Amina is a singer and actress. She was spotted by the French public during her participation in the 36th Eurovision Song Contest in 1991 with the title: It’s the last one who spoke who is right. Then we find her in the cinema. She has been very discreet in recent years, leaving to live in a wooden house in Sweden. She returns with a new album: The light of my choicesa very nice collaboration with the artist Léonard Lasry.
franceinfo: The light of my choices is the feeling diary of a free, cosmopolitan woman. Are you, free woman?
Amina: Freedom to me is really about following what your heart tells you. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But that’s freedom for me.
There is a song, moreover, which is quite symbolic of all this progress, it is: We are asked to please each other.
Wonderful ! It’s a duet with Léonard and I’m going to tell you a little anecdote that made my manager and my friends smile and cringe a bit at the time. I had an appointment with Robert Plant. He absolutely wanted to do a duet with me, that we work together and I know he’s a huge, superb artist, but that didn’t work and I never came back to the studio. He had a very beautiful voice, but I felt that my voice did not vibrate with his. With Leonardo, it was an encounter. He has a tone of voice that I like. When you like the timbre of the voice, it means you like being.
There is a song called: In front of us. We really dive into your origins, it’s a tribute to your native Tunisia. I would like us to talk about it because it refers to your mother who was very important in your life.
I’m a bit of a modern day nomad. I go where my heart vibrates.
My mother taught me singing. She was a very important person for me and she was a very rebellious woman, that is to say that when women in Tunisia were able to divorce, it was the first to divorce. I come from a very rebellious, very avant-garde family, so I said to myself: well, that’s great. Now, freedom outside the codes, what does it mean to me? For me, it was really about taking responsibility for my choices, ‘The light of my choices’, and Leonardo shed light on my choices through the lyrics and the music.
Music also came into your life through your grandmother.
Yes, because my grandmother sang traditional songs, but also the Italian variety. She mixed Italian, Tunisian, she danced the Charleston with fishnet stockings and golden sneakers. I come from a really funny family.
At 16, you started your own band, toured high schools. You understood very quickly, you sang reggae and jazz, that music was the key to seeking this freedom.
I knew my voice was going to take me on a journey. And for me, traveling is a form of freedom because you learn so much by traveling, by meeting other people who live differently. And it opens.
The summary of your life is still in the title of your first 45 rpm: Scheherazade.
Ah yes ! Scheherazade in which I rapped in Arabic. And I went to New York with a small model, I rapped there in small places very early. With personalities like Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, one of the founding fathers of hip hop culture.
I would like to come back to the title: It’s the last one who spoke who is right who changed your life. You also represent France at Eurovision. This song, what does it represent for you and this adventure too?
I represented France at Eurovision 91 with “It’s the last one who spoke who is right”, a song that spoke of tolerance.
In fact, I would never have thought of presenting myself at Eurovision. They came to get me. Me, I really knew that I wanted to come up with a song that represented France, so a real crossbreeding. And so that I wrote this song with Wasis Diop, Senegalese. And so there is an oriental and Senegalese swaying side to the song. There was also a Tunisian accordionist who came to make a very beautiful melody and Joseph Racaille who made magnificent arrangements. For me, it was France and representing France like that at Eurovision… We had no idea we were going to have such a high score, and we went there really relaxed, laughing.
The light of my choicesis tolerance. It is the fact that interbreeding is also at the heart of life.
If it is not at the heart of life, it is ambient morbidity. Why do I say at the heart of life? Because in ‘interbreeding’, there is the word: wise. It is wise to be mixed race. Anyway, we are all mixed race. When we look at the stars, there are bigger ones and smaller ones. Some shine brighter than others. They don’t go to war.
What does this album represent?
This album highlights weaknesses that I would not have dared to before. And I felt so confident with Leonard. Little by little, he brought me to this side of me. Maybe I could never have done it with someone else, certainly not with Robert Plant, that’s what I meant!