Interviews Archive - Page 106 of 115

Montreal’s musical ecosystem is home to an authentic Senegalese griot, a kora virtuoso from a long Mandinka lineage. Established in Quebec for more than 20 years, Zal Sissokho has been experimenting with hybridization while continuing the transmission of his age-old culture. Launched on Analekta last February, his album Kora Flamenca is a stylistic fusion with guitarist Caroline Planté, double bassist Jean-Félix Mailloux, percussionist Miguel Medina, oud player Mohamed Masmoudi, and singer Marcos Martin.

Celebrated on Wednesday, October 28, during ADISQ’s 2020 gala series, where Sissokho took home the award for Album of the Year – World Music, the material of this opus is once again highlighted in the context of a concert recorded and webcast at the Nuits d’Afrique.

PAN M 360 contacted the lucky winner for a conversation.

PAN M 360: You are a kora virtuoso, singer, and songwriter, you left Senegal and settled in Montreal in 1999 – how has this relocation changed your music?

Zal Sissokho: Yes, I am a kora virtuoso, singer, and songwriter. About a third of kora players also sing, that’s my case. I was first trained by my late father, Diéourou Sissokho, and I continued learning with other players. For me, living in Montreal allowed me to continue what I had started in Senegal.

PAN M 360: Sissokho is a griot’s name. What was your role in Senegal, and how do you see this role since you have been living in Canada?

ZS: The role of griot is still within me. A griot is a storyteller, a family mediator, and a musician. Through his words and music, he helps people become aware of different issues. I continue to assume this role here in Quebec.

PAN M 360: Will your children follow in your footsteps?

ZS: My daughters are very interested. Traditionally, griot girls sang and did not play instruments, which was the way it was done in the Mandingo Empire. Today, however, it’s more open and girls can learn to play the kora. My oldest should start next year because the size of the instrument requires you to be 12 or 13 years old to learn it. My task is to pass on my traditional knowledge to my daughters, after which they will decide if they want to continue.

PAN M 360: In Quebec, you worked with the Diouf brothers, with Celso Machado, Constantinople, Fakhass Sico, Lilison di Kinara, Richard Séguin, Takadja, Muna Mingole, Caroline Planté, and Cirque du Soleil (the show O), to name but a few. Are there any outstanding collaborations among your encounters, in Quebec or elsewhere?

ZS: All these encounters have left their mark on me because they have allowed me to give something and to receive something too. Going towards another culture is a way for me to not limit myself to my own.

PAN M 360: In what way have these encounters with non-Senegalese artists transformed your playing and your vision of music?

ZS: In my opinion, music has no borders. These encounters have helped me to push back the limits of my kora by playing scales that were not familiar to me at first. If I decided to move to Montreal, it was to find a greater opening, new horizons, and not to limit myself strictly to my traditional learning, which I nevertheless perpetuate when the context lends itself to it. It’s therefore important for me to study other music, other melodic scales, other harmonies, and to see how far the kora can go in these different contexts.

PAN M 360: How was your experience with flamenco?

ZS: As far as I know, only the great virtuoso Toumani Diabaté and the guitarist Ketama had ever done this fusion between Mandinka music and flamenco. Personally, I learned to play flamenco with Caroline Planté, a great guitarist. It was all new to me. I then observed that flamenco was close to Berber music… very different from Mandinka music! Together, we spent a lot of time exploring to see what was possible to create and what wasn’t. I was very impressed with the way the flamenco music was played. We then composed several pieces, and kept about 10 of them for the recording.

PAN M 360: How do you reconcile your attachment to the Mandinka tradition with your experiences of hybridization?

ZS: In my songs, I recount what’s around me, what I live and what I see, while keeping my Mandinka traditions alive. In fact, all my encounters outside West Africa have always made me want to compose. These experiences have also allowed me to get to know my instrument better. You never stop learning, and that’s what inspires me!

PAN M 360: There have been major technical advances in the playing of the kora, several virtuosos are now making their mark. What are those changes, in your opinion, and how has your own playing changed as you observe them?

ZS: I’m going to give you some names of kora players that I like to listen to: Toumani Diabaté, Ballaké Sissokho, Toumani Kouyaté. Their ways of playing the chords, of using them, of adapting the kora to different tonalities, all this makes me want to go further in my research. So the kora has become universal. My father and grandfather played traditionally in Senegal, at ritual events – christenings, weddings, etc. – and it’s still played today. Later on, younger musicians revolutionised the game. Today, kora players are technically superior, limits have been pushed back.

PAN M 360: What’s the game plan for Thursday’s concert?

ZS: I’ll present the music from the album Kora Flamenca with Caroline Planté, Miguel Medina, and Jean-Félix Mailloux. We had toured a little after the release of the album last February but the pandemic stopped us. Even though this concert will be presented without an audience, we will give everything we’ve got, to make sure that people enjoy watching it.

PAN M 360: What are your plans for the future?

ZS: A new idea is running through my head: kora and jazz! But I also plan to tour with the Kora Flamenca project… when COVID is a thing of the past.

PAN M 360: Congrats for your Felix award, “Album of the year -World Music “!

ZS: Thank you ! I am very happy, it is a recognition of my work done for more than 20 years in Quebec. I feel fortunate to have such a great team around me. This is my country now, I spend more time here than in Senegal, I’m happy with this welcome, I feel like I’m part of this society and this music industry. And we keep up with the good work, we are not giving up!

The artist Saycet, whose real name is Pierre Lefeuvre, has created the original soundtrack for the French Netflix series La Révolution, an ambitious project for both Netflix and himself that earned him the privilege of working with a symphony orchestra for the first time. As a composer, musician, and producer, Saycet has been able to evolve thanks to his influences, collaborations, and concerts. Somewhat involuntarily, he’s recently turned to composing music for moving images. This large-scale project has turned out to be a titanic work that’s given birth to 240 minutes of music mixing modern, powerful electronics with adaptations of works by classical composers such as Beethoven, Bach, Lully, and Handel. Saycet reflects on this great premiere, crowning his 15-year career.

PAN M 360: How does one go about composing a soundtrack for a Netflix series?

Saycet: Well, first of all, you do a casting like an actor, with a file that you send in (via an agent). Then we make a demo tape, like the other composers, and then we wait. Then one day, you get a call. But, of course, that’s without mentioning all the upstream work that has been going on for several years for documentaries, films, and advertisements. [NB: the recent soundtrack to the wildlife documentary Le Roi Bâtard, which he composed with Laurent Garnier]

PAN M 360: What were your visual, audio, or other inspirations for composing the soundtrack for such a project, revisiting the history of France?

Saycet: My inspirations were mainly the series itself. I arrived very late in the process, the editing was almost finalised and I was lucky enough to be able to compose directly on final cuts. The showrunner Aurélien Molas [creator, author and producer] had absolute confidence in me. As a result, it was done very instinctively. He had a reference before I met him, it was the soundtrack of the film Sicario, by Jóhann Jóhannsson. So I tried to get the essence of it and take it elsewhere.

PAN M 360: Musically, was the inspiration of artists such as Beethoven, Handel, and Bach, to name but a few, obvious to you?

Saycet: It was mostly a big coincidence. It all started from Handel’s La Sarabande (the version in the film Barry Lyndon) which was in the edit (on another scene). It was at the debriefing that we asked ourselves whether we should leave it as it was, making it a synchro (with a strong tribute to Kubrick), or whether we should remove it and replace it with a score.

The music supervisor for the series [Pierre-Marie Dru] then challenged me to my interpretation of it – something I had never considered. So I did it very instinctively, the producers really liked it, and then I tried to find other songs to interpret that would fit into that universe. Through this process, which was absolutely unthinking and done rather in a hurry, I didn’t have time to ask myself questions about inspiration or what was obvious, to be very honest. If I’d had the time to intellectualise it beforehand, I wouldn’t have done it, for lack of self-confidence.

