Daniel Balavoine: His two children Joana and Jérémie, who grew up without him, became underground artists… and one of them released a surprising work!

Daniel Balavoine: His two children Joana and Jérémie, who grew up without him, became underground artists… and one of them released a surprising work!

“Paris Dakar in mourning: Thierry Sabine, Daniel Balavoine and three other people died in a helicopter crash”thus Bernard Rapp launches the 8 p.m. television news, on France 2 on January 15, 1986. The day before, the founder of the famous desert raid and one of the most popular singers of the time lost his life. On this day, it is not only Paris Dakar that is in mourning, but the entire France which mourns the disappearance of Balavoinethis committed artist, whose outspokenness was already as legendary as his pieces like The singer, My son my battle or All the SOS crieswhich still ring in our ears. If he was in the aircraft that day, it was not so much out of a taste for racing: he was participating in the operation Paris of the heart intended to deliver water pumps to the most deprived inhabitants of the desert.

On January 22, 1986, a huge crowd flocked to Biarritz where his funeral was celebrated. That day, a few months before a tragedy took away Coluche, the French lost an artist whose destiny promised to be brilliant. And two children find themselves orphans. Jérémie, the eldest, is only two years old, as for Joana, the youngest, she will be born five months after the tragedy, brought into the world by their mother, Corinne Barcessat. The Azizaa famous song released in 1985, was written for the latter. Coco, as she is nicknamed, is a pied-noir Jew born in Casablanca. “Your yellow star is your skin”the artist sang about him. They met in 1981 when Balavoine had already experienced several romantic affairs, including a short-lived marriage with Dominique in the early 70s.

At the end of the 80s, Corinne, who has since rebuilt her life, and her two children find themselves alone in the face of their sadness. How do we build ourselves when we grow up without a father whose tutelary spirit is so great, when we bear his name? The first to answer the question, many years after her birth, was her daughter, on the occasion of the release, in 2021, of a comic book entitled Sleeping Lionsin which she told her story and in particular her fight against her drug addictions, which caused her many setbacks: “My name is Joana Balavoine. This family name which means a lot to millions of people, he was first for me the symbol of a great emptiness and a great absence. The name of a very well-known character, whom I did not know. And yet who was my father »she wrote in the preamble.

Joana, Daniel Balavoine's daughter had to fight to bear her father's name

A name she had to fight for. At birth, she had received her mother's last name but the latter fought so that her daughter would inherit the surname of the famous singer: “Our lawyer, Sylvain Jaraud, launched legal proceedings after my birth so that I could be recognized post mortem by my father and can bear his name”Joana explained to Paris Match in 2015. It is largely thanks to the media coverage of the time that it is today called Balavoine. Before his death, the singer had in fact publicly spoken about his partner's pregnancy.

Joana is not a writer. She is a singer, like her father. Immersed from an early age in the world of 80s pop, she joined forces with DJ Phantom to create the electro soundtrack for the show's credits. One day, one hourlaunched on France 2 in 2007. A few years later, in 2011, she shared the stage with Marc Lavoine to perform Save lovean emblematic title of his father. In 2015, she launched a musical project with Alexandre Mazarguil under the name Gentle Republic. The duo unveils a first EP, composed of five tracks, and immediately publishes the video for the title Better Run. From ? No known music, but this comic strip of which Joana wrote the dark scenario: that of her life.

“I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to have a dad”

During the promotion of her book, invited to the microphone of France Infoshe had hidden nothing about her suffering, her faults, the lack of her father and the devastating consequences that had resulted from it. “So it wasn’t a coincidence that you fell into drugs?ask our colleagues. No not at all, Joana replied.. It starts with fragile people and I was extremely fragile. Without father, without framework. (…) When I tried cocaine and ecstasy at 16 that was offered to me, it didn't scare me. That didn't impress me. I wasn't aware of the effects. There may even be a lack of information”. In the columns of Parisianat the time of the book's release, she added: “Being a posthumous child is the first seed. I am built on this trauma. I couldn't understand why I wasn't allowed to have a dad. Because of this absence, I had no limits… And as my father was Daniel Balavoine, a lot of things were also passed to me. People love dadthey have tenderness for him… It was complicated to live with this myth, on the order of legend.”

