The astonishing artistic hiatus of Alex Coniam, former singer of La Bande à Basile

“I was 21, and I was very shy, and it was very difficult,” singer Alex Coniam recalls, recalling her first steps as a street artist, a guitar slung over her shoulder, in 1960s Paris, swaying on stage in embroidered costumes and bell-bottom trousers. However, a few years later, the young woman achieved breakthrough popular success, in the wake of La Bande à Basile and its cult hit “The Caterpillar That Begins Again.”

Michel Berger and La Bande à Basil

Born in 1944 in Morocco and based in Meslin (Lampal Armour) (22) since 2000, Alex recounts “a very joyful and essential childhood, discovering very different countries and ways of life, with my English mother and father, a diplomat from Rostrinen (22).” Bathed in a cultural melting pot, according to her father’s mandates, from Liberia to the Congo, via New Orleans, the girl embarked on theater studies, enrolling at the 100% female American university Mount Holyoke, in Massachusetts. “I returned from the United States to Paris, with my folk guitar, and I was playing in the streets and playing in small clubs. In 1966, I met Michel Berger, who asked me to sing his songs on a 45 rpm record. I still need to get a copy! In his office I met Raymond Guénot, creator of La Bande à Basile, in the early 1970s, and author of the successful La Chenille, smiling artist who joins the cheerful team and marries its leader, whom she married. Son Yan in 1972.

Drucker, Olympia, and Giscard

“From the beginning, La Chenille was a huge success, and was truly impressive. After our appearance on Drucker’s show, in December 1977, we immediately performed Olympia, every day for two weeks, and followed that up with an international tour for three months,” Alex recalls. Increasingly, La Caterpillar hangs a thousands-legged procession of admirers around its waist “We have received at the Elysée President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing! » But the pigtailed diva from The Caterpillar is not a moth drawn to earthly light. “The world of the entertainment industry is very difficult and not always honest,” complains the person whose passion has failed to flourish in this microcosm of light and shadow.

From the beginning, Caterpillar has been a huge, and truly impressive, success. After our appearance on Drucker’s show, in December 1977, we immediately performed “L’Olympia”, every day for two weeks, and followed this with an international tour for three months.

Incident and voice change

“After a concert, in 1979, I had a very serious car accident with my very young son. We are getting by, but I am taking three months off work, and I am going to England. In a bookshop in London, I found a collection of traditional songs and poems, in honor of For the women of the Hebridean Islands, located in Scotland, in the north-west. The texts touched me and the passion never left me. “I finally found my voice and my way,” recalls the nymph of the French variety, who began her transformation at the beginning of the 1980s, leaving the very profitable cocoon of La Bande à Basile. A major artistic gap prompted by an encounter with Flora MacNeil, a Scottish Gaelic singing star, at the Lorient Inter-Celtic Festival “I didn’t know traditional oral music and singing. Flora invited me to come and discover this whole culture with the people who perpetuated it on site. I took my bag and went there, wandering around, taking the boat to Saint-Malo. A radical change of face, moving towards intimate and everyday song, away from Parisian glamor.

“From walk to walk”

“I learned the work-songs of wool-treading and tweed-making, sung by the women in unison, but also the dance-songs and the lamentations and the love-songs… In twenty years I went twelve times to the islands of Skye, Barra, South Uist, North Uist and Lewis. Adventurous again in 2024 in pilgrimage style, until May 21. “I will present my book De ballades en ballades, which I will self-publish in 2023 and accompanied by a CD recorded with percussionist Dominique Mollard. With this book illustrated with pictures, I pay tribute to all those people who have given me their songs , many of whom died. “It’s a kind of anti-gift,” concludes the singer, who has chosen to escape from the golden cocoon of The Caterpillar, to better spin on her wings, and flutter with the flowers of song.