Every day, a personality invites herself into the world of Élodie Suigo. Today, the singer, multi-instrumentalist and author, Voyou. On February 24, 2023, his second album “Les Royaumes minuscules” was released and he is on tour throughout France.
Voyou has been considered the new enfant terrible of French song since the release of his first album: The noise of the city in 2019. Initially, he was a bassist for the groups Elephanz, Pégase and Rhum for Pauline. Since 2019, he is therefore a singer and multi-instrumentalist musician, he composes, arranges for others like Yelle, Vincent Delerm. On February 24, 2023, his second album was released: Tiny Kingdoms. He is on tour throughout France.
franceinfo: tiny kingdoms is a disc that you have built with sensitivity and above all with an infectious warmth.
Thug: I think yes. In any case, I like when things go well with people, when everyone is happy and trying to put good vibes between people. And it also probably comes from the music that I am used to listening to, which is often very warm and which is more made to bring people together rather than to separate them or to talk about oneself.
Has this music always accompanied you?
In fact, yes, I really listen to a lot of music on a daily basis. I always need to discover new things, things that come from many different countries, even many different eras and many different styles. I don’t know, I feel like it’s my own way of doing sociology where I try to understand people, to understand the world, to understand how people are in periods, in moments in history.
Music is a good way to anchor people in time and tell a story.
You were born Thibaud and grew up in Lille.
Yes, in the Lille and popular suburbs.
Music came into your life first through the Conservatory and then there were orchestras, bars. This music was evident in your future, which today has become your present?
Let’s say that for me, it was pretty obvious that I was going to do this because I’ve been doing it forever. And above all, I never wanted to do anything other than that. That is to say that when I had the baccalaureate, I immediately left to tour with groups, as a musician. And I also started all my research work on music by listening to a lot of things, trying to immerse myself in all possible and unimaginable musical cultures. I think I’ve always wanted to do this. Afterwards, I never asked myself the question of how I had to do it. I’ve always tried to do it as naturally as possible and suddenly, I have the impression that it’s quite natural, the fact of being here today, in any case to be able to make music. The fact that people listen to it is something else again, but here it is!
You never gave in to anything. When you don’t want to do something, you don’t do it.
I don’t particularly want to do things that I don’t want to do.
Art is a place, a huge space of freedom and I have a little trouble with the idea of being constrained, but maybe that’s what makes me a thug after all. You can’t force my hand to try to make music that isn’t what I already know how to do or what I want to do.
I also make music to show all the love I have for music, so it would be stupid to go break that and go do things that I don’t want to do.
In Tiny Kingdoms, there are 11 titles that you actually built. There are three-minute kingdoms that you composed, wrote and arranged. Is finding yourself alone a creative process?
The fact of having been in bands for a very long time where I tried to propose things, and where I was quickly frustrated because I faced other egos and other ways of thinking about music , it really made me want to master all possible instruments to be able to record myself. To have exactly what I wanted each time and to be able to write, compose and arrange the pieces to have a final result, even if it is not perfect, which comes closest to what I want. have in my head.
You are smart because you deliver things to us, but at the same time, you keep this modesty and it seems that it is important for you to keep this secret garden.
It’s because I think I’m still very modest. When I talk about myself in the first person, I still try to create sorts of barriers between what I’m saying and reality, by including a lot of images. For example, a song like The insects on this album, I say something that is a bit filthy, a bit strange and at the same time, it allows me not to take what I feel too seriously and to be able to pass it through other things.
So feet on the ground, but head in the stars?
It’s a bit like that.
Thug with a big heart!
Feet in the mud itself and head in the stars!
I would just like to finish on the tour. Is going on stage also a way to meet your growing audience and enjoy this one-on-one time with them?
The tour is a bit like my life. I’ve been doing this since I was 14 and I happened to have vocal cord surgery just before the lockdowns and then there was the Covid, so I was off tour for super long and there we go again. Suddenly, I am excited like a chip. On top of that, it’s with a very good team with which, it’s yet another way of making music and which is really the thing that I’ve been fantasizing about for a very long time, it’s to be able to do a live where there is no electronic matter, in which there are only real instruments playing. We will be able to make music in the true tradition, on stage we can make it last all we want, as long as we want, we can even improvise. There are moments that are quite jazzy, moments that are a bit more variety. It’s going to be quite gratifying to be able to really make music completely without machines.
Voyou will be in concert, for example, on March 24, 2023 in Lyon, the 1er April in Lille, the 14th in Nantes, the 10th of May in Mérignac, the 16th in Paris, the 15th of July at the Vieilles Charrues in Carhaix etc…