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"I used to dream of a world in which composers, performers and producers could make music without being constrained by the bottlenecks of genre and market forces. French guitarist Titi Robin has made an album as if tht fantasy were true ... the result is rich and moving, a tale with the depth of a novel and the narrative drive of a folk legend."
John L. Walters THE GUARDIAN 2009 (about KALI SULTANA)
" I do think he is one of the world's great musicians and visionaries."
Charlie Gillet, BBC-London, 2009
"One of the most interesting French gypsy guitarists today"
Los Angeles Philharmonic / Hollywood Bowl
" "Gitans" was not only ranked as one of the best albums of the year by critics around the world, but it is widely considered one of the best albums of Gypsy music ever recorded."
Dan Rosenberg, The Gypsy Road
"Titi Robin is probably one of the best known French composer / musician in the crossover world music style."
Eelco Schider, Folkworld
Thierry Robin, known as “Titi”, the self-taught musician born at the end of the fifties in western France, has created a musical world for himself instinctively assimilating elements in response to his need to express himself. The two worlds in which he has navigated daily and that have both directly and deeply influenced him are the gipsy and oriental cultures.
Before the World Music trend was born, these communities were open and encouraging to him while French mainstream music struggled with his approach. Arab and gipsy community celebrations provided him with the opportunity to test his original musical sound against these rich traditions from which he took his inspiration while never imitating them, obstinately looking for the best way in which to express himself as a contemporary artist. The musicians accompanying him were almost all from these minority groups. The two artists of major importance to him were the flamenco cantaor Camaron de la Isla and the Iraqi master oud player Munir Bachir.
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photo Louis Vincent
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At the beginning of the eighties he began to compose in an extremely personal style that has stayed with him since. In 1984 he produced himself (playing the guitar, the oud and the bouzouki) in a duet with Hameed Khan, the Indian tablas player from Jaipur, performing both on stage and in local festivities, clubs and oriental restaurants. His repertory (instrumental) grew little by little, just as the foundations of his improvisational style. An album : “Duo Luth et Tablâ”, that is no longer produced and has become a collector’s piece, bears witness to this original universe.
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Duo Luth et tablâ, with Hameed Khan (photo: D. Meuriault)
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In 1987, a strange group entered the musical scene in Angers:
“Johnny Michto”, a mixture of Moroccan Berber rhythms, electric bouzouki, rock bass guitar, clarinets and bagpipes; an attempt to offer the public something other than the rock groups that proliferated, by bringing together the folk cultures of the group’s members. Once again, it would be the North African community that gave the band the warmest welcome, the “born and bred” French finding it hard to take on board this novel style.
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photo: Christine Bartaud
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While working on the instrumental duo with Hameed Khan, mixing melodic improvisations and light-hearted rhythmical duels, Thierry Robin met the Breton singer Erik Marchand, a representative of what he considered to be the richest folk and traditional culture to be found near his region of birth. Together they would develop a repertory of compositions using quarter tone modes and the marriage of the Taqsîm style of oriental modal improvisation and the Gwerz, the very ancient monophonic lament that the singer is one of the few to preserve alongside Yann Fanch Kemener. Ocora Radio-France sent them into the recording studio: “An Henchou Treuz” (1990) was awarded the Charles Cros Academy Grand Prize.
It was the beginning of the meeting of two duos that would turn into the “Erik Marchand Trio”, for which Thierry Robin composes and arranges the best part of its repertory. This highly original group composed of a Breton singer, Arab lute player and a specialist of the Indian tablas (as a matter of interest, a photo of the group illustrates the first article on “world music” in the Encyclopaedia Universalis), performed a great deal, from Womad festivals to stages presenting contemporary music, from the Paris Théâtre de la Ville to the Quartz in Brest, and the jazz scene that greatly appreciates their innovative approach to improvisation. They also toured abroad, from Quebec to Houston, from Marrakech to Jerusalem. In 1991 the first “Erik Marchand Trio” work was released : “An Tri Breur” on the Silex record label.
