This is I Muvrini's fourteenth album to date. Where does the title Umani come from?
It means "humans". Umani was really the best word we could come up with to show that there's something human in Corsica and something Corsican in the word human. It's our way of proclaiming loud and clear that the cultural particularities and identities that are so often perceived as standing apart in the world are actually part of humanity… The world's full of differences and diversity and that's what makes it such a rich and interesting place. There shouldn't be any kind of hierarchical system with one culture at the top and another at the bottom. Humanity is everywhere and that means that the moment someone opens their mouth to sing they're entering the universal. The concept of universality is not the whole world minus (minority cultures like) Corsica, Brittany, the Basque country and Madagascar. It's the opposite of that, in fact – the world is a bit of all that added together! Difference shouldn't be seen as a dehumanising factor. It's not a threat or anything. It's an extra richness, a plus. And the world where you add all those differences together is a world that might best be described as Umani. As far as I'm concerned there's no greater dream today than us sending out this message of humanity to the world from this little strip of land called Corsica.

The first single chosen for release from the album is Jalalabad, a song you recorded with French rap star MC Solaar. This is a bit of an unexpected collaboration that will take more than a few music fans by surprise…
You know, to be honest that's not a question, which would ever come up if we weren't Corsican. The problem is that all too often people pigeonhole musicians from Corsica, from the south and from minority cultures in general. If there's not an obvious link between the music these musicians are playing and their roots people feel they've strayed off the subject somehow or missed the point – or worse, they're accused of selling out and not being themselves any more! What we're interested in is turning those conventions on their head. What's important to us is to show the strength of our music doesn't just lie in notions of preserving our heritage and our cultural traditions, it can also lie in an act of imagination. There are other things going on in the world right now outside of Corsica and it's quite possible for a musician or creative artist in Corsica to be touched by events taking place on the world stage.
Personally, I think the experiences of Afghan women constitute an important pole in the world right now and send a truly deep and universal message to mankind. And being Corsican means that our ears are open to that message and it's impossible to remain insensible to it. What's more, sooner or later you feel you have to send back an echo to that and transmit some kind of message through your music. That's where Jalalabad comes from. It just so happens that the song ended up as a collaboration with MC Solaar – who, like us, is a man of words and one who's proved himself sensitive to what's going on in the world around him.
I think it's good for us to speak out on an issue where we're least expected because one of the problems with music today is that artists are placed under a sort of cultural 'house arrest'. It's like Corsican musicians have to stay within the bounds of polyphonic music, rap can only be the music of disenfranchised kids in the suburbs and Algerians can only play Raï. But there are all kinds of bridges between these musics… and it's up to us artists to build them!

Do you feel that you're always having to fight against preconceived ideas in the minds of journalists and the general public?
Well, I certainly feel that people have a tendency to dismiss music by cultural minorities as a sort of "new folklore". It's like "Wow! You're Corsican. How come you're doing something other than that polyphonic stuff you usually do?" But the truth is Corsicans need to be something more than that. Yes, we have a tradition of making polyphonic music but we're interested in so many other things besides. Corsicans need to listen to Mozart and read Fernando Pessoa and enjoy the work of international painters too. That's what the Corsican sensibility is, you know. The strength of our culture lies in reaching out and going elsewhere in our imagination. And the question facing us now is how do you sing about the world today when you're Corsican? What can you say? Are you allowed to venture out of the musical territory you've been assigned? And in our case that territory is our musical heritage – which admittedly is a wonderful one but the problem is it's all too often considered exotic by foreign ears. And frankly as far as we're concerned we're not at all interested in being exotic, what we want is to get across something essential.

