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Amazigh Kateb - Life after Gnawa Diffusion
Solo debut for Algerian singer
Paris
04/12/2009 -
Amazigh Kateb: Well, I spent the first ten years here in France unable to return to Algeria because I could have been called up for military service. We didn't perform our first concert there until 1999. Interestingly enough, Gnawa Diffusion's first albums were never officially released in Algeria but they were available on the black market there. Apparently they sold really well on university campuses… That made me feel really good because when you write songs about your homeland and you haven't been back there in years you start feeling a bit out of touch with things and you start worrying that maybe it shows in your music.
Is your new album something you'd planned to do for a long time or something you thought about doing once you'd left Gnawa Diffusion?
This album was no accident. I'd had it planned for quite a while. I started writing some of the songs on the album while I was still with Gnawa. But I knew I needed to have a break before I got round to recording it - believe me, fifteen years on the road is a long time! I always told myself that I had a couple of songs on the backburner and if ever I was broke one day I could get back to work on them. When I decided the time was right I went for it no holds barred. I wrapped up the entire album in eight months which isn't bad given that we were on tour most of the time and there wasn't much of a break between concerts.
I believe you went out on tour with songs you hadn't even recorded on your new album yet?
That's the way we always worked with Gnawa. Touring and recording are two very different emotions. When you turn up to play a venue where people don't know your music it's obviously a lot more complicated than when the audience know all your songs off by heart. But personally I get a big kick out of that! When you do a concert and the next day you see all these videos posted on Youtube, when people start singing along to the chorus of your songs and there isn't even an album out yet, well then you know you can do your job without any helm from the media!
I'd certainly never imagined a sound like this. I never dreamt that one day I'd end up making an album with a DJ, but when I met Boulaone I felt this genuine connection, both on a personal and a musical level. Boulaone is really passionate about music, he fires off whatever sound feels right to him but he manages to keep within the general ambience of each track. And that's very liberating for me! I'd got into the habit with Gnawa of giving the minimum so everyone else in the band had maximum freedom. But that made me pretty lazy about songwriting. Basically, you start getting a bit annoyed when you're up working till 4 in the morning and then you turn up for rehearsals and everyone plays exactly the way they want to play! Making an album on my own meant I had to go back and rework certain songs imagining that anything and everything was possible.
Why did you give your album a title which can be interpreted in different ways?
The album's called Marchez noir* because it's an album that was made up as I went along, without any kind of market study beforehand, like a kid who makes his own toy. The title is also a reference to "les marches noires", black protest marches organised by leaders like Martin Luther King. Given the current mood of Manichaeism operating in the world today where black is seen as the colour of evil I'd prefer to have black as my colour. I'm not interested in joining the Axis of Good and aligning myself with right-minded people!
I wanna tcheefly
Algerian tour dates until 11 December 2009 (*"marcher" in French means "to walk"; "le marché" means market, "la marche" means march as in protest march.)
Bertrand Lavaine
Translation : Julie Street
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