ABSTRACT
The summer of 1993 seemed an appropriate moment to attempt an assessment of the career of Leo Ferre, singer-songwriter, anarchist, poet and musician, whose controversial public image had left its mark on several generations of French people of all categories. His evolution seems to fall into five main periods, each with its characteristic nuances of style and public image. In this chapter, the authors propose to look at each of these periods in terms of Ferre's distinctive contribution to the development of the chanson genre. From the point of view of the development of Ferre as an artist, and of chanson as a form of expression, the period is extraordinarily rich. Finally it has challenged the boundaries that separate the artistic genres, and the hierarchy which insists on the separation between 'high' culture, 'popular' culture and the mass media.