So you feel there are a lot of clichés bandied about when it comes to Corsica and Corsican musicians?
I don't know. All I'm saying is that it's easy to film and photograph Corsica and listen to the island's music, but Corsica basically remains unknown territory. You can't really 'read' Corsica from the outside and that's precisely because its soul, its sensibility and its heartland haven't been exposed enough. But then that's what being a minority culture's all about, I guess. That's what happen to a community whose native tongue is spoken by some tens of thousands of people at best, to a community who've lived cut off from the world because they've been told "Oh well if you're Corsican or Breton you can't expect to sing and be understood by people across the world."
But that attitude's changing today. World music has shown that if people don't understand one another it's not just because of linguistic barriers. There's a lot of other reasons involved that go way beyond questions of language. There's a problem with the fact that minority cultures have not been given adequate exposure to the rest of the world. Minority communities have not been able to express themselves, as they should. And I think we can learn a lot from the caricatures and clichés that have been bandied about in the past. It's up to us to do something about it too. If we don't attempt to build bridges between ourselves and the rest of the world then it's impossible for people living outside our community to know what Corsica really is and what our island can give to enrich the world...

Your new album kicks off with Aspettami, a song in Italian. Why did you decide to go for such an unexpected opening?
The first words on the album are spoken in Italian by this Italian guy who's totally anonymous in terms of the music world but who's got this absolutely extraordinary sensibility we all admire... He works in a foundry and he's one of the people who come over to see us from time to time. He loves Corsica as a sort of 'adopted' homeland but the depth of his passion is really quite extraordinary. And I think there's a lesson in there for us all really – a lesson about how you can love the land you adopt and that adopts you in return. So that's the reason we chose to begin the album like that really because it immediately situates us right in the heart of the Mediterranean.
Besides, I like the idea of having a bit of Italian take people by surprise like that. And it seems even more fitting that the album should kick off with a foreign language as this is really an album about opening doors and playing with frontiers – and maybe that should take people by surprise and shake things up a bit. Aspettami (Wait for Me) is a song that revolves around the idea of a port as a place of chance which becomes a place you become attached to forever. When you sing about a port it automatically conjures up the image of lovers and families separating while others arrive back from their long sea journeys. The port is a place charged with memory, a place where there's always someone hanging about staring out at the sea. And in a way the port is a poignant symbol of Corsica too – after all, what's Corsica but a bit of land and a boat? Aspettami was our way of situating Corsica where it belongs, that's to say right in the heart of the Mediterranean, our way of tapping into its Latin identity. And on another level Aspettami is a very beautiful song about exile, departure and return.

There's another well-known guest star on your new album and that's Stephan Eicher who joins you on Un sognu pè campà. And there are also some very impressive Spanish vocals on Vogliu...
Well, that's what a musician's life is all about, you know. It's just one long adventure where you cross paths with all kinds of other singers and musicians. Josefina (who sings on Vogliu) is someone we met two years ago and who's gone on to become an integral part of the group, although she generally plays a much greater role live on stage than she does on I Muvrini albums. Josefina is someone who brings a wonderful musical background with her, who helps anchor us a little more firmly in Mediterranean culture. What's more, she's a singer with an incredibly strong personality and a truly exceptional voice.

When it comes to working with other singers we always follow our instincts and that's what happened with Stephan Eicher too. We invited him to come out to Corsica – every year we invite different artists to come and work with us, you know. And when you work that way the relationship you build with the other artist goes a lot deeper than performing on stage together for one night. You have the time to develop a real affinity. Anyway, what happened with Stephan Eicher was we wrote Un sognu pé campà, sent the song to him and he said yes, he wanted to come on board. That's how music should be, you know, as straightforward and simple as that. Un sognu pé campà is three minutes of pure artistic collaboration and we're really happy with the end result. Stephan's voice is like an echo to our own vocals, our own musical universe and I think the work he put into the song makes the whole thing much more intense.
There are a lot of themes that crop up in your songs time and time again. I'm thinking of things like the idea of exile, journeys and man's relationship to the land. Do you think these themes are intricately linked to Corsican culture or are you telling your own story somewhere along the way?
Well, I think the theme of belonging to the land, putting down your roots or pulling up your roots is an eternal one which tells the story of men everywhere. After that, it's a question of some people being more aware of it than others or experiencing it in their own lives to a greater or lesser extent. Land is a fundamental notion for the Corsican people because there's something a bit sacred in the way we relate to the earth. The land's not only the place we belong to, it's also the place we uproot ourselves from – because you have to remember there's been a certain Diaspora in our history. But at the end of the day Corsica is the place we'll return to live or be buried. And, yes, that's a major theme for us. But then again maybe all the songs in the world are actually love stories between people or between man and the earth, no matter what story they seem to tell on the surface...

