Janice de Rosa: Magic

When was the first time you played in Paris - professionally?

Professionally?... it was 1991. I went to this jazz club, and there were these guys playing, at Latitude Saint Germain, and I asked them when they had a break if I could get up and do a couple of songs with them. They were cool, because they were three instrumentalists, there was bass, drums, piano, and so I got up to sing a couple of songs and everybody went - - Woah!

Then the guy who's booking there offered me some dates... , and so I thought since the guys were nice and let me get up, I'd offer them the gig, and I started playing in the top jazz clubs in Paris. So I ended up meeting these guys who were pretty famous - - and I really started with the top people.

That was jazz... then you switched to world music?

No, then I switched to blues because I thought that the jazz scene was a little bit too elitist, because my friends you know not all of them could come in and spend 500 francs on a couple of drinks, and I realized with blues I could play in places that were more accessible where people could have a beer for 3 dollars, you know what I mean.... And I started becoming really famous on the blues scene, because I was the only woman who was really known in France to sing the blues - the rest were guys. So that went really really fast, the blues scene. I had a band at that time, I was playing at this theatre in Montmartre, and this guy from radio Nova, who's African, came down because the press agent said you got to hear this girl sing, you won't believe that she's white. So, he's from Cote d'Ivoire, his name's M.C. Iba, and he talked to me after this thing, he says, we have this show on radio Nova, would you like to come down and sing live? You know, 'cause I don't think they've ever seen a white person singing like that in France yet. So I went down to Nova and there was a guy, Mangala, who was there doing promotion for his album. And I went down with my guitar player and had an African percussion player at that time with me, and we're just going to do an accoustic live thing on this radio show. And then he asked me whether I wanted to stick around and do a jam with Mangala. I said sure, because I was used doing jam sessions, collaborating, and stuff like that, improvising... So I went in and Mangala had this African bass, it's kind of like the kora, that he plays, which I'd never seen anything like it, it was really cool.... So he starts playing, the guitar player's playing, the percussion, doing this thing together... That was like the first mettissage key that was done really, at that time, because that was like 1994. And he sang in Mandinge, and I sang in English, we kind of did this duet, you know, he was doing his blues - because he said the blues is African, and I was like, huh, I'd never really even thought about that, because I'm thinking that blues is American - so I'm singing my blues, he's singing his blues, and together we did this really cool thing and MC Iba said, oh Janice, you're the only person who could ever do something like this in France, you'd do a thing with African music that'll be like really cool. So the guy started hooking me up with different composers, just to jam with people, people that Nova knows, and I ended up really hooking up with this guy Djeli Moussa Diawara who plays the kora and got it to where I really started to be able to do something really easily with.... He invited me to sing with him on some concerts and in some recordings, and I just took the thing that I'd recorded live, you know, with Mangala and Djeli Moussa Diawara to this producer. Because I was playing over at the Chesterfield and these guys from Oui-FM they said, Janice, you got to have a CD so we can play it on the radio, you know, we all love you but you need a CD. And I said, well I thought someone was going to come in and discover me, because I was singing like in probably 20 places in a month, and I was like everywhere, you know and you could come and see me, if you went out, I was there, you know, singing somewhere. And he said, no, no, no, the industry is not like that, you got to go knock on the door. So they gave me the name of this producer that worked with Americans, you know, and I went in there with a cassette, and I just played the live stuff that I did with the guys, and the guy says huh! that's really cool, and a month later we were in the studio recording that, and you know, 3 months later we had Warner Brothers and Sony fighting to sign this album that we'd recorded basically in 4 days, and I mean live, like that, feeling, you know. That's when it all started to happen.

That was your first record, five years ago?

It came out in '98. That was acoustic with just kora, contrabass, and percussion, it was almost like an unplugged version of the thing I'm doing with Djeli Moussa Conde and Sal.

You understand Mandinge, you understand the words?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean I can't sing a song if I don't understand the words. I'm not into doing things phonetic, because I'm into the feeling, you know, when I sing the most important thing for me is the feeling. I mean the words are there, the music is there to pass the feeling, and if you don't know what you're singing how're you going to put the feeling behind it? EM: Are all your lyrics and songs original compositions? Either me, and Diawara, or Conde, or I also wrote something with Sissokho Yakhouba, another kora player who plays on Afro-Blues. EM. Your relationship with Djeli Moussa Conde is like magic, does it happen because of the kora, the people, isn't there something transatlantic and unifying?

Well I think the thing with me and Djeli, is that magic is a sign that we're together. I mean, I'd gotten to these festivals in Italy, that I was working on in getting, because the Italians are so disorganized, and it took them 2 years for finally get their shit together, and then they said OK we have these dates now, you want to come. And I was already onto other things, working on other albums, you know... I had these dates in the south of Italy, for the summer festival, good dates, and decided to put a new band together with people that I always wanted to work with and just do new arrangements of some songs and write some new stuff - the thing is, they already had afro-blues, and - they wanted that, but I didn't want to do something that I'd already done before, I'm always looking to do something new, so I thought it would be cool to do something with bass, guitar, drums, make it more like funky, soul, groovy... I mean we did a lot festivals, acoustic and - when you're on a big stage it's much more effective to have something that everyone can get up and dance to and it's got a real back beat. That's when I started more into the mix of afro beat and rock and r&b and soul, rather, than the mix of African griot music and the blues. The new thing with Djeli's more a continuation with metissage but bringing it more into a place where it's more energetic, more electric, more happening, especially for dancing and stuff like that. I see now with word of mouth it's playing on 5 radio stations every day. So obviously it's much more commercial the way we've constructed it. The first album was the first metissage ever done in France, you know... Warner Borthers never ever worked with an African person, and they actually created the World Music division after they signed Afro-Blues, it was really like the beginning of this thing. Now everyone is doing something with the kora...

What kind of projects are you working on now?

I actually have a couple of options, Djeli and I have new songs and there's an option to do another album with a new band and stuff like that, because Ahmed didn't play on the album, and we'd prefer it to was him, and Martin and stuff like that, it's an evolution; we've been together over 2 years now, on the road and playing, and everything, and so finally really the right mix ; we have a lot of ideas for songs. Djeli has his own music that he does, and I have my music that I do. When Djeli does his thing it's very African, and when he's with me and the band, he gets much more like international, into finding where we all meet up and connect, you know, it transforms into something else.

But it's the same thing: I had just this cassette, and went to this producer, and we come up the room and play it off this little boom box, and just the word that you said, I said: do you hear the magic - in this? And he was there listening to the cassette, like the other guy with all that pshew pshew ( you know, noise) like it's not even a CD, everybody comes in with a CD, and I'm here with a cassette, like only you and the Africans come with a cassette. Pshew pshew, and he's sitting there listening and it's the speakers with all the noise of the cassette, and he says: yes, there definitely is magic in this, and I definitely want to do it! We were in a studio, we recorded 10 songs in one day; I mean just direct, just the way we do it live. That's also what keeps the feeling really fresh when you listen to the record. It has a really good feeling, because that's what we'd brought from coming back off the road.