Interviews – Page 77

Photo: Romain Garcin

Did you know that the cactus produces a flower – and that Sofiane Pamart plucked one from the tree of rap? He’s the go-to pianist for this musical genre, working until now in the shadow of names such as L’Or du Commun, Scylla, and Vald. And even if his flow has no words, his new album Planet Gold speaks to more than one, here and there. Pamart spoke with PAN M 360 about this and more.

PAN M 360: Why this album?

Sofiane Pamart: You see, Planet was released last year, and we added six new songs to reach 18 with Planet Gold. I’ve been playing piano since I was very young, it was time for me to make my solo piano album. I decided to do it to talk about my relationship with travel. This album is both my first solo piano album and at the same time, it represents my love for travel and for this country.

PAN M 360: Your ideas flow from rap music, no?

SP: Yeah. I find rappers super inspiring because of their lifestyle, their way of representing themselves in relation to the world, their spontaneity. My lifestyle as a pianist is much more like a rapper’s. I play the piano, but they are the ones I feel most comfortable with, even in the videos, in the things we have. My style of communication is comparable to a rapper’s, because of the similarities in taste. More than ideas, we do the same thing. I’m a pianist, but I’m treated like a rapper among rappers.

PAN M 360: What are two decisive influences for you?

SP: The first is travel. Otherwise, it’s also a family story. I come from a non-musical family and I’ve been playing the piano since I was a child. For me, it’s a strong symbolic gesture, and a pride in the accomplishment of all the work we’ve done since we were very young. Today, I have a life as an artist, centered on the piano, and this life is possible because since I was a child, we have had a whole organization around music. It is a first strong founding gesture that I have towards my family, to pay them back and pay tribute to all the efforts that my parents and grandparents, who never made music, had to make for me.

PAN M 360: Often, people who’ve just left the conservatory tell me that naturally, that their parents are musicians.

SP: In fact, you see, when you come from that milieu, you already have the right references, the codes. We didn’t have them and we went about it differently. So, for me, it’s even more of a source of pride. Coming from a family of non-musicians, at the conservatory, that means a lot.

PAN M 360: What is your view of the conservatory sphere and its elitist side?

SP: It’s true that going to the conservatory means understanding its codes and the big competition that’s played out both in terms of your level of music, but also in terms of your more classical cultural references. Something that you have is one type of person more than others at the conservatory. As for me, I managed to go all the way to the conservatory, but living in an environment that has nothing to do with it, I’m very comfortable, in my life, to move from one world to another. I take the good things from both worlds. I create a kind of link between them. My audience would not have taken the step of listening to a solo piano album. Around me, a lot of people were interested in the piano because I played it, but even more so now that I have visibility. They like this approach because they have the impression that they would have done like me.

PAN M 360: How do you respond to the classical purists, who remain unconvinced?

SP: The relationship to music in criticism and analysis, which is meant to be very cerebral, I find boring, really boring. That’s my personal approach. I don’t want to frustrate people who want to have an intellectual approach to it, but it’s not my temperament. So I’m quite happy not to be in that environment. I’m happy to evolve between several worlds where we see things in a more positive way. First of all, you see things from a cool angle. The important thing is to touch, to be moved. That goes beyond the technical repertoire. That comes later. It’s interesting to understand how an artist creates, but that comes later. I’m very happy to move away from that. If it does you good to tell you that there are winks at Debussy, I’m very happy, and if you have no classical references and it makes you think of film music or something else, I’m very comfortable with that.

PAN M 360: For the track “Madagascar”, what did you have in front of you and what did you think about?

SP: I love Madagascar, it was a really incredible experience. I loved going there. Even if there were moments that were a little sad. The country is beautiful, but there’s a lot of poverty, and you see some things that really mark you. But in fact, what I tried to translate in this song is more the wonder I had. You see, it’s a cascade of notes, because in fact I think it’s really a magnificent place, imposing by its beauty. It’s very magisterial for me, the theme of Madagascar, you see. Because that’s the impression I had when I arrived, and I wanted to communicate that. I was in Madagascar and also in Nosy Be, which is a bit more “paradisiacal”, but I did both.

