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The Orchestre National de Barbès
A Happy Melting-Pot of Styles and Cultures
Paris
10/02/2003 -
RFI Musique: The ONB have already played several gigs at Le Cabaret Sauvage. Do you feel particularly attached to this venue?
Taoufik Mimouni: Yes, we do, in fact. We like the place a lot, it's got a great atmosphere to play gigs in. And personally, Le Cabaret Sauvage holds wonderful memories for me - it reminds me of when we first started out, of our second proper concert after our first gig at Le New Morning in Paris at the end of '95. Things really kicked off for us when we appeared at the Printemps de Bourges festival in April '96, of course. That's what really launched our career. Things really started snowballing after that.
Why did you decide to slow down recently and take things at a more leisurely pace?
Well, basically we felt that from now on we wanted to put all our time and energy into the new album. We still don't feel all that satisfied with our last album, you know. One of the main problems was it was made in such a rush. It got to the point where we even had to replace a couple of musicians on tour because they'd got completely blocked in the studio. There was no way we wanted to go through all that again.
I think it's important for a group to be able to stand back and get a bit of distance on things every now and then. You've got to do that if you want to work together efficiently. Things had got so hectic that we'd been playing two or three gigs a week. It had got to the point where we just had time to nip home and get our mail and then wham! bam! we were back on stage again.
Well, there are still 12 of us, but yes, a few of the original members have drifted away in recent years. Two of our musicians – keyboard-player Jean-Baptiste Ferré and guitarist Olivier Louvel – had been dividing their time between the ONB and other bands and they decided to leave recently. They were both replaced by friends. The ONB has always been like one big family, you know, although we've always invited passing musicians to join us on stage too.
Actually Smail, the keyboard-player who's just replaced Jean-Baptiste played with us at our very first gig at Le New Morning. He was in the ONB before Jean-Baptiste, in fact. And Khlif, our new guitarist, used to play with Youssef in Cheb Mami's group, so he already had an ONB connection too. In fact, Khlif had already stepped in to replace our second guitarist for two months when he had to drop out because of an injury.
Would you say the group's artistic direction has remained more or less the same over the years?
Yes, the basic ONB spirit remains exactly the same. We still sing in Arabic, Kabyle and French and we try and keep our music as upbeat and varied as possible. No style is ever out of bounds as far as we're concerned. We'll play anything from our own cultural heritage – i.e. traditional music from the Maghreb – to more international styles such as rock, ragga, reggae, ska and salsa. And we're equally at home mixing reggae and Gnawa music as we are mixing African sounds and ska, for instance. Traditional music from the Maghreb remains at the heart of our work, of course, but we've always tried to draw a whole lot of other musical styles towards it to colour it and dress it up a bit. We'll be playing a couple of our new songs at Le Cabaret Sauvage, of course. But we'll be keeping the rest under wraps – we're keeping a few surprises up our sleeve for when the new album comes out!
No, not especially. We did a lot of cover versions on our first album, so we were obviously singing other people's lyrics. But as we function first and foremost as musicians, I'd say we chose the songs on our first album more in terms of melody than lyrics. On our second album we did actually get round to writing some of our own lyrics, but on the whole the themes didn't stray much beyond traditional Maghreb subject matter, that's to say nostalgia, love or joy…
Our next album's going to be pretty much in keeping with our previous work as far as the lyrics go. The songs will be pretty varied, but there won't be any out-and-out political message. We've never been a militant group, you know. Everyone in the group has his own ideas and beliefs; we don't necessarily have the same take on things. We've got everything in this group from Muslims and non-Muslims to Christians and outright atheists. And politically there are differences too – some of us vote left-wing, some of us vote right-wing. So we've never attempted to put any kind of collective message across.
There might not be any direct kind of political or social statement in your songs, but the ONB have played at a lot of fund-raising gigs for humanitarian causes over the years. You've performed at concerts on behalf of civil liberties in Algeria, the GISTI (an information and support group for immigrants) and campaigned against AIDS…
That's normal. There are some things you can have different opinions on and others where that's just not possible, like AIDS, of course. As a human being you can't help but be touched by a cause like that. So yes, you're right, the ONB have come out in support of a lot of causes like that.
No, I don't think there'll be anything like that. I'm actually Moroccan, but I've never had the feeling that the Algerian musicians in the group particularly want to take a position on things. The problem is, the situation out there is so obscure right now that we're in no position to pass judgement.
The new ONB album has been a long time in coming. Your last album dates back to 1999, in fact. So when's the new album actually due out?
We were a bit traumatised by having to set ourselves limits and deadlines for the recording of our second album. Everything was done in such a rush. We were about to hit the road on tour again and everything had to be finished at breakneck speed! At the end of the day I'd say there are some interesting things on our second album, but we're not entirely satisfied with it.
This time round we decided to take a completely different approach. We deliberately chose to slow down our concert schedule and not overload our calendar so that we wouldn't feel pressurised at all. So this time round there are no deadlines. We prefer to take whatever time we need. And the great thing is that our record label, Virgin, totally understand that approach. They're not putting any kind of pressure on us at all.
T.M.: Well, we've had a lot of requests. And I must admit it does get a bit frustrating at times not to get out on the road and play when you're a musician. We've had a few differences of opinion in the past because the ONB are first and foremost a live group. At the end of the day we prefer to express ourselves live on stage, rather than lock ourselves away in a studio for months. But we finally agreed that if we wanted to assure the long-term future of the group we had to have new material. Right now there's no major tour planned; we'll just be playing a few individual dates.
And will you be continuing the ONB tradition of inviting guest singers and musicians up on stage with you when you play at Le Cabaret Sauvage?
Well, we've contacted a few people. By mid-January they hadn't all got back to us, but one thing I can say for sure is there'll be a very varied mix. We'd definitely like to work with Raïna Raï, a group of Indian musicians and there'll be a few Gnawa legends involved too.
Patrick Labesse
Translation : Julie Street
02/02/2011 -
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