The French public met Raphaël in 2003 thanks to his duet with Jean-Louis Aubert, On the road. Since then, what a long way for the author, composer, performer and writer. Many successes like Caravan, In 150 years or Schengen and are now part of the soundtrack of many families.
He also built himself artistically thanks to a writing with a sharp, licked pen and his two works: Return to the sea and An eclipse, were critically acclaimed. The first even received the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle in 2017.
Raphaël innovates and decided to create a musical show: Magnetic tape, which has been played at the Bouffes du Nord since March 17th until March 27th.
franceinfo: What does this show represent for you?
Raphael: I’ve done a lot of concerts and I will continue to do so, I love it, but here it’s the desire to do a kind of unidentified object, something different that has never been done , like a recording session, live. I come on stage with a piano, there are tapes playing, a sound recording booth with a sound engineer who isn’t there yet. And then, after a few songs, he arrives and begins to interrupt me, to ask questions, to make me very curious, very strange reflections. And then he takes off his cap and I realize that he’s not the engineer I usually work with. It’s someone I don’t know.
“It’s a kind of concert, guided by a slightly disturbing, slightly dangerous and armed engineer, which theoretically leads me to bring out the best in myself.”
I feel like you needed to surprise yourself.
I do two things at the same time. I make and write songs, I produce records. And then I write books. Anyway, I try to do all that and that’s what I love to do passionately, both things. It’s a bit of a way of doing both at the same time because it’s a concert and at the same time, there’s a narration, dialogues. There are things that are a little curious, a little funny. I would say it’s an attempt to mix these two worlds and hopefully it will take.
It’s structured and at the same time, it’s a little without a net, with a need to re-orchestrate live tracks that we thought we knew by heart.
The songs are somehow quite inexhaustible. There are songs I wrote when I was 23, 24. I am twice that age now, 46. We continue to live with these songs, they evolve at the same time as us. The show lasts an hour and a half and I play about twenty songs: Caravan, Let’s not leave angry, In 150 years Where The evening train. They are also the ones I love. Maybe because people like them, they’re the ones I like, I don’t know. I look at them with great tenderness. Sometimes I find it really good. I wrote 140 so 20 is the crème de la crème!
In your life, music was the starting point.
Music is always the basis of everything. That’s what I like the most. If things are not going well in my life, I put on my piano, my guitar and I play.
Moreover, there, you are facing a piano.
I will always come back to that. Yes, I play a little guitar too. It’s a passion. I still haven’t understood how you can concentrate so many emotions and so much beauty in such a short time like that.
“Music is my language, it’s my territory.”
I’m not a purist of sound, image, or those things, but I would say that what counts is simply what we tell and how we tell it. It’s something that can be recorded on a dictaphone or on the finest analog tape in the world. The emotion is not there.
Your most beautiful encounter was with the piano. It is the instrument that allowed you to reveal yourself.
On this show, it started from a desire to leave this image of a bit of an eternal troubadour with his guitar and the ballads. The guitar is my instrument, but I discovered the piano and I love it. It’s like new territory. It’s an entire orchestra.
This show is also a tour. There is this need to also go into contact with the public which has been deprived of artists for a very, very long period. What does it mean to you to go live on a stage?
That’s wonderful. This is the very essence of what we write for. A music listened to by nobody, it is almost as if it did not exist. There is a line from Leonard Cohen that I really like, which tells a bit about this show and which says that “the songs are ennobled by those who listen to them“. They are the ones who put greatness in the songs. That’s why I also play the songs that people love because they have ennobled them. They put secrets, love, we can’t imagine the importance it had in their lives. I know it’s been played at funerals, things like that. I’ve been asked for my music more for funerals than for weddings until then!
Happy with your journey, your imprint in music?
Me, I like these songs. I like what they say and I find that they define me a little. Sometimes what strikes me is a kind of poetry that is a little curious, a little strange, in any case very particular, and that must be what I am. Even if we don’t really know what we are. We get up, we shake ourselves.