PAN M 360: Overall, rap is a rich compendium of a multitude of horizons, what do you intend to bring through the piano?

SP: It’s broader than just rap. In my way of working, I bring together people who don’t have the codes of the piano, but I talk to anyone who’ll be moved by the music. I like it when someone explains to me that they learned the piano young, and that it makes them want to play again, or start playing. I like it when they make a personal story out of a track. Either it makes you want to go further, to play, to create a reproduction, or you’re just in the process of escaping. That’s why I have an album about travelling. I think it’s something we can all have, escape through the imagination, it’s an inner journey. Since there are no words, it leaves room for you to make your own story.

PAN M 360: A gold medal from the Lille Conservatory, a rich rap repertoire, a cutting-edge style, a company, YouPiano, a law graduate in Lyon, an MBA in management – what are your flaws?

SP: (laughs) Well, no, afterwards, you know, it’s normal that as an artist, you show your best face, your best assets. You’re going to keep your flaws secret. Being very emotional is sometimes a quality, sometimes a flaw. For me, my flaws go hand in hand with my qualities. Being very emotional can turn against you, and you’re less in control of what you want. Being very productive makes you obsessive about working, which can be a flaw. Moreover, I really enjoy life, travelling. I can’t hold on if I stay in one place for too long. We have flaws in our qualities, it goes hand in hand.

PAN M 360: Are you a bit hyperactive?

SP: Yes, very much so. Especially as a child, now I manage better, but as a child, it was too much.

PAN M 360: Does the piano channel your energy?

SP: The piano channels it in a serious way because at that moment I’m focused, I forget everything.

PAN M 360: Do you play other instruments?

SP: Only the piano. On the other hand, what’s good, and what I do a lot with beatmakers, is to go from the keyboard to many other types of instruments.

PAN M 360: What is your mood for future musical projects, and do you plan to have guests?

SP:I haven’t yet thought about inviting other pianists. The most natural thing for me would be with my sister, Lina. For me, she would be the first guest. My sister has chosen a different path, she’s a diplomat, but on the other hand, she’s at a very high level on violin. She’s younger. She also does a lot of concerts with me. Recently, we composed together the music for the commercial for [the video game series] Assassin’s Creed.

PAN M 360: Just the family so far?

SP: Just the family.

PAN M 360: Who are your favourite pianists at the moment?

SP: I love Chilly Gonzales. He’s a character! As a pianist, he breaks codes, with his humorous, joking side, it’s really something of his own. That and Tigran Hamasyan, and Henri Barda, a master I had in classical music. He plays Chopin like nobody else.

PAN M 360: And YouPiano, what is it?

SP: Before, when I still had time to teach piano, I had developed a way of learning the piano without going through solfège. My preoccupation was an approach to the piano that everyone could work with, and that’s reflected in my music. My relationship to learning is the same, learning without going through music theory, with rewarding results. In a short while, I’ll be posting lessons linked to my pedagogy. I’m very close to the start-up ecosystem, ideas are flowing from everywhere.

PAN M 360: And what about your scores, do you release them?

SP: Not yet, but it’s in progress, I’m asked for them every day.

PAN M 360: Anything to add?

SP: I can’t wait to come and play in Canada. I already played two years ago in Montreal. As soon as the borders open. There, everything is on hold, the Olympia is still closed, we’ll see. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

Last March, Dakka Dembélé was due to launch his album Petit bateau on the Nuits d’Afrique label, but COVID 19 decided otherwise. Here we are, nine months later and in the red zone, and the launch show finally takes place without an audience, though an audiovisual recording allows us to attend remotely. On Petit bateau, the singer fully plays his role of reggaeman and decries the very risky journeys of migrants on overloaded boats, which can lead them to drowning rather than to the promised land. On the other hand, Dakka Dembélé offers us a most convivial roots reggae cruise, with a mix of West African colours, a worldly sound system imagined in Montreal.

