Exactly one year after releasing his first album, Journey to Mars, the singer-songwriter and director Munya will finally come and sing us her pretty pop songs, at the invitation of Coup de coeur francophone. “One year already, it’s crazy! she whispers on the phone, from Brooklyn, where she lives. “Composing my album in the middle of a pandemic, I remember having this thought about the doctors, the nurses, the people on the front line. Me, I write music: what’s the point? But after releasing the album, I received a lot of messages from people telling me that my music made them feel good. I guess that’s my role. »
It has been said and repeated: the pandemic has complicated the professional life of musicians, Josie Boivin, alias Munya, can testify to this. “I don’t have a cat, I just have suitcases” in which she lived, she explained to us in March 2019, when launching a compilation of her first microalbums on the New York label Luminelle. At the start of 2020, his calendar was strewn with concert dates, all over North America. Then everything stopped.
“It really put a brake on my career, like for many artists, deplores Munya. I confess to you that 2020 was a year of anxiety for me”, her colleagues and she finding themselves facing the unknown. Gone, for the time being at least, is the life of a musical nomad. We had to unpack. “I composed music in my small apartment, a way for me to escape from reality. »
Since the beginning of my career, I have worked a lot alone. I self-produced and made my albums myself, I play almost all the instruments on them, but this time I decided to work with a friend of mine, Kainalu, who helps me make the songs.
Thus was born Journey to Mars, an album in which the artist took refuge, since the pandemic prevented her from returning to visit her friends in Montreal and her family in Saguenay. His songs invite you to escape, Munya, talented melodist, rocking us with his soft voice in a dreamy pop with hints of sixties, set with selected synths. The beautiful aerobatics of the organs on the heady For you and its slow funk rhythm, the summer pop of Boca Chicathe quasi-house groove of Cocoa Beachwhich most recently received a chillwave treatment orchestrated by Texan composer and remixer Neon Indian.
“I’ll tell you that [la création de Voyage to Mars] was still difficult. It’s not that I had to force myself to compose these songs, since writing was a bit of my therapy, but, due to the pandemic, I went through darker times, when normally I’m a very positive person, very playful, I have the gene of happiness, as my mother said. This can be heard in the music she creates and which has won her the hearts of American audiences, even though she composes mostly in French.
A new album in sight
For her return to Montreal on the poster of the Coup de coeur francophone, Josie Boivin is cooking up a singing tour mainly in French. She reserves her brand new songs for her next tour, the musician being currently in the process of creating her next album. “Since the beginning of my career, I have worked a lot alone. I self-produced and self-made my albums, I play almost all the instruments on them, but this time I decided to work with a friend of mine, Kainalu, who helps me make the songs — remotely, since he lives in another State. »
Kainalu (Trent Prall), bassist of the group Djo, led by actor Joe Keery (the Steeve Harrington of the series Stranger Things), plays some bass tracks on Journey to Mars and has just released a solo album titled Hourglass Ginseng, on which Munya sings. “I can’t wait to share what we’ve done so far, it’s really cool,” says Josie. He’s someone I admire a lot, he’s so talented, I feel blessed to work with him. »
“It’s still too early to say what this next album will look like, continues Josie Boivin, but, musically, I want to challenge myself by getting out of my comfort zone, by making my compositions more complex. As we are two brains working on the project, I feel that the realization will also be more complex. And if Journey to Mars was my escape, the next will talk about my origins, the women around me, my mother who raised me, who I am and where I come from. »
Munya will be performing at the Ministère on November 11, with Rayannah and DJ Nicolas Ouellet.