PAN M 360: How was it to work with a symphony orchestra?

Saycet: It was a big first for me. It was quite impressive, because I don’t speak the language and I haven’t mastered the codes of an orchestra. Everything is in some way opposed to the other, and quite naturally, I was very quickly satisfied. We were able to really communicate, and I was able to let myself go towards more and more personal intentions.

PAN M 360: Will the composition of this soundtrack have an influence on your artistic future, and how would that translate?

Saycet: I don’t know about that! (laughs) I hope so, thanks to Netflix, which has a global reach. La Révolution will have an influence on my future already, by making public my artistic project. I also hope that my work will interest producers or directors from new countries.

Pierre Kwenders’ international career regularly takes him to Europe. His many Parisian stopovers have been punctuated by an artistic collaboration with Clément Bazin, electronic musician, songwriter, and percussionist by training. In addition to his solo projects, which keep him very busy, Bazin was notably part of Woodkid’s international tour a few years ago. Together, the Parisian and the Congolese-Montrealer planned an intercontinental flight on Classe tendresse. It’s a bird’s-eye view of the landscapes these two citizens of the world create, revealing their respective journeys through this EP, with remixes, on the Bonsound label. Pierre Kwenders sums up this trip in all courtesy.

PAN M 360: How did you get to know Clément Bazin, to picture Classe tendresse together?

Pierre Kwenders: My manager had met him in Montreal when he performed there, and told me about him. I finally met him in France two years ago. He then invited me to his studio, made me play some sounds I liked, and I came back to Montreal with them. At first, they were tracks to work on my next album, and… Clément and I worked together again later, when I went back to Paris. The connection came very naturally, after which we thought, why not release an EP together? All the songs were recorded there, when I was working with Moonshine or for my own shows, we always had a session. The last one was recorded in February 2020, just before COVID. The EP was for all intents and purposes finished, we added three remixes of the four songs to the program. Time and circumstances finally worked in our favour.

PAN M 360: Except for the percussion aspect, isn’t this duo EP in the same spirit as your solo work?

PK: Absolutely, my identity is there. But in a tandem project, we have to find each other! I didn’t want to take up all the space, I wanted Clément to bring his flavour and identity too, and that’s exactly what he did with the steel drums that are on almost all the songs, except the song “Ego”, surprisingly. That’s really what attracted me to his work, this love for steel drums and Afro-Caribbean culture. At a very young age, Clément became interested in steel bands, and today he plays them very well. Incredible, this instrument! We agreed on this interest in Caribbean culture, which I naturally like, given my African origins. The steel drum was invented by musicians from Trinidad. This creativity of underprivileged artists also exists in my native Congo, and groups like Kokoko!, Fulu Miziki, Staff Benda Bilili, or Konono No. 1 play instruments they built themselves. I think it’s wonderful. The impossible can become a possibility, that’s the beauty of the human being.

PAN M 360: You sing in Lingala and French, your music has elements of Congolese rumba – your cultural heritage is once again resurfacing in this new EP, isn’t it?

PK: As they say, you can take me out of the Congo, but you can’t take the Congo out of me! To use another well-known expression, I fell into Congolese rumba when I was a child. When I started music, I wanted to do Congolese rumba, but I also wanted people to understand where I came from. For example, ewolo is a dance from the ’90s, from the group Zaiko Langa Langa. For me, the song “Ewolo” is a way for me to pay tribute to this group that I loved when I was 10 or 11 years old. We used to dance to it at family parties. I also remember my mother’s 35th birthday, it’s a childhood memory that I wanted to share. In the same song, there is also an extract from a street song that my parents themselves used to sing when they were little. It’s imbued in me, it’s part of who I am, and I’m happy to share it.

PAN M 360: Can you elaborate on the beatmaking on the EP?

PK: I had nothing to do with it! I gave Clement the freedom to take it where he wanted. The beats at the start were the result of his ideas, then I worked with him, suggesting that he extend such and such a sequence, and son on and so forth. He took up my idea and told his own story through composition and direction. He had ideas, so I could add things here and there. Clément and I inspired each other. And everyone brought what they could bring to the final product.

PAN M 360: Was there a common goal from the outset?

PK: The basic idea was to make people dance, and touch their emotions. While writing this project, I myself was living important experiences in my life, I wanted to talk about them, but not in sadness. I also did “Ego”, a song in homage to Africa, which I had never done before. It’s also a nod to the Ivorian coupe-décalé style that I’m a big fan of, and also to DJ Caloudji’s song “Sentiment manquant”.

PANM 360: “Ego” is a tribute to Africa, a first for you.

PK: Yes, I wanted to pay tribute to Africa for the good things, for the big cities that see the birth and growth of so many artists, some of whom are becoming international, from Youssou N’Dour to Burna Boy, via Franco and Manu Dibango, whom I name and who left us during COVID. I wish he could have heard it! In Congo, for example, electronic music is becoming very present in the big cities, without dislodging rumba and soukouss for all that. It’s all part of what I like to do, which is to travel and pass on my culture, to make people even more curious about Africa beyond my own music.

PAN M 360: What about the next Pierre Kwenders album?

PK: It’s coming out in 2021, and what’s in Classe tendresse is not at all the material for the album. This EP is a nice interlude with Clément. It gives me great pleasure that this project can see the light of day, and that I can share it with my audience before looking to other horizons next year, after having worked with Clément Bazin and, before that, with Ishmael Butler from Shabazz Palaces.

Photo: Norman Wong

With this fourth studio album, the Toronto trio claims to be at another stage of its existence. METZ are as brutal, twisted, and uncomfortable as ever, but with Atlas Vending, the band push their music towards new dynamics, exploring the theme of growth and maturation with martial rhythms and twisted riffs. In all this fury and sonic maelstrom, there are a few hidden hooks, a sign that the combo, if not softening, is slightly less oppressive and anxiety-provoking. The band’s bassist, Chris Slorach, tells us more about this new charge and what this new maturity means for the band.

PAN M 360: The photo on the cover of your fourth album is fascinating, it’s a strong image. What is its story and what does the title, Atlas Vending, mean?

Chris Slorach: It’s really hard to say because it’s got a lot of personal meaning woven into it. But I think a lot of it has to do with us growing and changing. Just evolving, you know. It might not make sense as a literal term, but internally, it has a lot of significance to our band. It’s difficult to explain. As for the photo, Alex Edkin’s (guitarist and singer) father is a hobby photographer and this particular photo has been sitting for about three years, just waiting for a home. We thought of using it for a seven-inch but then we changed our minds. So for the artwork for this record, we went through five or six cover designs, but kind of fell back on that one and, as we continued to look at it and continued to lay it out, it started to reveal itself as the obvious choice for the cover of that record. I think it’s a really powerful photo, the image matches the music. It just felt right.

PAN M 360: You spoke of growth and evolution, can you be more specific?

CS: Influences and lifestyles, just who we are as people – we’ve all grown and changed quite a lot over the years. Our influences are constantly in flux, we’re all big music fans and record collectors. Where we’re pulling our musical influences from are very different than what they were ten years ago. But those changes are also on a personal level. Alex and I are both married and are parents now. I’m in my early forties, I’m no longer a young man. The things that are important to me on a daily basis are very different than what they used to be. So I think you can’t have all these changes happen in your life without it affecting what you do, right? So the way that we approach music has changed, just like our life on a daily basis.

PAN M 360: As far as these different influences are concerned, can you name some of them?

