Sapho, a French-Moroccan singer, was born Danielle Ebguy in Marrakech, Morocco, in 1950. She emigrated to France at the age of 16 and, by 18, was living on her own in Paris, taking acting lessons, playing guitar, and singing on the streets.
A musician friend convinced Sapho to audition for the famed music school, Le Petit Conservatoire de Mireille, and she soon abandoned her acting studies to focus on music. Her first LP, Le Balayeur du Rex, was released in 1977 by RCA.
After spending a year in New York, where she worked as a French reporter and played in different clubs, Sapho went to London to record her second LP, Janis (1980). Over the next three years, she released three albums before taking a brief break to concentrate on a book featuring cartoons from the Brasserie La Coupole in Paris.
Sapho returned to music in 1985 with Passions, passons, which marked a departure from her previous rock sound and featured Middle Eastern influences. This led to a series of concerts at Le Bataclan in Paris, where she began performing her arrangements of songs made famous by the Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.
The next few years saw Sapho branching out further, living in Mexico for a while and releasing the album El Sol y la luna, which features a duet with the Argentinian singer Jairo. She also published two novels, was involved in making a film about the children of the Intifada, and performed in a Threepenny Opera, all while still performing and recording her own music.
Starting in 1992, Sapho focused on the music of Umm Kulthum, releasing a full album of that material and touring the world, including a performance in Jerusalem in 1994. Her next album, Jardin Andalou (1996),blended rock with Arabic and Andalusian elements.
This was followed by Digital Sheikha (1998),a more electronic-based album featuring Pat Jabbar and Bill Laswell, released by the Swiss label Barraka el Farnatshi. In 1999, she released La Route nue des hirondelles, along with her third novel, which she later transformed into a stage show that she toured for the next couple of years.
Sapho continued to perform and record, working and performing in Bagdad, Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Gaza before recording Orients (2003) with a classical orchestra made up of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian musicians. In 2005, she focused on material by the famous French songwriter and composer Léo Ferré, accompanied on stage by a flamenco guitarist.
In 2006, the album Sapho chante Léo Ferré – Ferré Flamenco was released, featuring a song translated into Darija (Moroccan Arabic dialect). Her latest album, Universelle, is a kind of travel through all of her influences, from blues to traditional sounds, and is sung in French, English, and Darija.
