Dédé Fortin
André "Dédé" Fortin (1962-2000) was an important singer-songwriter of the Quebec music scene of the 1990s. He was the frontman of the music group Les Colocs.
Profile
Dédé Fortin, was a singer and songwriter born in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec, in a farm close to the village of Saint-Thomas-Didyme. A past cinema student of the Université de Montréal, he was also an admired video clip filmmaker. He gave the lyrics of his band, Les Colocs, humanity, simplicity and social conscience (especially about poverty). He was also a passionate believer in Quebec independence and brought his band to take a prominent role in the YES side of the 1995 Quebec referendum.
Fortin was sometimes a tortured soul. The often festive flavor of the melodies of his band are sharply contrasted by his tragic end, a youthful demise brought upon by the long agony of a self-inflicted knife wound to the heart, in his appartment of the Plateau Mont-Royal neighborhood of Montreal, on May 10, 2000. For days, flowers and loving messages were brought by the people to the doorstep of his appartment building of Rachel Street, in honor of a man who embodied the music of a whole generation of Quebecois.
Upon the discovery, a poem was found. Condemned by doubt, immobile and timorous; I am like my people, undecisive and dreamer; I speak to who wants to hear of my fictive country; The heart full of vertigo and consumed by fear. André "Dédé" Fortin is now considered a major milestone of the history of Quebec music.