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Flashmag May 2019 www.flashmag.net
MARSHALL. They call on Georges DECIMUS, brother of Pierre Edouard, and you Jacob, while at the same time you were guitarist and arranger, and rather in styles, like Rock and rhythm and blues. So why did you decide to make this 90 degree, turn? What convinced you to follow this adventure?
The adventure seemed interesting to me, I was offered to have fun, working on a music that already existed but I was convened to find , a formula that would make it edible and attractive, so that it could be appreciated by anyone and in any corner of the globe. With very precise criteria. If it had to be appreciated by everyone, listeners had to know that it originated in Guadeloupe. It had to be successful in Guadeloupe and the rest of the Antilles before spreading elsewhere.
.hat brought your experience of rocker and arranger of sometimes African music, to the composition of Kassav?
I think it brought fresh blood. The vision of music in the West Indies at the time was quite diverse, there was the Caribbean music that rubbed against other genres like Jazz and Rock ... so I invited some musicians who did not necessarily make West Indian music, but who could bring something special to the band.
Kassav was born at a time when the Caribbean bathed under the domination of Haitian music with phenomena like Coupé Cloué or Claudette and Ti Pierre, because almost all groups of "kadans" as the Aiglons or Vikings were strongly influenced by Haitian music which has submerged the Caribbean from the 1950s. In your opinion Kassav came to fill a lack of identity, especially for Caribbean people from Martinique and Guadeloupe, or it was rather a logical evolution of the Caribbean musical landscape?
Sure, There was a lack at the time. In the West Indies, everyone wanted to have something of its own, there were identity movements, where everyone claimed its specificity ... well Haitian music was doing well it still works, it is still present in the Caribbean. Our goal has never been
to eradicate this or that music, but simply to bring something new that represented a certain ideal. The arrival of Kassav was something new, and it was experienced as a local music, local peoples could be proud of, and it certainly filled a void somewhere.
Kassav, forgive the expression, is a bit like a laboratory experiment, because its founders experimented the fusion of rhythms like the Gwoka, the Bèlè, the Mazurka, the Biguine or the Creole Waltz, to create a Zouk which conquered the world. In the process did you have the shadow of a doubt? When did you realize that you were holding the right end?
I never had a doubt. In fact, I was given a mission, and I knew what to do. Well, the experience was conclusive in view of our early successes. But, coming from islands that have barely 450 000 inhabitants and have the ambition to do something that will touch the whole world was perhaps bold, but we tried and we were lucky that it worked
The group grew up after the first album Love and Kadance released in 1979. The 5th Album Kassav released in 1983, sees the arrival in the group of a woman Jocelyne Beroard, again, Kassav innovates by giving a woman a lead role in a group formed by men. Have the women of the world who have been listening to kassav for 40 years, sometimes commented on the egalitarian nature of your group?
No. Not really. There was a lot of things that happened in the band, we had a lot of innovative ideas. For example, the association of Guadeloupeans and Martiniquans in a band, something new in Afro Caribbean music. Jocelyne came as a backing vocalist in the group and it is after several years that she was offered a role of lead singer in the group, things evolved on their own, naturally.
From 1984 to 1987 Kassav is under the label GD production of Georges Debs then it will be CBS production, that became Sony music. This change of label, if it was necessary to say something about, what would you say. What it brought to your music ?