Brigitte Fontaine | Artist
Brigitte Fontaine is a French singer and avant-garde musician born 1939 in Morlaix, France. She incorporates diverse styles including rock, folk, jazz, electronica, spoken word poetry, and world music, to create her own unique sound. She made a series of increasingly strange and eclectic art-pop in the 1970s that gathered a lot of acclaim in France, although she remains obscure to an international audience. The daughter of two teachers, Fontaine developed a taste for writing and drama very early. She spent her childhood in small villages of Finistère, then in Morlaix. At 17 years old, she moved to Paris to become an actress. In 1963, she turned also to singing and appeared in several Parisian theatres, interpreting her own works. On her first album 13 chansons décadentes et fantasmagoriques (1966), she worked with arranger Jean Claude Vannier, who had also done arrangements for Serge Gainsbourg. On subsequent records she got jazzier, and then into more difficult directions of avant-gardism and art song. Her albums were wide-ranging and somewhat erratic, employing African tribal rhythms, discordant progressive jazz, pretty folky melodies, throat-stretching a cappella vocals, spoken poetry, and classical arrangements. In 1969, she began what would be a long collaboration with Kabyle musician Areski Belkacem. Fontaine wrote a series of works in free verse and prose which comprised the show Comme à la radio at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier before being turned into an album of the same name. Recorded with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, this album marks a clean break with traditional French songs, building the first bridges to world music. In the 1990s, Fontaine moved closer to the musical worlds of Björk and Massive Attack by testing new, more electric musical forms and, especially, more electronic forms than before. The release of her album Genre humain, in 1995, met with great critical success. To-date Fontaine has release 19 studio albums, including five collaborations with Areski Belkacem. Outstanding works include Brigitte Fontaine est... ? (1968), Comme à la radio (1970), Je ne connais pas cet homme (1973), Vous et nous (1977), Genre humain (1995) and Kékéland (2001). Also highly recommended are two superb compilation sets, Morceaux de choix (1999), and Plans fixes (2003). Although Brigitte Fontaine has been a major figure in the French underground for many decades, she remains obscure to English speaking audiences. Her uncompromising eccentricity is built on real artistic genius, expressed in such a literate and terrifyingly cerebral way. Fontaine is also the author of 21 publications of prose and poetry.
Artist Website: universalmusic.fr/artiste/5046-brigitte-fontaine/
Featured Albums: Brigitte Fontaine
Related Artists: Areski Belkacem, Jean-Claude Vannier, Art Ensemble of Chicago
Collections: Women of Note, Music Visionaries
