Multi-instrumentalist but guitarist first, Ben Harper is also an author and composer. The American singer, who has been accompanied by music since his first steps, has just released a new album, Bloodline maintenanceor 11 new titles to pay tribute to a deceased friend.
franceinfo: You grew up surrounded by guitars and banjos in your grandparents’ music store. Is music a quest for meaning in your own existence?
Ben Harper: Absolutely. It has always been an existential quest for me. A quest or journey of discovery to find meaning in emotions.
There is an unconditional love of music that has developed in you since you were very young. You also grew up alongside your grandparents who ran a music store. When did you realize that this music was an integral part of you and that it was therefore going to be part of your daily life?
Music has always been an integral part of my life. Throughout my youth, we never turned off the turntables. There was always a record on the turntable, all the time. And when we stopped listening to a record, we heard someone playing an instrument in the house.
What did you dream of as a child?
It would be easy to say that I dreamed in music. It’s a bit cliché to say that. Nevertheless, I dreamed sonically because I was raised in a music store. I spent ten hours a day there. I think I’ve heard more instruments than human voices in my life. But I also dreamed of an easier childhood because I didn’t have the easiest childhood.
“In a way, the sound, the music gave me a way to come to terms with my difficult childhood.”
We have the feeling that as a child, you were quite reserved and that you suffered a little from this life, precisely. Did the music allow you to express yourself, to tell things and to regain your self-confidence?
Yes. Make no mistake, there are environments for children that are much worse than what I experienced. I’m not so much the victim as that, there are really untenable situations. Mine was a little special, I did odd jobs. I know that I worked hard, whatever the activity. And I’ve always been proud of the fact that I worked hard. So, my childhood taught me that I had to work hard. In the United States, black people are forced to work twice as hard to get halfway there. So there was this obstacle as well.
When you started making music, you chose the lapsteel. It finally joins what you say, this memory of slavery. You have used this instrument to pay homage to a whole history, to move things forward, to remind us of what should not be forgotten. Is that also your “mission” as an artist?
“The sound that attracted me above all others was lap steel. It was a mirror of my pain, of my suffering, of my protest and no other instrument matched it. “
The second song I wrote was like a king, Like a kingand the lyrics are: “Martin Luther King’s dream became Rodney King’s worst nightmare“, because, at the time, a black man could not walk in the street after dark. And the first time that I played this title, it was in a café which was part of a campus The next day I went back to the music store and a student, white, who was my age, came up to me, while I was sweeping, and he told me that it was really important for him to help me. say the importance of this song. And I realized that music could communicate things in a really special way. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m someone exceptional, it means that music can transmit a sense of autonomy and power and I transmitted that to this person.
The title that closes this album is called Maybe I can’t. It’s a title that says a lot about the range of feelings that came over you when you lost a friend. Is this the song that most ultimately represents the writing and construction of this album?
I think that’s the emotional epicenter of the record, yes.