“I already see the headline of Nice-Matin tomorrow: “Izïa calls for the murder of the President of the Republic.”” The singer did not lack irony, Thursday evening, on the stage of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. After having imagined live, in front of the spectators who came to listen to him, the lynching of Emmanuel Macron who would be “hung twenty meters on the ground” like a piñata, before hitting him with a “bat full of nails”, the reactions did not wait until the following day. An assistant to the mayor present in the concert hall left the room then warned the gendarmes, who waited for the singer at the end of the show to question her. The singer was discreetly exfiltrated from the concert hall before being arrested later by the police. An investigation was opened by the Nice prosecutor for “public provocation to commit a crime or an offence”.
Since then, videos of the singer’s monologue have agitated the web. Political reactions were not long in coming: the LR mayor of Marcq-en-Barœul, Bernard Gérard, announced on Monday the cancellation of a concert by the singer planned in his city on July 13, on the occasion of the National Holiday. “The coming to Marcq-en-Barœul of this artist, for a public, free and family concert would be in contradiction with the values of gathering which prevail during our National Day”, explained the city councilor in La Voix du Nord .
Before the controversy, Izïa Higelin – or simply Izïa, her stage name – was better known for her energy in concert. The only daughter of Jacques Higelin, who has become a rocker like her father, gives her all on stage, sometimes throws herself at the public, talks with them. If her career really took off in 2012, when she received the award for rock album of the year at the Victoires de la Musique for her album So Much Trouble, her love affair with rock goes back further.
Last born of the Higelin siblings – her father had two other children by other women, including the singer Arthur H -, Izïa was raised in Pantin by a very present father. As a teenager, she already began to write songs that she performed at the age of fourteen at the Cabaret Sauvage, in Paris and at the Calvi festival. She was only sixteen years old when she was spotted by the Printemps de Bourges who programmed her, before opening for another rocker, Iggy Pop, at the Palais des Sport.
The same year, she made her first foray into the cinema. She plays Louise, in Mauvaise fille, the drama by Patrick Mille. The role earned her the César for best female hope. There followed regular collaborations with filmmakers from all walks of life: in 2014, she played in Samba, directed by the Nakache and Toledano tandem, before playing a feminist and lesbian activist the following year in La Belle saison, by Catherine Corsini. She shares the poster with Vincent Lindon in Rodin, the film by Jacques Doillon, released in 2015. She also went on stage in 2017 alongside the actor Vincent Dedienne, for a reading of Just Kids, by Patti Smith.
Even today, she is struggling to mourn her father, who died in 2018. It was Jacques Higelin who made her want to perform, she explains in an interview with the daily Le Monde. . “He was my best friend, dad, we loved each other a lot. He put a guitar in my hands very early on, then it was the piano, we improvised, we sang. When he went on tour, he took me on the bus with him. Things have been slowly recovering since 2022 and the regular resumption of concerts, with an audience that has been loyal to him for ten years.
The singer, whose political commitment is marked on the left, had never been the subject of any controversy until Thursday. In the columns of Le Monde, she was already talking about a slump since the Covid epidemic. A temporary “depression”, with the air of a crisis of the thirties. “Since this three-year break, I can no longer take things lightly, it’s as if a form of recklessness had escaped,” she explains.
The political context regularly feeds the anxiety that inhabits it. “It’s hard to keep the faith right now. We are going through a terrible period with the economic crisis, police violence, injustice. “Before adding, as an omen: “I am not the only one. People are raw.”
