An amazing encounter

Umani, I Muvrini's previous album, featured contributions from the likes of Stéphan Eicher, MC Solaar and the Afghan singer Manila Fazel. For Alma, the Corsican group travelled out to South Africa. "It's eighty times bigger than Corsica," Jean-François Bernardini marvels. "South Africa is a country that gives meaning to today's world, a country that's working hard to overcome its problems but which still has a lot of wounds. There's always a lot of the blues in the voice of South Africans. They are a people who have found a way through song to express their soul." It's a notion that is dear to the hearts of these Corsican natives who consider creativity to be the most beautiful of traditions. "We worked with seven talented singers, real musicians who were both respectful of our music and welcoming. They had tears in their eyes the first time they heard our music and our singing. And to see them like that, we too were overcome with emotion," he recalls. "Our work with them was incredibly straightforward. It's like a painter who puts an unknown colour onto the canvas. We adapted the lyrics so that they could accompany us in the Zulu language."

The final result was thirteen tracks, plus a remix with Ivory Coast bass player César Anot. The songs won't be any surprise for long-term fans of I Muvrini: the cultural blend on offer is so subtle that you don't necessarily hear it on the first listen. Nonetheless, it really opens the album out, enriching it with a deep sense of shared experience. The initial release of the album will also include a bonus: a documentary on the making of the album. It reveals the true subtlety of this encounter, showing young South Africans dancing to the music of this album without in any way losing the richness of their Zulu dance moves. It's clear that the intuition Jean-François Bernardini spoke about really hit the mark and that the meeting of cultures that resulted was incredibly rewarding.

Thanks, boss

This summer, two of the singers on this album performed with the band in a string of concerts across Corsica. A tour this autumn will take the group to France, Switzerland and Belgium, and they will play Bercy in Paris on December 9. Still affected by his time in South Africa and his collaboration with South African singers, Jean-François Bernardini now sees things in a slightly different perspective:  "You can't go on an adventure like that and expect to be unchanged. When a child you've given a coin to says "Thanks, boss," you say to yourself people must have done some seriously bad things here. You realise that here you're on the unjust side of the world."

But the new album hasn't entirely sated Jean-François Bernardini's desire to create: there is also his book Carnet pour Sarah to contend with, his second to be published. It's not a novel, but a collection of texts which taken together the author considers "a small guide to contemporary Corsican culture." The book's structure is rather like an album, where each song is an independent element of a coherent whole. The collection melds the real with the imaginary and is aimed at a wide, general audience. "Carnet pour Sarah has more of a narrative and is perhaps less poetic than my first book. It's close to a certain way of life. The stories are Corsican, but the values are universal," he concludes, faithful to his own credo.

I Muvrini Alma (Capitol/EMI) 2005
Jean-François Bernardini. Carnet pour Sarah. (Editions Anne Carrière)