record tour, complete concerts, why this French group is a real phenomenon

Squares that tear in a few minutes, concerts in closed window zeniths … Indochina, 44 years after her training, always attracts crowds. Bertrand Dicale, musical journalist, deciphers the “Indochina phenomenon”.

Since the beginning of the year, the Indochina group has been on tour for its “Arena Tour”: 89 dates through France, which already display almost complete. The performers of “the adventurer” will be at the Zenith in Clermont-Ferrand, on April 22, 23, 25 and 26, for four closed counters. The places on their tour have passed in a few minutes. A performance that few French artists achieve. Trained in 1981, Indochina could have been only a meteor of the French new Wave wave. However, more than forty years later, the group continues to fill the stadiums, sell millions of albums and unite an audience still as fervent. In 2022, their “Central Tour” tour brought together more than 400,000 spectators, with complete concerts in the largest speakers in the country. Bertrand Dicale, musical columnist on France Info and author of the “Dictionary in love with song”, decrypts the “Indochina phenomenon”.

He explains one of the reasons for the group’s success: “The group has several successive lives because it has always been to the same audience, the same age group but not to the same people. He speaks to adolescents. This audience is regularly renewed”. Indochina has never hesitated to approach sensitive subjects. Their universe, both dark and dreamlike, finds a particular echo in several generations, affected by the sincerity of the texts. Titles like“ three nights per week ”,“ I asked the Moon ”or more recently“ our celebrations ”testify to this ability to renew itself. The musical journalist underlines: “It is impressive to see that for 45 years, Indochina has been able to change the theme while remaining in the same themes: the discovery of sensuality, the discovery of sexuality, the discovery of extreme feelings, the oppression of parents and society. Indochina is always on this same perspective, in this same vision of the world, psychology and tragic. “Dancetaria”?”.

The exceptional longevity of the group is also due to the fact that they have never encountered a decline. Bertrand Dicale recalls: “The group has not experienced an empty passage. If there was one, it is because the media did not understand what was going on. The rooms are always full. They have been doing stadium in France for twenty years. If they decide to go sing in a small room, it’s just for fun, for fun. But they only make large rooms because they know that adolescents need that. They need large ceremonies. This is what is the most touching with Indochina and Nicola Sirkis: it is their ability to approach gigantism and to approach glory with immense serenity”.

The columnist of France Info puts an argument to explain the record speed which the concert tickets are sold: “The public of Indochina is an audience rather present in the world. There are artists who touch adolescents but who are not also connected. Their audience has fewer broadband connections and online credit cards. Not that of Indochina“But he warns:”Do not be too impressed by the speed of ticket sales because in these cases, the purchase automata are really in action for the resale of tickets. France Billet has announced that they stop 200 million industrial purchase orders per day. On tours where all the counters are open at the same time, there is a huge mass bought by automata to feed speculation. It’s really a big problem. The artists are more victims than accomplices of this”.

If Indochina has imposed itself over the years, it is also linked to the personality of its leader, Nicola Sirkis: “Indochina is an extraordinary group but all large groups are. You cannot make history for generations by being a mainstream and ordinary group. It is an extraordinary group not only for its longevity but also, for the personality of Nicola Sirkis and people with whom he works on time. The group has a great concern for the public. When Nicola Sirkis talks about his songs, he starts sentences in the first person singular but we can feel that it is not selfishness. He never wanted to break his image. He knows why people love him. If people love him, he is him”.

Nicola Sirkis works for him, with his psychology, his obsessions, his pleasures and his creation, but he does this for people.

Bertrand Dicale, musical journalist

The journalist continues: “He has a fairly exceptional listening to his fan base. He knows her surprisingly well. He goes to the concerts of others. If, during his family, he could descend into the crowd and listen to what he says, he would. If Nicola Sirkis wanted to write a play in Alexandrians on a goddess of mythology, he would. But that would not be Indochina, so it is Indochina. This is perhaps what is particular in his career: how much he does not have the concern for his own whims”.

At the dawn of her 45th anniversary, Indochina shows no signs of shortness of breath. The group is also preparing a new album for 2026, which fans are already looking forward to. Additional proof that the Indochina phenomenon is far from having said its last word.