“La Javanaise” is a French chanson written and composed by Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote both the words and the music. He wrote it for Juliette Gréco, and both Gainsbourg and Gréco recorded it in 1963. Gainsbourg’s version was made in January 1963 at Studio Fontana in London, arranged and conducted by Harry Robinson, and released as a Philips 45 EP in March 1963 with “Vilaine fille, mauvais garçon” on the flip side. Gréco recorded her version on 4 April 1963 in Paris, arranged by Jean-Michel Defaye, and released it as a Philips 45 in May 1963. She had debuted it in March 1963 on her cabaret tour “La Tête de l’art”. The title puns on the Parisian java dance and on javanais, a slang argot. The lyrics use unaltered French words with an “av” sequence inserted to suggest the argot. The song is one of the great successes of both careers and of French chanson. It appears in films including Bruno Podalydès’s Dieu seul me voit (1998) and Ron Howard’s The Da Vinci Code (2006). It has been covered widely, notably by Claude Nougaro, Sacha Distel, Jane Birkin, Julien Clerc, Alain Souchon, Régine, Madeleine Peyroux and Iggy Pop.