CS: I get a lot of influences and inspiration from my wife and my kids. I find it’s a driving force for me, and always a source of inspiration to work hard. Musically, I’ve been listening a lot to Charlie Megira. A bit of a chameleon, as far as his music goes. Some stuff sounds like The Cramps meet Santo & Johnny, and some of it can sound like Joy Division. It’s really all over the place. And I have a deep history in metal, I traveled to Montreal many times to see metal shows. This year I’ve been revisiting a lot of old metal, but there’s a band from Finland called Oranssi Pazuzu who put out an amazing record this year. And then revisiting old music like The Kinks. I was reading about volatile bands, and the story of the brothers in The Kinks is fascinating.

PAN M 360: Can you tell me how and when the album was recorded?

CS: We recorded it at the end of November, early December, 2019. In Providence, Rhode Island, with Seth Manchester (Daughters, Lingua Ignota, The Body) and our friend Ben Greenberg (Uniform). We’d been writing for about a year and a half before going into the studio. We put out Strange Piece, toured it quite a lot, and had taken a couple of months off to recuperate. I took off to play bass with a band called Daughters and when I came back, we just got into it, wrote this record, and drove down to Providence and made it. It was one of the most fluid and comfortable records to make. We were very prepared. We recorded and mixed the record in 14 days.

PAN M 360: Covering seemingly disparate themes such as fatherhood, overwhelming social anxiety, addiction, isolation, media-induced paranoia, and the urge to give up, each of Atlas Vending’s 10 songs offers a kind of snapshot of the current situation. If you hadn’t told me when the record was recorded, I would have thought it was something you would have done during the pandemic. It’s the perfect soundtrack. That said, all your albums could be the perfect soundtrack for a pandemic!

CS: I feel that we operate with enough anxiety to survive an entire pandemic (laughs). There are four albums of pure anxiety, if you want it! The one we’ll write during the pandemic will be just acoustic banjo, to truly take us out of our element (laughs).

PAN M 360 : So you choose to work with a producer on this album. You didn’t want to work with Steve Albini, like you did on your last record? Is he too expensive?

CS: We’ve never worked with a producer before this new album. Albini was the engineer on our previous record. He is a very competent person who knows the ins and outs of a studio like nobody else, so it’s a great situation to walk into. But I created a relationship with Seth, and we’ve been talking in the band for so long about making a record, so when we were trying to figure out where we were gonna make the record, everything fell into place and it just made sense to go work with these guys. We wanted a very comfortable situation with some familiar faces so that we could feel at home and try to have fun making that record, and not feel like we’re working. I’m not saying working with Albini is not fun. He is, he’s a really nice guy, he’s incredibly talented, but the situation that we wanted to get into was something more friendly. And working with Seth and Ben helped us feel in our element. So it’s the first album we did with a producer, we always self-produced.

PAN M 360: Would you say this album might be more melodic than the others?

CS: Yes, I think so. There’s no way I would deny it with songs like “Hail Taxi” or “A Boat to Drown In”, there’s clear melodies. I think that we’ve always focused on finding a hook in a lot of our music. We’re all big fans of rock ’n’ roll song structures. This album is a growth in songwriting but also, there’s a confidence that comes with this much experience playing, so we felt more confident making that record, confident making a more melodic record.

PAN M 360: Can you explain the evolution of the band since its beginning?

CS: When we first started we were probably a mathier band with longer songs. Our first seven-inches were fairly long and drawn out, a lot slower, and with time, we’ve turned into a very straightforward rock ’n’ roll band. On the outside, a casual listener might not feel the same sort of growth, maturity, and forward movement that we feel within the band. We feel that with every record we’ve made, we’ve taken a step and evolved. Like Alex said, “change is inevitable if you’re lucky.” So that’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to get better at writing songs, and become better at our instruments and feel free to move around the space that we’re creating. To grow personally and as musicians with every single release.

Originally from Colombia, the young Ela Minus has released the album Acts of Rebellion, on the Domino label. Composed, performed in English and Spanish, arranged, recorded, and produced by her alone, this invigorating work reveals a complete artist, trained percussionist, and accomplished beatmaker. Her high-level musical education certainly hasn’t hurt, but in this case, the rebellious spirit and vibrant creativity of this very gifted woman pulverizes all academicism. In recent months, excerpts from her new album have titillated our ears, hence the conversation that follows.

PAN M 360: Since few people know you outside your network, let’s start at the beginning – describe your journey.

Ela Minus: I’m from Bogota, Colombia, and based in Brooklyn. I started playing drums at the age of nine, when I started a band in elementary school. As a teenager, I played emo rock and hardcore punk, and then I wanted to study drums more deeply. I left Colombia when I was 19 and enrolled at Berklee College of Music in Boston, where I lived for four years. I was fortunate to study with the great jazz drummer Terri Lyne Carrington – my approach to music comes largely from that training with her.

PAN M 360: There are more and more excellent female drummers, but we’re far from parity, aren’t we?

EM: Yes, indeed. There are a lot more female drummers than before, but not yet enough. We were two women drummers in my student year. And today? You know, I listen to a lot of jazz and I don’t see enough change, this style is totally dominated by men. Beyond jazz, the music suffers because female musicians play differently. Because we are what we are, we should celebrate that difference more in the music world.

PAN M 360: You obtained two majors at Berklee, one in jazz drums and another in “synthetic music” – how did you get interested in electro?

EM: Before I came to Berklee, I was interested in electronic music, I was fascinated by synthesizers. Bands like Radiohead had already inspired me to explore synthesizers and electro music. I also felt that I should learn something other than drums, so I decided to sign up for this major devoted to music synthesis. I bought my first synthesizers, cheap ones, old ones. I dismantled some of them because I wanted to learn how they were made, and learn how to repair them. Then I started building my own synthesizers and composing with these new instruments. On the drumming side, I got tired of bands, and of all those young people who wanted to be famous more than being good artists. It became very boring, I just wanted to make music. Since I was working alone, I started singing and playing live. Up to now, this solo project of electronic music has become more and more serious.

PAN M 360: How did you bring this project to the stage?

EM: I first recorded three songs for fun, and then I was invited to Colombia for a festival. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was going to do! So I played those three songs, and then someone in the audience asked me to play another one. Since then, I’ve never stopped creating new proposals. In my spare time, I recorded a first EP, and when I felt that I had enough experience and knowledge playing live, it was the right time to record a full album. It took me four months, I did everything – composing, playing, beatmaking, producing. This album is a compilation of everything I learned during four years of playing live.

PAN M 360: What’s your stage equipment, and how do you present yourself in front of an audience?

EM: I have a MPC 1000 (Akai), a drum machine, a bass synth, a pocket piano that I built myself, a small modular synth, that’s about it. With this equipment, I do everything. I don’t play drums, I challenged myself to do something different from what I used to do. For me, it’s a lot of fun to play this music live. That’s an important factor that I think makes the music interesting. The live experience is always captivating. In the end, I played more live than I recorded with this project. I feel like a child! I had lost that spirit with the drums. There are chord changes, 32-bar loops within I can do whatever I want. I leave empty sequences at the beginning for improvisation, I give myself the right to make mistakes, I experiment. I approach my concerts as if I were playing jazz.

PAN M 360 : Your way of doing things isn’t purely electronic, since you sing lyrics.

EM: I’ve always liked pop structures in music, melodies, lyrics… I always come back to pop when I don’t really think about what I should do. My discoveries of some electronic music made me love the aggressiveness and darkness. I also like repetition, all these elements give you freedom, from a drummer’s point of view. When you put all your energy into keeping the rhythm and keeping a band together, and a synthetic rhythm allows you to do something else, it’s really liberating.

PAN M 360: Okay, but your music isn’t exactly pop, other important variables come into play – what would you say they are?

