SEUM | Safia Nolin: musician, activist, multiple …

For Safia Nolin, music is above all an outlet. If the singer has long channeled her sadness through sad songs, here she is angry. Armed with a guitar and a megaphone, she intends to break the molds and repair injustices. Maintenance.

“What is the use of carrying on my shoulders this cross which breaks my back?” », Asks Safia Nolin on Anybody.

The singer, seated at the café Pista, rue Masson, announces the death of a part of her career with the mini-album SEUM. The title refers both to the Arabic translation of “venom” and to the slang expression “to have the seum”, which more or less means “to be angry”.

Exhausted by a “year of bad luck”, disappointed by the music industry, the singer-songwriter almost turned her back on her primary passion during the pandemic.

If the artist was going to resuscitate, it was first by getting rid of his crown of thorns. “It is very important, in my project, to deconstruct the system in which I operate, because it does not make me. I’ll do business the way I want: without necessarily releasing albums. It stifles me, the pressure of 14 tunes. ”

SEUM contains eight. Or four, each available in two versions. In formula sunrise, Safia Nolin said hello to the sadness again through guitar-voice ballads captured outside, live.

The cathartic variants sunset are dressed in grunge and alt-rock sounds. These “anger” versions were built in the studio in the company of co-director Félix Petit – a “quiet force” encountered in the Magdalen Islands during a Louanges tour – and three musician friends: drummer Jean-Philippe Levac, bassist Agathe Dupéré and guitarist Marc-André Labelle.

“It’s the first time that I had a studio experience with a band feeling,” explains Safia. I had more confidence in myself, because I was with people my age, with whom I evolved. I was an integral part of the project. On my second album, I was more passive. I worked with big brothers, mentors: I was a bit in master and student mode. They listened to my wishes, but I had difficulty expressing them. ”

Other baskets

At the release of the first single of his new project, PLS, Safia Nolin says she was inundated with flattering “texts”. Rather than to be proud, the interpreter – who also signs the realization of the clips of SEUM – began to worry. “It’s a song that I love, that I’m so proud of, but the first thing I said to myself was: ‘What if it works? It’s gonna be horrible when I drop. ” I don’t want to go through this anymore. ”

Almost to the day five years ago, Safia Nolin received the Revelation Prize at the ADISQ gala. However, at the time, it was more his outfit – jeans and a Gerry Boulet t-shirt – than his first record, Limoilou (2015), which hit the headlines. “It changed my life,” she says today. It was a crash course of my personality. ”

The following year, Safia Nolin returned to recognition by getting her hands on the prestigious Félix for female performer of the year. Disappointment in 2018: his second album, In the dark, did not receive the expected critical and popular reception. “To rot away, when I look for my place, that the world settles down, I am drowning in the dark”, testifies the singer three years later on the recent Die off.

Safia now wishes to protect herself from a profession “very ephemeral, uncertain and left to chance” which takes on its meaning “in the validation of the other, in the ego”.

“I think life is a balance,” she says. I don’t think it’s healthy to put all your eggs in one basket. I had to freak out to find out. I realized that music on its own can’t be just that. I discovered I had another basket: activism, change, social justice – even though I hate that word. Make the future better for everyone, ultimately. ”

On October 13, Safia Nolin received “an ultra reward of this basket”, a medal of the National Assembly presented by the head of Québec solidaire, Manon Massé, and the deputy Vincent Marissal. “I wanted to leave a mark so that future generations will remember her as a fighter,” said M^me Massed on his Facebook page.

“The musical basket is easy: if it works, you have likes, views, comments, recognition, dopamine,” lists Safia Nolin. But there it was like a Felix of militancy. It was timely in my life. The sacrifices I make for my music are screeching less. “

Does this activism herald a move into politics? “I don’t know if I would go,” said the main interested party, who opened the door a crack. I feel like it’s even more debuzzy than the music industry. ”

Still, during the most recent election campaign, Safia Nolin supported the NDP through a TikTok video with her leader, Jagmeet Singh. Across Quebec, it does not hide its solidarity allegiances.

Watch the TikTok video

Playing trolls

From the very beginning, Safia Nolin has been the target of violent comments. A banal publication on Instagram feeds sites fond of click traps and alerts its detractors.

In July 2020, her denunciation of the sexual misconduct of Maripier Morin – an episode from which she suffered a lot and to which she does not wish to return – led to an unprecedented surge of hatred. In the following months, she received death threats and was the target of abject graffiti on the walls of the metropolis.

These are unhappy people fed by society and certain media, she observes, without having the slightest desire to excuse them. “I’m not for forgiveness, I find it too Catholic. ”

Inevitably, the author of these lines will receive emails from wrathful readers. Safia Nolin, in a way, has become a spillway for a whole fringe of Quebec society. “To them, I represent so many businesses that are not nice: the woke community, the left, the dykes. In 20 years, maybe I will understand. ”

The cover of SEUM shows a gravestone with the epitaph “Babye 1992-2020”. Above: an engraving of Safia with her shoulder-length blonde hair and round glasses. Since then, the singer has had her coconut shaved as part of the Leucan challenge, for the benefit of children with cancer, and has undergone laser eye surgery.

At the dawn of her thirties, the young woman says she feels like a character who accumulates misadventures, disappears for two or three episodes and returns “fucking bad ass”.

It is not uncommon for the singer, in social networks, to disseminate the homophobic, grossophobic and racist attacks that she receives or that she calls on the media to moderate the hateful comments.

“All my life I’ve been told, ‘Ignore them.’ What has it changed? No ! For me, ignoring bullies doesn’t work. They’re going to go bully someone else. If, since 2016, I had shut my mouth, I would be in the bottom of a hole. ”

While alive, Safia Nolin no longer wants to carry the cross that breaks her back: the music industry, the trolls, the media swelling. She is determined to forge her own path, fist raised and head held high. As long as there are injustices. As long as she has the seum, in short.

Visit the Bonsound page of SEUM