Belgian poet and singer Julos Beaucarne, who for half a century denounced all injustices in committed texts, died this weekend in Belgium at the age of 85, which sparked many reactions throughout the world. French-speaking space.
“A rebel with a broad heart”, the newspaper headlined on Monday. La Libre Belgique, while The evening celebrated this “citizen of the Universe” having “carried high the colors of tolerance, justice and love”.
In Quebec, this humanist artist with 49 albums and the eternal rainbow sweater was considered “the Walloon Vigneault”. At To have to, he confided, in 2012, to have immediately been seduced by Quebec, which he first knew with two ks and a grave accent in the crazy hours of Raôul Duguay. “A happiness, from the first time. Meeting people who spoke French on the other side of the world, it was paradise… ”Here, like at home, he immediately felt the same love of the language. “Words have this ability to put me in incredible joy. […] This French language which unites us is of a fabulous richness. “
In France, the country of his beginnings, he was so successful that he was a regular at summer festivals for a long time. On Twitter, the Francofolies festival in La Rochelle paid tribute to him on Sunday by recalling that he had performed there for the first time at the age of 75, in 2011, “sold out”. “He leaves us his words, his poetry and this precious injunction: ‘I think with all my strength that you have to love each other wrongly and through” ”, added the direction of the festival.
“Julos Beaucarne was indisputably the most inspiring Walloon songwriter”, reacted for his part the former Belgian Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, president of the Walloon region.
Born in June 1936 in Brussels, raised in the Walloon countryside in Ecaussines (South), Beaucarne has always remained faithful to his origins. He sometimes sang in Walloon dialect.
In his texts, he denounces pell-mell police violence, the plundering of the wealth of the Third World, Western imperialisms with the assassination of the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba or that of the Chilean singer Victor Jara (Letter to Kissinger, 1977).
Because that was also Julos Beaucarne: horror and beauty in the balance. “My records, my shows are the mirrors of life,” he illustrated, in another interview with To have to, this time in 2007. With great joys, great sorrows. Magnificent things, terrible things. There is no denying this variety. The trick is not to be overwhelmed by the horror. We have to bounce back. And if you want to bounce back, there is nothing to do, you have to fall vertiginously, that you pick up and that you start again. “
In 1974, his sixth album Fruit Trees Liberation Front became a gold record. The title marks his opposition to European measures that he considers harmful for the environment.
My records, my shows are the mirrors of life
Three years before the release of his first 45, it was in 1961 that his career as a singer began, in Provence. “To pay for the repair of his car” he performed that summer with his guitar in village squares, the Belga press agency recalled.
He often returned to Provence and owned a house in the Vaucluse.
In 2012, the singer had received in France the honors of the Charles Cros Academy with a prize for the whole of his career.
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