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Album review
Les Nubians
One Step Forward
Paris
18/04/2003 -
One of the most interesting things about your new album is that alongside each song on the track listing you suggest the ideal time it should be listened to…
Hélène: That's an important detail to us because we're storytellers, you know, we're African 'griottes'. When we started recording the album we hadn't actually come up with the concept of doing a track listing like that. All we had was the major themes, but things gradually came together as we worked and took on their own meaning. Before long it became clear that the album was a kind of soundtrack, it was like 'the music of one day in the life of the Nubians'. That was where the idea of the sun and the moon came from – and once we had that idea each song just sort of fell into place and it was easy to imagine the ideal time of day to listen to such and such a song. There's a song on the new album called La guerre (War), for instance, and it was obvious that that particular track should come at the zenith. You can imagine listening to it at mid-day with the sun beating down on your head and it's so strong you don't even know what you're doing! Then, as the sun begins to wane, the mood gets softer and the songs become more intimate and acoustic. That's when you've got songs about prayer, meditation and love. It was good to come up with the time angle on things because it adds a real narrative strand to the album. To be honest, we did come up with the idea of doing a double album at one point, where we'd have had the 'sun' album and the 'moon' album, but commercial pressures being what they are, our record company preferred us to put everything together on a single CD.
Célia: The main argument was that our album was going to work out too expensive – and as we think records are pricey enough as they are, we ended up lopping a few tracks off the album so that it came out at a 'normal' price in the stores. Although I hasten to add that we think that 'normal' price is actually too high!
Hélène: We'd like the French government to reduce V.A.T. on records to 5.5%, in fact. And it would be good if record companies reduced their profit margins a bit too…
Hélène: Of course we're keen to take this album to the "Continent". It's out there already, in fact – we've heard that in Cameroon it's received non-stop play on local radio stations! We've always tried to put across a universal message in our songs and this album's no exception. But it's true that this time round we've taken a lot more trouble to send out a positive message to our 'community'. As things stand in the world today the African community tends to be a bit denigrated – and that's something that's been going on for a long while too! We feel one of our missions in life is to try and give the African people back their pride! It's like "If you don't know where you come from, you can't know where you're going." There's also this idea that if you know yourself, it's easier to reach out towards others and accept and understand other cultures. That's what a song like Immortel Cheikh Anta Diop is about. It's so weird when you realise that there are French-speaking Africans out there who don't even know who Cheikh Anta Diop* is. There are Africans out there who aren't even aware of what his work contributed to human civilisation.
Célia: Cheikh Anta Diop was actually the one who discovered Carbon-14 dating. You can't deny that's a real discovery for mankind!
Hélène: One of the things we're trying to do with our music is to show that black people are united. We are one! Even though blacks have developed different styles of music in the different places they've ended up, we are one and the same people. That's why we chose to call ourselves "The Nubians" – it's a way of talking about blacks without using labels like Afro-American, Afro-Caribbean, Ghanaian and what have you. We're talking about one people coming together and using the process of getting in touch with their roots to move forward into the future.
There's a very different attitude to black music in France than there is in the U.S., for example. The boundaries of 'black music' in France seem to be quite vague, in fact...
Hélène: R'n'b and soul music have been around on the French underground for over 15 years now, but the icons of the French r'n'b scene are (white singers like) Ophélie Winter and Jalane! Black artists on the r'n'b scene aren't put forward at all. There's a real battle to be waged there, as far as the 'minorities' are concerned at least. Take a group like Kassav', for instance. It's funny that they've been going for twenty years now, but they've never received any kind of official recognition! We're in this ludicrous situation where one day you've got President Chirac making speeches about communities that assert their identities going against the laws of the Republic. And the next day he's there awarding Khaled the 'légion d'honneur', saying "Thank you, Khaled, for everything you've contributed to French music with your Raï"…But the reason Khaled was able to do so much with Raï is thanks to the support from his community, it's down to that and nothing else! If the Arab community hadn't been behind Khaled, he'd be nothing today! You can't deny it's difficult to negotiate a way through all that!
But black r'n'b singers do exist in France, don't they? Although it's fair to say they do tend to conform to a particular format…
Hélène: Yes, I'd agree with that, but a lot of them manage to work outside those pigeon-holes too. Take singers like Tété and Sandy Cossett, for instance…
Célia: K-Reen has managed to invent her own style too. What's more, she sings without trying to put on any kind of English accent! But K-Reen hasn't had the fame she deserves, although she's done a lot to pave the way for other artists. Princess Erika's managed to carve out her own niche too… But on the whole there's still a big problem with artists being pigeon-holed. We had that problem with our first album. People told us it wasn't 'world' enough, but then again it didn't correspond to French chanson or hip hop or soul…
Hélène: We even ended up being labelled as "Black Panthers" at one point, which is ridiculous when you think that we're actually 'half-castes'!
Célia: We were really made to feel that we had to choose one side or the other. But personally I don't feel at home on either the 'world' or the pure r'n'b scene. That's really not my identity - nor's French chanson either for that matter, even though we are sensitive to the fact that a song can exist with just simple guitar and vocals. But in the chanson world we're seen as being a rap group, which is funny when you consider that rap radios say our music's too "adult"… I'm 24 years old and personally I think aspirations rise a little higher than that! Language goes beyond a few grunts and "hey nigger!"… French rap has got a lot more to offer than that! The problem is, people tend to have one fixed image of second-generation immigrants – and that's one we don't really fit into! I think it's time the youth of the second generation were allowed to assert different identities rather than being lumped together under one banner.
Given the fact that your debut album only garnered moderate sales in France, do you ever feel the content of Princesses nubiennes was too ahead of its time?
Hélène: Yes, but the thing is when we recorded our first album we were really sick and tired of what we were hearing on the radio. We were really fed up with artists repeating the same old format. Back then in '98 black artists either did 'world' or rap and that was that! The only one who managed to work outside that format and do something different was Teri Moïse. We were basically fed up with all that and determined to do something different. And that's why when Princesses nubiennes came out the media had such a hard time trying to pin it down in any one category. And it's the same with One Step Forward – we didn't set out saying "Right, let's include a hip hop track or an r'n'b number!" We just go ahead and play our music, that's all there is to it! As far as sales of the first album go, you have to remember that soul was really just getting off the ground in France in '98. Singers like Erikah Badu and D'Angelo weren't selling any more records than us back then in France. Sales corresponded to the number of soul fans that were around at the time and that's that! Luckily, things have moved on a bit since then and the soul market has grown – so let's just say that this time round we hope to sell more than 60,000 albums in France!
*the late Senegalese writer and politician
Les Nubians One step Forward (Virgin 2003)
Loïc Bussières
Translation : Julie Street
17/05/2011 -
02/12/1999 -
