Enrico Macias’s ongoing journey

Latest album, Voyage d’une mélodie

Paris 

08/03/2011 - 

In the run-up to the 2012 anniversary that will mark his 50 years in the business, Enrico Macias has released Voyage d’une mélodie, a collection that takes the listener on a nomadic ballad into the Sefarad and Ashkenazi traditions. Co-produced with a pair of experts at the helm, his son Jean-Claude Ghrenassia and the Montreal-based DJ So Called, the sound track opens up new perspectives for the seventy-something singer as he makes a rejuvenating voyage into new, melodious duets.

RFI Musique: Why did you choose the title Voyage d’une mélodie ?
Melodies are like stars. You find them all round the world. This voyage is an invitation to discover several tunes that bring together and connect all of my roots, and some others too. They go from the Yiddish and Ashkenazi tradition, like Tu n’es pas seul au monde and Lehaim, to Snitra, a Berber song, and from Adio Kerida, which fits in with the Arabo-Andalusian heritage, to Yalali, a track that evokes Algerian traditions. Ultimately, it’s a trip through a great variety of music that is held together by my origins. I can relate to Vilnius’ Le chant des partisans as much as I can to Les Séfarades, which has lyrics by the writer Eliette Abecassis.

You bring together two traditions, Sefarad and Ashkenazi, yet they seem very different.
Culturally speaking, yes. And that can be said about their cuisine as much as their music. But at the same time, there is common ground, like the Ottoman Empire that dominated a large part of that area where Jewish communities lived. It was a political block that in some ways united us. It’s a bit like what I wanted to do here: it’s unacceptable that the Sefarads and Ashkenazi should be divided, despite all we have had in common for so long. We may be different, but we are complementary.

That distance has tended to narrow with recent generations.
Yes, definitely. It was a lot harder forty years ago than it is now, on every level: political, cultural, etc. Now it’s moving on, and that’s only to be welcomed because we are from the same family after all. But as well as this particular history, my idea is to bring all the people on the planet closer together. After all, we’re all brothers, aren’t we?

Is that where you got the idea to ask So Called, a cross-Atlantic Ashkenazi, to come and produce part of the CD?
He’s quite some character! I was impressed by the work he’s been doing for the past few years looking back into the Klezmer tradition. That’s what he brings to this project, a rather unexpected jazz edge. He even added some electronic effects. He’s an excellent musician and a truly lovely person. We first met in Canada. One of the reasons So Called accepted this project was because he was convinced of the connections between our two worlds and that a Sepharad with as pronounced a culture as mine could sing the great Yiddish tunes and vice versa. So Paris tu m’as pris dans tes bras is translated into Yiddish. It’s like a boomerang. He wrote all the arrangements of the Yiddish theme, and my son Jean-Claude did the others.

Isn’t it a bit complicated to sing in Yiddish?
It was a challenge, it’s the first time I’ve sung in Yiddish! When you don’t know a language it’s not easy to work out how to use the intonation and where to pause. Thankfully, I had a coach, Claude Zuffrieden, who teaches Yiddish and English. I was struggling to get the metre of the words right and he helped me a lot, which made it easier to be comfortable with the music. I even did a duet with Theodore Bikel! I also sing in Berber with Idir, whom I know well. Once again, that was a first for me and it was nothing like the Arabic I speak. The song is called Snitra, it’s a story that I wrote about a guitar and a bird, inspired by the sixties song, Oh Guitare Guitare. 

Who had the idea for the duets?
My son suggested some of them. Like Mi Corason, a love song with Yasmin Levy, in Ladino. I didn’t need a coach for that one! It’s a language that speaks of my roots: Arabo-Andalusian Spain. I even composed the music for Shalom Aleikhem, which I sing with Daniel Levi.

The Arabo-Andalusian style has followed you throughout your career, but it has been closer to the forefront for the last decade, like on Oranges Amères. Doesn’t your son play an important role in your artistic choices?
Yes, he is not only a very talented instrumentalist, but also a superb producer. On this album, he oversaw everything and annotated in places. Jean-Claude had a lot of influence on me in that area. And so did my wife, Suzy, who was the daughter of my master Cheikh Raymond. But it was also a personal choice. For ten years, I’ve been going back to instruments, although I’d never completely dropped them. The oud, with its warm, crystalline acoustics, has always had a special place in my heart.

Enrico Macias Voyage d’une mélodie (AZ/Universal) 2011
French tour and at the Olympia in Paris from 24 to 27 March 2011

Jacques  Denis