Impossible to remain indifferent to this great voice of jazz and soul, who has just won the vocal artist victory during the Jazz victories 2024. Concerned by the fate of people who leave Africa and drown at sea in the hope of a better life, Sandra Nkaké reaffirms her support for SOS MEDITERRANEE.
Franco-Cameroonian composer and singer, Sandra Nkaké defines herself as a feminist artist: “I am a human being who feels concerned about others and I support SOS MEDITERRANEE because its action is necessary” she explains. “The people who cross the Mediterranean risking their lives to seek a better future resonate with my own life, but also with the memory of all my cells. »
« What I try to do everywhere in my artistic gestures is to create connections, it is to create spaces where we can discuss how we build a fairer, gentler, more tender world. »
If Sandra was able to emigrate with a visa by following her family to France at the age of 11, she recognizes that she had luck to have been born in a place where she had the correct passport. “But my brothers and sisters, who are not so lucky, are just as human beings.” She knows only too well the history of slavery on her continent of origin, “because I am the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of people whose family members were taken away for the transatlantic slave trade. And in fact this story repeats itself! » she laments.
When she heard about the condition of migrants detained in Libya – enslavement, sexual violence, extortion, torture, etc. – and their flight to the Mediterranean at the risk of their lives, the committed singer did not hesitate to join Raphaèle Lannadère, Jeanne Added and Camélia Jordana for a concert tour in support of SOS MEDITERRANEE in June 2024. The project « Protest Songs »these are “four women, four sisters of the heart, four friends, four artists who wanted to support SOS MEDITERRANEE in a more proactive way”.
Caption: Sandra Nkaké during the concert « Protest songs » in June 2024 at the Nuits de Fourvière festival in Lyon.
Photo credit: Juliette Valero/Les Nuits de Fourvière
Sandra Nkaké and her accomplices interweave their voices in different works, including her own song entitled « Nuit », composed in tribute to those lost at sea.
The clouds are breaking.
The burn of the whip.
From the bottom of the holds,
Souls cried.
There are no more stars.
Beauty has faded.
There is blood on the sails.
The red anchor is wet.
But in the distance, I hear these voices calling me.
The mist appears on your face.
I saw the devil in your eyes.
He wanted my soul, but I chased him away.
He’s nothing to me anymore. His name does not exist.
Non.
In his song, the artist has “wanted to transform this story into music” because it’s the place where she feels “the fairest in the world. She talks about these bodies of today which will find the bodies of yesterday, showing that we still have not learned the lessons of history. »
Today, Sandra continues her commitment during Solidarity stops during one of the ten events organized in December 2024 and January 2025 in support of SOS MEDITERRANEE in the Paris region.
Video and photo credits: Guillaume Bernhard/SOS MEDITERRANEE
