Barbara

Monique Andrée Serf (9 June 1930 – 24 November 1997), known as Barbara, was a French singer. She took her stage name from her grandmother, Varvara Brodsky, a native of Odessa, Russian Empire (current-day Ukraine). Barbara became a famous cabaretière in the late 1950s in Paris, known as La Chanteuse de minuit ('the midnight singer'), before she started composing her own tracks, which brought her to fame. Her most famous songs include "Dis, quand reviendras-tu?" (1962), "Ma plus belle histoire d'amour" (1966) and "L'Aigle noir" (1970), the latter of which sold over 1 million copies in just twelve hours. She was buried at the Cimetière parisien de Bagneux, adjacent to the Paris Métro station named in her honour. The station Barbara opened 13 January 2022, on a southern extension of Line 4.

Born on Rue Brochant in Paris to a Jewish family, Barbara lived in northwestern Paris as a child. She then lived in Roanne from 1938 and Tarbes from 1941. Barbara was 13 years old when she had to go into hiding during the German occupation of France in World War II. Her family was hidden by the family of conductor Jean-Paul Penin from 1943 to 1945, first in Préaux and then in Saint-Marcellin.

After the war ended, Barbara's family came back to Paris in 1946, on Rue Vitruve in the 20th arrondissement. Her childhood dream was to become a pianist, but a problem with her hand made such a career impossible. To console her, her parents agreed to pay for singing lessons. A neighbourhood music professor, who heard her sing, took an interest in helping her develop her talents. She was given vocal lessons and taught to minimally play the piano; eventually she enrolled at the École Supérieure de Musique in 1947. Money was a problem and she gave up her musical studies in 1948. She was first recruited at the Théâtre Mogador, before a stint in Belgium, where she performed under the stage name Barbara Brodi. Late 1951, she returned to Paris to audition at La Fontaine des Quatre Saisons, a popular cabaret in the 7th arrondissement. However, as she failed to become a permanent cast member, she returned to Brussels. In 1955, she returned to Paris; with more luck, she began to sing at various cabarets throughout the capital, with a growing audience.

She was deeply scarred by the war and her family's plight. The feelings of emptiness experienced during childhood showed in her songs, particularly "Mon Enfance". She said in her uncompleted autobiography, Il était un piano noir (assembled from notes found after her death), that her father sexually abused her when she was 10 and she hated him for that. He later abandoned the family.

A tall person, Barbara dressed in black as she sang melancholy songs of lost love. From 1950 to 1951, after her father's desertion of her family, she lived in Brussels, where she became part of an active artistic community, before visiting Charleroi, where she befriended many artists. Her painter and writer friends took over an old house, converting it into workshops and a concert hall with a piano where she performed the songs of Édith Piaf, Juliette Gréco and Germaine Montero. However, her career evolved slowly and she struggled constantly to eke out a living. ...

Source: Article "Barbara (singer)" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Organised, caring and driven by duty the ESFJ personality type loves to contribute and remain constantly valued, productive, busy and liked. The ESFJ has an action-orientation that they will channel into people, helping and finding practical solutions to people issues and they'll work hard at making this happen as they are naturally oriented to the needs of those around them. Whilst the ESFJ wants everyone to feel valued, they will also want to feel part of the group themselves - they need to feel included. If someone is hurting, the ESFJ will be the first to respond.

The ESFJ character shares the same action-orientation of the ESTJ but with a people-based focus, they channel their drive, energy and practical nature into helping people. Driven by a sense of duty they are the cooperative, helpful, sympathetic and personable pragmatists, disliking anything ethereal or woolly as they prefer practical solutions to people issues, and they'll work hard at making this happen. Unlike the ESFP the ESFJ will want a plan and closure, they do not like loose ends or anything they perceive as sloppy or messy. As with most 'S's, they prefer the concrete, inhabiting a world of facts and the ‘here and now.’ Asking an ESFJ to sit and think things through or reflect before ‘doing’ is not easy as their natural propensity is for action; thinking is seen as a passive and useless activity. This means they will jump immediately into ‘sorting it all out,’ when at times if they’d taken a little longer to think they may have come up with a better solution. Organised, caring and driven by the known, routine comes naturally to the ESFJ who fear change as it is drags them out of the place where they feel they are strong and where they can contribute.

Conscientious and caring, the ESFJ will be good at follow-through and making sure the routine is taken care of, but may struggle with anything which appears complex, or which is perceived as not clearly getting the intended result or which causes conflict or disharmony. They value family links, friendships and tend to be slightly sentimental in their approach. Under pressure an ESFJ may become like the 'controlling parent,' smothering others in their attempt to provide support and believing that their way is best, becoming sensitive to any perceived criticism. Their values of ‘doing good’ and working hard to make sure things and people are taken care of are at the core of the ESFJ although they may at times try to instil these parental-style values in others, often using parental type words like "should," "ought" and "must." These are all said with a good heart and desire to help but the subjective nature of the ESFJ means that they may almost impose what they think is best in their desire for immediate practical help.

Being ‘F’s ESFJs may have trouble making more logical and factual decisions so driven are they by their values and wishing to maintain harmony, so their decisions will be primarily driven by the needs of those around them especially those close to them whom they feel a duty to ‘care for.’ Everything for the ESFJ becomes personalised and will be filtered through a more subjective ‘how do I feel about this person’ lens, rather than being objective and logical as a logical approach for the ESFJ is equated with being cold and harsh thus negating being helpful which is at the core of the ESFJ being. After a day interviewing I asked my ESFJ secretary to tell the successful candidate he’d got the job. “Was he the nicest?” she asked, “Did you like him best?" No issue of ‘suitability’ even crossed her mind! They tend also to have more of a ‘gate-post,’ binary mentality, seeing things in very black and white, ‘good or bad,’ ‘right or wrong,’ ‘nice or horrible.’ Being driven by feelings can also mean that the ESFJ gets hurt easily by any perceived or real criticism as everything is taken so personally, so factually and they can dwell on such criticism. Anything which appears complex or which has many shades of grey will be dismissed as it doesn’t conform to the ‘natural laws’ of ‘ESFJ common sense.’ They’ll want to jump in and help, which is why they were, according to their own values, ‘put on this earth.’