It was elegant, striking, but never flashy, meaningful and original. “They made the guitar sing in a very different, romantic, sensual way. “I heard Jansch and Renbourn when I was about 14,” he said.
It was slow going at first, but then he discovered English guitarists Davey Graham, Bert Jansch and John Renbourn. Growing up in Paris, Bensusan started playing piano and studying classical music at age 7 and within a few years began teaching himself to play the guitar. What sets Bensusan’s 40-year career apart is his refusal to allow the business of music to interfere with the ideals that originally informed and inspired it.
Shaped by that brief, shining moment in the late 1960s when musicians privileged strong values, tolerance, and music over money and fame, Bensusan, 54, is still the idealistic 14-year-old who fashioned from Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline a model for his own idiosyncratic artistic path.ĭylan has, of course, served as a muse for thousands of singer-songwriters. There’s a good reason that Pierre Bensusan, the French–Algerian guitarist scheduled to play at Barking Legs Theatre on Thursday, May 17, remains in relative obscurity despite his reputation among guitar aficionados as one of the world’s top players.
