Catherine Ribeiro, le chanteuse fantastique

Born in 1941 to Portuguese immigrants in France, Catherine Ribeiro's career began as an actress. Her first appearance was in French New Wave director Jean Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers (aka The Mercenaries or The Soldiers) in 1963, where she met Patrice Moullet, and in 1967 he offered to compose music for her poetry. They formed the band 2 BIS (soon to be renamed ALPES) and proved the ideal vehicle for Ribeiro's extraordinary voice - she is often referred to as the "French Nico" because of her dramatic, lower tones - on the seven albums they produced together. Ahead of a conventional rock format, their music was a unique amalgam of progressive underground, with vast spacey instrumental passages due to Moullet's home-made instruments (the percuphone, cosmophone & orgolia), heavy improvisation and experimentation, and a strong folk influence.