The inventor of afro-electropop, Kandy Guira, is on the scene in Montreal for the tail end of Nuits d’Afrique! But it’s by no means her only show in Canada: she’ll be passing through Gatineau, Sherbrooke, and Guelph before heading abroad for shows in Ireland, France, and Mexico. She’s using the tour as an opportunity to showcase her latest album, 2021’s Nagtaba, with which she hopes to break down barriers between cultures and languages, as well as make music accessible to people with hearing issues. 

PAN M 360: Hi Kandy! The tour you’ve been on these last few months, it’s taken you through Germany, Italy, and the U.S., and now it’s taken you to Canada. What’s the tour been like so far?

Kandy Guira: The tour’s going really well! It’s totally magnificent to see completely different crowds in each different country.

PAN M 360: What would you say is special about being able to do a tour across various countries?

Kandy Guira: It lets me meet the public in each country that usually follows me online. On the internet everyone’s there, everyone’s connected, but it’s better and more exciting to meet them in their own countries, to discover these countries, and to see the symbiotic connection. I always look forward to making this connection – it’s a pleasure to meet people who have already listened to our music because it puts a face on my listeners and gives me energy. 

My music and tours are also the mediums through which I can transmit my messages across language barriers. That’s why it’s special to me: it lets the public feel like they’re heard, and it helps me break down language and colour barriers. 

PAN M 360: Why’s it important for you to break down colour barriers?

Kandy Guira: We’re in such a divided world, and for me, the future is found in unity. That union, that’s what my album Nagtaba is about: it’s only together that we’ll create a magnificent and harmonious world. We build up barriers, create in- and out-groups, and say there’s no unity. That’s not true for me because there’s a vibe that’s unique for everyone, but we all exist, laugh, and cry in the same way. We have to deconstruct those barriers and see each other as we are.

PAN M 360: The music on your album, Nagtaba, how would you say it works towards breaking barriers like that?

Kandy Guira: Each song on the album talks about a specific problem and provides a possible solution. I sing in the language of Mooré, which is everywhere, even in sign language – I translate my songs into sign language to make them accessible to everyone because I have a brother who’s deaf. He doesn’t understand what I say, so what I do in my projects is I try to have a sign language singer at all my shows. 

I do all this to break down the language barriers, and if someone says, “I don’t understand Mooré, I don’t understand French,” I don’t think that’s a real problem because I’m listened to in the United States and China. If it’s possible for my music to enter those countries, that means it’s possible to come together.

PAN M 360: Could you tell me about the kinds of things that inspired Nagtaba? Was there any inspiration from your cultural heritage?

Kandy Guira: I’m Burkinabe (from Burkina Faso) and it’s the root of my inspiration. That is to say, the traditional Burkinabe music inspires me. I’m from the Mossi side, so on Nagtaba you’ll hear some bendré, a traditional tambourine used while singing for the king when he had to speak to people without anyone else hearing. 

I explored this instrument all while mixing it with my French side – I live in France now and I’ve been inspired by other musical styles I hadn’t known before. I wanted to bring them together for Nagtaba, which means “together,” to bring together the two different countries that served as my inspirations. It creates a bridge between the two countries, effectively.

PAN M 360: Does that make it important for you to play in a place like Montreal where there’s a similar mix between French and English?

Kandy Guira: It’s important for me because it opens the door. That bridge I’m building between Burkina Faso and France, I’m also extending it to other countries like Canada in this instance so Canadians and I can have an access point or each other’s cultures. 

PAN M 360: There’s an exchange there in both directions: you give your music, and they give back the culture. 

Kandy Guira: Exactly! By discovering others you can learn to accept them. The reason we don’t want to build bridges is often because we don’t understand people. If we give ourselves the permission, courage, and the desire to discover others, we’ll see that they’re a lot like us. We won’t be able to say we don’t know them anymore.

PAN M 360: Do you have any other projects that you’re working on now that are furthering those goals of unity?