EM: My music is a combination of pop, hardcore punk, and rough electronic music. I like darkwave, I also like Front 242 and all that Belgian electronic music that emerged in the ’80s and early ’90s, or the Canadian band Skinny Puppy. My approach to electronica is coloured by punk and hardcore rock, that’s where I come from. I don’t want a static concert in that sense. I need to sing, move, play instruments. It happens between you and me, we sweat together, we feel things, we are connected with the sound.

PAN M 360 : How do you plan to maintain interest while avoiding the trap of repetition that might be imposed on you by your own audience?

EM: Always fear that the person you married is in love with only one version of you. Lasting love must change shape, as being human involves change. Unfortunately, people often stay the same because they are afraid to stop being loved in a new version of themselves. It’s much the same between artists and their fans; for the relationship to be rewarding, artists need to make it clear to their audience that they need to remain open to change, to new forms, while remaining close to the human being who creates them. I really like this sentence by the art historian Ernst Gombrich: “Art does not really exist. There are only artists.” No matter what form your art takes, it is always you who is involved. People identify with you, so you really have to get to know yourself and find your voice. That’s my ultimate goal.

Photo: Etienne de Durocher

Born in Paris, Lee Terki arrived in Canada at the age of four. The singer-songwriter learned trombone in an art class and had a slightly more difficult time in high school. The sporty type, he turned to soccer, eventually joining a first-division team. After exploring film and psychology, music caught up with him for good. His first EP, The Half Full, took him all over the world, including Paris, Seoul and Tokyo, three jazz capitals. An important step that guided the creation of his first album, The Index of my Inner Thoughts.

PAN M 360: You grew up in contact with diverse cultures, your father is franco-Canadian of Kabyle Algerian descent, and your mother of Chinese-Jamaican origin. How did your musical tastes develop?

L. Teez: I remember my first music around the age of six or seven, my father playing me Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry”… I was taking art classes and in the old days, we used to burn CDs. I would do it for the class and the teacher would let me play them. As much funk, with Earth, Wind and Fire, James Brown, Cameo… as hip-hop. In the mid-2000s, it was a lot of Eminem, 50 Cent. I was very influenced by Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool and Stillmatic by Nas. A little later in my life, I listened to jazz. The first one who opened the door for me was Miles Davis with Kind of Blue. I find myself into melodic things, like D’Angelo or Erykah Badu.

PAN M 360: Which branch of hip-hop do you identify with the most? Listening to your album, I think of Vanilla more recently, but also of 9th Wonder, J.Dilla, A Tribe Called Quest…

L. Teez: I do jazz-rap. I’m into everything melodic, but in the old days it was more boom-bap. My drums are electronic or live, it’s not really the Akai MPC characteristic of the “boom boom bap” that we could hear at the time when artists like A Tribe Called Quest were hitting the charts.

PAN M 360: Sampling is the basis of hip-hop, how do you integrate it into your creations?

L. Teez: The particularity of the album is that I found all the beats online. I contacted the producers and made agreements with them. I’m already working on my next release, and my creative process is evolving. I’d like to go more in the direction of composition, so sampling is something I’m thinking about. In concert, I really like to play with a band, which makes it a bit difficult to use samples in this context. Sure, the sound of the sample brings a quality that you don’t find in production. Who doesn’t like a sample of soul, pitched up à la Kanye West? (laughs) It makes you feel good!

PAN M 360: Can you explain the importance of travel in the construction of The Index of My Inner Thoughts?

L. Teez: I did some showcase dates with my first EP, notably in Seoul, Busan, Tokyo, and Paris. When I travel, I look for beats because for me, music is also in the moments you live. I wrote a lot during my travels. I like to write outside, it frees my thoughts and ideas. In a city like Paris, I used to stay near the Moulin Rouge towards Montmartre, and I wrote “Hold Me Down” on a café terrace. It was inspiring and authentic. I have introspective themes because when you’re in contact with different cultures, when you have new experiences, your “you” is reflected a lot.

PAN M 360: Do you always work in the same way, first the text, then the music?

L. Teez: I always start with an existing beat. I write around the music, I let it dictate the “tone”. If there are more minor chords or less drums at a point, I’ll write differently, have a different flow too. On the album, a lot of elements come, go, and are added… It’s rare for instrumentals to be four-minute loops. I think the attention I pay to the arrangements comes from my love for jazz. If there’s a section without percussion, I’m going to be more poetic, and if there’s more, I’m going to be more energetic.

PAN M 360: Besides you, on the album, there’s Lea Keeley… how did you meet and what does her presence bring to the album?

L. Teez: We met at the Cypher, a jam that takes place every Thursday night at the Bootlegger in Montreal. There are musicians, rappers, dancers. The musicians who play in my band all come from there. We met at a jam session. We worked together organically. She has quite a voice. She has written some very melodic passages that add a lot of harmony. We developed a great friendship. She’s part of the band; when we play live, she’s with me on stage. Lea brought the soul music, she has a very powerful voice.

First of all, let’s immediately settle any possible uncertainties about the conductor and director of this project. Is the anecdote about the stage name true?

“My first name is Justin, and we chose Juste-1 (juste un) as the name of my previous band,” explains the singer and bassist of Bantü Salsa, naturally. “We pronounced this anagram according to French phonetics, to show our unity, in all simplicity. But the presenter of our first TV appearance, an English-speaking man, read the number 1 as one (in his language) when he called us up on stage. The audience immediately swallowed it as a brilliant idea and, tired of correcting the fans every time, we bowed to the will of the public, even adding a circumflex accent on the â to deliberately exaggerate the English pronunciation.”

A native of Cameroon, Just Wôan arrived in Quebec to participate in the Francofolies de Montréal. He eventually founded a family and set up a promotional initiative for hybrid artists, including a recording studio, video specialists, a label, and a publicity team: Les productions Miss-Meuré.

“In my mother’s language it means ‘eyes and ears’. For me, it simply symbolises multimedia. We’ve already signed a dozen artists. I’ve worked with the Arts Council on models, and as a director for award-winning and subsidised projects. Too many worthy artists remain on the sidelines, and can’t find their place. There is a lot of work to be done!”

The launch date of Bantü Salsa’s debut album fell in the same week as the restrictions imposed by Covid-19 in March. There’s now only one solution: roll up your sleeves and follow the calendar.

https://youtu.be/bHdg7IWPVSM

The United Nations of Quebec and the kora

If it’s true that there is a real alternative music scene here that strongly reflects Montreal’s unique demographic diversity, then the new band led by Justin Itoko (alias Just Wôan) can be placed at the top of the list, with eight different nationalities represented. It has a full brass section, Mexican pianist Ricardo Angel Soniaro (schooled in Cuba in the big leagues), African drummer Ronald Auguste Dogbo, and, to top it all off, the authentic Malian griot Diely Mori Tounkara, who happily ensures the inclusion of the 22 magic strings of this age-old Mandinka harp.

“If the kora in salsa is not an absolute exception, or a unique case, it’s indeed the first time that it takes up so much space, to my knowledge, in Afro-Latin orchestration at least,” says the leader.

Very eloquent when he evokes the evolution of the Bantu people, their history during centuries of slavery, their migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Angola, the songwriter of this Quebec salsa group offers up lively, sunny songs in which the beauties of the dark continent are also celebrated. And on “Kessaï”, the title song of this first album, we hear about living together everywhere, the right, the legitimacy for everyone to feel good anywhere, in any country, without having to suffer from local prejudices and systemic racism.

In an attempt to define the musical style of Bantü Salsa in the columns of PAN M 360, a few weeks ago I did not hesitate to quote models such as Richard Bona or Bobby McFerrin to describe the maestro’s singing. Does his pride still pass through the door after these compliments?

(He stifles an embarrassed laugh.)

