RFI Musique: Back to My Groove. The title of your new album sounds like you standing back and taking stock of your situation…
Elisabeth Kontomanou: No, not at all. Back to My Groove shouldn’t be seen as any kind of response to the albums that came before it. My new album revolves around personal things like my suffering in the past and my hopes for the future. There are old songs on it as well as more recent material. I’d say that unlike the last two albums I did, which featured covers of jazz classics, this album is simply a lot more personal. The songs I wrote for it tell the story of my life and while the episodes it touches on aren’t always funny, I think there’s an optimistic feel to things overall.
As for the music I wrote for my new album, it taps into the influences that have nourished me over the years - Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong but also Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Donny Hathaway. There’s a lot of jazz in there, but there’s also soul… and even blues. I like the idea of hearing a bit of blues in my music, because blues takes me back to my roots.

Why did you choose to sing in English on Back to My Groove?
Because my name’s not Michel Legrand! It seemed very obvious to me. After all, this album’s about blues and soul, not French music. I’ve listened to French music over the years, but it’s not something I identify with. I can do it when the occasion requires, though. For instance, I guested on pianist Leïla Olivesi’s new album, singing lyrics her mother had written in French over improvised music. It’s fantastic, but it’s something on an entirely different level…

Before going out to the States in the mid-90s you specialised in more of a ‘wordless’ style. Then, when you returned you put out two albums of jazz classics. Looking back, would you say you had to move in that direction to become a success?
No. I’d say it’s simply my life story. Everyone takes a different path. But I obviously realise words are important to the public. I have to say, though, I owe part of my success to a certain producer who believed in me. There’s no secret about it. You have to be supported by a record company if you want to get anywhere in this profession.
As far as jazz classics go, I feel I can sing them now - and go on singing them in the future - because I’m really up to it. I don’t feel that I was mature or experienced enough to do them justice before. I think you have to have lived a bit to sing lyrics like that. These lyrics are emotionally charged and the stories these songs tell have to bear some relation to your own life. If not, they don’t carry any weight. There’s no sense, no truth in them. I think someone like Abbey Lincoln has earned the right to sing these songs. She has much more of a link to this music than someone like Diana Krall.

How does someone like yourself, an entirely self-taught musician, go about composing your material?
Well, it’s very easy, in fact. If a song comes into my head, I can translate it into a few basic chords on guitar or piano, even though my music theory skills are very limited. That means I have a working base for the song. After that, I get a professional musician to readjust things so I get the song I’m hearing in my head.

You do a duet on your new album with your son, Gustav Karlström, about your recent reunion in Sweden. And there’s another track where another of your sons, Donald, plays drums. Is this album a purely family affair?
You know, when you audition musicians it’s a question of personal feeling as well as musical affinities. And the line-up on my new album happens to fit perfectly with the idea I had for it. I wanted to work with musicians I know who know jazz. That’s why there are American musicians like Leon Parker, Sam Newsome, Orrin Evans and Marvin Sewell, all of whom I get on really well with… Then, of course, there’s Thomas Bramerie, the double bass-player I’ve been working with for almost twenty years now. Our friendship and musical complicity go back a long, long way. Thomas is someone who helped me a lot when I was struggling.
Two of my four children are very present on this album, too. There’s my eldest son, Donald, who’s accompanied me a lot in the past, and Gustav who’s incredibly mature for 21. It was Gustav who took care of all the arrangements for the string quartet and the brass section. He did vocals on the new album, too, as well as stepping in as pianist and composer. Both of my sons know exactly what I want. We can say anything to each other without holding anything back and that arrangement works both ways. But make no mistake about it, if my sons are on my new album it’s primarily because they’re both excellent musicians!

I’ve heard that you’ve already recorded your next album…
Yes, that’s right. My next album features old jazz songs from the ‘30s and ‘40s that have all been chosen for their lyrics. There are quite a few pieces from Billie’s repertoire, but there are songs linked to Armstrong, too… I just finished recording them with Laurent Courthaliac, a pianist who really knows good old original jazz. He plays it just like it is, with all the original harmonies, without trying to add his own embellishments. His style really corresponds to what I’m looking for right now. I’m trying to go back to jazz roots, New Orleans, things which up until very recently were very distant from me. I only had a vague notion of what they were all about. But now I really feel the need to dig right down into jazz roots. I don’t want to scrape the surface any more.

And that means going back via the big jazz mecca New York, a city you left three years ago?
Yes, inevitably. You know, I left with a very negative image of the States, not of jazz. They’re two very different things. I’m planning to go back to New York, in fact, not necessarily to live there again, but to continue studying jazz. New York is where jazz is alive, where the people who inspire me are. New York is also where I experienced real poverty and misery, of course. I had to do all kinds of odd jobs to survive. I used to go and get food hand-outs at church, but I hung on in there and I always did my gigs come what may. I had this group back then, the Fort Green Project named after the local neighbourhood in Brooklyn where I was living at the time. They were a bunch of musician friends from Fort Green. I performed with them until I ran away from home with my kids and ended up living in a hostel for the homeless in Harlem. But no matter all the juggling I had to do - because the hostel closed early in the evening - I still managed to get out there and sing at night!