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I was born in Burndi, in Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.
In a very small country that few people know.
And that doesn’t look like the images of Africa we have here.
My father was a vagrant nomad adventurer
He did a world tour by bike when he was young and stopped in Burundi where he
met my mother who was a Rwandese refugee from the first massacres of 1959
in Rwanda.
I used to say that I grew up under an open sky. I use to spend my holidays in the
bush, on the banks of the lake. It was a permanent treasure hunt.
This is where I have drawn on the safe of my inspiration
In 1993 everything changed radically.
In one day, 150 frenchs, only women and children left Burundi.
The war broke out in all the country. And then in 1994, the rwandan Tutsi genocide
adds to it. At this point, the entire african great lake region erupted in violence.
Bujumbura became a real blaze, from this point I had to leave my country, my family,
my friends, my bearings, to be repatriated to France, it was 1995, I was thirteen.
Exile is first a breaking then a difficult adaptation.
For many years I lived in France as though I was in transit. So I felt the need
to write to explain to myself all those things that happened.
Writting it’s for me a way to explain things to oneself, then to the world and try to
speak to people’s emotions.
After my graduation I worked in London for 2 years. I got a serious job, I mean
with an office, a tie and a real schedule.
We were pressured to get Higher education but eventually to do a job that
didn’t require any kind of creativity or imagination.
At this time I started dreaming about to going back to France to do my music.
Already back in 1995 when I arrived in France I was involved in rap music. I
participated in various mixtapes, compilations, I did some opening gigs.
But when I got back from London I really put a lot of myself into music threw my
Spoken Words crew, Chant d’Encre.
With my crew we performed a lot.
Inside Chant d’Encre I met Suga whith whom I shared litterature tastes, writting
style, the taste for rap music. It was a chance for me to do something
with someone whose personality, thinking and being, I respect highly.
We created the band Milk Coffee & Sugar
With Suga we started to record in a friend’s kitchen.
But we quickly understood that we must be more organised to move forward.
In 2009 with our manager we set up our music label, 6D Production.
We learned everything by ourselves andreached a professional level, to
impose our band. The idea at the time was simply to exist.
We released our first album the 10th of May 2010. We did a big tour and many
opening gigs for Tumi and The Volume, Beat Assailant, Ben l’Oncle Soul, Blitz
The Ambassador.
My solo album is some 10 years of work because I wrote the first text « A-France »
about ten years ago. And it was thenthat I knew that wanted to do an
autobiographical album between here and there, between Africa and France.
The most diffucult thing was to talk about myself. And the question was: how to do
songs, tell story and share feelings about things that are completely normal in your
personal life?
For me it’s an album about exile, that’s the starting point. And with exile you start
to talk about crossbreeding, which includes black and white, but also here
and there… …
And the all album is built on ambivalence, on two pillars. In all songs I am in
between something.
For the foundation of the album I wanted to think from Bujumbura. It’s the reason I
went there to prepare the album.
The smell, the music of the city, the atmosphere, everything was important. I
wanted to find the Congolese rumba again because it was the music I heard
growing up.
Again this “in between” feeling, between two influences african music of my
childhood and the 90’s rap, a rap with more acoustic and real sound.
All the album was recordedlive.
Guillaume Poncelet is a Producer, arranger, composer. He plays trumpet and
piano wonderfully.
He created my album’s music with me, and with Suga who was there during
pre-production sessions.
Guillaume is a former member of the French National Jazz Orchestra, he plays
with Michel Jonasz and he produced the first album of Ben l’Oncle Soul.
I was really lucky to work with him on this album, which was a self-financed album
where we did everything by ourselves.
For the musical part we recorded the album in top studios with good acoustics.
But all the voices have been done at home, with mattress on the walls.
Ben : « The Super Musicians, they build a studio in real time ! »
Gaël : « People have seen videos of huge studios on the internet, with brass
ensemble, but here is the reality ! »
We did all of this album by ourselves with 6D production our small music label. With
my manager, Touria who has managed all the difficult aspects of music production,
with Suga who has composed some tracks and brought lots of ideas and
Nicolas Bozino who did all the video works.
On this album there are many guests:
There is the south african rapper, Tumi Molekane. Tumi came to Paris during the
summer 2011. We caught him between two gigs and we made him work because
he actually sings more than me on the song. He came to the studio and we did
the videoclip in the row. He put a lot of himself in the song and in the project.
There is Ben l’Oncle Soul. I could not see someone else on this song.
And the icing on the cake is Bonga. He is a singer from Angola. I have listened to
him since I was a child because he is one of the greatest African, voices like
Cesaria Evora. In addition to his artistic quality, he is
politically engaged. In the 70’s he participated in Angola’s liberation
struggle.
After months trying to reach him, he finally listened the song, and I think he
subscribed to what I’m saying in this song, a song called « President »
I was lucky because during the recording session there was a plate glass window, I
could see him recording and he was not working, he was living the song.
This is an album of saudade I think.
The saudade like people of Cape Verde say.
Saudade but with a rap twist…