“On the contrary! Being compared to such accomplished artists necessarily gives you more humility. And it can’t make your ankles swell, as they say, or give you a big head. It makes you humble before the talent of these musicians, who have immense careers. We’re talking about McFerrin, who can fill an entire stadium by himself with just one microphone, or Bona, who excels at everything he touches. I’m 37 years old and I still have all the work to do. It’s all in front of me.”

Nuits d’Afrique offers the third musical journey in its series Live from Montreal’s African Nights with Bantü Salsa and Ayrad, this Thursday, October 22 at 8 p.m. SEE THE LIVESTREAM

Photo: Jack Bool

In contrast with the absolute majority of French-speaking Quebec singers who’ve chosen to express themselves in English and who, it has to be said, are only listened to appreciably by French-speaking Quebecers, Helena Deland manages to thwart that insular model. A songwriter and performer with bicultural origins, she can boast a real career in English-speaking markets outside Quebec. Deland has toured with Whitney, Weyes Blood, Connan Mockasin, opened for Iggy Pop in Paris, and collaborated with JPEGMAFIA. Not bad! The next step is the imminent release of the album Someone New, on the Chivi Chivi label.

PAN M 360: Someone New shows a remarkable progression in your young career – could you identify the main factors?

Helena Deland: The clearest way to describe this progression is this – for my EPs released since 2017, there were no umbrella themes, that is, I didn’t approach songwriting as a fragment of something bigger. I would get to the recording stage, then I would make a summary of the songs on the programme. I wasn’t looking for a clear theme, but rather for coherence. From the moment I wrote “Someone New”, I became super excited! It kept me awake, the inspiration was stronger than sleep. It doesn’t often happen to me that a song comes to me so quickly. I felt like I’d put my finger on a proposal to develop. It was the spark plug, I really wanted to carry this project forward. “Someone New” gave me a model. I wanted to exploit a clear idea and use it formally in poetic writing.

PAN M 360: The more or less recurring theme of Someone New is the state of mind in which a woman in her late twenties finds herself, torn between the dominant models of emotional success and the assumption of a less stable emotional life than she had expected or desired. What’s your perspective?

HD: It’s a way for me to describe a period of great insecurity. I was wondering what I was looking for in love relationships… Why did I absolutely need this validation? The answer: clearly, it’s compensation! It is also the fear of loneliness. What we are presented with is a romantic version of stable and harmonious love. So there’s a clear gap between the nuclear-family model I grew up in, and our age of web-based applications for serial love. This “self-sufficiency” was a way for me to live my femininity, but it was really confusing. I hope one day to be at peace with myself, but I don’t see a time when I will reach full wholeness. When I wrote this album, in any case, I hadn’t really accepted yet that it might be impossible to achieve this. There was always this tension between the dream of a pure feeling of emotional comfort and the uneasiness caused by waiting for an ideal of love that one never reaches.

PAN M 360: Thematically, then, the songs are usually built around “Someone New”, aren’t they?

HD: “Someone New” talks about the end of the twenties, the end of youth, ageing, the construction of female identity on the male gaze. I didn’t blossom in a stable relationship, I questioned myself as such. What do I want? The nuclear family? Romantic success? To feel desirable? The songs lie in resistance to this deceptive ideal or in the hope of getting closer to it, or even in fear of the impossibility of achieving it. The songs “Comfort Edge”, “Pale” and “Fruit Pick” express these confusing, complicated, stressful states. “Someone New” still carries hope, the narrator asserts herself and ultimately finds peace. “Neutral”, in the end, is a kind of mantra… In the end, these songs underline that there is no perfect way to exist. Wisdom is to accept it.

PAN M 360: Successive listens to Someone New don’t lie – there was a lot of care taken in the production. Tell us about that!

HD: This is clearly the result of my intention to extend what I heard in my demos. For me, it was super important to take the songs as far as I could on my own. For my previous experience, I was working with someone who was very experienced and very confident. All my EPs were recorded with Jesse McCormack. He does everything and didn’t have to wait for me when it took me a while. The rhythm was his own. That was fine, but it was hard to measure my own insecurity in the studio. I wanted to know what I was capable of. I felt the need to slow down the pace, I found my own. A lot of thinking! Through that, my new colleagues helped me to correct or find solutions to problems. They helped me to find what worked.

PAN M 360: More specifically, who did you work with?

HD: I first played my demos for my friend Valentin Ignat, whom I had met when we were both baristas in the same café. He studies electroacoustics at Concordia University. He has a very geeky approach to sound, textures, details. I wanted us to do this together. It hasn’t always been easy, we didn’t always know how we would bring this project to fruition. In some songs, we could get stuck in a corner! So the band played, we recorded, Valentin did a pre-mix and then I was ready to work with someone more experienced than us. Gabe Wax is a star producer in the indie world, he’s worked with War on Drugs, Fleet Foxes, Deerhunter, Adrianne Lenker, Soccer Mommy, many others. He put a fresh wind in there, some songs have been completely rebuilt. At this stage of the project, it was really inspiring to work with Gabe. All in all, Valentin and I worked from July to November, Gabe and I worked from November to January.

PAN M 360: You studied French literature, so it’s possible that French texts could also pop up in your repertoire, no?

HD: Yes, I’d like to, but I feel I’m less well-educated in French-language song. In fact, my father is francophone and my mother is anglophone, born of Irish immigrant parents (McCullough). My parents had a more anglophone musical culture, even if there was Gilles Vigneault or Jean Leloup playing at home. My parents are from Montreal but they made their careers in Quebec City, which is why I grew up on the south shore of Quebec City. I lived there until the end of CEGEP. Then I travelled, I came to live in Montreal, I did a baccalaureate in literature at UQAM, and then I was super lucky with music.

PAN M 360: Talking to you, you have a very clear sense of the two cultures in you, franco and anglo. This is a facilitator for a career of your type, that is, for all markets where they love English songs. You’ve toured with famous artists such as Whitney, Weyes Blood, Connan Mockasin. You even opened for Iggy Pop in Paris, you worked with JPEGMAFIA. Was that an intention from the start?

HD: My manager, Nicolas Fortin, first saw me on stage at the Casa Del Popolo. Then he listened to my first EP before its release and offered to work with me. At first, it was a no, and then… a yes. He’s very present, trustworthy and has his own label, Chivi Chivi (Lydia Képinski, Lysandre, Étienne Dufresne…). I was at the end of the session, and we had been offered a tour with the American band Whitney. We did it. So, yes, we wanted an international career right from the start.

PAN M 360: There you are!

Photo: Mechant Vaporwave

It’s no longer a secret that Backxwash is one of the most eagerly awaited up-and-coming artists at this 19th edition of the Pop Montreal festival. With her album God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It, released earlier this year, the Zambian-Canadian artist affirms her rage for life and her search for identity as a black trans woman, through rap that clashes with her unexpected metal references and occult and cryptic lyrics evocative of black magic. Behind this mythical character of the witch, there lurks a desire to proclaim her difference, her independence, and her ancestral spiritual practice. PAN M 360 spoke with the artist to decipher the Backxwash spell.

PAN M 360: I don’t think I came across the meaning behind the name Backxwash. What can you tell us?

Backxwash: I find it funny, some punk bands choose two names out of the blue (laughs). Just like random stuff. I thought Backxwash would fit because I’m also like a queer person doing this art, so straight people look at it and wonder – what is that?

PAN M 360: My first thought was that it maybe had something to do with going backwards and washing the past.

Backxwash: That’s a good one, I might steal that from you. I like it.

PAN M 360: Your album God Has Nothing To Do With This Leave Him Out Of It was released on the label Grimalkin, which is more focused on LGBTQ artists and witchcraft art. What can you tell us about this label?

