Sylvie
Vartan (born 15 August 1944) is a French singer. She is known as one of the
most productive and tough-sounding yé-yé artists. Her performances often
featured elaborate show-dance choreography, and she made many appearances on
French and Italian TV. Yearly shows with then-husband Johnny Hallyday attracted
full houses at the Olympia and the Palais des congrès de Paris throughout the
1960s and mid-1970s. In 2004, after a break in performances, she began
recording and giving concerts of jazz ballads in francophone countries.
Vartan was
born in Iskretz, Sofia Province, Bulgaria. Her father, Georges Vartan, was born
in France to an Armenian father and a Bulgarian mother. He worked as an attaché
at the French embassy in Sofia. Her mother, Ilona (née Mayer), was Hungarian.
The original family name was Vartanian, but her parents shortened it to Vartan
after they fled to France. In September 1944, when the Soviet Army occupied
Bulgaria, the Vartanian family house was nationalised and they moved to Sofia.
In 1952, Dako Dakovski, a film director and her fathers' friend offered Sylvie
a role of a schoolgirl in the movie Pod igoto. The film was about Bulgarian
rebels against the Turkish occupation. Being a part of the film had a lasting
impression on her and made her dream of becoming an entertainer.
The
privations of the postwar Bulgaria made the family emigrate to Paris in
December 1952. At first they stayed in the Lion d'Argent hotel near Les Halles,
where Georges found a job. The family stayed in a single room at the Angleterre
Hotel for the following four years. Young Sylvie had to work hard to keep up at
school and to assimilate with her schoolmates. She learned French in two years.
In 1960 her family moved to an apartment in Michel Bizot Avenue. Thanks to the
example of her music producer brother Eddie, music became teenage Sylvie's main
interest. Her most influential genres were jazz and, out of spite toward her
strict high school, rock 'n' roll. Her favourites included Brenda Lee, Bill Haley
and Elvis Presley.
