Known for having been members of the emblematic group Zebda, the two Toulouse brothers also have a career together. At the beginning of October, they released their new album, Darons of the Garonne, in which they set to music texts by the poet-singer Claude Nougaro.
franceinfo: Mouss and Hakim, are you proud that the Nougaro family has entrusted you with these texts?
Yes, and the word “entrusted” pleases us a lot, moreover, because there is a notion of transmission that speaks to us. We are proud and happy to be legitimized by this gift.
When you were little, Nougaro was a must in the Minimes district in Toulouse, where you grew up!
It was the star! In our neighborhood, there was Stade Toulousain and Claude Nougaro, before Zebda.
He even wrote you a song, it is rare for artists who can afford to say that Claude Nougaro wrote them a song!
It is called Commuter boots, it was in 2002. He brings us back with him in his story, that’s the story of transmission, it gives humanity to a situation that is sometimes difficult to describe.
“When he gave us this text, we were like children in front of someone who was the age of our father and who was like a brother.”
Hakim and Moussto franceinfo
Words and poetry allow emotions to be given their body. “To visit the inventory, I put on my suburban boots. The commuter boots, it kicks me. It’s full of gracious little friends, little lice, it’s facetious, full of stones in the panties. They occupy sumptuous gruyere, cement and iron cheeses, so what do you want? They grate!“
I would like you to tell me who you are, where you come from, how you grew up with this mother who did not throw anything because the money was running out at home. Were your parents the pillars?
It is already the courage of exile, because we do not leave our family, our friends, with a good heart. It is to seek a better future. We had an education that was very respectful of the place where we live, of France. Our parents were at the same time illiterate, but very cultured, very music lovers both, there was a lot of music in the house. Suddenly, it put us on the right path on the way of seeing and doing things, and suddenly of making music.
Music, you quickly understood that it could become an outlet, a way of formulating things?
Very early on we felt, in our soundtrack to us, that it was songs listened to by our parents or that we discovered by ourselves, whether it was Renaud, Bob Marley, that we could underline the feeling of injustice beyond speech. And we already had this advantage of being brothers, of having something to pass on that went back to our childhood.
And all this without ever inciting violence.
This is the education we received, our parents were activists in the neighborhood. They are certainly illiterate, but they speak three languages, Arabic, Kabyle and French. It has always been important to us that a positive energy emanates from all of this. To convey an idea of progress, destroying oneself did not make much sense. An equation that we love is the desire to be part of it and the complementarity of know-how. For us, this is the definition of citizenship.
Are you proud of this journey, of being able to come back on stage?
It was a breath of fresh air in this period when it wasn’t that we took the time, but we got it. We went much further than we imagined in terms of production, and in the music too! There are the words, the melody, but there is our way of arranging things too, and what we want to convey in harmony, the sounds, we put strings, what we had never done before.
“We made our first love song in our 30-year career!”
Hakim and Moussto franceinfo
We are very happy not only with the result, but also with the breath that it brings us, the freshness almost like the first day. What luck !