For decades, Françoise Kucheida had embodied the French song perfectly, rolling her letters calmly to an accordion tune. She died on Monday July 17, 2023 at the age of 77.
Some will have known her in 1996, at the release of the album which propelled her to the front of the media scene. Some will have known her before when, as a teacher, she passionately made her kindergarten classes sing. Still others will remember her presence in restaurants where she sang, one hand resting on the counter, a microphone resting in the other.
Originally from Marles-les-Mines, Françoise Kucheida explained that she had always loved singing. From childhood, in the 1950s, she was introduced to her future profession by joining choirs at all costs. Having become a teacher in Liévin and Bully-les-Mines, the young mother with piercing blue eyes criss-crosses the north of France at the same time with “Récré Chansons”, a show of itinerant entertainers, so as not to dry up her passion. Between 1985 and 1992, she even recorded four 45s, waiting for her career to take off, but savoring her double life as an artist.
Driven by her love of singing, the teacher took early retirement and opened a café-théâtre, Les Trois Pierrots, in Liévin, without yet knowing that this decision was going to change her future. To find talent to bring to the stage of her café, Françoise Kucheida goes to Dali, a restaurant in Montauban where a cream of artists rub shoulders, who soon fall in love with the Liévinoise.
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Françoise Kucheida performs her pieces in front of children in Wimereux, during the Côte d’Opale festival. • ©France Televisions. INA
One evening in May 1992, in this same restaurant, the singer takes the microphone to save a pianist making a mistake in the lyrics of Bohemian. She was then spotted by Pierre Barouh, author of the film’s music. A man and a woman, and creator of the prestigious Saravah label. Fallen under the spell of her voice, Pierre Barouh brings Françoise Kucheida to the front of the stage, making her sing a cappella on the stage of the Montauban theater, paying homage to her during the closing evening of the festival in the same city. At the age of 46, and after having dedicated her life to singing, Françoise Kucheida begins her real career as an artist.
Red hair, sparkling, forming a neglected square above her black dresses, Françoise Kucheida surveys the French stages with her covers and her ballads. The consecration of the Northerner comes in 1996, when she receives the Grand Prix from the Charles-Cros Academy, which allows her to start a career on stage, with more than a hundred concerts in France and abroad. , particularly in Quebec, the United States and Japan.
Over time, his albums sold less and less until he flopped with his second album. cries from the heart, yet signed with Saravah. Finally, his career will end with a concert given in Méricourt in 2015, in tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack.
“She joined the paradise of French singers. She will be missed”declared this Tuesday, July 18, 2023 to La Voix du Nord her husband, Jean-Pierre Kucheida, former deputy and mayor of Liévin.
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