A Witch Like Any Other One
Our #WomanToday is a French singer and songwriter with a tantalizing voice and fiery lyrics; Anne Sylvestre.
Born on June 20, 1934, as Anne-Marie Beugras, she studies Humanities at the Sorbonne in Paris, where she quickly turns to music. There she will start performing in cabarets, taking part in the “Rive Gauche” (“left bank”) artistic scene that marks the 1950s-1960s in the French capital.
Unapologetic of her sex, she becomes well known as a singer and songwriter for her incisive lyrics. Through her songs, she takes resolutely social stances on various subjects such as poverty (“Porteuse d’eau”, Waterbearer, 1961), homelessness (“Pas difficile”, Not difficult, 1986), education in a consumer society (“Abel Caïn, mon fils”, Abel Cain, my son, 1971), war (“Berceuse de Bagdad”, Lullaby from Baghdad, 2003).
At the birth of her first daughter in 1962, she turns to children’s songs and invents a whole new genre, with her Fabulettes.
By 1973, she launches her own production company, so as to retain complete freedom over her songs’ content — the A. Sylvestre record label.
She will also sing about her abortion in the powerful “Non, tu n’as pas de nom” (You have no name, 1973), and other facets of women’s lives, such as “La Vache engagée” (Engaged Cow, 1975), “Une sorcière comme les autres” (A Witch like any other one, 1975) about maternity,”La Faute à Ève” (Eve’s Fault, 1978) about women’s rights, “Rose” (1981) about teen pregnancy, or “Juste une femme” (Only a woman, 2013) about sexism. She also supports same-sex marriage in “Gay marions-nous” (Gay, let’s get married, 2007).
In 1970, she signs the “‘Manifeste des 343 salopes” (“the Manifesto of the 343 sluts”), in which 343 high profile women claim to have had an abortion — in protest of the French law that still severely punished the practice. The idea behind this act of rebellion being “that they can’t possiblylock us all up!”
Though having committed to many tours across the country, she remains to this day based out of the city of her beginnings, witness of her first successes, Paris.
