Les Rita Mitsouko Marcia Baila 12 Maxi Single - Vintage Vinyl Record Cover/Alamy
Qalam strives to explore the interpenetration of different cultures. To this end, we have decided to launch a series of playlists in which music mediates between different geographical and ideological spaces. Our first playlist is called ‘West to East: One Hundred Best Songs’. It will be updated several times a week, and its curation will focus on how Western pop culture has reflected the realities of the East, whether they are musical, geographical, religious, or political. (The terms ‘West’ and ‘East’ should be taken as broadly and arbitrarily as possible.)
This French duo with a Japanese name shook the USSR during the perestroika era with their appearance on the TV game show What? Where? When?. At that time, no one knew that the vocalist Catherine Ringer had starred in pornographic films for a short time, and her unprecedented ease and dedication in dealing with music were more valued than anything else. ‘Oum Khalsoum’ is a song from the first album and is dedicated to the largest Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum (whose real name was Fatima Ibrahim Al-Sayed Al-Beltaji and who died in 1975), whose contralto voice was called the main voice of the Arab world.
Catherine Ringer herself (now sixty-six years old), alas, did not become the main voice of either Europe or France. Her partner Fred Chichin died in the late 2000s, and the duo Les Rita Mitsouko ceased to exist at that time. But in her time, no one else sang like her. One could describe the grand sobbing power of her voice in the verses of Mallarmé: ‘she, like a faithful sword, strikes with ancient ringing your inherent fear and the darkness of barren storms’.