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              Singer, Piaf Songwriter Georges Moustaki Dies at 79

   by Reuters

   French singer and songwriter Georges Moustaki, beloved in France for
   his songs celebrating liberty and collaborations with Edith Piaf, died
   on Thursday after a long illness. He was 79.

   The Greek-born singer grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, and arrived in
   Paris in 1951, where he began to play guitar at nightclubs and met some
   of the period's best-known singers.

   He was introduced to Edith Piaf in the late 1950s and started to write
   songs for the Parisian star, the most famous of which was "Milord"
   about a lower-class girl who falls in love with an upper-class British
   traveler.

   Developing a reputation as a singer in his own right in the mid-1960s,
   the hirsute and heavily bearded Moustaki achieved fame with songs
   including the immigrant ballad "Le Meteque" and "Ma Liberte," a hymn to
   the 1960s free-living spirit.

   Moustaki, a life-long advocate of left-wing causes, ended his singing
   career in 2009, later telling newspaper La Croix that he was suffering
   from an irreversible bronchial illness that made it impossible to carry
   on.

   French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti hailed an "artist with
   convictions who conveyed humanist values... and a great poet," and
   Twitter was flooded with tributes to a singer who many said had defined
   their childhoods.
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References

   1. http://www.voanews.com/content/edith-pilaf-songwriter-singer-georges-moustaki-dies/1666989.html