Furio De Angelis has been a Brassens fan for decades. He can trace his interest back to his early teenage years. He grew up listening to the songs of Italian folksinger Fabrizio De Andrè, whose work was greatly inspired by Georges Brassens. Later in life he turned his attention to Brassens and became familiar with his artistic production. Around 2005, he conceived the idea of translating Brassens’s songs into Italian and English, with the aim of making them accessible to a larger audience. A few years later he began collaborating with his brother Valerio on this website.
Furio was born in Rome, Italy, and is a retired representative for UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. During the course of his career, he has lived in many countries on four continents. He currently lives in Geneva. Valerio De Angelis shared his brother Furio’s interest in Fabrizio De Andrè as a teenager. Since 2009, he has collaborated with Furio on the building of this website. His main contribution was the design of the website and the writing of the html code. Valerio lives in New Orleans and he is a Professor of Mathematics at Xavier University of Louisiana. |
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Several people have helped us with the translations. We thank in particular the following persons: Lillian Chia for her many suggestions about the English translations; Christophe Vignat and Guy Piva who helped us with some of the more difficult French expressions in Brassens’s lyrics. |