The singer, songwriter and poet Hélène Martin, who set to music the texts of famous poets and friends including Louis Aragon and Jean Giono, died Sunday at the age of 92 in Cordemais (Loire-Atlantique), announced his entourage at AFP.
Born in December 1928 in Paris, she had started singing in Parisian cabarets.
At the beginning of the 1960s, she had the idea of setting poets to music by adapting works by Jean Genet, who encouraged her in this direction.
She continues this path by singing the texts of many other poets including René Char, Pablo Neruda, Louis Aragon, Jean Giono etc., but also by creating programs around poetry for television and radio.
She was the one who created "Sur mon cou", the adaptation of a text by Jean Genet (extract from "Condamné à mort") which was then taken up by Etienne Daho. At the head of her own production house, she has also interpreted her own poems. Among her multiple albums, she had notably signed Liberté Femme, inspired by her feminist commitments.