André "Dédé" Fortin (17 November 1962 – 8 May 2000) was the leader and singer of the Canadian band Les Colocs.
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Fortin was born on a farm near the village of St-Thomas-Didyme, in the Lac-Saint-Jean region of Quebec. He studied cinema at the Université de Montréal.
Fortin formed Les Colocs in 1990. They released their first album in 1993 to great acclaim. Les Colocs' festive melodies often hid the more serious issues Fortin's songs tackled, like poverty (Passe-moé la puck), loss of community (La rue principale) emotional dependence (Juste une p'tite nuite) or drug dependence (Tassez-vous de d'là). Fortin also made Félix Award-winning videos for the group during this period.
Fortin was a passionate believer in Quebec independence and a vocal activist for the OUI («Yes») side during the 1995 Quebec referendum. The referendum loss, coupled with the earlier death of bandmate Patrick Esposito Di Napoli from AIDS, affected him.
"Dehors Novembre" (1998), the last LP from the group, written and performed with the help of the Diouf brothers, has become his most celebrated work, winning the Félix Award for the Rock Album of the Year.
Fortin committed seppuku, a Japanese ritual suicide by disembowelment, in his apartment in the Plateau neighborhood of Montreal. A friend found him in a pool of blood. For days, flowers and messages were left in his memory at his apartment building on Rachel St. Some reactions, however, were more negative: one writer in Le Devoir said that he was "not a hero."[1]
Before his death, Colocs manager André Paquin received this poem, later published in La Presse: Condemned by doubt, immobile and timorous; I am like my people, undecisive and a dreamer; I speak to who wants to hear of my fictive country; The heart full of vertigo and consumed by fear.[2]
Rang Saint-Henri in St-Thomas-Dydime, where Dédé Fortin was born, was renamed "Chemin Dédé-Fortin" in 2006.[3]
A movie about his life called "Dédé à travers les brumes" was released on March 13, 2009.[4]
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