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  La Cedille Interview
interview 0301 added 17.05.05 words: Smiffy
technical:
QED
La Cédille (also known as
Ça) bring together North African and French influences
to create a very unique hiphop sound. La Cédille came to our
attention via Besançon in France. With their energetic stage
show they have made a positive effort to distance themselves
from the infighting and rivalry that has become part of the
French hip-hop scene in recent years. Their message promotes
unity amongst hip-hop lovers….
Their debut album 'Vu Du Large' was released on March 28th 2005
via the Chocolate Fireguard imprint so we caught up with Smoov
an MC from La Cedille to get the lowdown on the French scene and
their personal movement pushing non-synthesised hip-hop across
the continent….
Please introduce your crew – just as an
intro for those UKhh.com people who ain’t heard of you before?
 The name of the crew is La Cedille, a seven piece live hip-hop
band. We’ve toured in the UK for four years now. Maybe one
reason to your question is that we were more involved in our own
musical creative process than in a showbizness process! So it’s
taken more time to be heard from the masses. But everywhere we
have played in France and England, people appreciated it. Now
with this first album, it's time to shine!
How and why did you form?
The group started to work together 7 years ago. The members were
coming from hip-hop bands, jazz bands, salsa, African music and
funk. They met in Besancon, during concerts, some members were
already playing together before La Cedille. One common passion:
hip-hop, so they decided to start to work together and each
member puts into La Cedille its own influences.
A lot of UK hip-hop people talk about
the support that homegrown music gets in France due to its
enforced percentage radio policy - do you think this has had a
positive effect on the development of French rap?
It had two consequences: both good and bad. This policy, which
started 10 years ago, had allowed the emergence and success of
many good French groups, the golden age for rap was between 1995
and 1998 with crews like Beat de Boul, La Cliqua, Time Bomb,
Menage à Trois, etc. But then, because the radio and music
industry saw that rap was profitable, and because many rappers
saw that they could become rich with this music, it developed
too many "fashion rappers" and it killed the carriers of many
good MC's who just wanted to stay creative. I know what I'm
talking about, because I lived this crisis personally, but the
good consequence for me is that during that period because I was
looking for something "different" instead of all that bad rap, I
started to work with musicians in La Cedille. A different
precision: I'm not sayng I don't appreciate hip-hop with
machines, but during that period it was hard for me to find
interesting things in French rap. Finally, since 2003, we see
the comeback of many interesting things in French rap.
"...we
were more involved in our own musical creative process than in a
showbizness process...."
Ah ok – so can you break down the role
of everybody in the crew and their involvement in the creative
process.
So we have Rissmo the drummer, JM the saxophonist and MC, BSF
the trombone player and MC, Pisco the bass player and chorus
vocalist, Aurelius the guitarist, Snarf the MC, and myself Smoov
also an MC. The process to compose is generally really free: it
can come from a theme the guitarist plays when we are all
together, and then it inspires a subject to the MC or a bassline
rhythm. Or I can sing a melody with my mouth, and I explain to
each musician the way he can play it. Finally in the band, even
if some members are sometimes more inspired than others, we can
say that an instrumentalist talks as much as an MC, and the MC
plays music as much as an instrumentalist! Everybody expresses
its own feelings (in words or in music) on what is proposed.
Ok – so you obviously think hip-hop is
still relevant as a truly creative art orm in 2005?
As I said before, definitively I think YES, even if it is
something hard to see and feel.
Do you have a manifesto or collective
mission statement to which you all subscribe?
Not really, but what we can say is that each member takes as a
starting point the good and bad experiments of the life, and
expresses them with an artistic manner through the music, with
the aim of remaining positive…
So what’s been the most interesting
live work you’ve done so far?
Do you mean a concert or a work in a studio? If studio: The
recording of "Vu Du Large" at Beaumont Street Studio. If you
mean a live show: I can remember one gig in "The Moles" in Bath,
in 2001, something really special happened with the crowd - a
real communion.
Ok – so do you guys have any particular live tracks that you
know to drop at particular times to generate that type of vibe?
Yes, and we try to build our live shows as a story, with
different emotions at different times. When we play live, the
positioning of tracks like "Harmonie" (generally played in the
middle of the show, to create a confidential atmosphere with the
crowd) and "Empreintes " (which changes position and tempo), is
very strategic!