Kandy Guira: I’m trying to make my music more accessible to people who are hard of hearing. It’s my passion because I want it to be a habit to think of them, not something extraordinary. I want it to be logical and normal that we include them in the general public. That’s why I always translate my works into sign language, and my ongoing project is to bring a sign language singer to all my live shows and tours. I’m also in the middle of learning sign language, but I don’t know it well enough to do it myself.

PAN M 360: Even at Nuits d’Afrique?

Kandy Guira: At Nuits d’Afrique, unfortunately not. I would be happy to have them but they couldn’t provide one. That said, I’m always in contact with friends who are deaf and maybe they’ll propose someone who can attend and take that position.

PAN M 360: Any other causes you address in your music?

Kandy Guira: I talk a lot about education for young girls, women’s rights, and environmental conservation; these are also causes I address in my latest album. The album is full of ideas that will help us unite because that’s what inspires me.

PAN M 360: Thanks so much, Kandy! Hopefully, you can unite the world one crowd at a time.

Kandy Guira will perform during the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique on the Loto-Québec Stage on July 23 at 7 PM. This concert is free. For more info, click here.

Since it was founded in Montreal in 2001, Ensemble Constantinople’s vision has been “to encourage blending and exchange between the world’s different musical and cultural horizons”. Seasoned explorers, they provoke encounters and create dialogues “from Mediterranean Europe to the East, via the free spaces of the Baroque New World.” This vision will be presented for the first time at the Festival de Lanaudière this Sunday, July 23, on the outdoor stage, where the musicians, accompanied by tenor Marco Beasley, specialists in vocal music of the 15th and 16th centuries, invite the audience to cross an imaginary bridge, where East meets West. We spoke to Kiya Tabassian, founder and musical director of Constantinople, about this program and what it represents.

PAN M 360: Tell us a little about the program you’ll present at the festival.

Kiya Tabassian: The program we’re presenting is called Il Ponte di Leonardo (Leonardo’s Bridge). It’s a program that musically redesigns a bridge that Leonardo Da Vinci imagined, but never built, to link the two banks of the Bosphorus, for the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. I think it’s a program that stands strong like a bridge that you have to cross to meet the others. It’s a program that’s perhaps even more relevant today in the sense that, in the times in which we live, this kind of bridge of connections is increasingly important and primordial.

PAN M 360: As you mentioned, this is a program that builds bridges between East and West, and in which you will be presenting works from the XVIᵉ and XVIIᵉ centuries, which are drawn from manuscripts in the national libraries of Istanbul and Florence in particular. How do you work with such documents to appropriate the musical material? Do they have to be codified in some way?

Kiya Tabassian: It’s something of a specialty of the Constantinople Ensemble, which has been working with such sources for over 20 years now, to realign all these musical currents and traditions so that they come together well. As you say, these are ancient manuscripts, so they’re codified, written in older notations that don’t correspond to today’s modern notation. So, there’s a lot of deciphering to be done, a lot of research work, as a first step, which is very interesting indeed, because it really means going into the archives, the writings, the manuscripts, the works of musicologists and studying this historical ensemble. The next step is: “How can I make music with these sources? because often, these melodies and notations are quite simple. It wasn’t a notation designed to be put in front of a musician to play necessarily, but rather a means of preserving and safeguarding them.

That’s where it gets even more interesting because we can use this music as the basis for building something connected to our emotions and creativity as musicians. In this way, the whole music takes on a musical momentum, in the sense that we really live this music. It’s not historical music; we don’t pretend we’re playing like musicians from the XVᵉ and XVIᵉ centuries, we’re playing music that’s alive. There’s even an element of improvisation in the way I arrange the pieces. I make this music a complete entity again. And this collaboration with the magnificent singer Marco Beasley is precisely in line with this very lively approach to music. He’s a singer who is highly specialized and recognized in these repertoires, but he’s also a singer who sings this music as if it had just been born.

PAN M 360: This is very much in keeping with your intention to act as a conduit for the memory of this music, isn’t it?

