise,” he told the Sud Ouest newspaper. “La
Marseillaise is sacred.”
He said that Allwright had produced an “errant version” and added that he did
not want “to hear this song in my district. I may be an old fart, but that’s
the way it is.”
Mr Douard has ordered the choir to stay silent and banned organisers from
distributing the lyrics to the audience, as usually happens at Allwright’s
concerts. The folk artist responded by deciding to sing on his own.
Allwright, who became known for adapting Leonard Cohen songs into French, told
The Times: “I wrote the song in 2005 and I’ve sung it over 100 times since then
and I’ve never had a problem.” He said that he was considering legal action
against Mr Douard. “He used the word devoyé (errant), and that is a very strong
word in French.”
Allwright, 84, said that the Mayor’s reaction illustrated a “general rise of
the extreme right in Europe and that’s very worrying”. He said that La
Marseillaise, written in 1792 by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle for
revolutionary forces and taken up by volunteer units from Marseille — has
become an anachronism. “The words are very bloody,” he said. Allwright
suggested to President Sarkozy that France should adopt his version, but his
suggestion was rejected.