He launched the Village People, Gala or Eiffel 65: the French producer Henri Belolo is dead

A tube machine. His name probably does not tell you anything, but Henri Belolo has shaped a part of the disco and house soundtrack around the world. The French producer died on Monday at the age of 82 years.

"Sadness to learn of the death of Henri Belolo, member Sacem since 1975 as a songwriter. He has contributed to the rise of dance, disco & house in France by writing for Gala and Eiffel 65 & Village People, "the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers (Sacem) reported on Twitter.

In an interview with the Parisian in 2005, he bluntly said: "I do non-elitist music. My ultimate dream is to be on the shelves of Carrefour and Auchan. In other words, his dream has come true. Hymns heady, this French born in Casablanca has produced tons.

The Village People Revelation

Founder in the early 1970s of the record company Carabine Music, his career takes a turning point when he left for the United States in 1973.

With the complicity of his friend Jacques Morali (deceased in 1991), also a native of Morocco, he creates the Ritchie Family, disco vocal music band from Philadelphia. They meet the chorist Victor Willis, and start the adventure "Village People" ("Go West", "Macho Men" or "Y.M.C.A."), for which he received a Grammy Award in 1979.

"I was in New York with my partner Jacques Morali," he told Parisian-Today in France. We wandered around the Village and we saw an Indian playing bells on the street. Intrigued, we followed him to a bar, where he was a waiter, and made a disco number every twenty minutes. Among the guests was a guy with a cowboy hat. This was the trigger: create a group with all the stereotypes of the American male. "

At that time, he will also be one of the importers of hip-hop in France with the group Break Machine and his famous "Street Dance" in the early 1980s.

Then house classics but not that

A little later, Belolo will also democratize house music in France, through its label Scorpio Music. Eiffel 65 ("Blue Da Ba Dee"), Gala ("Freed from desire"), Haddaway ("What is love") … Pieces returned to popular culture, even in history, like " I Will Survive "in its version interpreted by the Hermes House Band, which revives every listening to the memories of the 1998 World Cup in France.

More recently, Henri Belolo has also propelled to the top of the charts songs like the child "A perfect world" of Ilona Mitrecey (1.5 million copies sold in France in summer 2005), or the very Latin "Papi Chulo" by Lorna.