Kiya Tabassian: Absolutely. What interests me in this music are qualities that no longer exist, or exist much less, in today’s music. These are qualities of depth of detail, of concern for ornamentation; qualities that have become rarer in more recent music. These are qualities that I bring to the fore in this music and that I want to pass on to today’s audience, because these qualities enable the musicians, but also the audience, to think differently, to listen differently and to take a musical approach to the present moment.

PAN M 360: Indeed, Leonardo da Vinci’s image of the bridge is very telling, and fits in well with the mission of your ensemble, which is to build links and bring together musical universes that could be described as opposites, but which ultimately end up coming together. Why is it important for you to express these similarities and bring these musical worlds together?

Kiya Tabassian: I think it’s because I’ve always believed that dialogue and knowledge of others make people grow. Whether in civilizations, cultures, knowledge or any other sphere of life, dialogue and knowledge of others lead us further down very interesting paths. It’s the same for me on a musical level. I’ve always believed that when a musical aesthetic, a musical tradition that’s well established, when I bring it together with another, I like that musically, it really enters into a deep dialogue. It’s a bit like meeting someone. You can start by saying “Hello, how are you? and talk about the mundane things in life, but when you get into deeper subjects the conversation goes further. Musically, there’s something new emerging that’s even greater than each of these traditions. It’s not a question of juxtaposing them and making collages.

When I discovered that a great personality like Da Vinci and others 500 years ago dreamed of building a bridge to link continents, to make it easier to go back and forth from one shore to the other, so that people could meet and exchange ideas, I immediately said to myself: “That’s really interesting, I want to talk about it”. Let’s try to rebuild this bridge with these kinds of music that surely met back then too. You know, Constantinople was the city where, for centuries, there was the greatest number of ambassadors concentrated in a single city. It was a city where there were people from all over the world, and where ambassadors also brought musicians and artists with them to their embassies to meet people, to bring them to the Ottoman court, to present them to the Sultan for ceremonies and so on.

Musicians have always been creators, curious people, and people who liked to travel and talk to other musicians. Today, in our own way, in 2023, we’re rebuilding this bridge that makes so much sense in today’s society, to help people experience a moment of well-being and peace through music.

PAN M 360: I may be opening Pandora’s box by saying this, but this musical discourse you bring to the table, do you feel that the world music label is valid today, or are we still in this sort of ambiguous position of a “marketing” label?

Kiya Tabassian: Of course, I’m stuck with the idea that these are marketing labels. On the other hand, I always try to see the positive side. Of course, “world music” means absolutely nothing, and it means a lot of things at the same time. If we look at the positive side first, I’ve always put an “S” to “world music” because there isn’t one world music, but many world musics. Once again, it’s quite interesting to listen to and be curious about music from all over the world. So I think world music is beautiful. I think it’s a nice term. But does it correspond exactly to what we do? No. Sometimes, there are very specific projects for which the world music label is far too broad. Ultimately, what interests me is contact with the public and the impact our music has on the people who come to hear it. I don’t pay much attention to that label. What interests me is that my music is heard by a wider audience and that these people spend a moment listening to music that touches them and takes them elsewhere in their imagination, in their hearts and in their minds.

PAN M 360: After Lanaudière, what are your next concert dates?

Kiya Tabassian: This Il Ponte di Leonardo project is on tour in Canada. We have four dates this summer with this project. There’s Lanaudière, on July 25 we’ll be presenting it in Montreal, then Ottawa on July 27 and Vancouver on July 28. After that, the ensemble leaves for concerts in Europe, and from September onwards, tours start up again all over the world. Also, in October, to kick off our 2023-2024 season, we’ll be presenting a concert in which I’ve decided to bring together Johann Sebastian Bach and the great Persian poet of the XIIᵉ century Omar Khayyam, who are two great thinkers of humanity with very different visions of the world. This project puts these two figures and the Bach music I revisit into dialogue, always in this spirit of encounter and dialogue.

The Concert Leonardo Da Vinci: From East to West will be presented at the Amphithéâtre Fernand-Lidsay on Sunday, July 23 at 2 PM. Part of the Festival de Lanaudière programmation. For information and tickets, click here.

