The folk artist achieved success in the 1970s thanks to this group that he co-founded with his partner Marie Sauvet.
Gabriel Yacoub, co-founder of the French folk group Malicorne, died this Wednesday January 22 at the age of 72, AFP learned from his manager and Marie Sauvet, his partner and co-founder of this popular group born in 1973 .
The singer and musician died during the night at Bourges hospital (Cher), following a long illness, they said. He would have been 73 years old on February 4. “His music will always remain,” wrote Marie Sauvet on Facebook, in a short message in tribute to her partner.
At a time when folk was on the rise and Bob Dylan was in everyone’s ears, the French group, initially composed of four musicians, chose to revisit the traditional repertoire in its own way, which it presented in the language of Molière.
“Malicorne recreates the magic of the music of yesteryear, by combining modern technology and rare or traditional instruments from around the world, such as cromornes, bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies, harmoniums and mandoloncellas,” it is stated on Gabriel Yacoub’s official website .
Just before the creation of the group, the couple had carried out a sort of trial balloon by publishing the experimental album Peter of Grenoble.
Decades crossed
Malicorne enjoyed success throughout the 1970s: he had around ten records to his credit between folk and progressive rock, the best known of them remaining their third studio album, Almanacreleased in 1976.
-The 1980s were marked by separations and reformations with new musicians. But, in July 2010, the Francofolies de La Rochelle managed to bring Malicorne back on stage in its original configuration.
Nolwenn Leroy paid tribute to them by covering one of their most emblematic titles, Let’s marry the rosesin his album Folk released in 2018.
Gabriel Yacoub also had a solo career, started in parallel with the group. In 2001, his song The stabbed dove appears in the soundtrack of the hit documentary The Migratory Peopledirected by Jacques Perrin, Jacques Cluzaud and Michel Debats.
Still with Marie Sauvet, in the 2010s he launched “Gabriel et Marie de Malicorne”, the opportunity to continue making music and concerts together. It was on the stage of the Chant de Mar festival, in Paimpol (Côtes-d’Armor), in August 2017, that Malicorne said goodbye to the public and closed a musical epic spanning more than forty years.
