RFI Musique - - Interview - Corneille finds himself

Corneille finds himself

Album number 3

Paris

23/10/2009 -

Two years after The Birth of Cornelius, an album recorded in English and released on Motown, Corneille is back singing in French. On his new album, Sans titre, the Rwandan-born soul maestro strips away clichés and gets to his core.

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RFI Musique: Sans titre (Untitled) is a strange name for an album! Is this an out-and-out refusal to be pigeon-holed?
Corneille: I didn't want to sit and rack my brains trying to come up with a marketing hook. I hate the way you have to call your album something which screams "Look everyone, here's my new record, you're going to love this!" I didn't want a hook or a label for my album and nothing particularly sprang to mind to define its general lines. Sans titre is basically a voyage of self-discovery. And taking that kind of introspective approach automatically means throwing off preconceived ideas. Sometimes society forces a label on us because it's easier for people to see us as part of a group or a community… But I've dared to take the opposite approach!

Have you ever felt as if you were a prisoner of your image?
Yes, clichés have a funny way of sticking. I remember back in 2000-2001 when I was doing the rounds of the record labels with my first album a lot of people were surprised that I wasn't doing hip-hop. When you're a black guy in the West that's what people expect. I went on to be relatively successful playing my French-style soul. And because I was an artist from a "visible community" who was getting a fair amount of media coverage a political dimension crept into things. I didn't feel comfortable being forced into that role. People can't see it when they look at me, but I'm actually a mix of a whole lot of different cultures. I was born in Germany, grew up in Rwanda and now I live in Quebec, a bilingual province. As for my career, that took off in France. I'm the sum of all these parts and I don't want to have to choose between them!

But it took you three albums to reach the point of refusing to define who you are…
It took me three albums before I was strong enough to resist the temptation of letting other people label me. Accepting a label makes life a lot easier. When you follow the path people expect you to follow they leave you alone. But when you choose to go down a different road you open yourself to a lot of questions. And if you're not ready to assume that you're better off sticking within the confines of a group or community. But what does it mean to be "black" today? When you're born in France and you've grown up in France and you go to a French school and watch French TV, you amount to more than the colour of your skin. You're French. And it's the same for black Americans and Arabs, too… You can maintain ties with the country your parents come from, but you can never be reduced to just that.

Apart from your obvious need to strip away labels what other themes does Sans Titre deal with?
This album is me standing up and saying "This is who I am and I'm proud of it!" I'm a recording artist, a musician, the husband of a wife* I adore. I'm a future father, a man of the world, someone who truly loves his profession. And without waxing too lyrical about marriage and the family in the conventional sense of the term, I wanted to express the fact that I've grown so much through that. I think being in a couple gives you a sense of real values and teaches you so much…

Your new album also finds you airing a few grievances - against the record industry, for instance…
The record industry has totally failed to adapt to the new ways in which music is distributed. The industry needs to reconsider its role, radically downsize and reinvent itself. The question at the heart of the current debate is essentially why should consumers pay for music they can get for free? Maybe someone should think about cutting the price for a start. When consumers pay 10 euros to download a track legally only a very small part of that goes to the artist. Most of the money feeds into the record industry which for many years now has been living way beyond its means and it's beginning to pay the price for that now…

There's another song on your album, Pauvre Cynique, where you speak out against cynicism…
Over the past ten or fifteen years cynicism has become a real trend. It's been seen as really cool to be a tortured soul, railing against all the terrible things in life. I felt it was time to buck that trend. I prefer to take a positive approach, celebrating the joys of love, the sunshine and the idea of looking for the beauty in everyday things.

After releasing an album in English on Motown you've chosen to go back to singing in French. Why?
I think it's a real luxury being able to explore music differently each time, just by switching from one language to another. I've discovered whole other universes in the process… It totally changes your sensations.

So, in short, Corneille, you're pretty happy with your new album?
I assume every word of it, every comma, every note, every chord! And it gave me the chance to work with my wife, too! She acted as my personal advisor and consultant on this album and she wrote some of the lyrics. In many ways, Sans titre is our baby, the child we haven't got round to making yet!