On October 5th at Aznavour’s memorial service in Paris, a French soldier sang a song in Armenian that made everyone emotional. The song was performed by the French army orchestra. What was most interesting, though, was the song’s author.
The original version of the song had spread across social media, performed by the French Bratsch group. The song was called “Armenian Waltz.”
There is an Armenian musician in the group named Don Gharibyan. He is a guitarist and singer, as well as the author of the “Armenian Waltz.” He is the one singing the original version of the song.
We also were able to find the connection between Aznavour and Bratsch. The band released an album in 2007 titled “A Full World,” in which they covered Aznavour’s song “A Drop of Water.”
The members of the band said in the video that Aznavour was like a father to them. And Aznavour said that he likes to make mixes of songs. The band offered to sing an Armenian-French song, and despite it being difficult for him to sing in Armenian since his native language was French, the offer was very tempting and thus, he agreed to it.
The band was formed in the 1980’s, and it had performed in Armenia twice: in Yerevan, Ijevan, and Vanadzor in 2006, and in Yerevan in 2011. Aznavour had met the band when they were recording the “Full World” album, which was in honor of the band’s 25th anniversary. They had asked Aznavour to record a song with them, which he had agreed to. But, they had not yet clarified why the song played at Aznavour’s memorial service.
Melanya Barseghyan
