Julie Pietri, who returns from a striking trip to Cambodia, confided in the “Journal des Femmes”. The singer tells us about the origin of this stay and gave us some personal confidences.
Julie Pietri returns from an overwhelming trip to Cambodia, during which she visited a class in her name, met a little girl of which she is the godmother or even distributed meals, for the AMUR association (at least one meal). The flamboyant singer told us about this poignant journey and also confided in the sexism of which she was the victim, egism, her difficult childhood or her life in Paris …
How do you feel since your trip to Cambodia?
Julie Pietri: I have nostalgia for Cambodia, children I met, missions that I have been entrusted. I could not do it before because I had cancer at the endometrium and I was operated on. But I was super happy to finally be able to realize this dream. I only stayed 15 days, because I had things to do in France … But I will go back and try to help set up a Francophonie festival there in order to pay the profits for children.
How did the trip go?
I stopped in Dubai and Singapore, it puts around 24 hours of travel, so the round trip was long and I did it all by itself like a big one! But I absolutely wanted to respond to this mission. I had agreed to be the godmother of this association, it was out of the question that I do not go as soon as I go better in terms of my health. The idea is to provide education and at least three meals a day to children. As I often say, saving a child is saving the world.
Are there moments that have particularly upset you?
I was visited the school, with a nursery class that bears my name and see 80 children waiting for me, who made small ballets and hearts … It was extraordinary! What tonglinized me was to see the gap between the richness that there can be in big cities and extreme poverty in more remote places. I was marked by the distribution of meals with the AMUR association, at the bottom of the discharges where children flee to find ready -made rice or even cockroaches. At the bottom of these discharges, there are slums, and the smell is unbearable. But I helped the team to distribute between 1000 and 1,500 meals by Sunday and I was delighted to go after my convictions.
Have you ever got in touch with your goddaughter before meeting her?
She wrote to me letters! And when I saw her, I told her to work because she doesn’t seem to want to work (laughs). I warned it: “The next time I come back, I want to see your notebook!”. Leaving, I had a gift of money in money as a gift that means “Julie” in Khmer and I keep it, it’s my lucky charm now!
“I preferred my freedom to money”
Has your notoriety been easy to live or has it rather been a burden in your life?
It is extraordinary to have an audience, to live in music … but all the next side are complicated. I paid the price for real sexism because I arrived before my friends from the 80s. I was said: “Be beautiful and shut up …”. It was very difficult to fight. This is why after five years, I freed myself from my crooked producers. When I claimed my contract from Claude Carrère, the producer of Sheila, he made me blackmail and said to me: “You are at the end of the contract, if you want to bar you, you must leave me your royalties”. So everything I sold after claiming my contract remained a dead letter. But I preferred my freedom to money.
The song “Eve get up” was also a way to free yourself …
Yes, I got out “Eve get up”, because I couldn’t take it anymore. It was a cry of liberation to say that I was standing and that women had to be too. I remain a feminist at heart, we talk about it, it’s a shame! I am not a girl who will make controversies on a tray, but I hit my fist on the table in music.
You have been the victim of sexism. Today, do you feel a victim of egism?
Today, I still manage to do lots of things, like producing my new album Origami… But I understood that, when you approach 70 years, you will not take place on the radio even if you work with 30 -year -old guys. Slimane once said to me: “Your title The crying men is really good “. Yes, but to be in rotation on a radio, you have to be young! I know that people say:” It’s good, she has made her career, place for young people … “But it’s so heavy because we will never say that to a guy!
Do you hope to continue singing all your life?
I do not intend to give up, I will continue to produce my albums, to look for concepts, to co -write songs … and to go to Cambodia! I am hyperactive and I do not consider myself as a woman of yesterday, but as a woman of today and tomorrow. There, I just released a song with a creature from Madame Arthur, Klaude, against homophobia. In the clip, I play his mother and I dress up. I’m afraid of anything (laughs)!
“I don’t care about others!”
It is thanks to your strength of character that you have made a career, since you do not come from an artistic environment …
My big brother always said to me: “I don’t know where you go out this vital energy”. But I don’t know either! I have always had the niac. I am a speech therapist, these are the studies I have followed and I graduated. But while I wrote my memory, I spent a hearing, without telling my parents, to enter this children’s group, the Basil band. There, an artistic director noticed me … He offered me a piece and when I listened to the model, I told myself that perhaps, I would find myself in a compilation to make a little money. It was Maria Magdalenaand in the end: 500,000 copies sold. It stomped me! I was not prepared. I thought I would never succeed, because there are so many called and so few elected officials.
Has your daughter Manon inherited your “niac”?
Manon is more “fragile” than me, very wrestling too, but with a large part of fragility. I think this difference comes from the fact that we did not have the same education, she did not have the same life as me. I come from an environment where it was a lot to fight.
You have also experienced the experience of uprooting since you were born in Algeria and you had to build a life in another country …
I lived very small the Algerian war in Algiers, in the middle of the bombs that jumped. I had a lot of trouble expressing myself because I was very traumatized and I did 15 years of psychoanalysis. I still remember that there were dead under the covers in the streets, that it was necessary to rush into doors of building when you heard shots and that it was sometimes necessary to lie on the ground on the way to school … At the beginning, my parents did not believe that things could climb and they had trouble leaving. These kinds of things mark for life. I had a very difficult, traumatic childhood, but I don’t tell it often.
“I’m a fanatic of Paris!”
On a daily basis, do you prefer the bustle of big cities or the calm of the countryside?
I love Paris! I am a fanatic of the capital: see all these unimaginable exhibitions, these painters … It’s exceptional. I often go to the opera, I love it! I have this disease a little. But sometimes it becomes too hard to endure all this work, and yet, I live in the Star. Right now, my building is in full facelift and besides my street is blocked, thank you Madame Hidalgo! So there, I’m going to go to Brittany, in silence, with my friends. We’re going to laugh and walk. I love Brittany and Normandy! But I have the nostalgia for Cambodia anyway …
Is there something that annoys you when the media talk about you?
It annoys me that I am reduced to a tube. When we talk about me as a “interpreter interpreter of Eve get up”, I find it very reductive. You make a blockbuster and that makes everything else disappear! Afterwards, if only one song of me remains when I left, as much as it is!
