Nearly four years after the media storm surrounding the SLĀV show, singer Betty Bonifassi is slowly but surely recovering from the “artistic trauma” she says she experienced after being accused of cultural appropriation. For the first time since the controversy, she returned to the boards last week in the Magdalen Islands, where she found refuge after feeling that she had become persona non grata within the Montreal art scene.
Since October 2020, Betty Bonifassi has been daycare center with an old friend in the archipelago, where she spends most of her time getting healthy and tinkering with new songs, even if she no longer has a manager and a care home. disk. A more than modest way of life for the one who experienced the heights in 2010, when her group Beast found itself nominated for the Grammys for best music video of the year.
“People think I was a millionaire, but not at all. I have always been in a precarious situation and I have never had a big head. […] But now, I’m ready to bounce back with my music,” says the Quebec singer with the metallic voice, who agreed to give an interview to the To have to after a few years of radio silence.
For her big comeback, she aims to release an album in the fall. A disc, recorded with Madelinot musicians, which she describes as both electronic and organic, with touches of blues and soul. An opus that will be luminous, she promises, because of all the well-being that the islands give her. But also imbued with a certain anger, because she cannot ignore the feeling that inhabits her when she thinks back to the brutal cancellation of SLĀV, a show directed by Robert Lepage inspired by slave songs, the fruit of years of research for the singer-songwriter.
bitter memories
The few black actors in the troupe at the time outraged anti-racism activists, although the show is not just about African-American slavery. SLĀV was intended to be a retrospective of thousands of years of slavery, in particular the slave trade in Eastern Europe by the Ottomans, which is what the title of the show alludes to. But no matter, the premiere at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (FIJM) in June 2018 will be marked by major events. For days, Quebec will tear itself apart over the concept of cultural appropriation, hitherto in the media blind spot.
Betty Bonifassi would fracture her ankle, which would cancel several performances before general outrage overcame the complete cancellation of all remaining performances at the FIJM. A missed act? “I don’t know, but I can never say that I feel guilty. I can never say that I feel guilty for having put the right actors in the right places, for having used 20 years of research and knowledge. I will never be able to say that I feel guilty for having wanted to go back to the origins of slavery in the former Yugoslavia, the country of my mother “, contrasts with a disconcerting outspokenness the musician, born Béatrice Bonifassi in Nice from a father of Italian descent and a Serbian mother.
At 50, this child of the world ensures that his exile to the Magdalen Islands helps him to make peace with this period. But she still hasn’t forgiven some people in the arts community for not stepping up to the plate to defend her artistic freedom. To the media either, which she accuses of having thrown her out without having seen the show.
The throat knotted by emotion, Betty Bonifassi also implores journalists to stop constantly bringing her back to this episode. “I was listening to an interview with Robert Lepage recently and we weren’t talking to him about it. Why am I always brought back to this? I have other things to say, ”she insists, the cigarette nailed to her beak in front of her webcam.
Don’t touch my freedom of expression
But difficult to ignore the fact that Betty Bonifassi has become in the eyes of some a martyr of “wokism” following these events. A political recovery on the right of which she says she is not aware. Perhaps it is better this way for the one who, as a high school student in the 80s in France, skipped school to participate in the major demonstrations of SOS Racisme in reaction to the rise of Le Pen’s National Front. Anti-racism has changed a lot since then.
“When I saw the demonstrations against SLĀV, I didn’t understand, because there were more LGBT flags than anti-racism slogans. I think I found myself in front of young people who expressed a pain that I had not caused them. […] I am against the castration of public debate, whether it comes from the right or from the left. I want everyone at the same table, even if we don’t agree, ”defends the singer, who also says she has experienced a certain form of racism.
When he arrived in Quebec at the end of the 90s, his Serbian origins sometimes brought him some ridicule. As if she was personally responsible for the deaths in Bosnia. Something to make her aware of what Russian expatriates can suffer at the moment.
However, she does not regret having dropped everything in France to follow her spouse at the time, the Quebec composer Benoît Charest, with whom she will start a family. We owe them the soundtrack of the hit animated film The Triplets of Bellevillewho will want Betty to be invited to sing at the Oscars in 2003. A feat that few Quebecers can boast of, apart from Celine Dion.
Today, Betty Bonifassi no longer has such ambitions. She only asks to be able to live again from her art.