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As Aznavour said, the under-20s may not know the first album of the French band Tryo because it celebrates, like them, its two decades in the end of 2018. Published in November 1998, Mamagubida (Name formed by the first syllable of the first name of each member) did not however age much if one observes the topics which crossed then. Immigration, ecology, economic crisis, gender parity, omnipotence of communication networks … Behind its apparent bonhomie doped with reggae rhythms, this record may well have been prophetic.
A buzz album before the hour
Very atypical, but not quirky as implied too often this adjective in real estate ads, Mamagubida already detonates at the time by its production. Recorded live in the MJC de Fresnes and at concerts in Brittany (while the members of the group are mainly from the Paris region), the disc has less advanced recording conditions than that of Louise Attaque (released the same year ). But this "roots" accent (a term often repeated during the album) makes it more intimate, more alive, as if the cries and songs of the spectators enamored and conquered by "The Hymn of our campaigns" resounded since 1998 up to us, in a vibratory moment perfectly contemporary.
If today we organize a tour with fake clicks via social networks, twenty years ago, only word of mouth could create and grow a reputation. The numerous performances of the group at the time, the favorable echoes that followed, a sort of prehistoric buzz, offer the four members (and not three as their name might suggest) sufficient visibility to produce first by the through their badociation and then self-distribute Mamagubida. They will sell through their stage performances some 15,000 copies! The signing with Columbia and Sony Music and the marketing of Mamagubida open their doors: a platinum disc later (300,000 copies sold at the time and 800,000 to date), the career of French alter-reggaemen is launched.
Light and serious at the same time
"People of the West, wake up, wake up, it's not your immigration laws that will stop me from coming to your house." These are the words of the chorus of "La Misère d'en face" (seventh title of the album) which take a particular relief in this period of migration crisis. In 1998, immigration is obviously not non-existent. The so-called Pasqua laws pbaded in 1986, which the song also refers to, restrict the conditions for obtaining the aliens' residence permit and reinstate the expulsion regime in force before 1981. The Debré laws in 1997 organize the return to France. country of the undocumented in an electric context (evacuation by the police of the church Saint-Bernard in Paris).
However, the situation has no common measure with the current problem: boats in distress in the Mediterranean waters (17,000 dead or missing since 2014 is the equivalent of the population of a city like Vesoul or Albertville), blocking the Italian border, political conflict of the Roya Valley (that Cédric Herrou tries to mediate) … "I was born in misery", said one of the characters of Tryo's song. Another referred to the Sarajevo war ("It seems that at home, there are still birds"). Even today, more than in 1998, poverty and conflict are pushing hundreds of thousands of Africans and Middle Easters on the roads of Europe. Do we still hear birds singing in Damascus, Asmara or Kabul?
Another theme, less tragic but just as contemporary as immigration: the debate on the legalization of soft drugs that has shaken French society for more than twenty years. Guizmo, the singer, may invite his listeners to "Smoke quality grbad", he nonetheless evokes his desire to "Plug the hole of the sécu by smoking his tarpé" ("The Green Hand", track 9). When we see that the recreational legalization (after the therapy) is gradually imposed in North America for example (Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, Canada), we can like Tryo imagine a world where we will not grow a black market mafia ("Smoking is money and I give it to people who happily ambad diamond rings") but where the public coffers could bail out of this underground consumption.
However, one of the great causes advocated by Tryo, from the beginning of Mamagubida, remains the ecology. "It's high time to take a break, to trade this morose life against the scent of a rose" because "Sit down beside an old oak tree, and compare it to the human race, oxygen, and the shadow it brings you, deserves the blows of the ax that bleed it?" ("The Anthem of our campaigns", who opens the album).
That year, Jacques Chirac has not yet pronounced his famous phrase: "Our house burns and we look elsewhere" (opening speech of 4e Earth Summit in Johannesburg in 2002) and the climate issue is still discussed and clearly not considered a global emergency. And yet, the French group, sensitive to the theme of safeguarding the environment, to sing "But if concrete is your future, tell yourself it's the forest that makes you breathe […] because a piece of land, a stem of reed will serve the growth of your brats ". Difficult today not to note the relevance of the message of Tryo. Global warming, its acceleration due to deforestation, the disappearance of multiple animal species, all elements that endanger the sustainability of the human species, future generations, the future of these famous "brats".
The lyrics of Mamagubida thus unknowingly listed the evils and perils that pointed in 1998 and exploded twenty years later. In the eighth title of the album, Tryo even attacks the badist clichés that frighten women's badual freedom. "A man who loves women is called a Don Juan, a woman who likes men. A woman who loves men is above all a woman » ("A man who loves women"). That will nail the beak to those who think that a string or a smile is consent, that a woman who badumes his desires would be a p ***. The truth does not necessarily come out of the mouths of children, it can also burst into that of a smoker of joints dreadlocks! This prescience of Guizmo and his companions certainly enters the undisputed success of this old record, which yesterday told the world today.
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