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Album review
FABULOUS TROBADORS
More Verbal Jousting from Toulouse.
Paris
27/06/2003 -
RFI Musique: Given that the Fabulous Trobadors are very much a live group – and your new albums sounds so live – why didn't you actually record it live at one of your concerts? Ange B: Well, if you want to do things that way you have to have your songs ready, you know, you have to have put in the necessary time perfecting them live on stage. There are two songs on the album – Ami and l'anniversaire – that we've been playing at concerts for two or three years now. But if we'd wanted to do the whole thing live, technically speaking it'd have taken two years to record the thirteen tracks on it.
Claude Sicre: And don't forget record labels work according to a totally inverse logic. They want you to do the album first and then go out on the road and promote it live. But in an ideal world it would obviously be better to play your songs in front of a live audience first and then go into the studio.
Demain has got a strong chanson feel to it and French radio stations are currently going for chanson in a big way. And strangely enough, it's Demain that's been chosen as the first single release from the album…
Claude Sicre: Yes, it is a bit of a change from our usual style. Guess you're right, the Fabulous Trobadors are trying to infiltrate the system this time round! Basically, what happened was our record label really liked the song and Demain also went down well with a lot of other people who wouldn't normally have listened to our album. So that means it can bring us a whole new public outside our usual musical circles. The song's a bit pessimistic really, its main message is "tomorrow discourages today." But on the album Demain is followed by Doman (an Occitan word for tomorrow) which is a lot more positive and upbeat.
Musically speaking, your new album's a very mixed bag. It seems to include everything from a protest anthem to playful verbal 'jousts' and harder hitting numbers…
Claude Sicre: I think the album totally fits in with what we do live on stage. On the one hand, we always try and accentuate rhythm. We perform with four dancers who get down off stage and jig about with the audience, you know. But we also throw in a few verbal jousting matches to give the audience a laugh. Basically, we're always switching back and forth between the two styles. And at the end of the day our new album was deliberately structured like a Fabulous Trobadors concert.
At the beginning of your career the Fabulous Trobadors were very much associated with the French rap movement. Would you say you're moving down different roads now though?
Claude Sicre: Yes, definitely, rap's moving in a completely different direction now. But I'd say we had an influence on the style, putting the theme of the town at the heart of things.
Ange B: We were associated with rap at the start of things because the movement emerged at the same time we did and our music was based on "tchatche" (toasting) and rhythm. Some people actually see our style of poetic jousting as rap. It's got what they like in it, you know, beats and vocals. When we first started I did the musical programming in much more of a hip hop spirit. I used a lot of rhythm boxes and stuff. I still use them now, in fact, but the thing is everyone's familiar with those sounds now. What I'm really into right now is the bass timbre of the guimbri (a three-stringed bass from sub-Saharan Africa). These days I'm also into the idea of sequencing the tambourins and putting them on a loop. So basically as far as the programming side of things goes I use the same approach as rap. I've actually got a project on the go right now with another guy who's a human beatbox. Basically, we put all these sounds on a loop and then "tchatche" over the top of them. We performed at a festival together recently in Arnaud Bernard (the Fabulous Trobadors' neighbourhood in Toulouse). And who knows? One day we may even do a record together!
While a lot of your vocal sparring is actually very funny, there's often a very aggressive side to things too…Claude Sicre: Well, we all know that psychologically and socially speaking aggression can be therapeutically channelled into discussion and debate. Sung "duels" are a sort of coded structure where the mind functions within a framework of rhyme and rhythm. So they work as a form of democratic debate and psychoanalysis at one and the same time. I like to think of them as "courtly humour", you know, like they had "courtly love" in the Middle Ages. Take it from me, this is a brand new concept which will be taught in schools in a thousand years' time! No, seriously, I'd really like debating to be studied in the same way as "courtly love." It goes back a long way, you know. In the 14th century the Trouvères were already staging verbal duels – that would certainly help teachers get to the heart of one of the fundamentals in our society and that's violence!
Last question, could you shed a little more light on one of your rhymes: "Pas besoin d'être engagé, je n'ai jamais été dégagé!" (No need to be committed, I've never been uncommitted)?
Claude Sicre: The notion of "engagement" (commitment) was developed by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946 once the air had cleared and the Germans had cleared out of France. The philosophy of "engagement" was invented by people living outside the major problems of the day. Basically, the idea made it easier for them to commit themselves to a cause. So they looked around in the world outside them to find a cause they could give their support to – and came across people who were actually living the problem on a day-to-day basis. If we don't need to "commit" ourselves it's because we're already living the problems in our neighbourhood and the town of Toulouse on a 24-hour basis!
It makes me laugh when I hear politicians talking about "going on the spot." The whole idea's grotesque! It means those guys are living in a totally different world and they need to get out and see the problems other people are having because they've had no experience of them in their own lives!
Ludovic Basque
18/02/1999 -