For fifteen years, Joana fought against her addictions, particularly to cocaine, alternating between withdrawals, relapses and depression. This fight, described in the comic strip, she then went to tell it in high schools and planned to get a diploma in addictionology. In March 2023, guest on the show In the Eyes of Oliviershe explained that she had gone to rebuild her life in the Basque Country, on the land where her father rests. “I have musical projects, which I carry out quietly, and I have fun playing in a group with people who are 70 years old. I play keyboards, I do backing vocals, I sing. Pleasure, no pressure”she summarized.

Jérémie launched into poetry after music

Singing and playing music is also what Jérémie, this brother who has long served as a benchmark for Joana, has done for a long time, but whose existence is much more discreet. No photos, no interviews, no famous albums, Instagram accounts or YouTube videos, the young man seems to have wanted to build himself away from the lights. “And everywhere in the street I want people to talk about me…” ? Very little for him, who, in 2013, opposed the release of the tribute album Balavoine generation.

And yet, very recently, this shadow artist seems to have decided to come out of it. On September 30, in complete confidentiality, he published under his famous name a book of poetry. Titled Schizoquelquechosethe work lists a large quantity of works written by the new forty-year-old. On its publisher's website, One hundred thousand billionhe finally shows himself, appearing in a black and white photo. A handsome brunette, with a growing beard and messy hair. The work reveals writing that oscillates between severe introspection and description of a world adrift. “He dares to look for the words and formulas to express life as closely as possible, where it awaits us and where we do not dare to go and taste it: deep down in feelings and emotions, behind ready-made thoughts”writes its publisher, Guillaume Wallut, referring to the book, of which here is an extract:

There are in the rooms of our cities
Arched bodies without batteries
Without mind
Avachis
Packed
Boneless
Like rubble
In front of their computers
Heads stuck in the shadows
Possessed by vacuum cleaners
Their shoeless footprints
From the foam of stolen dreams
On pieces of alcoholic glass

Joined by PurepeopleGuillaume Wallut says he is extremely proud to have been chosen by the young man to edit and “print on demand because ecological issues concern us and concern him”specifies Mr. Wallut, this work as beautiful as it is unique. He will not tell us more, leaving Jérémie the opportunity to express himself if he wishes. We have just learned thathe lived in Brussels.

However, on the publisher's website, the author says a little more about himself through a long interview supporting the release of the book.

“I did it by smoking weed or other substances,” explains Jérémie about his work

“For a long time, the challenge for me was to find my place in society thanks to my own creative work”, explains Jérémie Balavoine. “It’s true that writing is an activity that you can practice every day, everywhere, whereas music requires a lot of training and a more conducive environment.” The music, precisely, the son of Daniel Balavoine, who never speaks about his father in this long interview, evokes him, and brushes the subject aside… “Ah, the songs… I'll try to shorten the subject: it's not that it's not interesting to talk about it, I've already written songs, let's just say it's always existed at this time. about a conflict that made me not want to go there… I played music in bandsbut it's as if there was an invisible wall preventing me from going further in that direction. Although I have always written.” Always… and every day, specifies Jérémie who does not hide having sometimes gone search in artificial paradises dear to Baudelaire, his sources of inspiration: “I did it by smoking weed or other substances because I think it's interesting to meet this inner voice which then becomes much louder”he explains, also recounting this anecdote about the choice of the title of his book. “I had two or three songs that weren't really great, and one afternoon I was on my patio smoking weed and, I don't know, the song just came and when it appeared, it was that and nothing else.” A title, which he sees fit to explain, is in no way a reflection of an illness from which he suffers.

How is it that this book has so far gone unnoticed? “We haven’t really started promoting it”explains its editor. Time to appear in front of the general publiclike her sister who had waited almost 30 years, has she finally arrived for Daniel Balavoine's son? The coming weeks will tell us…