The 84-year-old singer celebrates his 60-year career and performs his last tour through France. He will pass through the Palais des Congrès in Paris on Sunday.
“No question” of retirement for Enrico Macias, “84 and a half years old”, including six decades singing peace and love: “what I love most in the world is to be the singer, the music and the stage!”, he confides to AFP, in the middle of the anniversary tour.
A “last tour” through France started a year ago and which will pass through the Palais des Congrès in Paris on Sunday, after Lyon, Lille, Marseille and soon Nantes and Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy. “I’m happy to still be here, to get up in the morning, to give interviews, concerts … If there’s no more that, I’m finished, screwed”, adds the interpreter of people of the north, Children from all countries et beggar of love“.
“For 60 years, I have been singing peace and fraternity. I am happy and above all grateful to providence which has allowed me to live until I am 84 and a half years old, while continuing the scene”, he says. . “The audience gives me energy. It’s the audience that keeps me alive and singing.”
“In my turn, I want to thank my audience and deliver a message: you have to keep hope all the time, never give up in the face of the trials of life”, enjoins the one who will have popularized Arab-Andalusian music, with more than 150 songs, including hits listed in the heritage of French song.
“Music and success have helped me heal from the traumas and hardships I have known,” says the Jewish child from Constantine, Algeria, torn from his native land in 1961. In the midst of the war of independence, Cheikh Raymond Leyris, his father-in-law who introduced him to music, was assassinated.
“My drug is music”
“I lived all my youth in violence. When I arrived in France, I was an orphan from my native land and I still am, without revenge or hatred. My song Children from all countries summarizes my ideal of peace and fraternity between human beings”, says the one who was appointed ambassador of the United Nations in 1997.
Landed in Paris, Gaston Ghrenassia, born on December 13, 1938, becomes Enrico Macias in the midst of a yé-yé wave. Despite a total shift, his first songs – Paris, you took me in your arms, The girls of my country, Poï Poï Poï – fly. He will celebrate his 30th birthday on the stage of Carnegie Hall in New York, before the Royal Albert Hall in London three years later.
“I never calculated my success or my career. My drug is the music that runs through my veins, in my heart. I want to sing as much as possible, until my last breath. For my ‘last round ‘, my son Jean-Claude had the idea of recreating the tempo of a day, from sunrise to sunset. We start with my first hits in a music-hall atmosphere and end with a total party, to the sound of Arab-Andalusian music”, explains Macias.
A few years ago, the new generation (Carla Bruni, Cali, Corneille, Natasha Saint-Pier…) paid homage to him by performing his greatest titles as a duo. The singer, he remains attentive to new talents: “it’s not the same style as me but it’s always original. Talent is doing something special and new. It is public support that is sacred,” he observes.
On several occasions, Enrico Macias has given up on returning to Algeria in the face of the systematic outcry within part of the political class reproaching him for his support for Israel. “I keep hope, he said. If the destiny that remains to me wants me to return to Algeria, I will not refuse.”
