They are the revelations of the Detours of Babel festival which is held until April 10 in Isère. South African singer Pilani Bubu and the Grenoble jazz quartet Marthe are on stage this Friday April 7 before two dates in Lyon and Paris at the end of the month.
Bringing artists into dialogue by mixing world music is the spirit of the Detours of Babel Festival which takes place from March 14 to April 10 in Isère. This Friday, April 7, the cultural center La Source, near Grenoble, welcomes Zin Nôogo, a concert with jazz and pan-African sounds with the grouping of several artists. This creation is the result of the meeting between the Grenoble jazz quartet Marthe, the South African singer Pilani Bubu and the Burkinabe percussionist Wim Zabsonré.
Marthe’s musicians – whose cultural mix has become their trademark – immersed themselves in South Africa for ten days. Guided by the enthusiasm and haunting voice of Pilani Bubu, they began to work out the score for the project. Zin Nôogo. “Pilani is a ball of energy, she sings, writes stories, she had a TV show in South Africa, she writes music for films. When we went to Johannesburg, we saw how to mix all our influences with this South African side“, says Florent Briqué, trumpeter of the group Marthe.
/2023/04/07/64300851f2578_detours-de-babel-00-01-40-13.jpg)
Committed words
Pilani Bubu grew up in a ghetto reserved for her Xhosa ethnic group and emancipated herself through studies and music. Very popular in her country, she chose the song to carry a committed word. “We talk about equality and youth in South Africa. The majority of people are between 18 and 35 years old. Almost half of the population is unemployed, a third of the children do not go to school. These are serious subjects, but we try to talk about them lightly through music. We thus open the debate and we think about solutions“, explains the artist.
To record their eight pieces, the quartet and Pilani Bubu chose a particular studio: a women’s prison. “With the boys in South Africa, it was very easy. I wrote in my language, Khosa, and I shared a bit of my culture with them. They saw firsthand how whites and blacks learn to live in this post-Apartheid society. This is the story we wrote together“, she says.
After the concert at Détours de Babel, where the six artists collaborated with some thirty students from the conservatories of Fontaine and Grenoble, the project Zin Nôogo will continue to live. Concerts are scheduled for April 21 at Périscope in Lyon and April 22 at FGO-Barbara in Paris.
Creation “Zîn Nôogo”. Detours of Babel Festival. The Source at Fontaine. Friday, April 7 at 8:30 p.m. Full price: 12 euros; reduced price: 10 euros. More information on the festival website.
