There hasn’t been a popular dance without an accordion, nor a dance-hall without a waltz, since the end of the Great War. You wonder if the genre was ever “modern” at all, so timeless does it seem… Yet it had to be born at some time, and its parents were a motley crowd indeed! First of all came the people from Auvergne, who began to settle in Paris at the beginning of the 19th century: they brought their “folk” instrument with them, and the “musette” tradition, turning their cafes and restaurants into dance-halls with an accordion band. Later, after 1870, it was the turn of the Italians, who crossed the Alps with an instrument of German origin, which they quickly adopted and began to manufacture themselves: the accordion. Then a third stream from Belgium and the North arrived in Paris to work in the factories, and, later still, the wandering gypsy communities of eastern Europe added their guitars to the sound of the accordion.

Edith Piaf is almost universally regarded as France's greatest popular singer. Still revered as an icon decades after her death, "the Sparrow" served as a touchstone for virtually every chansonnier, male or female, who followed her. Her greatest strength wasn't so much her technique, or the purity of her voice, but the raw, passionate power of her singing…