PAN M 360: How do you explain the importance of reggae in Ivory Coast, where you were born? After Alpha Blondy and Tiken Jah Fakoly, other reggae is emerging in West Africa, as it is also the case in Mali, where your parents come from. We could also mention the late South African Lucky Dube among your influences… Explanations?

Dakka Dembélé: Alpha went to Jamaica, where he met Bob Marley and was inspired by reggae music. He then returned to his country, Ivory Coast, where he made a first album, very inspired by his Jamaican experience, and he was the precursor of this style in Ivory Coast. Ivory Coast is also a country that is very open to the world, unlike other, more conservative African countries, so it was a fertile breeding ground for becoming a hub of African reggae. My main influences in African reggae are definitely Lucky Dube, Alpha Blondy, Ismael Isaac, and Koko Dembélé. These are the reggae artists that rocked me throughout my childhood and adolescence. Tiken Jah arrived a little later, and he’s also a source of inspiration.

PAN M 360: How do you place yourself in relation to Jamaican legends? Who are your favourite reggae artists from Jamaica or the Jamaican diaspora?

DD: My favourite artists from Jamaica are Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Culture, Burning Spear, Gregory Isaac, etc. They are music that I listened to as much during my childhood and adolescence. For me, they are really the founding fathers of reggae, and I have a lot of respect for them.

PAN M 360: Before migrating to North America, how did you learn the profession of musician, author, composer and singer?

DD: Although I was born into a family that was opposed to my musical career, music has always been present in my life. At the age of nine, my family was struck by poverty; I continued school, but I went to shine shoes at the train station. The songs of Bob Marley and Alpha Blondy accompanied me during this period, and I felt the need to denounce injustice and discrimination. I started to compose and write in secret. As a young adult, I founded my first successful group, DakkaGounga, in Abidjan. But in 2003, I was forced into exile in Mali because of the civil war. Thirteen years after my arrival in Quebec in 2007, the release of the album Petit bateau marks a major milestone in my journey as an artist.

PAN M 360: How would you describe the African touch in your reggae? Is there a link with your more specific cultural origins? What ethnic communities do your parents come from?

DD: My parents are Dioulas, so I sing in French and in Dioula. The Dioulas are descendants of Mali. They are generally traders and have always travelled throughout West Africa. My reggae is definitely part of my African history. For the most part, I deal with themes related to Africa, but also to my experience as an immigrant here in Quebec. I make reggae with West African sounds and mixed influences.

PAN M 360: How do you distinguish yourself from your predecessors and contemporaries?

DD: I’m part of the tradition of francophone and Mandingo reggae. I want to offer a voice to the marginalized and the most disadvantaged, wherever they live. I deal with issues related to inequalities, I sing about peace, hope, and the contrasts between my Africa and my Quebec. My Canadian reality has profoundly transformed my identity, and it also colours my current compositions. I distinguish myself from other African reggaemen by a very personal touch to my compositions, that comes from my own history and my personal rhythm.

PAN M 360: How would you describe your creative process?

DD: My creative process is unique in itself. I always start as a solo artist; I begin by working on the lyrics and melodies. As mentioned, I write in French and Dioula, and as Dioula is a tonal language in which the pronunciation of the syllables of a word is subject to a precise tone (at a specific pitch or a characteristic melody), when I compose, I base myself on the melody and the word inseparably. Once the skeleton of the song has been built, I play it back to my collaborators, who work on the composition and arrangements.

PAN M 360: When you arrived in Quebec in 2007, you were working as a shoemaker. Where did you receive your training, and do you still work as a shoemaker, to make ends meet?

