Pierre Barouh

With his first earnings he bought the mill, la Morvient, by the river in Le Boupère in the Vendée where he had spent part of his childhood. There he established a recording studio and welcomed other artists, using it to advance the talent of others and creating his own label Saravah in 1965. With the label he wished to mix musicians and styles, to multiply musical encounters. He worked, notably, with Pierre Akendengué, Areski Belkacem, Brigitte Fontaine, Nana Vasconcelos, Gérard Ansaloni, Jacques Higelin, Alfred Panou, Maurane, David McNeil, Elis Regina.

Soon after the label's creation, Barouh realised that he was not a manager and so entrusted management to a teenage friend he had known when he was 15 playing volleyball. However, in 1972, he discovered that this friend had stolen 1,500,000 francs by means which prevented Barouh from being able to get any of it back, as he "had given him everything: signatures, etc".

As an actor, he played the role of the gypsy leader in the film D'ou viens-tu Johnny? and appeared in Lelouch's Une fille et des fusils. As writer/performer he had success with La Plage – immortalised by Marie Laforêt and the guitarist Claude Ciari -, Tes dix-huit ans and Monsieur de Furstenberg. He shot a documentary on the beginnings of bossa nova with his longtime friend Baden Powell de Aquino.

In 1966 he participated in the enormous success of the film A Man and a Woman which won the Palme d'Or at the 1966 Festival de Cannes. He married the actress Anouk Aimée the same year; they divorced three years later.

Barouh died in the Hôpital Cochin in Paris from an infarction on 28 December 2016, at the age of 82. He was buried a week later at Montmartre Cemetery.

Source: Article "Pierre Barouh" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.