Le Meteque

"Le Meteque" was released in 1969 as a single on Polydor (66 675 per French Wikipedia, 59 304 per English), 2:30, with "Voyage" on the B-side, and appeared on the album of the same year, which English Wikipedia lists under the title Georges Moustaki with Jacques Bedos and Henri Belolo as producers. Alain Goraguer is credited as arranger and conductor on the Italian single, and probably on the original, which is unconfirmed. Moustaki wrote it alone. Serge Reggiani turned it down and record companies declined it, so he recorded it himself on a 45; the French article reports over 600,000 copies, and he is said to have had six non-consecutive weeks at number one in France, a claim English Wikipedia flags as uncited.

"Meteque" is a pejorative word for a Mediterranean immigrant, which he reclaimed; RTBF reads the song as a miniature autobiography and a reversal of an insult's meaning. A search summary attributes to him the remark that it became the hymn of anti-racism and the right to be different, but the original interview was not found. It reached number one in France and in Italy, where "Lo straniero" (words by Bruno Lauzi) was the best-selling record of 1969, number four in Argentina, two in Wallonia, 29 in Spain and 73 in Switzerland, and won the Gondola d'oro at the Venice Mostra internazionale di musica leggera, in 1969 or 1970.

Covers include Pia Colombo, who sang it live before the studio release, Caravelli, Manu Dibango, Georges Jouvin (1969), Bobby Solo (1970), George Dalaras in Greek (1971), Melina Mercouri (1972), Yossi Banai in Hebrew (1972), De Strangers in Dutch (1978), Alpha Blondy (2013) and Renaud (2022). JoyeStarr sampled it in 2006 in a track also called "Meteque". Which version our upload is has not been established.