At 73, Laurent Voulzy is an icon of French song. With more than fifty years of career during which he multiplied the collaborations with his friend Alain Souchon, the interpreter of The sun gives marked several generations. Thomas Sotto was therefore interested in the artist and invited him to his show Off road on France Inter this Sunday, June 19. The opportunity for the ex-husband of Mirella Lepetit to discuss his career, his family, his childhood and the Creole origins which gave him a bit of a hard time.
His Guadeloupean parents, Laurent Voulzy was born in Paris, after his mother wanted to leave the island to try his luck in the world of music and dance. Far from the fine sandy beaches and coconut trees that Guadeloupe can offer, the singer grew up in the Parisian suburbs, in Nogent-sur-Marne. A childhood he keeps”great memories“despite the racism he suffered:”I was very shy even though I could be a bit of a bandleader but I was very shy. A little complexed by my color, I was sensitive to that. I had people throwing jokes at me.”
These people were none other than his neighbors at the time: “It was not daily. He was from time to time, stares of people. A neighbor in my building, I was ten years old, who said to me: ‘Here, there are the Negroes who take down the garbage cans.'” If that did not prevent him from building up, Laurent Voulzy did not hide that these remarks had unconsciously had repercussions on his everyday life: “All of this marked me. I didn’t dare at all, even as a teenager, to sit in the metro so that people wouldn’t say ‘he’s not white, he takes the place of white people.‘”
Laurent Voulzy preferred to ignore these behaviors. The budding artist that he was also found comfort in music: “I was still a Guitar Hero at school. From the moment I learned the guitar, I played in a band.“Everyone knows what happened next: from silver or platinum discs to multiple awards, Laurent Voulzy has blazed his trail thanks, in large part, to the love of his fans, as red as a Pomegranate heart.