After making a detour to the small screen, landing a role in the TV series Doubt reasondeck filler (ICI Télé) and since 2019 hosting the show Arab Youth, Yallah!at TV5, Nadia Essadiqi returns to singing with live me, a third album under the name La Bronze “which speaks of the cycle of life, of death, of letting go of what no longer serves us to allow us to renew ourselves and accept the course of things”. And more specifically of the body exulting in its desires, undergoing the gaze of others, a theme previously explored on his previous album, infinite bodiespublished five years ago.
It’s a disc, insists La Bronze, which makes you want to dance, as paradoxical as it may seem if you only rely on the lyrics.
Admittedly, Nadia Essadiqi has surrounded herself with collaborators who know how to turn the right buttons to transform a song into ammunition for DJs. The guys from the Homy studio, local experts in the electropop aesthetic, collaborators of Milk & Bone, Lary Kidd and Geoffroy, and co-directors of live me. House composer Robert Robert, who works to give the ballad flexibility Monument erected.Clément Langlois-Légaré, from Clay and Friends, who adds his pop touch to the impeccable Farewell, a duet with Sarahmée. Yannick Rastogi, half of the composer duo Banx & Ranx (their album is about to be unveiled), on the excerpt Shine“the most festive song on the album, because the most pop”, comments Nadia.
Dancing depths
It is the paradox of live me : catchy, yes, but serious. There is a cloud above the dance floor. We go there with a heavy heart, hoping to dispel the doubts conveyed by Nadia’s sweet voice. “However, I find that in my desire to explore darkness and transcend it to then focus on light, there is something festive,” she replies. For me, there are plenty of very festive moments on this album, precisely because it is full of contrasts, going from introspection to casualness. »
We will then agree on this: live me is a carnal disc. “You enter me / First with your eyes / Then with your voice / We make one of us / Your tongue puts me down”, she explains on Ocean, the boldest, musically speaking, of the songs on the album. And again on Waters, which presents itself as a neo-R&B ballad before turning house: “When the walls fall / The nights are long / I forget my body / It screams so loud”. Faced with these uninhibited moments, the serious text of be firm, a powerful song, tense by the electro rhythm that criss-crosses the chorus. She begins with these lines: “At what age are women outdated / I’m afraid that no one wants to undress me anymore…”
“The pressure of the gaze of others, of what is adequate in terms of body, success, lifestyle, is very present in this era of social networks”, notes La Bronze, who admits not to escape it. The thinness and youth evoked in be firm “are well seen or valued in our society. It’s hard for everyone to go through this without being caught up in the pressure of what is seen as adequate. Finding your space in there is the process of a lifetime. »
“Personally, I’m afraid of aging,” says La Bronze. I feel [mon âge] in the eyes of others, in that of my employers for example. It is this impression that the woman loses her value with the passage of time. This is absurd since in so many societies, elsewhere than in the West, communities know that aging is a gift. Over there, we keep the elderly close to us, we benefit from their wisdom, their experience, whereas in our world, old age is less valued – especially with regard to women. It’s sad since aging is something so beautiful, it’s the accumulation of experiences and the sharing of these. If we embraced it better, the world would be richer. »
Latent racism
In Farewell, a song written with the rapper Sarahmée, the gaze of others also clings to the difference in skin color. The chorus implies the kind of prejudice that particularly affects citizens of Arab origin like Nadia Essadiqi, whose roots are Moroccan: “At home, it’s the bombs, isn’t it? / And the desert and misery / You’re killing the world, aren’t you? / Say your prayers, farewell the Earth”.
“I take the point of view of a character who speaks to someone who is not white-skinned and who knows nothing of his background,” explains La Bronze. It concerns a lot the Arab world, which is demonized: when we hear this word, “Arab”, we think of terrorism, whereas 99.9% of the inhabitants of the Arab world are peaceful. We have this latent, underlying racism. The one who makes people say: “I am not racist, but…”, a racism which is in fact simply a lack of education, and which dehumanizes certain peoples because of what we see of them in the media. They are thus associated with massacres and attacks. We lose our empathy for them when we only see them in this context. »
Hence the relevance of a series like Arab Youth, Yallah!Nadia insists. “We see then that these young [du monde arabe] go to school, have friends, go for coffees and beers, like everyone else here. I think there’s a key in that, which is to see people on a daily basis, their life as it is, to create empathy towards them and finally understand that we are all made the same, under our thin layer of skin. That’s what we wanted to talk about, Sarahmée and I, in this song. »
A great pop song, by the way. Like what it is actually possible to dance on serious subjects.