Django's daughter ? song title

TonyRees

Sandra also seems to have had some involvement with this LP release, https://www.discogs.com/release/7618605-Elisabeth-Wiener-Manitas-De-Plata-Kourako-Or-La-Guitare-Aux-Cordes-DOr, but the nature of the same is not obvious to me "Conte de Sandra Jayat" on front cover...)

stuology

Just going by what it says on discogs, it looks like the LP is a children’s story written by Jayat, read by Weiner with guitar accompaniment.

TonyRees

Thanks Stu! According to my own page on Sandra (now published to Wikipedia), "Kourako" was a children's story that she published in 1972. In this story, a child goes in search of a fabled guitarist who lives in harmony with nature (whoever could that be)... from the LP title his guitar also has strings of gold.

Reading further it seems that the child discovers that his hero no longer exists but learns that he has it within himself to produce beautiful music on his own strings of gold... for the full story see here: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=inu.30000105045664&view=1up&seq=126

TonyRees

Dear all, it appears from French Wikipedia that Sandra Jayat (birth name Lucienne Jayat according to several sources) died this February, see https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandra_Jayat (Google will translate this for you upon request...)

I plan to update the English Wikipedia article with this information, however her "death notice" - available at https://www.deces-en-france.fr/resultats/28373655-jayat-lucienne - raises a quandary. It puts her age at death as 94, based on a stated birth date of 13 May 1930. However the latter is around 8-10 years too early for other parts of her "story" to make sense - such as running away from an arranged marriage at 15 to look for Django in Paris where she arrived in 1955, to find the he had been dead for 2 years. Also the previously cited account by Begoña Barrera: ‘The Long Road in Search of a Tzigane Language: Sandra Jayat’ states that she was born “somewhere between two countries” (i.e. Italy and France) "between 1938 and 1939", while the death notice gives her place of birth as "Moulins - 03 - Allier"; from Wikipedia: "Moulins; is a commune in central France, capital of the Allier department".

Now the 1930 date and Moulins place are also found elsewhere on the web, apparently based on information in "Who's Who in France" (which is membership only to read, so I have not seen the relevant entry).

Also possibly relevant is the cover photo from this 1967 French EP, reproduced at https://amp.cdandlp.com/en/sandra-jayat/il-ne-faut-pas/7inch-ep/r114395752/ - if she was born around 1938-39, she would be maybe 28 or 29; born in 1930, she would be 37... which looks the more likely??

So to me this presents a few different options, one or more of which should then make it to the Wikipedia article...

(1) the "death notice" birth year (1930) date is correct for her, meaning that on her arrival in Paris in 1955 she would have been 25 not 15, also 37 not 28 or so in the photograph published in 1967

(2) the "death notice" birth year (and possibly place of birth) is misquoted for some reason

(3) 2 different persons are confused on the "death notice", the Lucienne Jayat born in 1930 being a different person from Lucienne/Sandra just now deceased, i.e. they have been assigned to the same person in error...

Thoughts, anyone?

Regards - Tony Rees

BillDaCostaWilliams

Tony, thanks for your work curating this info. in English.

In the LP cover photo, 28 looks more likely to me.

TonyRees

Bill, that is my conclusion also, although I did not wish to be the first to say so.

It is of course entirely possible that, if the Begoña Barrera account of her birth (based admittedly on her own story) is true (born “somewhere between two countries” (i.e. Italy and France) "between 1938 and 1939") and as a member of a nomadic Romany clan, she might have no official birth certificate, and when compiling her entry for the French "Who's Who", the compiler was only able to locate a certificate for a different Lucienne Jayat (different year and place) and relied on that instead. Just supposition at this stage of course; ideally we need someone with better access to French records (or a relative / investigative journalist) to take up the case... Or, 1930 is simply a typo for 1939, compare the entry in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, 2006 edition cited below.**

In the meantime there are other contemporary photos of the younger Sandra that might provide evidence one way or the other. Also possibly worth noting is that she apparently developed a close friendship with Babik, b. 1944, who would have been close(-ish) in age if she was born 1938/39/40, but less so if she was born in 1930...

Sandra in 1968 here: https://www.discogs.com/release/8844600-Sandra-Jayat-Le-Malentendu-Millenaire - age 29 if born c.1939, 38 if born 1930

Sandra in 1972 here (video): https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/video/i12282118/rencontre-avec-sandra-jayat-la-fille-de-django-reinhardt - age 33 if born c.1939, 42 if born 1930

This article https://idus.us.es/server/api/core/bitstreams/09da8907-c81f-4c87-8174-0e3b40c8ab68/content includes a photograph of Sandra and Naguine on p. 56, dated "early 60s" (let us suggest 1962 as a sample point in time), in which case Sandra would have been either 23 (if born 1939) or 32 (if born 1930). She certainly looks more like 23 to me. The source of the photo appears to be here: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=904199733039664&set=pcb.904201653039472

Sandra's birth year given as 1940 here: https://www.lepoint.fr/culture/sandra-jayat-l-egerie-des-roms-09-09-2010-1234635_3.php#11

** Note: Sandra's birth date given as 13 May 1939 in Moulins, in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, 2006 edition, copy available here: https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofarti0007bene/page/776/mode/2up?q=%22sandra+jayat%22

Additional comments very welcome!