DD: I started shining shoes in Abidjan train stations and then I became an apprentice to a master shoemaker in Trechville, Abidjan’s red-light district. One thing leading to another, I mastered the trade. I have always practised the trades of shoemaker and singer at the same time. I opened my own shoemaking shop in Montreal in 2011 (Cordonnerie Dakissa). I’m located in Plaza St-Hubert.

PAN M 360: Since 2013, you’ve played with Abdoulaye Koné, the Rootsteppers, David Mobio, Namori, Ons Barnat and Solid Ground. How has the Montreal scene changed your musical approach?

DD: When I arrived in Montreal, I discovered a musical scene of such richness as I’d never imagined, where cultures and styles mix and mingle. The Montreal scene and its diversity have always inspired me. This scene has helped me to further perfect my stage presence and my composition work. I have collaborated with all these artists at different levels and they have all brought me new learning and a fresh look at my compositions.

PAN M 360: Is the musical direction of your concert the same as that of your album? What about the contribution of guitarist and producer Guy Kaye, the contribution of bassist and producer Apotcho Strong? Can you describe the musicians in your team?

DD: The musical direction of the concert is provided by the Ivorian arranger and producer Apotcho Strong. It was he who set the guidelines for the interpretations. Guy Kaye only worked on the album, in collaboration with Apotcho Strong; Apotcho brought all his expertise in the sounds of African reggae, while Guy Kaye brought all his experience and expertise in world music and funk. Guy was also the mastermind of the mixing. For the band, I went looking for musicians with extensive reggae experience: Ons Barnat (keyboards), Botty Pottinger (guitar), Sylvain Plante (drums), and David Sergeti (guitar), as well as Apotcho (bass). The backup singers, Mélissa Pacifico and Mélanie Charrier, also worked on the album.

PAN M 360: Your team is multicultural and Montreal-based, how has that changed your music?

DD: Yes, indeed, I have a mixed team (Quebec, France, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, etc.). Everyone really brings a very special touch to the interpretation, which creates a unique overall sound.

PAN M 360: What is your link with Montreal, Quebec, North America, the West? Has living in Montreal transformed you? And if so, in what way?

DD: Yes, living in Montreal has completely transformed me. It gave me a different view of the world. Especially multicultural Montreal: I’ve gotten to know other cultures and I feel really good about it.

PAN M 360: What do you plan to play at the Nuits d’Afrique on Thursday, November 5?

DD: Thursday’s show is also the launch show for my album. I was supposed to do this launch at the Ministry on March 13, but history has dictated otherwise. So this show gives all the space to Petit bateau’s compositions with three compositions from my repertoire that are not on the album. There are also several guest artists: King Shadrock, Emde, Slim Samba, and John Kerkhoven.

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

DD: I’m working on an acoustic video project that will be launched on social media in the autumn. I’m already working on a second album. I will enter research and development in the winter of 2021, with the goal of releasing the next album in the fall of 2021. Of course, I’d like to plan tours, but it’s rather difficult in the current context.

Fuzz. With a name like that, fans of noisy rock know what to expect. When, in 2011, Charles Moothart and Ty Segall decided to form a band in the image of their idols Black Sabbath and other similar acts, the name Fuzz was a natural choice. Why complicate life unnecessarily, when you can keep it simple. The fuzz pedal is undoubtedly associated with a plethora of bands – especially guitarists – of hard, acid, stoner, and sludge rock, and that’s exactly what the two school friends wanted to make: noisy, heavy rock, with no other pretension than to have fun, one fist in the air and a beer in the other.

Drummer with Ty Segall in some of his many projects, Charles Moothart finds himself at the front of the stage with Fuzz, in charge of the six-string. This band is his idea, his baby. Five years after the double album II (like we said, this band doesn’t overthink things), the California trio, completed by bassist Chad Ubovich, comes back with… III, a more concise and precise album, on which Fuzz assert themselves more and more. Charles Moothart tells us all about it, at length.

PAN M 360 : When and how was this third album conceived and created?

