Jean-François Bernardini is the co-founder with his brother Alain, of the Corsican group I Muvrini (Les petits mouflons), created at the end of the 70s. A Corsican group which sings Corsican and which has always defended the culture of the island. The group has won eight gold records, two Victoires de la Musique and is releasing a new album, Piu forti.
franceinfo: Your new album, Piu forti, calls to reflect, to move forward, to tell ourselves that we absolutely must unite and say that the more we are together, the stronger we are.
Jean-Francois Bernardini: Indeed, we illustrate this album with a small drawing of a fish that comes to give us a little lesson in democracy by explaining to us that there is a power of the powerless and that it is good to take it. And that if we are divided, of course, the predatory world can be fatal to us. If we turn our heads and we are together, we are much stronger. I believe that this little lesson in positive citizenship is precious these days.
When you listen to this album, you immediately think of your father. I have the impression that it is also a tribute that you are paying him, a way of telling him that, over time, you have never finally stopped defending the same values.
“We have the deep conviction that diversity is in the mental cadastre, in the cadastre of the hearts.”
Jean-François Bernardini, from the I Muvrini groupat franceinfo
We are a small flowing stream. We are a small tree which continues to grow, which knows the attachment to its land, the attachment to the depths in this world of superficiality and which, at the same time, stretches out its arms towards the sky. My father, our fathers, or those who sang before us, are both between heaven and earth and they inspire us and give us strength. We never wanted to let ourselves be locked into this too close relationship, sometimes exaggerated moreover, with tradition, folklore, the land. We wanted to be not those people who separate, who hoist up walls, but those people who build the bridges that we so need in this world. It is this diversity that we want to sing, the one that enriches, these diversities that add up. So, from time to time, we write songs, we make albums.
There is anger, even if ultimately it is very channeled. Is it necessary to write?
Our fuel is non-violence, how you manage to transform the sufferings, the sorrows of the world, the cries and the crises.
“Anger is an engine, but our fuel is beauty.”
Jean-François Bernardini, from the I Muvrini groupat franceinfo
Georges Brassens said: “It’s very easy to write songs. You just have to think about it 24 hours a day“, it’s quite totalitarian. We’re a bit like a seismograph trying to hear what the other may not hear. When we put it on the table, there is indeed anger, but I think it’s an album that we wanted to animate, that is to say with soul. An album that we want to be ardent, with warmth. An album that the “we want to be open, with musicality in every note. Music is born from the soul, it’s its matrix. So, if we preserve a little soul in our songs, maybe it’s worth it to share them.
I would like to talk about the duet with Gérard Manset. You brought in an islander on the cult song: He travels alone. Was it important for you to sound the alarm?
It is an encounter and an unexpected song, the nobility and at the same time, the insularity, the wild side that Gérard Manset has. All of France knows it, it is not someone who appears and who often makes the front page. I never thought he would sing with us. This song is in the collective memory of all of France. One day like that, we just threw a little bottle in the sea and said: “I love this song !“It’s a gift like the artists know how to do, in their mystery, their generosity, their beauty, in the fact that they write timeless songs like this, which is all the more relevant.
Are you proud today of the road travelled, of the work you have done, of the fact that I Muvrini is one of the best-known Corsican groups throughout the world, if not the most known ?
Of course, it’s not easy to sing in a language that is at the heart of a cleverly programmed “linguicide”. Above all, I am aware of the work that remains to be done. I go to any high school, Corsican college, I sing in Corsican, no one understands me anymore.
Does it scare you? Does it affect you?
It doesn’t scare me, but I tell myself that the world is shrinking. He is impoverished.
“Each time a language disappears or is in poor condition, it is a bit of the beauty, the diversity, the intelligence of the world that diminishes.”
Jean-Francois Bernardiniat franceinfo
The fact that we have never said to these languages: “Your difference increases me” rather than “Your difference threatens me”, is something that must be cured and I hope that we will cure it. a bit because we are passionate about the circle, the link and the relationship.
I Muvrini will be on tour this summer in Corsica and at the Zénith in Paris next November.