At 76, Laurent Voulzy is one of the most popular French singers, all generations combined. However, his life has not always been a long, quiet river. He notably had to face racism from an early age.
In April 2024, Laurent Voulzy had found Manu Katché for an interview in all transparency for the media Yahoo. The opportunity for the 76 -year -old artist to come back to the significant episodes of his life. Starting with the racism he suffered in his childhood.
Laurent Voulzy “Colorful child” :: “There were zero in school”
Originally from Guadeloupe, Lucien Voulzy, his real name, was quickly placed as a foster family in mainland France, far from his family. “In my mother’s family, who was a petty bourgeoisie in Guadeloupe, they said to each other: ‘You can’t have a baby here without being married’. So they found her a little apartment in Paris where I was raised by her for two, three years. Then she did dance, and she started to tour, and I was in the nurse”, He first explained.
And the interpreter of Rockollectionthen installed in Pavillon-sous-Bois, to plant the decor: “I have no bad memories, but it was not joy (…) A bad memory is that there was winter, there was snow, and there were boys who had caught me. They held my arms around a tree saying to me: ‘Snow White, you have to eat snow’ “he reminded himself. Before entrusting: “Colorful children, there were zero in school (…) even when I was in primary school, much later, we were two colored …”
Laurent Voulzy traumatized: “So as not to take the place of a white …”
An ambient racism that Alain Souchon’s acolyte continued to suffer in adolescence. “I remember, I was going in the morning by metro. I never sat in the metro because one day I had a reflection on a bus of a good woman who had said to me: ‘You take our place’. So I got up, and never I sat in the metro not to take the place of a white”he detailed. Before telling: “A neighbor in my building when I went down the trash cans, I was ten years old, he said: ‘Here there are the negroes who descend their trash cans.'”
Evils that Laurent Voulzy, whose last album Belem Date of 2017 already, treated by going late to Guadeloupe. “I am leaving alone and I go to the city of Saint-Anne, I was 35 years old (…) All the sarcasm that I had received in mainland France came back to me. I told myself that all the people, here, had minimum my color, otherwise they are darker (…) I never have undergone that”he finally delivered.
