World Music Matters

Orient Occident, a six-piece ensemble from Turkey, Greece, Morocco, Switzerland and France, releases its eponymous debut album today. Banishing all notions of a 'clash of civilisations' their mutual respect of one another's cultures of origin, and the ability to listen, has resulted in an exciting and moving collaboration where music is the only language that counts.

Young, Canadian singer-songwriter Lisa Leblanc has performed 400 concerts in the last four years, and recently toured Europe with her new album 'Why you wanna leave, runaway Queen?', packed with stories based on experiences on the road in the US. She sings in English and a her local French dialect called Chiac. She talks to RFI about her brand of "trash folk" music, setting Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades' to the banjo, and why, despite calls to be more ladylike, she'll carry on speaking her mind. And singing 'with balls'.

Young, Canadian singer-songwriter Lisa Leblanc has performed 400 concerts in the last four years, and recently toured Europe with her new album 'Why you wanna leave, runaway Queen?', packed with stories based on experiences on the road in the US. She sings in English and a her local French dialect called Chiac. She talks to RFI about her brand of "trash folk" music, setting Motorhead's 'Ace of Spades' to the banjo, and why, despite calls to be more ladylike, she'll carry on speaking her mind. And singing 'with balls'.

Follow Lisa Leblanc on facebook

Haitian-American singer-songwriter Leyla McCalla has been touring Europe with her second, acclaimed, album, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey. RFI caught up with the virtuoso cellist and banjo player at the recent Blues sur Seine festival, west of Paris, where she tried to get youngsters into her brand of blues and experimental folk at a time when music education is under threat in her native America.

Haitian-American singer-songwriter Leyla McCalla has been touring Europe with her second, acclaimed, album, A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey. RFI caught up with the virtuoso cellist and banjo player at the recent Blues sur Seine festival, west of Paris, where she tried to get youngsters into her brand of blues and experimental folk at a time when music education is under threat in her native America.

McCalla is signing autographs on scraps of paper, even hands, after an hour of playing and talking blues to a bunch of 13 year olds.

"I see a lot of myself, my 6th grade self, in this group," she says. "The self-consicousness and inquisitiveness is really vulnerable and sweet."

At their age she was already on the way to being an accomplished classical musician.

"I was in youth orchestra and learning about chamber music and just starting to play in some of my first ensembles, so it was quite a formative time for me."

 

McCalla draws on her Haitian heritage and Creole influence to make songs that haunt you long after the she's stopped plucking the chords of her cello, banjo or guitar.

Her debut album, Vari-Colored Songs: A Tribute to Langston Hughes, was named 2013’s Album of the Year by the London Sunday Times and Songlines magazine. And her second album A Day for the Hunter, a Day for the Prey is on Songlines' top 10 best albums of 2016.

But there's nothing like a bunch of restless teenagers for keeping you rooted.

"I love where you get to play at festivals that are committed to community outreach and passing the torch to other kids," she says, "because that’s how I got into this.

"And I think that’s how a lot of musicians get into playing...  is someone exposing them to the music and then saying you can do this too."

As a student at Juilliard music school, it was professor André Emelianoff who lit the spark. 

"I think he was the first person that really challenged and believed in me, and helped me legitimize my sense of myself being a musician," she says.

Emelianoff and access to a good arts education both helped her become a great cellist. But she says arts education is being "gutted from the public school system programmes".

"When I was a kid it was mandatory that all kids play an instrument, now it depends on funding, the situation of each county or school district. And so it really saddens me to see that continue to sort of deteriorate."

She feels the situation is set to worsen once Donald Trump, with his promise to increase military spending,  takes office in January 2017.

"I'm very concerned with this perpetual war machine we're in. The wars we're winning, we're fighting, all in the name of democracy and freedom. I just don't believe it. They say 'we can't do arts education because that doesn't fund the war on freedom campaign'. I feel like that's what it comes down to."

As the daughter of Haitian immigrants, she's also started to feel more of an outsider.

"My family fled Haiti during the [Jean-Claude] Duvalier regime. That's why I play the cello! I probably wouldn’t be doing this if I’d stayed in Haiti," she says. "If I didn’t have the American public education system supporting my education." 

Without that support McCalla says many kids won't get to realise their potential, musical or otherwise. 

"If you don’t have those kinds of opportunities where people will cut you some slack in order to let you grow, then it’s just harder to imagine the American dream coming true.

"And the American dream of just buying more stuff and having more stuff doesn’t get to the heart of what makes people happy. So I feel like the dream is a little bit 'deferred', to use a Langston Hughes term."

