Flashmag's guest this month is a Creole crooner who comes directly from Guadeloupe, Darius Denon with his velvety voice is greatly imbedded in the tradition of zouk love, a real treat for music lovers, and followers of romance. If the genre since has witnessed a concurrence with the wave of dance hall that seems to steal the show, it’s no less the music of reference when one talk about the music of the French West Indies, and who better to talk to us about this genre, but a pure product of the tropics.
Darius Denon, thank you for granting us this interview. First, a trivial but important question. What brings you, to music?
Very young already my parents and relatives realized that I had a musical ear. Eagerly, they were telling me that often. However, it is at 14, that I really engage in music. I learn to play the guitar in a self-taught way, having seen play one of my uncles, I was blown away, and I said to myself "Darius You must be able to do the same”. It is from there that everything started. Since then, it's a passion that lives in my soul. This passion was also nourished by the arrival of the Kassav music group. At the time the Caribbean scene was the prerogative of Haitian music that really dominated the Caribbean. Kassav with zouk and zouk love, greatly influenced me, and especially Patrick Saint Eloi, was a model for me. Everything was good with him, the vocals, the scenic tenure, the instrumental ability. I was really subjugated. I had never seen an artist perform and play this way. He was really my model.
After, I was spotted by two musicians who were already in the circuit. And in 1989, they allowed me to sing in an Album. It was a great experience to sing in the largest recording studio in the West Indies, the Henri Debs, studio. So, I started from there, later I went to Paris, I perfected myself, I launched my first Albums, over musical meetings and collaborations I enriched my experience, and then my first album came out in 1998 and then another, the year after, but the album that really puts me on the musical map is Je t’emmene (I take you) released in 2000.
After these first experiences with Letchi and Christian Yéyé, and the Reve Antillais contest, how do you see your career?
Flashmag March 2019 www.flashmag.net
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Darius Denon Creole Crooner
Interview
music
Crédit photos Rikko Ross