Organized by Productions Nuits d’Afrique, the 15and edition of the competition for emerging artists in mixed music Les Syli d’Or finally reconnected with the public last Thursday evening during a festive finale presented at the La Tulipe cabaret. The victory of the group Syroko was beyond doubt, the orchestra elegantly combining Algerian chaabi, Andalusian music and French song. It was, obviously, the most refined and successful proposal of this finale; the Latin-pop disco project of the flamboyant Papish won the silver Syli, while the small Kotakoli orchestra, from the Congolese of origin Blaise Labamba, finished good third with the bronze Syli.
Led by guitarist and singer Yles Hamadou, the Syroko orchestra took over the stage at the conclusion of this joyfully colorful musical evening. Two percussionists, a double bass player, an accordionist, a violinist (Laetitia Franco-Lévesque, who dips her bow into several musical projects in the metropolis) and a banjo player (Ali Idres, excellent) accompany her during this “Algerian, Spanish and French, because that’s what Montreal is: we mix, we have no choice! launched Hamadou while the management tried to get rid of an insistent feedback at the start of the show.
The floor undulated gently to the rhythm of the darbouka piercing the rich orchestrations of the trilingual group, it was famous. Unless I’m mistaken, Syroko still doesn’t have an album to offer, but it will come, since in addition to the great honors of this 15and edition, the orchestra also wins hours in the studio for the recording of a project and makes sure to take part in a few festivals in the provinces, starting with the next edition of the Festival international Nuits d’Afrique, including the 36and edition will take place from July 12 to 24.
Dancing finale
Coming second in the race results determined by a professional jury and the public vote, Papish made the gallery dance with his repertoire certainly attached to popular Latin American currents – cumbia, reggaeton -, but resolutely pop in its conception. A percussionist played electronic drums, the sequenced sound of a drum serving as the foundation for the group’s compositions, sometimes more dub-rock, if not more disco and danceable.
At its head, Papish stands out less for the strength of his voice than for that of his spectacularly playful presence. We can certainly count on him to set the mood in an evening. He dances, gesticulates, harangues the crowd as if it were his own family, which was incidentally at La Tulipe, as much to applaud him as to celebrate his birthday.
Responsible for breaking the ice at the start of the evening, Blaise Labamba and the Kotakoli orchestra were the most experienced musician in this final. Before coming to settle in Quebec, Labamba learned the trade within the Big Stars orchestra, founded in 1991 by the late General Defao, one of the greats of the Congolese music scene in the 1990s and 2000s, pillar of the local rumba, soukous and ndombolo. It is precisely this kind of musical energy that Labamba was busy recreating on the stage of La Tulipe.
And it was successful… but on a small scale. The rumba orchestras on the other side of the Atlantic are massive, sometimes bringing together more than a dozen musicians and as many dancers. Kotakoli is the small-scale version: a drummer, a guitarist, a keyboardist, Labamba as master of ceremonies, accompanied by a dancer. Everything was there, the stage costumes, the choreography, but the music inevitably lacked power, reduced to a roughly orchestrated rhythm section. The rawness of the songs did a favor for the festive urgency communicated to us by the musicians, but made us dream of a maximalist version of the same project, enhanced by additional percussionists and guitarists.