At the age of 17, after a summer holiday in
Paris, Moustaki obtained his father's permission to move there, working as a door-to-door salesman of poetry books. He began playing the piano and singing in nightclubs in Paris, where he met some of the era's best-known performers. His career took off after the young singer-songwriter
Georges Brassens took Moustaki under his wing. Brassens introduced him to artists and intellectuals who spent much of their time around
Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Out of gratitude, Moustaki adopted the first name of the only musician he called "master". Moustaki was introduced to
Édith Piaf in the late 1950s by a friend whose praise of the young songwriter was so flattering that Piaf, then at the peak of her fame, requested somewhat sarcastically to hear him sing his best works. "I picked up a guitar and I was lamentable. But something must have touched her. She asked me to go and see her perform that same evening at the
Olympia music hall and to show her later the songs I had just massacred." After a decade of composing songs for various famous singers, Moustaki launched a successful career as a performer himself, singing in French, Italian, English, Greek, Portuguese, Arabic and Spanish. Moustaki's songwriting career peaked in the 1960s and 1970s with songs like "Sarah", performed by
Serge Reggiani, and "La Longue Dame brune", written for the singer
Barbara (Monique Serf). In 1969 Moustaki composed the song "
Le Métèque" — 'métèque' is a pejorative word for a shifty-looking immigrant of Mediterranean origin – in which he described himself as a "wandering Jew" and a "Greek shepherd". Serge Reggiani rejected it and the record companies refused to produce it. Moustaki then sang it himself, on a 45 rpm disc, and it became a huge hit in France, spending six non-consecutive weeks at number one in the charts. "A small, subliminal settling of scores became the hymn of anti-racism and the right to be different, the cry of revolt of all minorities," Moustaki said of the song. Moustaki's philosophy was reflected in his 1973 song "Déclaration": "I declare a permanent state of happiness and the right of everyone to every privilege. I say that suffering is a sacrilege when there are roses and white bread for everyone." Moustaki became a French citizen in 1985. In 2008, after a 50-year career during which he performed on every continent, Moustaki recorded his last album, Solitaire. On it, he recorded two songs with
China Forbes. In 2009, in a packed concert hall in
Barcelona, he told the stunned audience that he was giving his last public performance as he would no longer be capable of singing because of an irreversible bronchial illness. ==Death, tributes and funeral==