Richard Desjardins

A singer/songwriter in the tradition of Jacques Brel and Leonard Cohen, Richard Desjardins spent two-thirds of his career as an unknown and ignored musician, first with his group Abbittibbi and later as a solo artist. In 1990, his second album, Tu M'Aimes-Tu, propelled him to the forefront of intelligent French chanson. His activism for Quebec's independence and in defense of the poor and abused gave him the aura of a controversial figure. Desjardins was born 1948 in Rouyn-Noranda, a mining town in North-Western Quebec (a region called Abitibi). The son of proletarians, he sa...