CM: We recorded this album in August, 2019. It’s interesting because the record has certain songs that have some social aspects but nothing was reacting to what’s currently happening. So the album wasn’t affected by everything that’s going on right now, but we are affected by the fact that we can’t tour it. We recorded here in L.A. at this studio called United Recordings, that is unfortunately closing down, which sucks, because it’s a legacy studio that’s been going on since forever [the studio opened in 1957]. We had Steve Albini come out and record us.

PAN M 360: That was precisely one of my questions… Why did you choose to work with Steve Albini?

CM: We’ve worked with him a few times in the past with Ty. We’ve developed a good working relationship with him. He’s so good at what he does! It’s nice to know you can trust the person who’s commanding the whole thing, and just go to a room and get live takes. The last album wasn’t really like that. For this one, there is a lot of live playing, but we kind of went a little farther out with post-production and stuff like that, so I think we just really wanted him to try to do something that is as close as possible to what it feels like to be in a room with us. What it feels to watch us play a show, how we feel when we’re playing our songs… There’s obviously a few guitar overdubs and the vocals aren’t live, but we just wanted to be as true to the sound of the band as possible

PAN M 360: Did Albini record and produce the album?

CM: I guess he doesn’t really like to think of it that way, but the whole time he’s working, he’s kind of tweaking sounds. He tends to keep things pretty minimal. I would do a guitar harmony and ask what he thought of it, and sometimes he puts his foot in but generally he likes to stay out of that process. He likes to let the band figure out what they want to do. I’ve heard him say multiple times that he doesn’t want to voice his opinion and accidentally put band members against each other, so he is very conscious of that. We’ve gotten pretty comfortable with him, so I think he’s also comfortable voicing his opinion, but I don’t think he likes to feel like he is entering a conversation that should be between band members. It can be really intimidating at first. Like the first time we recorded with him, I asked him about his opinion on a drum take I was doing, when we were recording with the Freedom Band. He said he didn’t want to give his opinion and I thought, ‘Whoa, this is really intimidating’, but when I figured out why he felt that way, I came to respect that, not wanting to disrupt the creative dynamic within a band. He’s interesting, the way he draws that line, but that energy is not for everybody.

PAN M 360 : What does III have that your other albums don’t? What have you corrected or improved?

CM: For me, it’s more a mental thing. I did put a lot of pressure on myself on the previous album. Where I was at mentally in my life, five years ago… I was touring a lot, my mind was still in a younger place… So I had a lot of expectations. It’s not that I think that we didn’t achieve them, it’s just that I had unachievable expectations. I put a lot of pressure on my guitar playing and how I wanted people to receive the record. Which I think affected how I interacted with Ty and Chad as a band. We still had a lot of fun making that album, but it was a double album, it was really long, it was a huge undertaking. So I think that for this album, we wanted it to be fun and natural. And of course we wanted to practice a lot, we wanted to feel really prepared and just go and get our takes. We wanted that to translate on the tape, you know, that we’re having a good time making the record. To me, I think that’s the most standout aspect. Obviously the production is very high quality, so I think that for the listener, it’s a totally different experience. And I love these songs – a lot of these songs were written over the last five years, at different points in time. I do like that the album spans five years of songwriting. It feels like a pretty collective, focused effort. To me it feels like its very connected between the band and the listeners.

PAN M 360: And why did you take five years to make this record? With Ty being hyperprolific and everywhere at the same time, it’s probably difficult to have him for a while, without him having to do something else?

CM: Yes, it’s mostly because of schedules. It’s an interesting thing, because I love to work with Ty on some different projects, I feel lucky. We’ve known each other for so many years, we’ve done a lot of cool stuff together. Every now and then we would kind of pick up Fuzz and be like, ‘is it time?’. For me, this is obviously a very important band, so I’m always down to do it. So it’s kind of waiting for it to feel right, to feel it’s the time, because as you know, Ty always has a lot of things going on. So you gotta wait until it feels right, without forcing it. It still has to feel natural getting in a room, writing songs. We can’t be like, ‘oh now is our six-month window to write a record, we have to make it happen now!’. It was two or three years ago that we took some time to write two songs and ask ourselves, ‘are these Fuzz songs? I don’t know!’. And next thing you know, we have three, four, five songs more. Once we felt that the pieces were in place, then it was like, okay, now let’s write the rest of this record. So it happened the way it had to happen.

