[4] 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.

[6] 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".

[2] In 1971 Moustaki adapted the Ennio Morricone/Joan Baez song "Here's to You" under the new title "Marche de Sacco et Vanzetti" for his album "Il y avait un jardin" ("There was a garden").

In 1972 Moustaki popularized the translation of two songs by Mikis Theodorakis, "l'Homme au cœur blessé" and "Nous sommes deux", the former known in transliterated Greek as "Stou pikramenou tin avli", the latter being a French version of Imaste dio.

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.

[12] French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti hailed Moustaki as an "artist with convictions who conveyed humanist values ... and a great poet".

[13] Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë remembered Moustaki as "a citizen of the world who was in love with liberty, a true rebel until his last days", who had given France "unforgettable compositions and lyrics".

It was attended by his widow Annick Cozannec and their daughter Pia, the French Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti and numerous personalities from the entertainment world – Guy Bedos, Véronique Genest, Maxime Le Forestier, Jacques Higelin, Brigitte Fontaine, Arthur H, Valérie Mairesse, Hervé Vilard, Irène Jacob, François Corbier, Cali, Sapho, Enrico Macias, François Morel, Costa Gavras.

Moustaki was buried according to Jewish rites in a family vault at the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris a few meters from the grave of his former amour Édith Piaf.