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At the head of the folk and progressive rock group Alpes, committed singer Catherine Ribeiro embodied the spirit of the post-May 68 era. Born on September 22, 1941 into a family of Portuguese émigrés living in Lyon, she grew up in the suburbs. When she arrived in Paris, she was noticed at a casting and chosen by director Jean-Luc Godard to star in the film Les Carabiniers (1963), which was followed by several other roles. At the same time, she turned to song, recording her first tracks on four EPs released between 1965 and 1967, which earned her a place in Jean-Marie Périer's famous 1966 photo of the yé-yé stars in Salut les copains magazine. In 1968, her meeting with musician and inventor Patrice Moullet after a suicide attempt led to the creation of a group, which signed with the Festival label and recorded a single album, Catherine Ribeiro + 2 Bis, released in 1969. Renamed Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes, it radicalized its textual and musical discourse on the albums N° 2 (1970), Âme Debout (1971) and Paix (1972), which went on to become classics of the post-Mai-68 libertarian era among insiders around the world. A regular fixture at festivals, Catherine Ribeiro and her group gave hundreds of concerts, before disbanding after the release of the album La Déboussole in 1980. The singer's solo career, which had already begun a few years earlier, oscillated between tributes and personal collections. In addition to the albums Le Blues de Piaf (1977), which won a Grand Prix from the Académie Charles-Cros, and Jacqueries (1978), based on unpublished songs written by Jacques Prévert for Jacques Brel, she sang lyrics by other committed artists on Chansons de Légende (1997), and released more confidential albums such as Soleil dans l'Ombre (1982), Percuphonante... (with Patrice Moullet, 1986), 1989... Déjà! (1988), Fenêtre Ardente (1993) and concert recordings such as Catherine Ribeiro Chante Ribeiro Alpes (2007), which saw her reunite with her former group. Named Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1985, Catherine Ribeiro continued to perform until she suffered a stroke in 2020. After the death of her husband and daughter, she died on August 23, 2024 in an EHPAD in Martigues (Bouches-du-Rhône), aged 82.
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