Dobet Gnahoré punctuates his sentences periodically with this information, as a justification: “you know, I’m a twin.” Hard as iron, the 38-year-old Ivorian singer believes in the astrology that governs her life. According to websites that specialize in reading the sky, Gemini symbolizes communication, movement, exchange, curiosity, intelligence. These words may suit him well.
“I only live by my intuitions,” she adds in her beautiful, curvy voice. If I get up one morning on the wrong foot, if I’m cold sweat, if I have too many thoughts. Attack, I ask, to ask the negative energies to raise the veils. I pay attention to the signs, the density of my heart, my stomach. The universe, the energy, the wind, the water, the elements speak to me and animate me. And that’s also why I write: to organize the chaos of emotions that grips me. “
Feeds your “ivoirity”
For two years, this hyperactive, extremely hard-working mother of two daughters, one 21 years old and the other 10, in perpetual motion, has divided her time between Givet, a village of 6,000 souls in the Ardennes, and Abidjan, by choosing four or five round trips per year.
Last time, surprised by the confinement, she stayed for six months in the Ivorian capital. Time to feed his new album, Couleur.
These permanents return to the land of her ancestors, she who lived between Grenoble, Strasbourg and Brussels, Dobet explains them through the lack of her homeland, but also from this need to reunite her roots. Thus she clarifies: “As a singer, in France and internationally, I sell my” ivory “,” my “culture. But in order to renew it, I must return to the source, continue to be inspired, to feed it. Otherwise, it will dry up in me and there will only be memories. But serving memories to your audience is never good. “
The new Ivorian generation
In Abidjan, his source, land of artistic creations in all directions, observed by the whole planet, Dobet drinks Gnahoré in a makeover, lets his ears hang out in all the sounds of the moment, is a mushroom to capture the thousand vibrations in our capital – its Gemini- page!
And then, for young artists, she plays her role as “big sister”, crowned with a Grammy Award 2012 … She is the godmother of Grand Bassam’s orphanage, she created her music studio, a studio video and a label for young singers from the telehake The Voice Africa.
In return, she allows herself to be crossed by the creation of young musicians. Thus, his new record, Couleur, is adorned with electron tones. To give it her urban, afro-pop flamboyance, she entrusted the realization to TamSir. “It’s a young 21-year-old arranger setting fire to the Ivory Coast, especially with his group Kiff No Beat,” she says. “He’s part of my extended family because he’s a grandson. “Bock, where I spent my childhood. I needed to give clarity, youth to my music. I intend to practice this profession until my death. He I had to revive my score.”
To give women self-confidence
For even more than usual, Dobet Gnahoré followed a rule and an exact intuition, a common thread: his desire to dance, from first to last track. And above all, it is aimed at women for every step, for every sentence, for every title.
She celebrates their beauty, their pride, sends them extremely positive messages … She says: “I have gone through a very dark moment in my life. And then I got this click: I thought someone outside would I was actually the only one who could help me with this belief: I can, I come, I have to get out of it. So I address women, to my sisters as in patriarchal societies, I am more subject to doubt and hesitation. I encourage them to take their fate on his head, to choose his life, his career … “
Thus, she raises her daughters in complete independence: in values, respect, culture and musicality. She defines herself as “a very open woman, open minded, between tradition and modernism, maniac, hardworking, energetic, funny …”
And here is what emerges from this record, mostly sung in French, her adopted language, where it appears on the cover, grimed in blue, floral. Her voice, nourishing every day by vocalizations, meditation, yoga, sleep, reflecting, song by song, her temperament and her soul.
And it is really the spirit of an authentic singer that shines through, as when she gives herself more, gently, the title of Redemption: “I was achieved by the disease in Lyme, and before I found the doctor who healed me, I composed this track. For several months. “I had no more dreams, no memories … I had lost my voice … And I composed Redemption. I prayed to God that he would purify me, give me new life.”
Color thus sounds like a resurrection, a joyful, optimistic record, which surfs Moroccan rhythms, clippings, house or highlife colors. The testimony of a woman, a fighter who holds his destiny well in his hand every day …
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