How important do you think it is to
accurately create studio tracks in a live environment - is it
all about faithful reproduction or showing people a different
element to your sounds?
First of all, we are a live band. Our live shows are each time
different. For instance, the guitarist or the saxophonist never
play their themes the same way, or sometimes I might sing more
than I rap, using the same lyrics. So we say our live shows are
very free. And when we are in studio, we record everything live
too (the most we can) alongside some keyboards, sounds effects
or samples as we still appreciate the result you can have with
these technologies. You can ask our label how perfectionist we
are when we are in a studio, because their bank account can
remember it!
If you could be the support act to
anybody, who would it be?
Roots Manuva, Roots Manuva...
"...we
have the same kind of feeling when we listen to them, even if we
don't understand every word they say...."
Ok cool - so what is it about Roots
Manuva that would fit nicely into the format for a La Cedille
show? Have you checked much UK hip-hop when doing your tours?
We appreciate Roots Manuva because he develops a real musician
attitude in his flow (we think so). I can tell it for rappers
like Method Man or Busta Rhymes too, because we have the same
kind of feeling when we listen to them, even if we don't
understand every word they say. So we are sure it would be
interesting for us to work with these people. During our tours,
we have played with many groups like Practical Heads, Dark
Science and we have seen some live shows from "stars" like
Rodney P.
What’s the most important track you’ve
recorded so far?
This is a hard question, because we try to put every recorded
track onto the same level...maybe "Empreintes" because of the
way it was done. This track didn't exist when we entered in the
studio to record the album " Vu Du Large". So everybody wrote
his lyrics in the studio, the beat was composed there too...We
love to work that way, with all this kind of "fresh energy".
For you, which is more important:
performing live or recording in the studio?
Definitively performing live, because above all we are a live
band….
So how important is a major label deal
to you in this day and age?
If you can find a major label deal, in which you are totally
free artistically and if you can control your image with this
deal, it can be really good to you...but as you know, most of
major companies don't want to take any financial risks with
creative artists, and prefer to do "ready to eat" music, so with
that setup we think nowadays working with smaller labels is the
best solution. You can hear everywhere that there is a crisis in
the musical industry, but in my opinion artistic creativity has
never been in crisis!
Have any of you got solo
projects/ventures we should know about?
Yes, most of us compose music with computers, some members (Pisco,
BSF and Jm) work with other musicians in a afro-salsa band
called "La Kuenta". Aurelius has started to work more seriously
on a solo album, with his own instrumentals on which some guest
musicians, singers and rappers will collaborate. JM has almost
finished a really good instrumental album inspired by afrobeat,
soul and jazz. I used to make beats too with my colleague
Bamacco, under our label "Boomes Prod", Snarf plays the guitar
in some other bands too.
That’s a hectic number of projects – so
where do you see yourselves in ten years’ time?
Most of us already have wives and children...so let's say that
we see ourselves with more women and more children! I think that
all of us hope to still work in music, after more albums from La
Cedille, after many travels and callings around the
world...maybe in some other parts of music industry like
production etc, but still with the same taste in good music.
"...we
try to build our live shows as a story, with different emotions
at different times...."
Any particular people, releases, or
crews you'd like to give a little heads up for the UKhh.com
readers? Little hidden gems we might've missed over here....
 Don't miss this French rapper called Sterna and this producer
called Bamak!
Ok cool – we’ll look out for them but
in terms of legends - if you could be part of the greatest ever
posse-cut, who would be the other emcees?
Nas, Large Pro, OC, Elzhi, Pharoah Monch, Erick Sermon, Pete
Rock, Jay Dee, Nicolay (as a producer), Roots Manuva.
That’s a large track! Is there any one
particular artist there that has infused his influence into the
way you try to rock shows or structure your tracks?
This artist can be a mix between Fela, Jimmy Hendrix, Wes
Montgomery, John Coltrane and D Angelo! Sorry but it's hard to
talk about one person since we are seven individuals within La
Cedille!!
Have you got a website to plug and
people to big up?
The website is
http://www.lacedille.com, you can find all the news about
our activities (both in the band or solo ventures) and there are
two versions (French and English). Big up to our guys from
Practical Headz, Kava Kava, to Rachel Modest, to our label
Chocolate Fireguard, Kudos Distribution (UK), La Baleine
(France), Timeless Music Project, Mike Vaughan, and to all the
people who support us!
-
Smiffy
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