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photo:
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With this group, Titi Robin had become known above all as an oud player. “Gitans”, released in January 1993, would better define the musician’s world, introducing the bouzouki and guitar player. It is a homage by the artist to the gipsy community that taught him so much. A mosaic of encounters between artists dear to Titi Robin, representing the various branches of this great family, from Northern India to Andalusia, via the Balkans, from which he draws his personal musical vision. Guest musicians : Gulabi Sapera (vocals), Bruno el Gitano (vocals, palmas, guitar), Mambo Saadna (vocals, palmas, guitar), Paco el Lobo (vocals, palmas) François Castiello (accordion), Hameed Khan (tablas), Francis Moerman (guitar), Abdelkrim Sami (percussion), Bernard Subert (clarinet, bagpipes). This record, and the ensuing group, met with a large audience of both erudite music-lovers and amateurs of Mediterranean music. “Gitans” toured from Japan to the Hollywood Ball (USA), from South Africa to Europe’s major World Music festivals.
At the beginning of 1996, “Le Regard Nu”, an instrumental record entirely improvised and the outcome of a year of experimental research was released, breaking away from this remarkable collective adventure. Thierry Robin took inspiration from the poses of women models, just as a painter or a sculptor, to fuel his solo musical improvisations on the oud and bouzouki. This unique album remains one of his great pride and joys with admirers from across the planet.
Gitans’ tours continued, giving rise to “Payo Michto” in 1997, a live album with Francis Varis playing the accordion.
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Gitans (photo: )
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Titi Robin was looking for a path along which he could create ties with modern Western folk music. The result was a new group, whose orchestration included the saxophone, drums and bass. It’s name : “Kali Gadji ”. The ever-present gipsy and oriental influences mix with French rap and Western African polyrhythms. Guest musicians are Renaud Pion (saxophones), Abdelkrim Sami (vocals, percussion), Farid “Roberto” Saadna (vocals, guitar, palmas), Jorge “Negrito” Trasante (drums), Gabi Levasseur (accordion), Alain Genty (bass) and Bernard Subert (oboe, bagpipes). This orchestra toured for many years alongside “Gitans”.
In 2000 “Un ciel de Cuivre” was released, an album that Titi Robin believes best represents his musical universe in all its diversity. Fifteen guest musicians include Farid “Roberto” Saadna, Gulabi Sapera, Keyvan Chemirani, François Laizeau, Renaud Pion, Negrito Trasante, Francis-Alfred Moerman,… Speaking of this album, Titi Robin said : “This new record is not performed by a precise orchestra, unlike PAYO MICHTO or KALI GADJI, that precede it. It bears witness to the diversity of my influences and, I hope, to the coherency of my aesthetic universe. Gipsy cultures, both Mediterranean and Balkan, are still very present, but this is above all a personal vision of the world that I want to express through these musical marriages that make up my everyday life. This album, just like the record GITANS released in 1993, is a voyage, each melody has a particular flavour, each rhythm a story, the geography of its cultural origins is a mirror image of the traveller’s inner landscape. There are intimist melodies and festive rumbas, grief-stricken chants and a gipsy lullaby, highly-orchestrated dance music and calm trios, snowy mountains and sunny shores, blood, spices and honey, and many other things that you may discover before I do…”.
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In studio at Waimes (photo: A. Von Buxhoeveden)
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From then on, a sextet toured continuously, presenting tracks from this record alongside older compositions.
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Sextet (photo: Véronique Guillien)
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An instrumental trio also began to perform (oud, guitar, bouzouki/accordion/percussion) with Francis Varis and Abdelkrim Sami, drawing from Titi’s entire repertory. They played mostly abroad, especially in the Middle-East.
Since 1992, Thierry Robin has constantly worked with Gulabi Sapera (famous in India as "Gulabo") , about whom he has even written a book “Gulabi Sapera, Danseuse Gitane du Rajasthan” (2000, Naïve/Actes-Sud). She was a frequent guest performer at Tit’s shows and the songs “Pundela”, from the album “Gitans” and “La rose de Jaipur” from “Un ciel de Cuivre”, illustrate the extent to which the encounter between these two artists was an emotional one.
