Greek-born Georges Moustaki, celebrated for his collaborations with Edith Piaf, has died aged 79
French singer and songwriter Georges Moustaki, beloved in France for his collaborations with Edith Piaf and songs celebrating liberty, died on Thursday after a long illness. He was 79.
The Greek-born singer grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and arrived in Paris in 1951, where played guitar at nightclubs and met some of the period's best-known singers.
He was introduced to Edith Piaf in the late 1950s and started to write songs for the Parisian star, the most famous being Milord – about a lower-class girl who falls in love with an upper-class British traveller.
Developing a reputation as a singer in his own right in the mid-1960s, the hirsute and heavily bearded Moustaki achieved fame with songs such as the immigrant ballad Le Meteque, and Ma Libert̩ Рa hymn to the 60s free-living spirit.
A life-long advocate of left-wing causes, Moustaki ended his singing career in 2009, later telling newspaper La Croix thathe was suffering froman irreversible bronchial illness that made it impossible to carry on.
The French culture minister, Aurelie Filippetti, hailed an "artist with convictions who conveyed humanist values ... and a great poet", while Twitter was full of tributes to a singer many said had defined their childhoods.
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