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Toups Bebey's musical pact
New release
03/03/1999 -
Toups, your career stretches back a long way before your new project "PACT". Could you tell us a bit about the early days of your career?
Well, if we go right back to the beginning, I started out learning to play the piano when I was 6. Then I moved onto the saxophone at 14 and I guess I started playing percussion around 20. I had ten years of classical piano training and four years of classical sax at the Conservatoire - in those days, students didn't have a jazz option like they do now. But I ended up walking out of the Conservatoire 'cos I couldn't stand playing Bach on the saxophone every day. It's crazy, I mean Bach never wrote for the saxophone!
When you hear bizarre stories like that, you can understand why the French don't have a very good ear for music!
I think it's fair to say that the French education system doesn't take music seriously enough at all. I mean, you just have to look at the way things are organised in the USA to see the difference. American schools have this system of lending out instruments. Kids get to choose which instrument they want to play and then they get to take it home at night so they can practise everyday if they want.
But what about your musical experience outside education? When did you join your first group, for example?
I guess I must have been around 17 or 18 at the time. My first concerts were with this blues group in high school - Frank Ash was in the same group. Frank's gone on to form his own group now, you know, the Blue Devils. Anyway, back then me and Frank were at the same school and he came up to me one day and said "Come on, man! I know you play really good sax. D'you want to come along and play a gig with us?" Well, back then I didn't know the first thing about playing sax. I mean, I'd been learning classical sax for three years at the Conservatoire, but I didn't know the first thing about blues! Anyway, I managed to find out about it really quick 'cos I didn't want to let Frank down. But I can tell you, Frank was really insistent, he just refused to believe I didn't know anything about blues … Anyway, I did a lot of other things before I finally decided to devote myself to a professional music career. I was a teacher for a while in the States, you know. I didn't want to teach music, 'cos it's a real passion for me! So I ended up teaching English and French. Then in 1986 I gave everything up became a full-time musician. Two years later I started playing with Salif Keita. And after that things just snowballed and I ended up working with lots of different people like Charlélie Couture, Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine, Les Quatre Etoiles du Zaïre… Then in 1994 things changed and I started to get really fed up with what I was doing …
Did you really just got fed up? Or was it more a sense of frustration at having to play other people's music rather than getting on with creating your own?
Yeah, partly, but there was a bit more to it than that. When I first got involved with the music scene, you know, I was all fired up with enthusiasm but I had a certain innocence about the whole thing. I was seeing things from a fan's perspective. And when things started turning out differently from how I'd imagined them as a fan, well, I got kind of disappointed. Anyway, I got fed up and I went on to form the group Paris Africans during the summer of '95. We played our first concert in January '96, and things started moving very quickly for us after that. Over the next six months we went on to play at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris. Then we performed at festivals in Montreux and Cayenne, and did a whole series of gigs in Italy…
Basically, a whole lot of things were going on around this time. By the time I formed Paris Africans, I'd already started getting a few ideas together for the PACT project. But when I started concentrating on Paris Africans I put them back in my drawer and said to myself that I'd get back to them later. You know, around that time I was surrounded by all these people who kept saying: "I'll play anything you want, but I'm not getting into techno". So that really wasn't the right time to launch PACT. Then in 1998 Paris Africans were all set to perform at Midem (Ed. the annual record industry fair held in Cannes) in the 'Jazz Talents' section so me and Véronique (Ed. Toup's girlfriend/manager) decided to kill two birds with one stone and take along the ideas for the PACT project.
Anyway, I ended up locking myself away in the studio for a fortnight with François Jourry and managed to transform my original ideas into songs, well, four songs to be precise. We handed the cassette around and time went by, and I didn't think about it all too much. Then all of a sudden the thing started snowballing - suddenly everyone was interested in PACT! Then we got a call from the guy who was organising Mixmove (Ed. a techno/dance salon in Paris). Anyway, he invited us to come along and perform. And we thought if he's going to program us at Mixmove in October then we'd better get our act together and record something. That was back in May and I was just starting to work on the brass stuff. In fact, I only got round to working on the PACT project seriously in July because the arrangements for the brass company turned out to be much more colossal than I'd ever imagined.
In the course of your career, Toups, I see that you once worked with a certain French musician called Jean-Michel Jarre. Was it Jarre who inspired you to branch out into electronic music?
No, not at all. The way I see it is like this. You've got two musical worlds which on the surface appear to be entirely unrelated to one another but which, in fact, have certain common links. Well, faced with that situation, you've got two types of musician - one who prefers to stay in his world because he's not too sure about what he's going to find in the other and one who jumps at the opportunity of discovering something new. Well, I fall into the latter category.