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Titi and Gulabo in Jaipur (photo: Véronique Guillien)
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In 2002 a work by both artists was released : “Rakhî ” dedicated to the union of their respective worlds using songs from the cast of the Kalbeliyas, the snake charmers, of whom Gulabi is the emblematic and internationally renowned dancer. "JIVULA", a show uniting her choreography and Titi Robin’s compositions, took form in September 2002 and was performed on numerous French and international stages. With lighting specially created by Pascale Paillard, this new scenic venture was given a very warm reception.
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with "Gulabo" at the Café de la Danse -Paris 2002 (photo: Bill Akwa Bétoté)
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In the same year he composed the entire soundtrack for Manuel Boursinhac’s film “The Code (La Mentale)”. The director wanted Titi’s musical world to accompany his images, while the artist learnt much from this new adventure that he hopes will happen again.
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2004: release of the anthology ALEZANE by Naïve. Presentation of “Alezane” by Thierry “Titi” Robin: “These two records are a selection of recordings made over a period of a dozen years, but draw from some twenty-five years of compositions. In my preceding albums, I have always tried to bring together dance and intimist tracks in the smoothest possible way. Here, on the contrary, we present a panorama by categorising the tracks as either rhythmic tunes (CD I) “Le Jour”) or calmer ones (CD II “La Nuit”).
The true challenge is to express, within an artistic system that has rather more imposed itself on me than been chosen by me, my path as a contemporary musician, all the colours and scents that envelop and go through me. I invited Eric Roux-Fontaine to work on the visual aspects of this project. Eric is a contemporary creator, painter, photographer, involved in gipsy cultures for the past dozen or so years. He agreed to undertake the entire graphic conception of this double album.”
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photo and painting: Eric Roux-Fontaine
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The same year, Eric Roux-Fontaine asked Titi Robin for a series of poetic texts for his book RAJASTHAN, un voyage aux sources gitanes”, published by Garde-Temps. Using writing as a tool, Titi continues his aesthetic research.
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from "Kalakars Colony" (Eric Roux-Fontaine)
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KALI SULTANA l'ombre du ghazal
photo Louis Vincent
KALI SULTANA
L’ombre du ghazal
Autumn 2008 – time: 1h45’
Francis Varis : accordion, arrangement for strings
Ze Luis Nascimento : percussions
Kalou Stalin : gumbass
Renaud Pion : clarinets, saxophones, arrangement for strings
Maria Robin : voice, dance
Anne Berry : viola
Aude Marie Duperret : viola
Véronique Tat : cello
Titi Robin : ‘ud, buzuq, guitar, composition, artistic direction
“When words fail, music raises its voice,” Vladimir Jankelevich used to claim. Titi Robin’s music expresses what words often have difficulty capturing: it speaks of the extreme solitude of the soul, the naked truth of heartfelt emotions, the delicate grandeur of love, the tough but necessary process of learning how to live one’s life, and the fierce sensation, occasionally tinged with violence, that the beauty of the world can stir in each and every one of us. These thoughts and sensations, which can only be conquered within the secret confines of love, are generally those we keep to ourselves, for our normal vocabulary is unable to retranscribe them. However, with the aid of his instruments (guitar, ‘oud, bouzouq), Titi Robin manages to share them with his fellow human beings.
For over thirty years, this restless musician has swum at the confluence of gypsy and Arab cultures. He has surfed the impetuous and majestic poetic wave that flows from the foothills of India through Central Asia down to the banks of the Mediterranean in every direction. But it is impossible to reduce his art to a simple desire to blend sounds and styles, less still to an ambition to concoct an acceptable style of world music. On his new album, Kali Sultana – L’Ombre du Ghazal, Titi Robin proves as never before that his quest is to develop an intensely personal language, straight from the heart and rooted in his flesh, which hugs the topography and fault-lines of a vast interior landscape. A language unlike any other, whose natural eloquence and evocative force are all the more striking because they do not need to resort to words. “As an instrumentalist, I think I know how to tell a story,” he says. “I have a very concrete relationship to music: I say things that are extremely specific and that are always rooted in my own experience. If the musical form I use can make them more tangible for people, then that is of course the course I’ll follow. Kali Sultana is the crystallisation of that idea.”