There's another outstanding song on your album and that's E u tempu va – a song where you evoke the themes of courage, duty and honour. Those are pretty heavy subjects for a modern group, don't you think?
Personally, I like the idea that there should be no distance between what we sing about on stage and what goes on in life. E u tempu va is our own personal homage to traditional peasant life. It's a song, which conveys the sense of time passing. I feel I've been privileged enough to read in the great book of peasant life – and I've learnt a great deal from it. Peasants are a people whose life has revolved around gestures rather than words. Maybe somewhere down the line someone convinced them they didn't speak properly – or they didn't speak the same language. And people have often considered that peasants lack education, that they don't really know how to live and how to love. But if you take the time to read the book of their history and study the lines on their faces you learn a lot, believe me. E u tempu va is our way of paying tribute to all the peasants in the world and in particular to those I knew growing up in my own little village in Corsica.
It's thanks to them that I've built part of my culture and my being. And in peasant culture there have always been these very strong values of courage, duty and honour. Maybe that all sounds a bit moralistic to us today, but when that's something that's founded on actual experience, something someone's lived through and learnt from in their own life, then it's not a question of abstract morals. I learnt a lot from growing up in traditional peasant society and I feel I want to speak about what I saw going on there.
Basically, these are things that used to be handed down from generation to generation in villages across the countryside. And those villages may stand empty today but, believe me, they've lost none of their soul. The world's peasants are a race who are slowly dying out today - and if that race is in decline it's also because our relationship to the earth is becoming more and more distant. Maybe that's precisely why the world's in such a mess today!

These days it goes without saying that I Muvrini are the most famous Corsican group in the world. But that wasn't always the case, was it?
You know what's important to us is looking back and seeing just how far we've come. We set out with absolutely nothing, but we believed in what we were doing and somewhere along the way we found hundreds, then thousands of people, who have followed us and shown extraordinary loyalty to us and our music. And, believe me, that kind of recognition is incredibly important to an artist no matter how big or small. These days I Muvrini have become one of the most important media informing people about Corsica and what goes on there, who tell our own story from the inside. We're a voice echoing from a tiny strip of land and trying to send our message across to the rest of the world.
In the course of our journey we've met a lot of fellow travellers walking the same road. The new album acknowledges this too. The cover was designed by Antoni Tapies, who has to be one of the most incredible encounters we've made along the way. Tapies is one of the last cult painters of the 20th century who's still alive today. He's spent his career promoting his 'Catalan-ness' to the world and I don't think our encounter with him was entirely fortuitous. It shows that there's a certain artistic solidarity and a fraternity between cultures. I discovered Antoni Tapies some ten years ago now when I came across one of his books, The Practice of Art, and that's what led me to discover his paintings. Anyway, one day we decided to write to Tapies and tell him we were working on a new album. He wrote back and ended up giving us this wonderful gift, the original work which appears on the album cover…

I Muvrini have performed a lot of tours that have taken you to the four corners of the world. How does your music go down with foreign audiences?
Well, reactions obviously vary a great deal from one place to the next. One of our latest tours took us to Poland… where we ended up performing in the Warsaw Theatre with one of the country's greatest sopranos and the Polish Philharmonic Orchestra. After that we went on to have an absolutely unforgettable experience appearing in a square in Warsaw in front of an audience of over 50,000 people. Each experience is different but I think they all bear witness to one essential thing and that is that when an artistic sensibility – no matter what language it's expressed in – is powerful enough it can open doors all over the world and build bridges you never even dreamt possible.
So we've gone down well in Poland and Romania, but there are also some very promising things happening for our music right now in Germany and the United States. We've got a lot of projects underway and there's a lot of hard work ahead of us so we'll need to put a lot of time and energy into our concert schedule and promotion in general. But I have to admit we really enjoy the work because it makes us feel we've got something in common with other people no matter where we're from. And that's one of the most essential things music's about!

Interview: Valérie Passelègue
Translation: Julie Street
Homepage photo : DR

CD: I Muvrini / Umani (EMI, 2002)
Book: Jean-François Bernardini / Umani (Le Seuil)

I Muvrini on line