JULIA SARR - PATRICE LAROSE
Set Luna
Senegalese-French singer Julia Sarr is full of subtle surprises. And in a
sense, she and French flamenco-inspired guitarist Patrice Larose are living
their music in reverse. “Our first big concert was at Carnegie Hall,New
York” Sarr exclaims. “Usually people arrive there at the end of their
career. For us it was the beginning.” The concert took place in October of
2005 on a night billed as “Youssou N'Dour Presents The Fresh Face of
African Music,” after Sarr and Larose had only played five concerts
together.
Their collaborative album, Set Luna, released by No Format! in Europe and
Sunnyside Records in America is for each their debut recording. “To me it
is a solo album with two people,” laughs Sarr. “I like the fact that my ‘solo
debut’ is with another person. I love the encounter. And I love the fact
that people in Paris have been asking when I would do my own album,
and they didn’t expect this. They maybe wanted simple easy listening
African folk songs. This is not easy listening. You have to listen to it twice
to get in to it.”
“There’s an indescribably graceful mixture of depth and immediacy to the
stories Julia’s telling, transcending language and creating a musical
language which strikes right at the heart,” says Thomas Rome, Youssou
N’Dour’s manager and a champion of Sarr and Larose. “In 1960, Miriam
Makeba made a similar impression in her first trip to New York, with Harry
Belafonte’s help. When Miriam performed, her voice was so captivating, so
original. Robert Shelton, in The New York Times, called her ‘incandescent.’
Within a year, Miriam’s name had sprung from Carnegie Hall and the
major Greenwich Village jazz rooms to worldwide recognition. For me,
Julia Sarr appears to have a similar power on stage, something that sets
her apart from any other singer I’ve ever seen, except Miriam, with whom
she shares, to my mind, a startling affinity.”
Set Luna (So I’ve Observed, in Wolof) came about when producer Laurent
Bizot literally had a dream one night about Julia Sarr creating a flamenco
album. Sarr and Larose had met at a Paris concert in 2003 but never
expected to work together until Bizot brought them together. Prior to this,
each had been a backing musician. Sarr sang with Lokua Kanza for twelve
years, as well as backing for Youssou N’Dour, MC Solaar, and Tony Allen,
among others. Larose, who at age fifteen was inspired by his Spanish
grandfather to listen to flamenco guitar, has collaborated with many jazz
and Brazilian musicians, most notably Marcio Faraco. Both artists start
with tradition but do not limit themselves to it.
“Originally flamenco came from India,” Larose says. “But the funny thing
is in Africa you find some rhythms that are the same as flamenco. You find
something very close to bulería in Senegal. You find a lot of 6/8 rhythm in
both flamenco and Senegalese music. Another interesting thing is the
style of singing. Youssou N’Dour and Mali’s Salif Keita have something
really close to El Camarón de la Isla. I once told Salif Keita that his singing
reminded me of El Camarón. He said El Camarón is his favorite singer in
the world!”
Neither Larose or Sarr approaches their music on Set Luna as set in
tradition. Yet both use their roots as a launching pad, which may be why
Youssou N’Dour called Sarr “the fresh face of African music.”
“Africa is in motion,” Sarr explains. “Because in Africa we now have cable
TV. You can have MTV in the village if you want. My generation is the one
that is emerging with a mix of Africa and world sounds. We know our
culture. We know about the singing, about the history. And we also live in
a contemporary world.”
“It’s funny but Julia doesn’t have a typical African voice,” says Larose.
“She has a lot of soul influence and gospel influence. She doesn’t sing like
most Senegalese people. She has something different. So we wanted to
add more aspects specifically from Senegal.”
Listeners will be quick to realize that the title track “Set Luna Djamonodjî”
features the vocals of Youssou N’Dour. “Our original vision was one voice
and one guitar,” explains Larose. “As we worked on the album we wanted
to add a little more. For percussion we thought of just one guy: Leïty
M’Baye. And we tried to call him, but he is really from another planet. We
tried three different numbers and after six months we gave up. When we
were about done, he showed up!”
Both Sarr and Larose talk about making music from the heart and not
worrying about whether the album would sell. Sarr pushed for ballads.
Larose was thinking about overlapping traditions. The compositions are
like a dance with both artists asserting in some places, conceding in
others.
“I was not worried about the results of the album,” Sarr explains. “Usually
people do songs and they want to be famous, to get somewhere. We just
wanted to invent something new together. It was a fresh encounter. It
was quite natural. We didn’t think about doing a jazz thing or an African
thing. We just said “let’s do music together”.
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Julia Sarr, born in Dakar, Senegal, but who has lived in France for
twenty-five years now, is a contemporary young woman: an African in
Paris whose curiosity towards others remains anchored in her ancestral
culture – she's of Wolof descent –, she remains open to the world and all
its metamorphoses and perpetual crossbreeding. A singer with a clear
timbre, she owes her faultless technique, and her voice's exceptional
power of emotion, to her numerous participations over the years in
projects related not only to African music (from Oumou Sangare to Papa
Wemba, Miriam Makeba, Youssou N’Dour or Koffi Olomide), but also to
French popular music (MC Solaar, J.J. Goldman, Johnny Hallyday or Michel
Fugain). Her ten-year association with Congo singer Lokua Kanza, has
been an impressive partnership, one that has given direction to her
career. This recording, the first to reveal her voice in its most intimate
aspects, marks a new departure for her.
A virtuoso guitarist with a love for acoustic sounds, but also a brilliantly
original composer and arranger, Patrice Larose belongs to those men in
the shadows whose protean talents are equal to their sense of discretion.
A passionate admirer of Flamenco – one of his grandfathers is Spanish –
Patrice formed his first group in 1990 and mixed flamenco and jazz before
experimenting widely in various domains from salsa to African music (the
latter, notably, after his introduction to the M’balax music of Senegal in
1997 in the company of griot Leîti M’Baye when the latter came to Paris).
He's enjoyed the privilege of being Brazilian singer Marcio Faraco's partner
since the turn of the millennium, and his work as a guitarist & arranger
featured on both the latter's recent albums for Universal Jazz. Patrice
decided to move on, and this collaboration with Julia Sarr is his first
recording project under his own name.