Posted at 7:00 a.m.
The virtues of musical trance no longer need to be demonstrated. But some artists push this approach further than others. This is the case of Ifriqiyya Electric, which will perform on Thursday as part of the Festival Nuits d’Afrique.
This cosmopolitan ensemble, founded by an Italian bassist (Gianna Greco) and a French guitarist (François Cambuzat), explores possession rituals as a way to purify and elevate oneself.
“The demon possesses you for life and he will stay with you all the time, but from time to time he asks for your body”, explains François Cambuzat, joined in Quebec a few hours before a show of the formation at the Summer Festival .
In the desert, when a person is bad, he calls the leader of the community and he contacts everyone who is free to attend a trance and after a session, it’s like a night of techno music, you wake up and everything feel better. It’s exactly the same thing, except that we buy a ticket, they’re free [rires] !
François Cambuzat, guitarist and co-founder of Ifriqiyya Electric
With the addition of two Tunisian singers, Nassima Moucheni and Syna Awel, the quartet offers an electroshock of cultures directly inspired by the trance rituals of the Maghreb countries, China or Kazakhstan. The group creates its music in a hurry, at the cathartic borders of hardcore. It adopts rough and disruptive sounds which contribute to an atmosphere of permanent boarding, with the added bonus of a strong industrial load, which drives the point home with thunderclaps.
“Rammstein? Absolutely, agrees Cambuzat, delighted to speak German industrial techno. Contrary to what many think, he continues, world music is often incredibly violent. When you go to a banga ritual in the depths of the desert or in a dîwân in Algeria or among the gnawa in Morocco, you realize that a Swedish metal band like Meshuggah are altar boys. »
Gianna and I played with broken knees, torn cruciate ligaments and toothaches, and as soon as we got on stage, it was all over. We said to ourselves: there is still something in there! It’s therapeutic and it makes us feel good.
François Cambuzat, guitarist and co-founder of Ifriqiyya Electric
more than music
Born in Vietnam, from a Moroccan father and a Belgian mother, Cambuzat studied oriental music at the Tunis Conservatory (the Institute of Superior Music), before discovering this passion for adorcism and uplifting music. .
“One day we were touring Mongolia and a friend from Inner Kazakhstan told us about Xingtian shamans. Me, I’m not at all baba cool, hippie, yin-yang, I don’t drink and I’m allergic to THC. But it immediately caught my attention,” he says.
PHOTO PROVIDED BY NUITS D’AFRIQUE
Ifriqiyya Electric
Thus was born the project of Ifriqiyya Electric, which has so far three albums, including one in collaboration with Sufi musicians.
Cambuzat does not hesitate to draw parallels between therapeutic elevation rituals and certain Western music, such as techno, punk and dub. “Because it’s a lot of stop and goall of a sudden, all the percussion stops and the voices remain, there is a technique that is very modern”, explains Cambuzat.
The formation also uses a lot of looping sounds and technology, essential elements of its approach. Just like improvisation, which according to him represents “60%” of their creation.
But the experience of Ifriqiyya Electric does not stop at music. For Cambuzat and Greco, exploration is also anthropological. The tandem favors human encounters and the discovery of the “other” to better assimilate the rituals of elevation.
“We are curious people and we like to know how others are doing,” explains the musician. What we love is doing the rituals in the desert. What is interesting is going to treat people. When we play with them, they understand completely, it’s the same language, except of course for the modern sounds that we incorporate. At first, they are surprised, but after half an hour, they understand that we are inside. We don’t touch anything, we fix it, that’s all. »
Over time, their project even became a documentary.
“We make ethnomusicological films, always on the rituals of possession, concludes Cambuzat. With the Uyghurs in China, before, we toured a lot there and since we made this film, we are banned from staying, six or seven years ago, we toured 40 concerts in 40 days, regret he. Our website has been hacked, the addresses destroyed…”
Ifriqiyya Electric, July 14 at the Ministry, 4521, boul. Saint-Laurent in Montreal.
Nights of Africa, from July 12 to 24.