Made up of psychiatric patients, a nurse, a doctor and a music therapist, the Squatteurs de blues group never stops touring with its show “Maudit blues”. The therapeutic results are also there.
This Tuesday, June 2, 2026 evening, it is in the den of psychiatry, in the heart of Sainte-Marie hospital, that they will perform. And they invite the public to hear all the voices that rush through their heads to the point of sometimes making their lives hellish. Their names are Sylvie, Yohann, Aymeric, Françoise, Sylvie, Eugénie, Rosie, Pierre-Sylvain, Sylvain, Jérémy… All suffer from the same illnesses: mood disorders, psychoses or schizophrenia. They were supported by the psychosocial rehabilitation center of the Sainte-Marie association. intimate, set to music, that they linked their paths.
The history of the Squatteurs du blues dates back to 2017. “My trigger was when I was cleaning the treatment room: I turned on the set, and systematically, patients would pass a head in and a dialogue would begin”, remembers Olivier Rabereau, a psychiatric nurse for over 30 years and more recently a graduate in music therapy. Around a few volunteers, “most of whom had never sung”a group is formed with the idea of performing for the music festival. Olivier Rabereau becomes the bassist, quickly joined on guitar by the psychiatrist Pierre Kivits. “But when we play, we are all in the same boat, there is no longer any blouse that differentiates us”, slips the nurse.
“Reconnect with their identity and their history”
When Covid-19 comes, in 2020, the workshop takes a completely different turn: the arrival of musician and music therapist Francis Esteves, alias Cisco, propels the Squatteurs into pure artistic creation. “We were in full confinement, we must remember all the anxieties that this generated”, recalls Olivier Rabereau. “So, Cisco started helping them write. The Squatteurs’ production over this period was titanic.” So much so that in 2021, they released their first album with 23 tracks. The Squatteurs were recognized as artists by Sacem, in the same way as their idols.
Cisco remembers: “The urgent thing, for me, was to transform this workshop: that it not be occupational, but that it be integrated into the therapeutic process with a view to the recovery of each patient. I always told them that their symptoms did not define them: before the illness, they had their own identity, their history. And it is with They had to reconnect. For four years, we built a therapeutic alliance to tame each other. Music was only a pretext to allow them to express themselves, to find their place again.
“Bringing down a lot of prejudices”
Behind the console, Cisco and his association Prodiges supervise the tour of the Squatteurs show: “Maudit blues”, a clever staging which installs the texts of patients, slammed, in mirror of the medical institution, sometimes overlooking. Olivier Rabereau and Pierre Kivits drop their instruments to stage their own tensions. “We learn every day, and we would be very bad professionals if we did not question our daily practices”replies the bassist nurse. “In this show, we talk about our illness from the first symptoms, to hospitalization and then recovery”, describe Aymeric and Jérémy, two pillars of the group. “For us, these are years of torture. We don’t always know how we survived, so we don’t hesitate to say strong words.”
Words that hit all the certainties of their audiences, and remind us that one in four French people will face a mental disorder in their life. “With this show, we are addressing all those who have been affected but also all their loved ones: they are often destitute”, resumes Aymeric. “We know that our texts bring hope, that we can get through it, and that we break down a lot of prejudices.”
“The results are stunning”
This tour took them on a crazy collective adventure, like a joyful colony on the roads of France. “Some had never left their little area”, says Olivier Rabereau. “So we have to imagine us at the hotel all together! These are incredible times, and it is very important that everyone evolves with and thanks to each other.” And Cisco bounces back: “The results are astonishing: since we started this project, no one has been hospitalized again, and their treatments have been reduced. They have regained self-confidence, are proud: they have come out of the isolation in which the disease locked them.”
In the coming months, the Squatteurs’ experience will be the subject of an academic publication, in which Cisco is participating. “to dissect the method and the scientific support, because the recipe can be duplicated everywhere”. During this time, the Squatteurs are increasing their projects as peer helpers: with groups of disabled adults, in particular, they are now running writing workshops.