Backxwash: It’s more a collective, I guess. It’s about people coming in together and helping each other with whatever services a person might need for their next project. It’s very socialist in a sense, because services are being distributed among everybody in the collective equally and there is no hierarchy to it, no contract, nothing like that. I sadly had to leave Grimalkin, but they do incredible work. These days you have official labels who go to somebody young who is just starting, and put them in a very bad contract early on in their career. I was thinking that Grimalkin was perfect because they don’t really do that. You need to be careful because some labels are predatory.

PAN M 360: You mention that your album is about your struggle with religion. How was religion important to you in the past?

Backxwash: I grew up extremely religiously, I like to say that I was a bad Christian. The place where I grew up is pretty conservative. Most of the laws are kind of determined by what the Bible says, essentially. Growing up, I started asking all of these questions around me. At the same time, I was figuring out my identity. It took a bit to start asking all these questions, I couldn’t ask them before. Any questions that I ask, the answer would be referred to the book. Now that you’re growing up away from the shackles of what they imposed on you, you are now free to ask those questions and heal the trauma that was caused to you, essentially in the way that you wanted.

PAN M 360: What helped you through this trauma?

Backxwash: Discovering precolonial spirituality, not being afraid to be yourself and getting a system of individualism through that. It was a long process as well, because you’re taught most of these things when you’re growing up and you have no question as to why you’re taught those things. You’re just told you’re a Christian and you don’t know why you should be a Christian. You’re just told you’re a boy and don’t know why you should be a boy. You take a step back and think this thing is much more complex than it actually was.

PAN M 360: I read you discovered the precolonial Tumbuka tribe’s spirituality. Can you tell us more about that?

Backxwash: I’m half Tumbuka, half Chewa, and I try to embrace both sides. The main point between the two tribes is embracing ancestors, spirits, and traditions that come from these cultures. Before I embraced the Tumbuka tribe, I was told that it was a spiritual evil. You shouldn’t be conversing with spirits because spirits are demons. Spirits are going to visit you, spirits are going to give you signs if your ancestors are looking over you, they’re going to try to get to you. Just embracing that conversation and that imagery, saying that this is a safe space for you. It opened my perspective to practice and whatnot.

Vimbuza is a healing dance with therapeutic function popular among the Tumbuka people. By becoming possessed by Vimbuza spirits, people could express mental problems in a way that was accepted and understood.

PAN M 360: How did you embrace the persona of the witch?

Backxwash: Back in the 19th century, when the missionaries came to the country that I grew up in, we used to do the spiritual practices that I’m doing right now. The missionaries taught their English, through their English, they taught us that it was witchcraft. Witchcraft is a sin. I think about it in a way that witchcraft is actually the African spirituality in a sense. That’s how I embrace it. I’m also a fan of the occult and I like to read up on different things on magic, different practices. I guess that just how it comes together, through one concept, which is witchcraft.

PAN M 360: We can hear a sample from the writer Alan Watts at the end of the song “Into the Void”. How did you come across his work?

Backxwash: I’m always interested in people that share perspectives. The perspective might not be different but the approach to the perspective is very different. Alan Watts is somebody who gets into grandiose topics and kind of breaks it down into digestible terms. It is not digestible in a sense that you’re going to lose key information out of it, but digestible in the sense you’re going to get so much key information out of it.

PAN M 360: The void is something Alan Watts talks about in his work. How would you define the void?

Backxwash: The void is terrifying, it is nothingness. My mind is going to a place of nothingness and darkness because of the paranoia that I’m feeling, it is inescapable. It is something that I can’t really get away from and it’s not gonna let you go. The song is based on real-life occurrences of being attacked or harassed when you’re going down the street as a trans person. Your mind goes into that really dark place of nothingness because you don’t know what the next person is gonna do to you.

https://youtu.be/1PFxAiVwfis

PAN M 360: Your album was nominated on the short list of the Polaris Prize. You winning it as a trans person, don’t you think it would potentially be a strong political symbol?

Backxwash: Absolutely. I’ll be happy for anybody who is not rich to win it. For some people, that much money is game-changing. I would have preferred that they could share it equally. Because of COVID, everyone is having a hard time, no one can tour.

PAN M 360: The Venezuelan artist Arca, who’s also a trans person, is one of the most important artists of the last decade. Her last album combines glitch with reggaeton, which is completely out there, if you think about it. Yours combines rap with metal, noise, and occult references. Through these creative collages, I think I can somehow have a better picture of the feeling of emotional dysphoria that some trans people can have. What’s your take on it?

Backxwash: That’s a good way to put it. One thing that I realize as well being in this trans artist world, is that a lot of acts modulate their voices in interesting ways. Being a trans person and feeling a certain way about your voice is kind of interesting to me. It’s like empowering yourself through that. Most trans people that I meet make some weird experimental music of some sort, you know (laughs). I think I’ll have to agree with you there. Just having the feeling of that influences how the sounds are gonna come together.

WATCH THE 2020 POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE CELEBRATION HERE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tVePzyKQAY&ab_channel=BACKXWASH

Global pandemic, extreme divisions within the anxious Western populations, troubling American presidential elections, we’re going through some of the best ones. We have to be aware that this distressing climate distracts us from the regional tragedies experienced on this small planet…

Take for instance the very violent aggression against the Armenian residents of an autonomous but landlocked region of dictatorial Azerbaijan, whose expansionism is being revived by its Turkish ally. This Armenian enclave is named Artsakh, officially the Republic of Artsakh or Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh. For decades, this territory has been the object of significant tensions, which have been at their highest since the end of September.

One thing is certain, Tigran Hamasyan is very concerned. Certainly the most famous Armenian musician of his generation, the supervirtuoso pianist laments this new ordeal experienced by his people, once again a victim of the powers of the region who are vying for territorial influence – Turkey, Russia, Iran.

Is there any need to recall the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire of which the Armenians were once victims?

Because Hamasyan is augmenting the supportive actions for which this Facebook page has raised more than a million US dollars, since he launched a video in homage to the martyred couples who fought the Ottoman army in the previous century, PAN M 360 contacted the musician at his Californian home to ask him to express himself on the issue.

“On September 27, this region was attacked pretty much on its entire border by our neighbours from Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey as well – even though Turkey is denying it, but there is so much evidence of it. Thousands of mercenaries from the region have been hired to fight in the border attack. The fact they brought terrorists to the region, creating a lot of hostility, it becomes very fragile in the south Caucasus. Last Tuesday was the heaviest attack since the war began. Even though Russia invited the foreign-affairs ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease fire for humanitarian purposes, this agreement was violated five minutes after the time it was supposed to start. It is ironic that Azerbaijan says little or nothing about its deaths, which somehow confirms the hiring of Syrian mercenaries. Tens of thousands of people are displaced, at least 600 Armenian men have been killed in combat so far, especially last Tuesday. It is ironic that Azerbaijan says little or nothing about its deaths, which somehow confirms the hiring of Syrian mercenaries.”

Hamasyan felt the call of the country where he was born and raised until his early teens, when his family moved to California and he was able to pursue higher education there, and launch his international career. A few years ago, he moved back to Yerevan to take care of his grandmother and also to recharge his cultural batteries. His identity was revived and, in the current context, he’s very eager to man the barricades.

He sees this violent aggression against Artsakh as an imperialist operation by Turkey, eager to seal its influence in the Turkish-speaking countries of the region, starting with Azerbaijan.

“For a century, Turkey wanted to connect Azerbaijan to its land, so it would have more control of the area. And… ethnically, Turks and Azeris are the same people. Armenia is only a little country around there, its population is the indigenous people of the region. Armenian and other peoples have suffered for a long time at the hands of the Turks and the Ottoman empire -Assyrian, Greek, Kurdish, Lezgins.

