French singer Catherine Ribeiro has reportedly died at age 82.
Le Monde reported yesterday (August 23) that Ribeiro’s representatives confirmed the news to Agence France-Presse. No cause of death has been revealed, only that she passed away in a retirement home in the French city of Martigues.
Ribeiro leaves behind an illustrious career that involves leading progressive rock group Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, active from 1968 to 1981. The band gained a cult following for their avant-garde theatrics and political focus that breathed transgressive life into their psychedelic folk-inspired sound.
Ribeiro was born in Lyon, France in 1941 to Portuguese parents. Prior to her music career, Ribeiro tried her hand at acting with appearances in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film Les Carabiniers and 1964 Italian western film Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West.
She released her first EP ‘Dieu Me Pardonne’ in 1965, pursuing a path as a yé-yé singer before convening with multi-instrumentalist Patrice Moullet to form Catherine Ribeiro + 2Bis three years later. The group was later renamed Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes.
Ribeiro’s work with Alpes displayed an about-face turn from yé-yé star to daring experimentalist. Ribeiro + Alpes released their final studio album, ‘La Déboussole’, in 1980. Towards the end of the group’s career, Ribeiro returned to her pop star roots for a slate of albums that culminated in 1993’s ‘Fenêtre ardente’.
Since the 2000s, Ribeiro had largely stepped out of the spotlight, aside from sold-out concerts in France, two of which were documented in live album ‘Live Intégral’ with her band Alpes.
What remained the same through her music career was her unyielding conviction towards political issues – her albums with Alpes gave focus on the Vietnam War, Palestine, and the displacement of Chilean refugees in the 1970s. Per Le Parisien, Ribeiro signed a petition against the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Radio France also notes that, in 2017, Ribeiro was stirred by the rise of the #MeToo movement, and shared in a Facebook post accusing an unnamed man in entertainment of rape, recalling an encounter dating back to 1962.
Over time, the work of Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes has gained a cult following, with their albums gaining accessibility in the 2010s via streaming platforms and vinyl reissues. The band had been championed by Kim Gordon, who, in an interview with The Quietus, stated that Ribeiro’s vocal work has been an influence on her. Weyes Blood also once raved about Ribeiro to Pitchfork, praising her “extremely powerful, wild, improvisatory voice.”
Former The Teardrop Explodes frontman and author Julian Cope wrote about Ribeiro’s vocals in a 2007 review of the band’s debut album ‘No. 2’. “Ribeiro’s voice soars, whispers, breaks into screams, cracks open the sky and passionately scales the heights of her Alpine-ranged emotions that peaked dramatically as if to darken the very summit of Mount Blanc itself,” he writes on his website column The Book of Seth.
“Her whole heart is in every modulation of every consonant while her commitment to her words that nested inside the arrangements of husband Patrice Moullet suggested a personal and artistic relationship that was complementary in every way.”