Photos: Courtesy Patrick Bruel
One of France’s most renowned singers, he was born in Tlemcen, Algeria, under the name of Patrick Maurice Benguigui. At the age of three, Patrick and his mother Augusta Kammoun settled in a Parisian suburb, “Argenteuil in Val d’Oise,” after Algerian independence. There they adapted and integrated with another Algerians into French life and later moved to the 13th arrondissement of Paris.
At fifteen years old, he played the lead role in a film that partly represented his own life, Alexandre Arcady’s Le Coup de Sirocco, a story about the arrival of an Algerian family in France after independence in 1962, which captivated almost a million and a half viewers. It’s said that he did the casting and was one of those selected but when he didn’t receive the call by the film production company, he decided to go to Mexico for work in a holiday club.
His first single hit was in 1984 “Marre de cette nana-là” where he sold 200,000 copies of the album De face and became an idol of a million girl fans. In 1987, he made history by performing at l’Olympia music hall in Paris, but it wasn’t until 1989 with his second album Alors regarde that he became a megastar of French music, with three million records sold, songs like “Casser la voix” or “Place des grands hommes,” playing 130 dates sold-out tour 14 times at Zénith in Paris and almost one million spectators, that Patrick Bruel received the Victoires de la musique award as Best Male Artist of the Year in 1992.
His latest album, Encore une fois, the tenth of his musical career, included a song with lyrics and music by himself, inspired by and dedicated to his mother and his Algerian origins in “Je Reviens.”
After 60 years - starting 2023 - Bruel returned with his mother to their original country and on a journey through those images that he had only seen in photographs or in stories that his mother told him, he found a land that opened his heart and made him feel at home.
They visited the secondary school where his mother was a teacher, his grandparents’ house, which is inhabited by people who have taken good care of her, and also Oran, the land of his father, Pierre Benguigui, whom he had accepted back into his life and that of his children twenty years ago.
“Je Reviens” perfectly demonstrates the beauty and human quality of Algeria and its people. We hope soon to hear about a concert of Monsieur Bruel in that wonderful country.
In 2024, Patrick Bruel has made ten studio albums, ten more live albums and four compilations with more than 15 million records sold, throughout his musical career. He has appeared in more than 50 films of different genres and some as well-known as Sydney Pollack’s Sabrina, where Bruel shares the screen with Julia Ormond, Fanny Ardant and Harrisson Ford or Le Jaguar in a funny comedy by Francis Veber alongside Jean Reno. He has also written an autobiography Patrick Bruel: conversation avec Claude Askolovitch for Editions Plon, where he talks about his origins, family, career, passions, etc.
This is only a little part of the greatness of this Algerian who arrived in Paris when he was only three years old.
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