” When the Soviet revolution happened, Stalin gave the region to the people actually living in Azerbaijan, they were called the Turks of the Caucasus. Azerbaijan as a nation did not exist – it was made by the Soviets. The real historic Atropatene (which existed long before Turkic tribes came to the area) is today located in Iran. Artsakh has been populated by ethnic Armenian for thousands of years. Even if you did a genetics analysis you would see that. Then Azeris started populating the region more and more. At some point, during the Soviet era in ’88, the whole thing erupted, Armenians started speaking out and did protests. In fact, the Soviet Union and Azerbaijan were slowly getting rid of Armenians. There were no Armenian schools there, no Christian churches were allowed, Armenian identity was going to be eradicated and at some point, Azerbaijani government had a plan to divide/merge Karabagh into 4 different regions of Azerbaijan thus killing any identity of Armenians. So the Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh demanded to be part of Armenia, and this created a big conflict. Azerbaijan responded very violently and started killing Armenian people in Azerbaijan. So it’s sad the way the international media are treating this conflict today.”

Like most Armenians aware of the conflict, Hamasyan disapproves of the Turkish government’s game of influence in its support for Azerbaijan, he also laments the cautious support of countries that should be its unwavering allies.

“Unfortunately, not enough nations openly support Armenia in the resurgence of these attacks against our people. Turkey’s participation in NATO, fossil-fuel money, and other geopolitical factors also cloud the issue. Meanwhile, Turkish President Erdogan wants to become the sultan of the Ottoman Empire that fell at the beginning of the previous century. ”

And what does the world have to say about this outbreak of violence? Hamasyan is astonished and disappointed at the media’s reading of the explosive situation in the Artsakh.

“Many international media are talking about the conflict, they’re often saying that the conflict has flared, which is really not the case. They are looking at Azerbaijan and Armenia as equals, which it’s clearly not the case. It’s sad, because it’s always been the agenda to clean the region of Armenians. When the Soviet revolution happened, Stalin gave the region to the people actually living in Azerbaijan, they were called the Turks of the Caucasus. They were living in the Iranian areas, but for thousands of years, there were Armenians living around there, they are indigenous to that territory.”

Hamasyan is well aware that the balance of power is clearly against the Armenian people, at least in the short term. Nevertheless…

“Times are tough, very hard times. Too many people have already died and this is not a fair fight. My country is not armed as Azerbaijan is armed, and supported by Turkey. So it is a completely unfair fight, but you know, Armenians survived this region when it was reduced to a very small country. I can’t say what the chances of victory are on our side, but I can say without hesitation that there is no chance for Armenians to leave the region. There is no way! Roughly speaking, everyone is willing to die to keep this land. Everywhere in Armenia and in the diaspora, we see lines of volunteers ready to fight. Even in his sixties, my own father applied!”

In 2013, Hamasyan returned to Armenia, spent more and more time there and finally settled there permanently. In 2019, he returned to live temporarily in California with his small family, where he is today – more or less against his will.

“I’ve been stuck there since COVID, but I hope to return to Armenia very soon. Of course I keep playing, I’m always creating music, this process doesn’t stop. There are so many projects that I am involved in, traditional Armenian music is still an important part of my musical language even if not all my projects are of Armenian influence.”

Just a few weeks ago, the prestigious Nonesuch label launched a new opus by Hamasyan, The Call Within, recorded by the pianist alongside bassist Evan Marien and drummer Arthur Hnatek, not to mention a contribution from the Children’s Choir of the Varduhi Art School, and another by guitarist Tosin Abasi.

“I wrote this music to be played by a jazz trio. However, some compositions are done with synthesizers and guests. I would say that the prominent influence of this album is rock – math rock, prog rock, metal.”

And how does Hamasyan intend to fight during this bloody conflict between Artsakh and Azerbaijan? With his music, as you can imagine.

“I’m already doing it with whatever I have. For example, we raised some funds to help out families, completely devastated by death or destruction of their houses. One first fundraising is almost completed, we raised close to a million dollars, and a second fundraising cycle is about to happen. My friends, musicians and artists, will help.”

In this case, music isn’t meant to loosen morals…

Photos: William Arcand

As a journalist, I first met CRi in 2016 when he had just graduated from a digital music major at Université de Montréal. Associated with artists such as Robert Robert and Ryan Playground (now TDJ), Christophe Dubé was a Montreal producer to watch. Four years and a meteoric rise later, the daring artist is releasing his first album this weekend, Juvenile, with contributions from Sophia Bel, Jesse Mac Cormack, and Daniel Bélanger. What happened in such a short time?

PAN M 360: Let’s go back to our last meeting. If you had to choose one word and one event that marked your career for each year, it would be?

CRi: I would say that 2017 is research, both individual and artistic. I’ve accumulated more instruments, I’ve taken piano lessons. 2018 is the break. I was in a couple with Ouri, she was my first collaborator, we grew up together musically, then we left each other. This separation allowed me to find myself again in 2019. I would say it was a revelation: who am I as an artist, and what do I want to do? Through that, there were events like releasing an EP with Anjunadeep, starting to play a little bit everywhere… And there was the song “Fous n’importe partout” by Daniel Bélanger, which I covered with Charlotte Cardin. It was a pretty intense change in my way of being, of approaching things. 2020 is the album. It represents a new era for me. I’ve acquired a certain maturity, the long format has forced me to ask myself questions and confront myself, with my art. I come out of it stronger.

PAN M 360: Do you still consider yourself part of the new Montreal electronic scene? What can you tell me about your musical environment?

CRi: The electronic scene itself is very diverse, but it is quite hermetic through its different styles. I think it’s a shame that the techno, house and trap scenes each operate in a vacuum. It would be cool if the scenes were to rub shoulders more, if they were more connected. My gang is musical but not necessarily just electronic, we’re more into indie. Sophia Bel, Jesse Mac Cormack, they’re people who not only perform on stage with me, but they’re also friends with whom I spend time and with whom I make a lot of music. We don’t necessarily share the same styles, but what touches us all is perhaps this kind of northern melancholy in Montreal.

PAN M 360: Why did you choose the electro-indie-pop angle?

CRi: Through this album, which is, in a totally aware way, more pop, more dance, my approach is to democratise electronic music and take it out of the underground. It’s cool and necessary, the underground, but it’s also important that it becomes more accessible. There are people from outside the big cities who don’t necessarily have access to this scene, there’s no bridge between the two. If it’s something I manage to do, it could highlight artists who are a bit more underground. People would be more interested, a bit like what’s happened in hip-hop in recent years in Quebec. Loud, for example, confirmed the popular success of the genre, of hip-hop culture. Following that, it’s an ambition – I’m not at all comparing myself to Loud, but it’s a bit of an approach in the sense that I find that the scene is too closed in on itself. When you see the success of Piknic Electronik or Igloofest, you know there’s an audience and potential, there’s just a missing link between the scenes.

PAN M 360: The visual identity of your project is particularly eye-catching and neat, what’s behind it?

CRi: I was lucky enough to work with Will Arcand for the photos. My visual universe really got a boost because I had the time to work on it in confinement. It was important to have something punchy, with colours like blue and orange, especially as my music is colourful. We focused on the blur because in my way of making music, even if it’s controlled, the arrangements can get out of hand, you don’t really know what’s what anymore. The face in the water is like looking in the past because you are born in the water.

PAN M 360: You signed to Anjunadeep, a particularly well-known English label. The European electronic scene seems less hermetic than here, and audiences are perhaps more receptive to your style of music. What do you think?