I didn't hesitate about branching out into something new. All the more so as I knew Jean-Michel Jarre's work from way back. When I was a kid I heard "Oxygène" non-stop on the radio just like everyone else and I remember around that time everyone was into Pierre Henry's "Messe pour le temps présent" as well. So, basically, I got into electro music around the age of 10 or 11, years before I began working with Jarre! I was already aware of all the amazing things you could do with synthesisers, aware of the enormous creative potential in electronic sounds. I've always followed, albeit from a distance, what was going on on the electro scene, you know, Vangelis, Brian Eno, Philip Glass, Terry Reiley and the 'repetitive Western music' thing… I've also been really impressed with experimental music, like Gavin Bryars's stuff. You know, Bryars is really creative. He went out on the street and recorded this drunken tramp singing, then went back into the studio worked it into a loop which repeats itself during 40 minutes and puts all this sumptuous orchestration behind the tramp's voice. It's amazing, you've got all these strings going on - a full orchestra, in fact!
Anyway, to get back to PACT. The project matured over five years and then you had to go out and find the right people to work with?
No, it didn't happen like that at all. I already knew François Jourry. François was having a few problems finding a place to work in and I suggested he brought his equipment on over to my place. So he did and we just started working together, perfectly naturally. You know, I prefer to stay focused on the music side of things and leave the technical stuff to someone else. I mean, trying to do both things at once is just a big waste of time as far as I'm concerned. There are some musicians who manage to do both and boy, I can tell you, I really admire them!
The traditional instruments and the modern electro sounds seem to complement each other really well on the PACT album. Can you tell us something about the traditional instruments you used in the studio?
Well, there's a Pygmy flute, for example. It's a very basic kind of instrument - it just plays one note, whatever note you choose, but just one note. So I tried to create a kind of music which would fit round that. On the track ndehou@bebey.com you get the musician singing and then this flute just answering back over and over again with the same note. On "Da Fulani" you hear a bow played by twanging it in the mouth. And there's also the sound of us tapping on the side of a Coca Cola bottle with metal forks.
Besides the sound of the instruments, there's also a bit of traditional chanting …
On "Pact Fever" you can hear chanting in Douala. That's a language - not a dialect! - from Cameroon. It's important to point out that a language and a dialect are not at all the same thing politically speaking. Most dialects are languages, in the sense that they function in the same way as languages - i.e. they have grammar, syntax and a system of vocabulary. OK, even if it doesn't obey these rules, it can still be a dialect. But, most of the time, it's fair to say that African dialects are real languages. Only what tends to happen is that there's one 'official' language used in a country. And then all the other languages are relegated to the position of dialects.
You know, for a long time in France Breton was considered as a regional dialect. But now Breton's recognised as a language - in fact, these days kids can study Breton for the 'baccalauréat' if they want! In Cameroon there are two official languages - French and English. But in Senegal they've managed to mix a whole lot of different languages together to create Wolof which is a national language on an equal footing with the other official language, French. Wolof and French are taught in exactly the same way in Senegalese schools. It's a shame that more African countries haven't managed to do this. The result is that in places like Cameroon, you've got people fighting with each other. There's a whole lot of different ethnic groups and each of them thinks they're more important than the others. Sadly, in Cameroon we haven't been capable of working towards fusion like the Senegalese…
When I say there's a big difference between a language and a dialect in a political sense, it's because 'languages' are considered as important while 'dialects' are relegated to an inferior status. When people say Africans speak in 'dialect', it's a way of doing them down. On the track "Da Fulani" I sampled a traditional chant by the Fulani, a people who live in Nigeria and Northern Cameroon, who belong to the ethnic group known as Peuls. And on another track, "Autruche international", I used a muezzin making the traditional call to prayer in Arabic.
Do you think the idea of fusing traditional sounds with modern electronica will encourage younger music fans to take an interest in traditional music?
Well, that's one of the main aims of our project. You know, the reason I called one of the tracks on the album ndehou@bebey.com is so those music fans will want to go and check out what's happening on the Francis Bebey website! But, no, in answer to your question, I didn't really have this idea in the back of my mind that people should start listening to more traditional sounds. I made this album because I felt like making it just the way I wanted. And I'm pleased to say that I've got a lot of positive feedback from the public so far. People like the fact that I've mixed acoustic sounds with electronic stuff. What happened was a lot of stuff ended up being played live then we mixed it with samples and computer-generated stuff afterwards. It's a sort of 'arranged marriage' between humans and machines!
An arranged marriage, not a 'marriage of love'?
No, no way! Machines are the tools and then on the other side you've got real human beings. Living beings are only attracted to living beings - at least I hope that's the case! You know, I think people are getting a bit fed up with music which is just generated by synths and computers. Back in the early days, synthesisers played sounds which weren't real sounds. They could never sound like anything other than synthesisers in fact. I remember everyone used to laugh because a synth making the sound of a violin sounded nothing like the real thing! Then over the years synthesisers got more and more sophisticated and today they can sample and reproduce sounds so that they sound like real instruments. The way I see it, the time is just ripe for a fusion sound mixing 'live' and pre-programmed music!
Interview: Gilles Rio
Translation: Julie Street