To know more about the Ensemble Constantinople’s next shows, visit constantinople.ca 

On July 22 and 23, Productions Nuits d’Afrique will be overseeing the launch of La Percée, a living laboratory initiative to promote music in all its diversity online. Through various projects led by La Percée, “artists, academics and members of the music industry get involved and contribute to the spread of greater musical diversity in the digital environment.”

Against the backdrop of NAFI in full swing, La Percée “analyzes and highlights the challenges of online discovery of creations and productions labeled World Music” a catch-all, borderline colonialist expression that defines a vast, heterogeneous range of music from all over the planet… except the populations of the richest countries.

To mark the launch of this initiative, the public is invited to a participatory exhibition to discover the thoughts and projects behind La Percée.

The La Percée community, a “living laboratory”.

PAN M 360: First, let’s take a look at the genesis of La Percée, and what motivated its existence.

Johan Lauret: We decided to tackle a problem we’d been noticing for a long time, which isn’t specific to world music alone, but is even more visible in productions and creations labelled world music. In fact, it’s also an expression we’re questioning. With La Percée, the idea was already to analyze the challenges of discoverability. That’s why we met you in the wake of your book La Misère des Niches, as part of a study Destiny carried out.

PAN M 360: And what was the next step?

Johan Lauret: We decided to go a step further because we realized that the issues Destiny had raised were really important. Rather than leave the study there as it was, we decided to present it to the artists, popularize it, and see together how we could find possible solutions. When I say together, I really mean artists, industry professionals, institutions with discoverability projects and researchers. We’re going to incubate these projects in the laboratory.

PAN M 360: Summarize the main research parameters of this laboratory.

Johan Lauret: First and foremost, it’s a collective laboratory designed to promote greater musical diversity online. We realized that in the digital world, whether on streaming platforms or on the web, there’s an abundance of online music. There’s a huge, huge amount of content, but the recommendation algorithms, particularly on streaming platforms, are really focused on promoting a very small number of artists. So we thought that, when it comes to music, invisibility is more important than anything else.

PAN M 360: And how do you go about changing things on the web?

Johan Lauret: We started by asking ourselves two big questions: firstly, what are the real chances of discovering diverse music online? Secondly, is the so-called “world music” category still relevant for guaranteeing the visibility of a plurality of musical genres on listening platforms and on the web? To answer this question, we’ve begun to identify possible solutions. The first is a research/action program to be led by Destiny and a scientific advisory board, which will enable us to try and understand why this content is less pushed by recommendation algorithms, and thus see how we can improve this online discoverability.

Destiny Tchéhouali: I’d like to point out that what we’ve really added in terms of value to our findings, compared to what we’ve been seeing up until now, is that the problem of the discoverability of world music, of niche music, really amplifies a problem we were already aware of, but which we hadn’t fully grasped, particularly in terms of the role played by algorithms in anticipating and shaping trends and musical habits, and the way in which even styles, genres and musical universes are standardized in today’s era of streaming platforms.

And above all, we’re in a trend towards musical populism, where we’re really trying to offer the public what they know, what they have, what’s sufficiently well known that they won’t refuse it. And so, the global demand for mainstream music that is relayed by radio stations, that is supposed to appeal to everyone, that is easily accessible to all, is a trend that is not only confirmed but is currently being accentuated. And it’s not justified.

PAN M 360: For several years now, music lovers have been noticing and suffering from this.

Destiny Tchéhouali: We’re undergoing a kind of dictatorship of what’s recommended by the platforms. That’s really a major conclusion. This state of affairs will continue as long as we don’t take adequate measures to move towards a common definition of what we mean by niche music. The music community will therefore have to unite around a common, calibrated and consensual lexicon in order to counter this dictatorship of the platforms.

PAN M 360: Is it really possible to reverse this trend?

Destiny Tchéhouali: I wouldn’t say reverse the trend, but at least develop a new culture of musical diversity by recommending musical diversity online. To do this, we first need to qualify, recognize and characterize the music. We need to do this using both musicological criteria or even acoustic parameters, and perhaps also by using artificial intelligence systems to better take into account the diversity of these musical genres and sub-genres, particularly those that are grouped together in a bit of a catch-all manner in this “world music” category.

