“I sang in the street, paid by the hat”: Clara Ysé recounts her improbable beginnings in song
Interview Clara Ysé, ardent and secretive composer-performer, remembers the shy child she was, her musical education thanks in particular to her grandmother, her singing teacher and her Colombian nanny, and sometimes to the detriment of her parents' hearing well-being... Then the first concerts in her apartment which led her to the success she knows today.
Interview by Sophie Grassin
Clara Ysé, French singer-songwriter, photographed on June 24, 2025, in Paris. MATHIEU ZAZZO FOR "LE NOUVEL OBS"
To go further
In a six-track EP (released by Tomboy Lab) and an album, "Oceano Nox" (Sooner or Later), Clara Ysé, a multi-talented artist, has imposed her magnetic titles such as "Le monde s'est dédoublé" or "Souveraines". Daughter of the psychoanalyst and philosopher Anne Dufourmantelle , who died in tragic circumstances in 2017 on a beach in Ramatuelle, and the painter Bruno Dufourmantelle, she loves the paintings of her father who, from the dark, made the light spring forth, and, from Janis Joplin to Mercedes Sosa, the magic of singular voices. Flashback.
How long have you been singing?Clara Ysé Always. When I was a kid, when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I replied: "Singer." I was painfully shy, but with my brother, I would dream up shows—songs, choreographies—for anyone who... agreed to listen. I've been trying to rediscover that childhood inventiveness ever since.
You deciphered music before you knew how to read...I started playing the violin at the age of 4, practicing…
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