Music: Baloji, an artist in the plural

Is Baloji an African singer or rapper? Composer ? If the question arises listening to his album is that this Congolese origin endorses all these qualifiers. Electro tunes with Congolese rumba, rap with humming melodies … The artist multiplies the caps. At risk, sometimes losing some. "I think people have a hard time understanding that we can be multiple," he says. Music is still very segmented in France, as in Belgium. The concept of plural identity is complicated to apprehend, or worse, scary. "

It does not matter if his music is not identifiable for some record companies. Baloji makes its plurality a trademark. And it works. The songs from his last album, 137 Kaniama Avenue, have his fans dance in Belgium, the Netherlands and France, where he is on tour. In Bordeaux costume this evening in November in Paris, the artist will quickly fall off the jacket. He invades the space, on stage and in the pit. Link the titles and prove to his audience, compressed in the hall of the Café de la danse, that he can also dance, and bounce from one corner of the stage to another.

From Lubumbashi to Belgian boarding schools

A few hours before, in his dressing room, he was slowly absorbing the ankle of a cream intended to calm the pain of his sprain. In this room of a few square meters, Baloji seems even bigger than it already is, folded on the cushions of a two-seater sofa. Cloaked in a big black sweater and a scarf, a cap on his head, he expresses himself in a deep voice, puts down every word. The man exudes a full serenity. Hard to imagine as a turbulent child twenty-five years ago. From seven to fourteen years old, this native of Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is sent to boarding school by his father.

"I was really difficult, so I guess it was a way of channeling me," he admits, smirking. What memories does he have? "Rigor, rigor, rigor. A severity that does not visibly affect him: Baloji Tshiani from his full name, "group of sorcerers" in Tshiluba, will go from school to school, "Jesuits to nuns". If he condemns the way in which values ​​have been transmitted to him, he admits that all the same this teaching reflects today in his way of life. "In my way of sitting at the table for example. "

Music, "an addictive trick"

At fifteen, his life takes another turn. No more school, give way to music. At the time, the family apartment is located above Caroline Musique, a record store. Quickly, Baloji befriends the employees of the shop. Every Tuesday, day of release of new titles and albums, the teenager is there, and spends hours listening to them all. "An addictive trick" that allows him to discover all genres of music. "For the rap and r'n'b fan I was, rock was a real discovery," he says. Guitar music, as they say, was hated in rap, because it was assimilated to music rather Anglo-Saxon. "

The young man feeds on all the sounds he hears, and takes note for his early rap songs, composed with his band Starflam. However, music with African sounds are not (yet) part of his repertoire. His first "real contact" with the continent's music happened "by accident". For a title from his first opus, "Hotel Impala", he samples a piece of Manu Dibango, "All this will not make us Congo." "The title had a very funk side, very European but with a great groove," says Baloji.

A "Kongolois" in the DRC

Released in 2008, the album integrates African sounds, and dedicates the new interest of Baloji for the continent. A year later, he will go in person to give it to his mother. The artist has never seen her since that day when her father tears her from her country and her family, to take her to Belgium. He was three years old. After very long years of silence, he receives one day a letter from this woman to whom he has never spoken. When we ask him to tell us about their reunion, Baloji kicks in touch. And prefers to send us back to his song "Born of the Last Rain," which tells of the moment when, for the first time, he sees this woman with her eyes surrounded by tears, less beautiful than in her imagination.

Since then, "contact is complicated". But the "Kongolois", as it is defined, returns regularly in the DRC. The country has served as a backdrop for a short film, which he has made in recent months. A new arrow to his bow. "In fact, I like to think of my projects as a whole. Everything is important: the cover, the clothes, the typography, the colors … It was a little by accident. I wanted to make a clip but no one wanted to follow me. So I learned on the job, as for music. An apprenticeship that succeeds him.