To disappear for a decade is enough to be forgotten. Mônica Freire makes sure today to remember our good memories: ten years after her last concert in Quebec, the singer-songwriter returns with the extraordinary Ilhada, an album of roots – those of Brazil where she was born, those of her grandmother of Lebanese origin and those of her adopted city, since “I would never have been able to make such an album in Brazil, I believe- She. It’s a Montreal album”, a melting pot musical ideas, Brazilian songs drenched in subtle electronic orchestrations conversing with the rhythms and sounds of the Middle East.
“It’s funny, when I play in Brazil, I sing more in French, whereas here, I sing more in Portuguese,” confides Mônica Freire, who nevertheless offers us the most French-speaking of her albums since each song is performed in both languages. “This is the first time I’ve ventured into writing in French — before, I sang other people’s words. I felt ready to take on these words, written in all simplicity. These songs came naturally to me in Portuguese and French, so I left them that way, without asking any questions. »
The questions that Mônica asks herself rather concern her multiple identity. Indigenous, Afro-Brazilian, Persian on her grandmother’s side, Quebecois by her trajectory which led her to Montreal, where she lived for more than eighteen years and released two albums (after her first two, published in Japan, now untraceable), Bahiatronica (2005) and Na Laje (2008).
Two years later Na Laje, Mônica was performing in Brazil; she hung on there for ten years, except for a visit in 2014, the time of a handful of concerts in Quebec. Three years in São Paulo, seven years in Salvador: “It was… phew! A lot of things — it already feels like another life,” she breathes.
“As we know, Brazil was going through a very difficult time at the time. » Shortly after her return, she says, “the political context was not favorable to artists”, the rise of the far right there culminating with the election, at the end of 2018, of President Jair Bolsonaro. “The arts took the edge, artists had difficulty making a living from their practice. »
The musician’s reflections on the fate of the polarized world, then affected by the pandemic in the heart of which she returned to Montreal with her daughter, are addressed in the lyrics of the album, for example on Nothing is going well anymore, in duo with the musician, singer and oudist Ayham Abou Ammar, “Syrian of origin having fled the war three years ago to live here, in Montreal. When he translated his words written in Arabic to me, I read them as something luminous, full of hope, which forced me to rewrite my second verse.”
Percussion
Based in Salvador de Bahia, Mônica enrolled at the Federal University of Bahia to study Brazilian music. “It was one of the reasons why I returned to Brazil: to reconnect with my roots. I left the country at the age of 17 the first time, I returned there almost twenty years later to live there, with his daughter. “I took this moment in Bahia to delve deeper into the popular demonstrations [de la musique] of Brazil, the rhythms of each different community, which opened doors for me when I approached the creation of my new album”, on which she plays a multitude of small traditional percussive instruments.
“The starting point of my music has always been rhythm, percussion,” she explains. Only, for this one, I explored oriental percussions”, those of the roots of his grandmother, of Lebanese origin, and of his great-grandfather, born in Syria. These people from the Middle East, explains Mônica, constituted the first great migratory wave from Brazil, at the end of the 19th century.e century. “These percussions”, the derbouka and the bendir, for example, played by the Montrealer of Lebanese origin Joseph Khoury, “are close to oriental classical music, more so than the more raw percussions of Brazil. I have the feeling that this exploration, between Brazilian and Middle Eastern music, will follow me for a long time.”
So much the better: this meeting, rarely attempted, is absolutely successful. The sound of the drums is undeniably oriental, but suits the rhythms of Brazil admirably. Even the plucked sound of the oud, played by Nazih Borish, a Syrian of origin and member of the Constantinople ensemble, evokes that of the bérimbau, the instrument resembling a bow that arrived in Brazil with slaves from Angola.
Exile
Thus, this union between music from Brazil and sounds from the Middle East which makes Ilhada is favored by the touch of multi-instrumentalist and director Jean Massicotte, who, in the 1990s and 2000s, transformed into gold several artists’ projects, often from Audiogram – it’s him, behind the console of the recordings of The ants (1998) by Jean Leloup, the first Pierre Lapointe (2004), the legendary albums of Lhasa de Sela, visionary artists also in their fusion of musical cultures.
“Jean, what’s incredible about him is that he plays a lot of instruments – piano, bass and electronic instruments very well,” adds Mônica. Above all, we took the time to chat, about life and music. In the studio, he spoke of “tripolarity”: finding the right balance between music from Brazil, music from the Middle East and electronic music,” by letting the songs breathe better, emphasizing the “silences” between the notes, adds the musician. . It’s a success: the thrills we feel when discovering the delicate Areia at the start of the album, the synthetic bass sounds which give weight to Arreboisthe quasi-house cadence of the wonderful title song!
Ilhada is for Mônica the album of a return to the roots, but an album of sharing, of exchanges, of travel. “Have I returned to Montreal for good? I stayed there for eighteen years before returning to Brazil,” she replies to indicate that she does not know what the future holds for her, other than that of an eternal exile. “Everyone who migrates leaves something unresolved,” says Mônica. Wherever we are, there is always a part of us that is missing — when I was here, I missed Brazil a lot, and conversely, when I was there, it was Quebec that I missed . »
“But this is something that has been with me since I was very little, this feeling of exile. I have always lived in my little bubble. Music is my bubble, and it came into my life when I was very little because I needed this place to take refuge from a lot of things — family dysfunction, my own feeling of loneliness… L exile is my life, but at the same time I live so much in the present that, no matter where I am, I have the impression that there is so much to see and experience that I don’t feel not disoriented. Because music is my compass. She’s the one who tells me what to do and where to go. »