CRi: Yes, I agree. I believe that in Europe, there’s a much more thorough education of this style of music. Burial can play in a shoe shop, it’s part of people’s everyday life, Mr. and Mrs. Everyman listen to electro. Signing with Anjunadeep is a good way to get out of Quebec, without emancipating myself, because it’s important for me to represent my scene.

PAN M 360: You have been able to do some dates in Europe, particularly in Great Britain, what was that like?

CRi: As Quebecers, the French always call us cousins. Yes, I feel that way when I go to France, but I have the impression that we Quebecers are more like British people who speak French. Culturally, there is a closeness that comes through architecture, through food. When I had the chance to play at Printworks in London, there were 7,000 people, it was a complete meltdown. It’s a bit like Piknic, Igloofest, but that was really something. It seemed like the audience already knew the tunes before they heard them.

Montreal can count on beautiful voices from West Africa. Ilam’s voice is among those that generate the most impact with the Afropop-prone audience. In the context of the necessarily virtual Nuits d’Afrique, the singer’s show is at Le National, as scheduled before the restrictive measures excluding the public from the concert halls. A webcast will compensate as will this conversation with PAN M 360.

PAN M 360: What has your journey been? Where exactly did you grow up? Who trained you as a singer and musician? How did you come to Montreal?

Ilam: I grew up in Dakar, Senegal. I’m of Fulani origin, my parents come from the north of the country. Pulaar is my mother tongue, it’s very important to me. Of course, I learned Wolof, the most common language in Dakar. So I mix Pulaar and Wolof in my songs, just like French. I started my musical career with a hip-hop group. At the same time, I was studying at the Conservatory of Music at the l’École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Dakar, where I was perfecting my vocal technique with Professor Adolphe Coly, who is not a traditional singer but rather has a Western classical background. In Dakar, you can find very good music teachers, but it’s not like in Montreal. Institutional teaching is not as well developed; musicians have to be resourceful if they want to perfect their musical education. So most competent teachers give private lessons. Personally, I’ve mostly continued to teach myself in order to arrive at the music I make today. It’s a love story that brought me to Montreal in 2014, after a short stint in Thetford Mines. I came to live in Quebec because I have family here, my son lives here. I had left directly from Senegal; I had never travelled to the West before.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about West African pop, which had its heyday in the ’80s and ’90s. Three decades later, where does it stand?

Ilam: It’s a continuity. At the time, there was a lot of talk about Mory Kanté, Ismaël Lô, and Angélique Kidjo, who guided me a lot in my music. I can point out other influences – Fara Freddy, Baaba Maal (who is Fulani like me), Ali Farka Touré, Oumou Sangaré. Today, many artists, including myself, are inspired by this African musical heritage and are enjoying a certain success. In addition, I listen a lot to the neo-soul of Anderson Paak and Melanie Faye, or the blues of Gary Clark, Jr., or reggae, or even flamenco of Concha Buika. So my music is a fusion of my traditional influences, Afropop, and other sources from outside Africa, but the African part of my music is the basis of my work. Thus, I sing in Pulaar, Wolof, but also in French and English. Beyond languages, music is first and foremost a question of emotion.

PAN M 360: In what way can Senegalese Afropop regenerate, without sounding old-fashioned or dated, stuck to the sound of Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal, and Touré Kunda?

Ilam: Music is above all originality, but it is also emotion. It’s an identity that must belong to each artist. Certainly, artists have left their mark on Senegalese Afropop, but many new sounds are currently emerging. We’re talking about a contemporary, modern, urban Africa. This translates on several levels, including that of music. It’s this Africa in full evolution that I also want to show in my music. These same experienced artists also trust the new generation to bring new things. For example, I had the opportunity to do a duet with Baaba Maal on my last album, Néné, and it’s this confidence that I felt, this willingness to let the new generation speak for themselves. The most important thing remains to showcase African musical culture all over the world. Afropop is regenerating itself, but we must also be able to show it.

PAN M 360: How do you go about proposing something different from the Senegalese clichés regarding Afropop?

Ilam: My artistic approach is precisely to break down the clichés that most Western audiences may have absorbed. My music is a mix of Afropop, with blues, a bit of flamenco, and sometimes reggae… but Senegalese mbalax is not one of the styles I explore, even if I sometimes dance to it, like any Senegalese. So I don’t try to do what already exists, I try to create and propose my own musical universe. I like to mix tradition and modernity in my music. For example, in my sound there’s a bit of kora, djembe, “tribal”, and other sounds. Also, my modern musical influences are very varied, many different musical styles have left their mark on me. By keeping my identity, I want to make music that touches everyone and represents the current Senegalese music scene. In reality, for me, there are no clichés in Senegalese music, and that’s precisely what I want to demonstrate.

PAN M 360: Is your music gradually distancing itself from your cultural origins, since you’ve been living in North America?

Ilam: Yes, a little, because inspiration is also found through the environment in which we evolve. I’ve had the opportunity to meet many artists, to attend many different concerts here, ranging from traditional Quebecois to other musical styles such as flamenco. This cultural mix makes Montreal’s music scene very rich. It certainly influences my music. I am sad to see that some of the meeting places I used to go to are closing down at the moment. But the artists are still here. It’s a good experience that I’m living here.

PAN M 360: How do you find your inspiration in Montreal?

Ilam: Musically, Montreal is a real inspiration for me. Sometimes it seems to me like the whole world in a scale model. There is a great cultural diversity, and it’s different from where I come from. Inspiration can come from all over the place – during a jam with other musicians, when I’m nostalgic for my homeland, when I meet new people… But living in Montreal has changed my outlook a lot. I saw a lot of people playing instruments, it was very inspiring for me. I see more professional opportunities there. And my tastes have also changed. This new life has made me more open to different musical styles. I’m lucky enough to have enough fans who want to attend my shows, which is why I was scheduled to perform at Le National. I’m really happy to be able to count on a mixed audience in Montreal, from different generations and cultures.

PAN M 360: How did you put together your band in Montreal? Can you introduce us to your musicians, and the type of instrumentation you offer?

Ilam: Most of the musicians I work with today, I met at jams when I arrived in 2014. There’sAssane Seck on guitar, Donald Dogbo on drums, Mathieu Gaultier on bass. We usually play as a quartet, but I sometimes play with others as well. What’s important for me is to play with good musicians who understand my music while having their own universe, and especially with whom I share the same feeling. And, no, there’s not a lot of electronics in my music, because I like to see the instrumentalists at work. I feel more connection, a greater symbiosis. Nevertheless, I listen to a lot of electro music, but I prefer instruments to programming for my own artistic project.

PAN M 360: What are the differences in composition and production between the album Néné, released this past spring by GSI Musique, and your album Hope, which was launched in 2016?

Ilam: The album Néné is a big production for me, bigger than Hope. Néné is also an album developed between Montreal and Ivory Coast (with Sony Music Africa). It involved more musical research as well as the participation of great artists such as Baaba Maal, an African monument who came to Montreal to record a track, “Meta Jah”, with Yann Perreau. It is an album of exchange, communion, sharing, and a certain musical maturity.

PAN M 360: How is your music received in West Africa?

Ilam: My music is well received in West Africa. The general public is beginning to discover me there, it’s always a pleasure! Every year, I go to Senegal to give concerts with the Canadian Embassy or the Quebec Office. It’s always a pleasure to be able to have people discover my music there. The public is always very receptive. I would love to record my next album in Dakar. I would like to do an artist’s residency there and invite Senegalese musicians to take part in my musical journey.

PAN M 360: What are your future plans for your career, beyond the pandemic?

Ilam: I’m working on my next album, it’s my next big project. And I hope to be able to hit the road again in the next few months and bring the album Néné on stage, on several continents, as planned. We have to do shows in other forms, but I can’t wait to play, with my band, in front of a real audience!

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