.............25..............
Flashmag October 2018 www.flashmag.net
well with us African, because often the complex side with its musical chords often bushy, remains very little digestible for the Africans. Its intellect status with its intensive codification in schools has made this style of Jazz even more inaccessible.
Everything is in the attitude this way of being free is what makes Jazz. Someone who does pop, does not have this freedom, he first has to follow a code about his image. As of today, there are tons of music which, when you remove the image, the substance simply fades, and this is at the antipodes of Jazz which remains a very spiritual music.
Your quintet composed of Michel Alibo (Bass); Sylvain Gontard (Trumpet), Irving Acao (Tenor Sax), Nicolas Viccaro / Arnaud Dolmen (Drums) is a real treat, how did you manage to convince musicians of various origins to play with you. Or rather, how did this alchemy came about? what created this harmony?
The quintet itself initially did not have Michel or Arnaud. In place of Michel there was Etienne Mbappé. It is with them that I have come a long way, and since it has become like a family. The harmony is almost perfect when I start a theme everyone knows what he has to do. They understand my style of play. But now that Etienne Mbappé is very busy with his own career, I asked Michel Alibo to kindly replace him. It's a boy who is huge. He can play with artists from different background and repertoire, with incomparable generosity. This versatility makes him a talented bass player, and I think he proves, that he can match Etienne whose talent is great.
In 2016 you produced a collaborative album called Riddles with pianist Laurent de Wilde. how was this project born? two years later if you had to give your opinion on this album what would you say?
The collaboration with Laurent is really the almost perfect illustration of the maxim Jazz is an attitude as I said earlier. He is really trained in Classical Jazz, and one day he called me. he told me, it's been a long time that we appreciate the work of each other. What if we made an album?
I was a bit reluctant, because I had already done a collaboration in 1997 with a German pianist Joachim Kuhn and I came out very dissatisfied with the outcome. The abundance of notes and extreme virtuosity did not satisfy me. For example, I worked with traditional Congolese musicians and you know that the one who speaks less, is often the drum master . Our rhythms are triangular in general two accompanying bases that produce many notes and a higher base of the drum master, more monotonous which concludes the musical chords by giving them their final touch. I come from this school. So, I explained to Laurent, that I did not want to make a Jazz based on virtuosity; so, we have to prune the notes. He understood me, since he lives in Paris and knows the African music. We got along because he has a beautiful general culture, he is also a good writer because he also writes. He has become a brother for me because he brought me his classic Jazzman style, and I brought him my African Jazzman side. Well, that's how Riddles was born.
Pianist, guitarist, composer and vocalist you are a musician who does almost everything, but always seems to surround himself. In your opinion, the language of music bears more when it is enriched by the voice of many of musicians or simply when it carries a project which in itself has a certain philosophy. Should we musically think like Ray Lema to contribute to one of his projects? What motivates you in choosing your musical partners?
Often it's me who falls in love here, I really believe in falling in love with each other work; if one wants to progress musically. A musician who is refractory to others eats himself from the inside out, when we love others we are always learning new things. People are not identical there are people who have abilities that others do not have, while rubbing shoulders with others we necessarily improve our weak points. My collaborations are mainly based on this philosophy of appreciation of the other and I think it's a quality