Beyond institutionalized categories, we want to give music lovers, users and artists the chance to catalogue and list all the keywords and tags, perhaps leading to a kind of new taxonomy based on the musical indexing of world music. The idea is to adopt a lexicon that better reflects the diversity of its genres and sub-genres.

PAN M 360: And what does the community think?

Destiny Tchéhouali: The intuition we confirmed has aroused the interest of other players such as Rideau, MétaMusique and ADISQ. We feel that there’s something to be done if we all get around the table together, even if it means developing a new model that may eventually be settled and appropriate, or even used by music streaming platforms too.

Johan Lauret: The idea of the first stage is to contaminate the entire ecosystem of cultural and digital projects in Quebec and Canada, and to see if platforms like Scène Pro and Rideau, which connect presenters and producers, can help us better define all the musical genres that make up the “world music” category. That’s also the idea behind the laboratory: to see how research work can feed into concrete projects here in Canada. With La Percée, the idea is to organize regular events to share what we’ve learned and stay in touch. With the major players in the industry, it’s a question of seeing how they operate and finding common ground to satisfy everyone. In a way, that’s our ambition.

PAN M 360: For the moment, in any case, there’s nothing to suggest that the situation will improve any time soon.

Destiny Tchéhouali: We read this article by Étienne Paré, which appeared recently in Le Devoir, pointing out that francophone music was the big absentee on the listening charts. Of the 100 most popular songs currently playing on listening platforms in Quebec, not one is from French-speaking Quebec. This is really worrying, but we mustn’t blame listeners. It’s more a question of understanding the dynamics of the offer as structured by the platforms and recommendation algorithms. We invariably come back to the question of taste similarity; algorithms categorize us, and this runs totally counter to the development of curiosity and eclectic musical tastes. What we need to do now is find a happy medium within this offer, and give a little power and autonomy back to the listener. When I say “power”, I mean more the freedom to choose, to get lost in repertoires and discover new musical worlds. That’s true discoverability.

PAN M 360: Finally, what is the nature of your partnership with Productions Nuits d’Afrique?

Johan Lauret: Nuits d’Afrique has almost 40 years of archives – audio content, video content, photo content. In the end, it’s really a part of the history of music that we want to promote. The idea is to make it a content platform at the heart of which we’ll really place the artists, especially those from the local scene. We’re also going to rely on their testimonials to tell this story. But behind that, we also really want to work on a structured, linked database so that this content can be discovered.

The idea is also to create rich, long-lasting editorial content that will ultimately document all the local and international artists who have passed through the Festival International Nuits d’Afrique. With this platform project, there’s both the idea of telling a story that, in the end, isn’t told so much, and of recognizing the contribution of all these artists to Quebec’s Canadian cultural heritage, but also of working to make all this content, all these artists, more discoverable in a digital environment.

The exhibit will take place at the Réfectoire of the Esplanade Tranquille du Quartier des spectacles, on July 22 and 23, from 1 PM to 8 PM.

Sona Jobarteh, an accomplished musician from Gambia, has been immersed in the world of music from an early age. For her, music is a natural talent, almost a vital function. What makes her an even more exceptional artist is the instrument she has adopted and through which she has made an international name for herself: the kora. Traditionally reserved for men, Sona Jobarteh is one of the few women in the world to have mastered this instrument to perfection. In addition to her musical career, she is the founder of the Gambia Academy, a school designed to offer a complete curriculum to Gambian children, in addition to teaching them traditional music and dance.

PAN M 360 spoke to this exceptional musician on the eve of her first concert in Quebec, as part of the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique.

PAN M 360: Hi Sona, thank you so much for your time. Growing up, you were surrounded by music. When did you decide that you were to pursue a career as a professional musician?

Sona Jobarteh: It’s hard to know because I don’t think I woke up one day and suddenly decided thatn. So I don’t really know what happened. It has been the norm of my life to be in music and to share music.

