Jazz fans have returned to the south of France as the Jazz à Vienne festival gets underway.
Numerous music lovers are drawn to one of Europe’s oldest jazz festivals and its enormous (8,000 seats) Roman amphitheatre by the stunning surroundings and high-quality sound it offers.
MC Solaar, a French rap superstar better known by his stage name Claude M’Barali, kicked off this year with a mashup of his first three albums, which helped define the history of rap in the 1990s and had a significant jazz influence.
“It’s a revival, and the fact that we’re at Jazz à Vienne indicates that jazz was one of my influences at the time, according to the singer and composer. The composers were sampling jazz or mingling jazz, that is, doing so with musical arrangements as opposed to “boom-boom” (editor’s note: not just dependent on BPM). It’s wonderful to discover it once more. And it’s incredible that we’re performing here with a Big Band, with roughly thirty people on stage, and playing these pieces once more.”
A rap performance that is more poetic than hardcore, more festive than ferocious, and that incorporates rock, salsa, or reggae manages to bring elements from many continents, traveling through Africa, Europe, and then America. The performer was born in Dakar to Chadian parents in 1969.
“I call this “Around the world in an 7-inch record”, MC SOLAAR says. We have all kinds of music, sometimes we have stories like those of African griots. There is the power of American music with rap, and we even brought in France with Serge Gainsbourg, whom we sampled… basically, music softens people’s hearts, and it has no borders: that has always been a credo.”
MC Solaar has been able to re-release his three albums after a conflict of several years with the record company Universal which blocked the rights.
He’ll be touring Europe this summer.
