#SessionLive with Kanazoé Orkestra and Oriane Lacaille, from Burkina Faso to Reunion

Our first guests are Kanazoe Orchestra for the release of the EP Folikadi.

It is in an explosion of rhythms that opens this new EP of the griot child of Burkina, Seydou Diabaté known as “Kanazoé”. The genius of the balafon offers us an energetic, joyful and committed third opus. No more inward-looking confinement, here, we look the world straight in the face without veiling our faces. At five years old, Kanazoé, son of a griot, was already playing the balafon to accompany the workers in the fields during the harvest. From the age of ten, on the death of his father and mentor, he left for the cosmopolitan Bobo-Dioulasso where he discovered the scene. Troubadour, griot, virtuoso of tradition, he keeps his roots, but lets his wings grow. Arrived in France, he never ceases to open his universe to other influences and to make his music grow. With his orchestra, met in 2013 in Toulouse: Madou Dembele on balafon and n’goni, Thomas Koening on saxophone and flute, Stéphane Perruchet on percussion, Elvin Bironien on bass and Laurent Planells on drums, he released two albums : Miriya in 2016 then Tolonso in 2019. And finally the EP Folikadi in 2022.

Today at Antipodes, Folikadi will be carried by a new voice, like a new breath, that of the French rapper/singer Gaëlle Blanchard. More than a meeting, this symbiosis makes us rediscover the balafon. Always at the center of the music, he ventures into other playgrounds and gives pride of place to texts and melodies. No need to prove that Seydou Diabaté knows how to master his instrument; with his new pieces, it is a question of mixing, of experimenting, of observing, of reflecting. And always this quest for meaning… A classical piano under a blues voice, Hero tells us about a child worried about our future. Kassi and its captivating range, tells the courage of women who cry in silence. Timou Déwo, sung in Creole, raises the question of the fate of children conceived outside of marriage. In English, in Bambara, in Creole, Kanazoé always keeps the same intention, to commit to a more responsible, humanist future, while keeping joy and hope in its music. Because the balafon is above all that, generosity, sharing, accompanying life stories. The famous dance / think. Folikadi has so much to offer in experimentation and curiosity, a new EP that proves that to touch the universal, all you have to do is reach out.

Titles performed at the Grand studio

– Precious Time Live RFI see the clip

– Herofrom the album Folikadi see the clip

– Folikadi, Live RFI see the clip.

Line Up: Seydou “Kanazoe” Diabate – balafon; Mamadou Dembele – balafon, n’goni; Gaelle Blanchard – singing; Elvin Bironian – bass; Thomas Koenig – flute, saxophone.

Stephane Perruchet – percussion, Laurent Planells – battery.

Sound: Benoît Letirant, Mathias Taylor, Fabien Mugneret.

► Scrapbook Folikadi (Antipodes Music 2022).

Then we receive Oriane Lacaille who will sing 2 titles of his new EP Hear My Voice.

Oriane calls herself “Zoréol” (mixed race of a French parent from mainland France and a Creole parent from Reunion). His father, Rene Lacaille, is one of the essential figures of Reunionese culture with Alain Peters and Danyel Waro. He knew how to feed his family rougail and sega, curry and maloya.

Oriane, born in 1986, fell into the pot, her magic potion is the groove, the mastery of the ternary dance, the one which, following the dance, shifts the European ear upside down.

She grows up in the cold country (peï la fre in Creole) – in the Alps – but at the Lacailles, as soon as you walked through the kitchen door, it was the Tropics. While René’s accordion cascaded in notes, his mother Odile was passionate about words.

From an early age, she never stopped listening to and playing with her brother the songs of Alain Peters, which are still a strong inspiration for her. Until the age of 20, she only sang in Creole while growing up in metropolitan France. She accompanies her father by making Reunionese music, itself mixed and tinged with jazz, Caribbean, African music and all traditional ball music. Oriane goes on stage at the age of 13, when she accompanies her father on his tours. The stage is like home, it’s a family thing. This is what they do, the Lacailles, or at least the men, because for previous generations, women did not have access to it. Rebels, his grandmother and his aunts stole the right to play percussion, thus circumventing prohibitions and shackles.

After music came writing and poetry, her mother’s legacy. For the two albums of her duet with Coline Linder, Titi Zaro, Oriane begins to write in Creole and French. More recently, she founded Voodoo candy with Jerem Boucris and reinforces the mix of his “Franco-Creole knowledge”: rhythms, words, melodies…

Oriane composes with her ukuleles or her takamba (also called aouicha, it’s a guitar of Gnawa origin that arrived in Reunion in the 70s and 80s and played by Alain Peters). His songs are written in both French and Creole. His song goes from one to the other as if it were only a mixed language that would belong to him. She chooses to always “mix” the two languages ​​in order to create a bilingual, playful poetry, where the words have the upper hand.

Her texts are always as close as possible to her feelings and speak in turn of love, femininity, motherhood, migrations, slavery, domestic violence, or sometimes tell her dreams, which are an important part of his life. Her pure and soft voice also carries an ancestral power that transports, like the percussion she plays.

Oriane has been working for fifteen years in collaboration with artists, from creation to the stage. She meets Piers Faccini, when she is unknowingly on the verge of launching out on her own with her songs and under her name. Piers Faccini, craftsman of purity, thrower of dice and hopes (Dom la Nena, Yelli Yelli, Jenny Lysander) helps him pull the spark to the fire. She sends him models and texts and he invites her to record at his place in the Cévennes. In the studio, Oriane plays all the percussions, she likes to create polyrhythms in a soft trance. Piers Faccini, a goldsmith, composes and arranges with her and plays multiple instruments (guitars, guembri, harmonium,…). Their two voices harmonize, they create powerful and soft choirs that carry Oriane’s lead voice. Malik Ziad, companion of Piers Faccini, also adds guembri on La lang la poin lo mo. Oriane and Piers thus weave together 4 songs, for the EP series Hear My Voice, which celebrates the craft of the songwriter in all its forms and languages. The EP will be released on Beating DrumPiers Faccini’s label.

Titles performed at the Grand studio

-Malak, Live RFI

– Green life, excerpt from the EP Hear My Voice see the clip

– La Lang La Poin Lo MoLive RFI.

Line Up: Oriane Lacaille – vocals, ukulele, kayamb, Yann-Lou Bertrand – vocals, double bass.

Sound: Benoît Letirant, Mathias Taylor.

► EP Hear My Voice (Beating Drums 2022).