PAN M 360: What made you decide that you wanted to pick up the kora as your main instrument?

Sona Jobarteh: The kora is a hereditary tradition. So it’s something you are born into. It’s less about choosing the instrument, it’s more about the history of the family.

PAN M 360: What about the other instruments that you play?

Sona Jobarteh: There’s a different story for each one. I came to some of the other instruments I play sometimes through my relatives. For example, my older brother plays the cello, so I started doing that. The guitar is an instrument I came to around 12 years old. I was somewhere where there was a guitar and I tried it. Then, whenever I saw a guitar, I had to play something on it. There were very organic affinities with the instruments I play, you know?

PAN M 360: You are also very active in the education field. Could you tell us more about your mission at The Gambia Academy?

Sona Jobarteh: The Gambia Academy is not especially a music school, it’s an academy with a full curriculum. That’s what I’m working on developing. Music is a part of it too, like any other mainstream education institution. It’s a place that puts a lot of emphasis on culture, history, traditions, and several other things like that. People are a part of education. Music is a part, too, obviously.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about your music specifically. Which message are you trying to convey with your musical work?

Sona Jobarteh: I’m not sure that it would be true to say, in my case, that there is a specific message that I want to convey. It’s not my intention to have a mission or to make you know who I am. Ironically, I talk about this in one of my songs. I talk about analyzing and dissecting things to the point that they become untruthful. I don’t put things together in some sort of plan.

PAN M 360: That being said, how do you see music in general?

Sona Jobarteh: Music is very much an integral part of not only human existence but individual existence. When we are musicians, we play music, of course, but it also becomes our private form of communication. Just like when I’m speaking to you, I’m not planning which words I’m going to use. It’s the same in music. The focus is not about what it is and how it is, the most important is that I’m speaking. Or playing. What I mean is that music is in a whole other class. It’s bigger than anything. Music as a whole is bigger than the specificities of my music.

PAN M 360: So music has the same status as a language?

Sona Jobarteh: I use music because I was in contact with it, I grew up with it. Like anybody, you know? If you are born into a great education, that becomes part of your life, right? I use English because I have been exposed to it. If I was in France, I would be using French. So it’s not so much the language of music or the specificity of the music. What is important is what you are trying to communicate. It doesn’t really matter how, right? And it happens to be different for other people. They might choose voice, it might be the guitar or the piano.

PAN M 360: What do you sing about when you compose a new song? What are your current themes?

Sona Jobarteh: For me, it depends on what the music’s message is, and what it wants to communicate. It’s different for every song. I won’t talk about all my songs, because that would take all of your time to go through all my songs. But I can say that, now, my songs are very much in line with the work that I do in connection to the Gambia Academy. They are in connection with social development, economic development, and educational development. My songs are very much linked and connected to all of those important areas of social development that I work on on a daily basis, away from music.

PAN M 360: You also composed a score for a movie. How do you approach this kind of work?

Sona Jobarteh: Just because it’s a film, it has to be different. You are no longer creating music that is sung by itself. It now has to take a secondary role, to serve the purpose of the visuals. So by its very nature, it’s going to be different than mu own personal music. I have to subject myself to the message of the film, the message of the videos, or the frames that I am dealing with. So it’s a very different experience, and what’s being composed can testify to that. It’s a different platform altogether.

PAN M 360: Which projects await you in the future?

Sonah Jobarteh: Well, to be honest, the most time-consuming work that I’m doing is really the work towards the Academy. Since I’m running the Academy, it’s a full-time job in itself. It’s been tough being away for long periods of time, with this intense schedule that I have at the moment. It’s been hard to maintain both.

PAN M 360: We are especially lucky to have you, then! How do you see your presence at Festival international Nuits d’Afrique?

Sona Jobarteh: I’m looking forward to it! I was in Canada a couple of weeks ago but in a very different area. So it’s the first time that I come to this particular region of the country. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.

Sona Jobarteh will perform on July 20 at 9:30 PM, on the TD – Radio-Canada Stage, during the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique. The concert is free. INFO HERE!