Follow Leyla McCalla on facebook

 

,

Singer-songwriter Erik Aliana talks to RFI about championing the ancestral rhythms of his native Cameroon on his new album Just My Soul.

Franco-American pianist, singer and composer Ariane Gray Hubert began her musical journey in India 15 years ago. She took her piano 'an alien instrument in India' and struck up an altogether original dialogue with players of tabla and the less well-known ghatam. She talks to RFI about 'breaking the rules to create a language of [her] own' by blending Western and Eastern classical music traditions.

Nawal hails from the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. She's built on her ancestral Afro Sufi roots to create a unique sound, beyond both music and the material world. The first woman to play guitar in public in Comores, and beaten as a result, she talks to RFI about her unorthodox brand of "Muslim gospel".

Nawal hails from the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean. She's built on her ancestral Afro Sufi roots to create a unique sound, beyond both music and the material world. The first woman to play guitar in public in Comores, and beaten as a result, she talks to RFI about her unorthodox brand of "Muslim gospel".

Nawal was born into the mystical branch of Islam known as Sufism. Her great grandfather El Maarouf (1852-1904), an eminent Sufi priest in Comores, preached an Islam founded on love, respect and peace.

"He really had the love," she says admiringly, "I can feel him in me."

While she inherited a strong sense of spirituality from both sides of her family, her mother also passed on a rebellious streak.

"My mother is from this generation of peace, love and rock and roll and she was one of the first six women who decided to work and have a job like a man."

A devout Muslim with a deep undertstanding of the Koran, her mother abandoned the veil, and got divorced several times in what was, and still is, a deeply conservative society.

"At this time [1970s] it was a revolution," says Nawal.

Double culture

The singer-songwriter has drawn on this double culture, mixing the influence of Joan Baez, John Lennon and Bob Marley "all these people [who] were speaking about love” with the African and Islamic influences of her native Comorian heritage.

She sings mainly in Shikomor, the Bantu language of Comoros, accompanying herself on guitar, gambusi (a 4 stringed lute from Comoros), mbira and the dar frame drum.

An enthralling stage performer, she gently discourages applause between songs, preferring to "leave space for silence".

She’s now been performing for more than 25 years and her repertoire is increasingly inspired by a Sufi form of chanting known as dzikr.

"The older I get the more my divine power needs its place and also I practice more."

She describes her music as ‘Afro Sufi roots’ or ‘Muslim gospel’. The message is simple but can appear almost counter-culture in these hyper active times.

The song Aman from her second album in 2007 means 'peace of the soul'.

"I’m singing in this song that love is the best medicine against all the craziness from humans and especially now there’s more and more need for Aman, for this peace.

"If we really want peace in the world, we have to go and find this peace inside ourselves, because to be able to love myself I need to be in peace with myself and then I can exchange peace with the other."

Beaten for playing in public

Nawal did not reach this level of self-acceptance overnight. She moved to France at the age of ten, struggled to fit in, but found comfort in music. When she returned to Comores in 1985 and tried to become the first woman to play guitar in public, she was dragged off the stage and beaten.

"My uncle said you know in our family we cannot let the first woman playing guitar like a man be coming from our family."

Three albums later and following successful tours in Europe and North America, she says her uncle is now proud and comes to hear her in concert.

Other female musicians are also making progress.

"Now there’s some young women in Comores who study guitar," she says. "They’re not yet playing on stage but they’re practising and they want to become professional. So I did open the way a bit and that’s great."

Not easy to ‘sing Allah’ in France

Nawal has a loyal following here, but admits singing "Muslim Gospel" is challenging in secular France.

"I tour more outside France," she says. "Believers say I’m not religious enough and atheists don’t want to hear about God," she laughs. "One concert programmer told me I talked too much about love between songs."

She says if she finds a better message, she may move on. But for the moment the religious tolerance found in Sufism resonates the most.

"When I have a heart that’s open, when I don’t judge the other but when I listen to him and have compassion and I’m joyful, then my house becomes joyful and I shine," she says, smiling."If I shine, my neighbour’s going to shine too."

 

Nawal's latest album to date: Caresse de l'ame. She's currently working on a gospel-style remix of her acclaimed album Aman. Follow Nawal on Facebook

Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou are one of West Africa’s oldest and most successful bands, masters of Vôdun-inspired afrobeat. Singer and co-founder Vincent Ahehehinnou talks to RFI about their new album Madjafalao and why their music has not changed with the times.