Lubiana, 2024. © Diane Moyssan
The Belgian-Cameroonian Lubiana composes for her second album, Red eartha song of love to the African continent. Where we find the quest for self of a thirty-year-old with a traveling soul, who is accompanied by the kora, the traditional harp from West Africa.
On the cover of Red earthwe see her as a child in the middle of a village in Cameroon. There is the brick-colored earth, the huts behind, the forest in the distance, and then the carefreeness of this little white girl. It was in Bangoua, in Bamiléké country, that Lubiana Kepaou spent the summer holidays of her childhood. These moments of the rainy season, between boredom, walks in the bush with her cousins and contemplation of insects, marked this daughter of architects, born to a Belgian mother and a Cameroonian father.
With a second album of nomadic pop, tinged with R’n’B and black music, the singer and kora player pays homage to the African continent. “As a child of the diaspora, it was important to give another vision of Africa. It’s not just war, misery, or chaos. It is also so much richness, love, kindness, and goodness. This land which has long intrigued me, I can see its beauty today“, she explains.
The kora, his heart instrument
Lubiana’s story is that of a mixed-race woman, who broke away from her Africanness for a time, and returns as a young woman to celebrate the continent. It is also that of an adventurous musician who took the time to become an artist. At 17, she participated in the talent show The Voice in Belgium, before joining the conservatory. Her studies in jazz were not without difficulties, until she discovered the kora. After dreaming of this Mandingo harp, she will encounter it a few months later.
The young girl was traveling with her mother to the Spanish island of Majorca, in the Balearic Islands, when she heard its crystalline sounds for the first time. “There is a kora player in a large square. I hear this sound and it’s almost like a movie, when all the noise goes away and it’s just that, she says. It’s love at first sight! It speaks to my soul! That stops me straight away! I don’t know what it is. So I’m making a video. I then discovered the kora.“
Dubbed by Toumani Diabatéwhom she met after a concert in Brussels, she threw herself headlong into her apprenticeship. It passes through London and Los Angeles and also travels through Senegal, Gambia and Mali. Lubiana evokes the griots in The boywhich salutes these guardians of oral tradition, and in Maliplayed in duet with the great Toumani. This kora master died on July 19 and the emotion is palpable when she talks about her reunion with him and her son Sidiki, in Bamako, in 2023.
African women in the spotlight
The Belgian-Cameroonian sees herself as a “storyteller”. She uses French, English, like Bangoua. My name is Mousso sings African women with its chorus in Bambara. It was after watching the documentary Rwanda: the silence of wordsdedicated to women raped during the genocide, that she contacted Gaël Faye. “In my opinion, Gaël is like a big brother at heart, she said of the Franco-Rwandan rapper and author. I see myself so much in his journey. He grew up in Africa and he came to Europe in the summer. He had an inverse relationship to his origins compared to mine. I sent him the song via Instagram, saying to myself: ‘Well, we’ll see…’ He accepted and invited me to Rwanda.“
The White returns to this crossbreeding which can be a source of “great opening to the world“as much as a factor of”non-membership“. “I am the Bsnack / African style / Even though I know it / This word pains me / Because if for my frAndres / I am strangeAndre / What is my place / My place on this earth?“, she asks. Red earththe young woman wrote more than 60 songs and she only kept 10. She surrounded herself with the rapper Vincha, who co-signed a few texts, with Clément Ducol (Camille, Vincent Delerm, Vianney), who directed all, and a group of experienced musicians.
The one whose name means “beloved” traveled the world before finding herself. It’s as if we were following his journey until he returned to his ancestors. His record, full of intertwining voices and strings, embraces his African origins with great gentleness.
Liked, Red earth (6&7) 2024
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