She defined herself as “free and libertarian, without ever accepting one clan rather than another” in the columns of InrockuptiblesCatherine Ribeiro, a key figure in experimental music of the 1970s and a human freedom activist, died at the age of 82 in Martigues (Bouches-du-Rhône).
Appeared in the cinema in The Carabinieri by Jean-Luc Godard, alongside Patrice Moullet, she quickly moved towards music. With Moullet, she founded the group Alpes which would produce 9 albums. She then established herself as the heir to Colette Magny and Léo Ferré. And her committed songs earned her the nickname “the red pasionaria” or “the high priestess of French song”.
In April 1966, she appeared on the cover of “Salut les copains”, in the famous “photo of the century”, with all the rising stars of the song. But this descendant of a Portuguese worker, unruly and tormented, refused this preordained destiny: “I don’t want to turn into a cover girl. The everyday song no longer interests me.”
She then opted for the avant-garde and moved towards sounds halfway between psychedelia and progressive rock, between minimalist music and jazz. Her songs bear witness to her multiple commitments: for Palestine, for Chilean refugees, against the war in Vietnam, for ecology, against President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing…
Deemed too rebellious and a million miles from commercial standards, she was boycotted by the media. “Catherine’s rebellious beauty and her anger deep in her soul are a nuisance to show business,” said Léo Ferré.
This does not prevent her from finding her audience, often activists like her. She performs at the Fête de l’Humanité where she sings in front of 120,000 people.
She had Mitterand as a fan
In 1982, she filled Bobino for three weeks. One evening, with a famous spectator who slipped in incognito: the brand new socialist president François Mitterrand.
Although she proudly proclaims her commitments, Catherine Ribeiro finds it hard to be reduced to that. “I’m tired of being made to wear this single red label,” she said in 1980. “It’s not me who marginalized myself, I was marginalized! I will reach a wider audience if radio and television channels finally decide to consider me as a singer in my own right.”
But we won’t see her on stage much anymore. Having retreated to the Ardennes in the 1980s, she married the socialist mayor of Sedan, Claude Démoulin. She suffered a stroke in 2020 and had to be hospitalized in a German clinic.
In recent decades, she rarely broke her silence, performing all the same at the Bataclan and the Francofolies. With always the same thirst for commitment. “Until my last breath, I will fight for freedoms.”