Vocalist Cyrille Aimée was primarily raised in France by a French father and Dominican mother. As a curious child in Samois-sur-Seine, she would sneak out of her bedroom window to wander into the nearby gypsy encampments filled with those attending the annual Django Reinhardt Festival.
She quickly fell in love with gypsy music and way of life; years later she would sing on street corners with friends while traveling across Europe. While in the midst of one such odyssey, she found herself at the Montreux Jazz Festival, where she won first prize in the vocal competition – which included the financing of her first self-produced album
When Aimée audtioned for the Star Academy (a kind of French American Idol), she became a finalist. Informed she would have to sing only what she was told, her gypsy spirit rebelled—and in what was a cause célèbre she walked from the competition.
