Catherine Ringer died at 68 from cancer on 14 September. Since then, artists, politicians and cultural figures have paid tribute to the voice and freedom of the music icon.
Some voices you recognise in a split second. Catherine Ringer’s was one of them. A voice that could laugh, rasp, scream, sing of love, desire or madness. A voice that never wanted to be put in a box.
The announcement of her death has triggered a wave of emotional reactions. Among them, French President Emmanuel Macron, who paid tribute to a personality he called “unclassifiable, irreverent, profoundly French”.
On X, the president accompanied his message with a clip from 2024 in which the artist sang ‘La Marseillaise’ during a ceremony marking the enshrining of the right to abortion in the Constitution.
The Élysée also paid solemn tribute on Wednesday in an official statement. The text traces the journey of this “all-round artist”, born in 1957 in Suresnes and immersed from childhood in an artistic family environment. After her first steps on stage at the Café de la Gare and then at the Palace, as well as “darker, more painful experiences” from which she managed to break free, 1979 marked a major turning point when she met Fred Chichin.
Together, they created Les Rita Mitsouko, a duo with an art “free and impossible to categorise”, which broke through to the general public in 1984 with the resounding success of the song ‘Marcia Baïla’.
Following the death of her partner in 2007, Catherine Ringer carried on her career “with deeply moving dignity”, alternating solo projects with returns to the stage to revive the band’s cult tracks. Described variously as “a diva, a popular singer and an avant-gardist”, she leaves, according to the presidency, “a singular, flamboyant artistic legacy” that has left a lasting mark on musical life in France.
Leave a comment