After an intense battle with prostate cancer, Cowboys Fringants singer Karl Tremblay passed away on November 15, 2023, leaving his loved ones to mourn, but also all of Quebec, which cried in unison. icon of a generation.
Few people have ever hummed a Cowboys Fringants song in their car or around a campfire. From the elderly to the child, including the young person taking their first steps into adult life, everyone knows at least one song by the group from Repentigny.
The QMI Agency therefore decided to make him its personality of the year 2023 following the results of a survey carried out among Quebecor media information managers.
“Little by little over the years, Karl Tremblay intruded into our lives to the point of becoming like a member of our family. His voice and his songs accompanied us everywhere,” summarized Jean LaRoche, director of information at Quebec Journal.
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When the voice of the Cowboys died, at the age of 47, a wave of sadness like we have rarely seen for an artist, apart from Félix Leclerc and Gerry Boulet d’Offenbach, swept over Quebecers, noted Danick Trottier, professor of musicology at UQAM.
“It is perhaps the first time in music that mourning is experienced through something more transgenerational,” he noted about Karl Tremblay.
Many Quebecers rushed to get a ticket so they could say a final goodbye to him during a national ceremony organized at the Bell Center on November 28. The other members of the group, Jean-François Pauzé, Jérôme Dupras and Marie-Annick Lépine, the partner of Karl Tremblay with whom he had two children, were also present.
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A shock wave
“I always really liked Les Cowboys Fringants, but it was really when Karl Tremblay died that I became aware of the extent to which it was a feeling shared by a lot of Quebecers from all walks of life,” testified Camille Dauphinais-Pelletier, head of content at 24 hours.
For Danick Trottier, this impact is due to the social imprint of the group’s songs, but also to its presence for more than 20 years alongside Quebecers. Without forgetting the announcement of the singer’s illness in 2022.
“Karl Tremblay had a very endearing personality, but also a slightly more elusive character because he lent himself less to the media game than other stars in Quebec,” he underlined.
Above all, Les Cowboys Fringants and its singer have always been able to bring out the feelings of Quebecers in words.
This was particularly the case with their songs America cries And On my shoulder releases in 2019, which took on an almost symbolic dimension during the pandemic, believes the specialist.
“These songs resonated very strongly in our solitude and our anguish. That cut across several generations,” he analyzed.
TOMA ICZKOVITS
Les Cowboys Fringants is also a mark left in other French-speaking countries, such as France, where they began to experience success in the early 2000s.
The show of a lifetime
Highly anticipated during the last edition of the Quebec Summer Festival, the appearance of the Cowboys Fringants was canceled due to bad weather conditions.
It was finally a few days later, on July 17, that Karl Tremblay took the stage and delivered the performance of a lifetime in front of a crowd of 90,000 people gathered on the Plains of Abraham.
Photo Stevens LeBlanc
“This artist showed incredible courage and strength to offer the public a memorable show,” recalled Karen Villeneuve, Show Director of the Quebec Journal.
“There was something of the order of destiny that was at stake in this concert,” said Danick Trottier. Karl Tremblay’s musical testament appears at that moment in all its most serious and emotional aspects.”
Although the group returned to the stage afterwards, several concerts were still canceled during the summer due to Karl Tremblay’s state of health.
Even without the singer, the history of the Cowboys will continue to be written through the Karl Tremblay myth, believes the musicology professor.
This is already somewhat the case with the musical comedy of Cowboys Fringants, Royal Pubwhich premiered in Quebec, a week after the singer’s death.
“He will become a more than iconic character, he will become an essential when we talk about Quebec song,” he concluded.