Love him or hate him, you have to admit that Claude Nougaro has achieved the remarkable feat of making the French language "swing". The Toulouse-born star has devoted his career to the 40s jazz style popularised by the likes of Duke Ellington and, needless to say, swing plays a major role on Nougaro's new album, Embarquement Immédiat. In fact, Nougaro's new album gets off to a superbly smooth start with Jet Set, a satirical song about social climbers, which features Nougaro's favourite 5/4 intro on drums. (The swing star used the same irregular beat in his 1965 classic A Bout De Souffle, borrowing inspiration from Dave Brubeck's Blue Rondo à la Turk).

The Big Band Sound

After this inspirational intro a big band (recorded in the U.S.) kicks in, rolling out a thick carpet of sumptuous brass with a 60s soul-jazz feel. Nougaro's voice blends into the big-band backing, sounding like an instrument in its own right - in fact, you could readily imagine his velvet vocals being replaced by a trumpet or a sax! The fabulous arrangements on Nougaro's new album come courtesy of Yvan Cassar, the music mastermind behind Johnny Hallyday's mega-show at the Eiffel Tower last June. Cassar was also responsible for writing the arrangements for half of the tracks on Embarquement Immédiat, Nougaro looking after the scores of the other six.

"I wanted someone who could handle symphonic arrangements," says Nougaro, explaining how his collaboration with Cassar came about, "I didn't want a diehard jazzman. What I was looking for was an all-round arranger who could tap into my extensive musical range and do everything from jazz and classical to African rhythms. I'd been very impressed by Yvan Cassar's work in the past - especially with the arrangements of Toulouse and Vie Violence that he wrote for a philharmonic orchestra of 90 musicians".

From Celtic Bagpipes to Sabar Drums

Weaving a rich musical mix - which integrates everything from Nougaro's beloved "Afro" sounds to Celtic bagpipes (L'île Hélène), flamenco guitar (Ma cheminée est un théâtre) and intimate waltz-style ballads (La Vie en noir) - Yvan Cassar paints a multi-coloured canvas which somehow manages to avoid sounding like simple patchwork or collage. One of the highlights of Nougaro's new album is Langue de Bois, a song on which Touré Kunda's former percussionist, Moussa Sissokho and his partner, Leiti M'baye, thunder out a compulsive rhythm on the sabar drums as the haunting voices of an all-female choir (Bessy Gordon, Esther Dobongma, Valérie Belinga and Assitan Dembélé) spiral in the background.

"What I was trying to do with Langue de Bois," explains Nougaro, "was to create a kind of rap which involves a lot of punning and word-play. The song expresses the revolt of the forest against what, in French, we call the "langue de bois" - the sort of "wooden" language that revolves around empty phrases and clichés. The song was inspired by a trip to Africa. I remember on a visit to Gabon seeing all this lush vegetation towering above my head - it just seemed to be such a glorious gesture of defiance!"

A Quest For Truth

Nougaro also celebrates his love of Africa on Bozambo, a song which fuses a full string orchestra with the compulsive beat of the tom-toms. "On Bozambo I describe myself painting," Nougaro says, "And what happens is my brush starts tracing the outline of a Pygmy which turns out to be me. The title comes from a film I saw at the local youth club when I was 9 years old. That was back in 1939 when I was living in Toulouse in the rue Sainte-Anne. You see, Africa was already imprinted on my soul even back then!"

Embarquement Immédiat contains other flashes of autobiography too, Nougaro recounting his personal moments of melancholy (La Vie en noir), his love for his wife (L'île Hélène), an idyllic country picnic (Déjeuner sur l'herbe) and the moment his father proposed to his mother (Mademoiselle Maman). "I'm driven by the desire to express myself through my work," says Nougaro, "so I spend a lot of time trying to fathom out what's going on inside. I'm on a permanent quest for truth and I seek it wherever I can, through love, music or art."

Music and art are closely linked in Nougaro's world and the visual side to the singer's writing is perhaps explained by his passion for sketching in his spare time. When he's not juggling with words, Nougaro likes nothing better than to take out his artist's pencils and juggle with colour. In fact, the ground floor of the singer's new apartment, situated in Paris's 5th arrondissement (a stone's throw from the Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre church and Notre-Dame), has been transformed into a makeshift studio complete with palette and easel.

Nougaro says he admires artists who devoted their lives to making art out of suffering and his songs have often paid tribute to painters in the past. Picasso and his legendary muse, Gala, feature on Nougaro's new album alongside Bernard Buffet and his muse, Anabel, in a song entitled Chiffre Deux, Nombre d'or. "It's a song about couples," explains Nougaro, "but I bring in famous male couples too, like Verlaine and Rimbaud, Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday... I'm fascinated by intense love stories, by the kind of all-consuming passion which burns forever!"
Revamping the Jazz Classics

As he has done in the past - most famously with A Bout de souffle (based on Take Five) and Armstrong (inspired by Let My People Go) - Nougaro digs up legendary jazz tunes and sets his own lyrics to them. This time round, Nougaro chooses to rework Tin Tin Deo, a track made famous by the Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo (who, together with Dizzy Gillespie, made his name pioneering Latin jazz in the late 40s).

"I felt the need to go back to the jazz classics for a bit of fresh inspiration," explains Nougaro, "And God knows I've listened to enough of them! Anyway, while I was listening to a pile of old jazz records one day I came across a version of Tin Tin Deo - recorded as a trio with the pianist Oscar Peterson - and I just fell in love with it!"

Drawling his way through the opening of Tin Tin Deo, his voice caressing the lyrics with pure sensuality, Nougaro swoops into a swing beat on the second verse, upping the tempo in an unbelievably smooth transition. Embarquement Immédiat proves, beyond any shadow of a doubt that, when it comes to swing, Claude Nougaro still reigns supreme.

Fara C.

CD: Claude Nougaro Embarquement Immédiat (EMI)
Books: 40 chansons triées sur le violet - Nougaro's texts are illustrated by the Argentinian artist Ricardo Mosner (Editions Albin Michel).