PAN M 360: When you started Fuzz, you were just trying to see if you could make some big hard-rock riffs without it sounding cliché. Today, do you see Fuzz differently? Do you think the band is somewhere else ?

CM: I think it’s somewhere else. The first Fuzz song I wrote, I think it was “Fourth Dream”, I literally wanted to see if I could write a riff that doesn’t sound totally cheesy. Fuzz is obviously a nod to ’70s rock ’n’ roll. So yeah, I think it’s different. Because you would like to think that you don’t stay in that same cycle, doing the same thing over and over again, so I do think that we’ve exited that mentality, we want to do something that feels specific to us. We obviously love Black Sabbath, but we don’t wanna be a Black Sabbath worship band. But at the same time, we don’t want to walk away from that so much that we end up disappointing the people who like the music. We still looove that music, I still listen to Black Sabbath all the time, I still listen to the Stooges all the time. So we’re still making high-energy rock ’n’ roll that’s meant to be fucking loud and fun to listen to. But we try to mature away from just feeling like, can I write a Black Sabbath riff… that was seven or eight years ago.

PAN M 360 : You mention Black Sabbath, and with Blue Cheer, I think these are the two most obvious influences that come to mind when listening to your music, but we feel a few jazz spikes here and there on the record… Are there other influences you’d like to talk about ?

CM: It’s a constantly shifting space. I think over the last five years or so, I’ve gotten more into jazz, listening to Art Blakey, Miles Davis, and stuff like that. Not just picking the record to listen to it, but listening at how they play their instruments and how they play together. And of course there are always records that come in and out of cycles, and there are the staples that stay in there, like The Groundhogs and stuff like that.

PAN M 360 : You play drums with Ty Segall and play guitar with Fuzz, whereas it’s Ty who plays drums in Fuzz. Do you guys switch instruments sometimes, or you just stick to the guitar?

CM: Guitar, that’s my place, that’s my home, spiritually. I love playing drums in Ty’s band, but guitar will always be the best way to express myself. So with Fuzz, it’s always me on guitar. You see, that’s the thing – when I first met Ty back in high school, he was a drummer. He was the best drummer back then. He’s always been one of my favourite drummers. That’s also why this band started back then, it’s because he wanted to play drums and I wanted to play guitar.

PAN M 360 : Can you shed some light on the lyrics? They’re often rather nebulous or abstract, even cryptic.

CM: Each song is different. For example, I feel “Spit” is a really abstract one. There is, like, a story happening, but it’s very loose. For the most part, Ty and I are writing the lyrics. So when we write together, it’s a really interesting thing because he tends to be more abstract and I’ve always liked to tell a story. So we always kind of end up landing somewhere in the middle. I think Ty, over recent years, has come back to wanting to be more specific with the lyrics, but there’s an interesting combination. I like poetry, so I always kind of think that way, but Ty is also really good at being more focused on the sounds, like he can say, ‘I can’t sing that word because it doesn’t work well with the way that the vocals go’. So we end up finding these weird balances, where it’s like, ‘I wanna say this but we can’t say that… ’. So we have to change this last word to make it work and then we end up with that kind of a weird Frankenstein of a sentence, and then we’re like, ‘oh, that’s really cool!’. Every song is different. Some are much more straightforward, and it kind of goes back to what I was saying earlier, us not wanting to abandon what this band is, we want to keep certain songs fun, like pump your fist and yell at the show, you know? We’re a rock ’n’ roll band, so we want to keep it primitive, and other times be a bit more heavy. But I agree, there are times where it might just not make sense!

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