This is the great return of Babel Music XP after a few years of absence (ex Babel Med) which will be held from March 23 to 25, 2023. Our guests, the director of Babel Masic XP, and one of the artists of the 2023 edition who will come to sing 2 tracks from his album Second Skin in the #SessionLive.
⇒ The website of Babel Music XP.
Our first guest: Olivier Rey. The current director looks back on the history of Babel Music XP and concocts a playlist for you:
– From the Crau temperi see the clip
– Ali Asghar & Yasna Together rise (Iran / Romania)
– Sarah Yally Shagalt Al Bal see the clip
– An’PagayKoze Live RFI.
Then the #LiveSession receives Ariel Tintaralso on the bill at Babel Music XP 2023 to present his EP Second Skin.
” Ariel walks, Ariel navigates.
In balance between the West and the Caribbean, at the confluence of French and Creole, at the crossroads between modernity and classicism, between intimate and universal, Ariel walks.
Create encounters, get out of the way and build bridges.
Ariel moves forward. Free. “.
These words, written by a friendly and particularly fertile spirit, are those of Éloi Potier, lyricist who, for several months, has been helping Ariel Tintar to find his words. Éloi co-writes Ariel’s lyrics, and helps her sing what sometimes isn’t easy to write, let alone say. Not easy because what Ariel Tintar says on this disc (a five-track EP, whose pop, precious, elegant, plural, navigates between acoustics and electronics), sometimes borders on an eminently cathartic approach, as when he sings, on ” Missie Bolo “, the racism experienced in Martinique and in France by his father. The scars, sometimes, are not immediately visible to the naked eye. ” Between intimate and universal says Eloi…
Not easy either because if Ariel sings most often, on this disc, in French, he also sings in Creole (on the sublime ” Es Ou Ka Sonje “or the very personal” Missie bolo “). But having grown up in metropolitan France (in Bordeaux, a city he joined at a very young age), he sings necessarily French-speaking Creole, a mixture of Guadeloupean Creole (his mother’s), a Martinican Creole (his father’s), and a fantasized mixture of what he may have read or heard here or there. His own language? There is a bit of that. ” Ariel walks. “. He was once (a first EP was released in 2016, that is to say an eternity ago…) called Ariel Ariel, and now uses, as an artist name, his real first name and name. A far from trivial gesture for an artist who has taken advantage of recent years to refocus on the essentials, and to get as close as possible to his deep identity. Before finding yourself, you must have sought. Here we are. Ariel Ariel (again) become Ariel Tintar? Here is a funny reversal for the one who, younger, tended to camouflage, to arrange, to disguise the great truth under artifices which often resembled small lies. The truth hurts, it is acquired then, it is necessary, sometimes, to protect oneself from it? This is the subject of the song second skin » see the clipwhich opens the disc and it is a subject, moreover, recurrent with him.
He is no longer there because the time of adolescence has passed, but confesses: ” Lying has been a survival ploy for a very long time, something that is hard to get rid of. In general, this is one of the recurring themes of my records “. Lying yesterday, and affirming, today, a form of liberation, a form of return to oneself? Because Ariel – this musician who plays, produces, sings, composes – now advances unmasked, and it is his true self that is displayed, concerned with authenticity and a real connection between his deep nature and the gestures that accompany. ” I move forward in the world, towards myself. Towards what inspires me, towards what I find beautiful. And I want to say that my ambition is there, very simple. »
So Ariel moves around a lot, changes hemispheres, takes the time to get to know his native Martinique better, passes through Morocco, visits the countries of friends he meets on the road (a musician by profession, he has toured a lot with Angèle, Charles X, Crystal Murray…), arises a little in Brazil, in Brasilia in particular, the city of his friend João Pedro Mansur, Afro-Brazilian producer who co-arranged this disc. From Brazil, he brings back many ideas, and also lasting passions for musicians in which he willingly places himself in filiation, from Caetano Veloso to Toninho Horta, from Milton Nascimento to Rodrigo Amarante. From here and elsewhere, he was also able to acquire the conviction, perhaps more profound than yesterday, that he shared a certain form of identity with others, these others likely, finally, to understand him a little bit better. Even those with whom lying is no longer justified, since there is between them the persistence of a mutual understanding? ” I spent all these years meeting people who brought me closer to what I am most, to this identity of being black, of being an artist in this society. I have news work team with whom the questions of uprooting or isolation are truly within us and with whom it is more reassuring to work. “.
The result is a music that travels and encounters have helped to shape and which deeply resembles what it has become. Someone who listens a lot to others, who asks them for advice, who considers himself today “ as a unifier of people (his Brazilian producer João Pedro Mansur, his Burkinabe drummer Kikoué Laopé…), who reads the books that teachers do not necessarily give priority to study (Raphaël Confiant, Édouard Glissant, James Noël, Nathacha Appanah, Dany Laferrière… .), who is still taking lessons at an age (Ariel is in her 30s) when most wouldn’t even consider doing so. Ariel is perfecting her singing, is currently learning Portuguese, continues on the road, envisaging as much as possible the journey that widens and widens horizons. “Ariel walks, Ariel navigates. How to find your way, and convince yourself that it is indeed this one, and not another? Perhaps by taking many, and as much as possible, paths. “Ariel moves forward. Free. “.
Titles performed at the big studio
– Es Ou Ka Sonje Live RFI see the clip
– Irmafrom the album
– Taxi Caribbean Live RFI see the clip.
Line Up: Ariel Tintarguitar, voice; Gaetan Demoenbattery.
Sound: Jérémie Besset & Mathias Taylor.
►album Second Skin (D&A 2022).