A long suite arranged in two parts, seven movements and three interludes, this river of an album has the power and flow of a lyric and epic poem. Melodic and rhythmical motifs follow on from one another, answer each other and expound on each other, united by the free inspiration of music which abolishes any distance between improvisation and the written tradition, individual expression and collective dynamics, the fervour of dance and meditative introspection, a commitment to the real world and the aspiration of dreams. As ever in Titi Robin’s music, these motifs weave the outline of a story, in which it is Kali Sultana (the “Black Queen”), who this time takes pride of place.
She is the feminine incarnation of grace, an ideal of beauty that every artist pursues; she is the universal, imaginary and yet ubiquitous muse, whose indescribable and elusive splendour every artist dreams of embracing. As Titi Robin is one of these men whose thirst for beauty is never sated, he has intimate knowledge of it; he has been chosen to paint its portrait and invent a story that leads it, over the course of the album, from the edge of the desert to the feverish heart of the city. “Kali Sultana is a very loaded symbol and she has several faces and several forms. She represents the beauty every artist seeks, and the harmony, the pleasure of making music and meeting the audience for which every improviser strives. Kali Sultana is my name for that quest. This goddess and I go back a long way, as she has sometimes been embodied in the people I have lived and worked with. She can be very violent, but this violence also makes it possible to express and to resolve things. I have always felt it is very important to express the softest things as well as the most violent in my music. That’s also due to my gypsy heritage; we can be very sentimental and very arid, blend spices with honey. We look for that kind of balance in life. We very rarely manage it, but we can sometimes achieve it in art.”
Titi Robin achieves this balance on this album to a large extent through his perfect understanding with his partners. Kali Sultana was developed during several residencies (in Châteaubriand, Angers and Rheims) and on stage, and is built on the close dialogue with this first circle of musicians who, over many years, have become his own body and soul: the bass player Kalou Stalin, the accordion player Francis Varis and the percussion player Zé Luis Nascimento, as well as the clarinettist and saxophonist Renaud Pion. “Every one of us contributed, added his touch to the project, brought in his own personality and culture. That’s also why this music doesn’t talk about music; it talks about our lives. The moment we record is always a concentrate of life; every emotion is heightened. The music on Kali Sultana is like a river with all its tributaries, all the streams that pour into it and sweep along objects which either float on the surface or sink to the bottom. Everyone has played their part in the final result, perhaps even more so in this particular project because the work we did on the tunes, the rhythms, even the very substance of the music, has taken a long time. I am really proud of how everything has come together.”
One of the elements that holds the music together on Kali Sultana is the string section (two violas and a cello). The parts it plays, in arrangements by by Renaud Pion and Francis Varis, settle like a veil over the sculpted shapes made by Titi Robin and his band. “I’d already used strings on the album Ces Vagues and on the soundtrack for the film La Mentale. But this time they take up more space: they are an integral part of the adventure, including in live performances… The soloists give shape to Kali Sultana: their playing, their tunes and their rhythms are its flesh. But then you can’t just let the music wander naked through the desert, through town or on stage… So the strings are its clothing, but they don’t hide its grace and its natural beauty. They are there to emphasise its nobility and to reassure it too, because you always feel vulnerable when you’re naked.”
In this project, which is mainly instrumental, a voice makes two appearances on the second half of Kali Sultana: once in the third movement and once in the Rumba Sultana that precedes the epilogue. Chanting in her vibrant voice, Maria Robin, Titi’s daughter, lends an added intensity to the music, which, throughout the album, celebrates the pre-eminence of singing. “I consider singing to be the purest form of expression. That’s why I’ve accompanied both male and female singers so often. I’m not a singer myself, but in practice I try to make people forget the instruments. I have no particular respect for virtuosity; in fact, I try to be skilful enough so that people forget the technical aspects, and so that people who have heard me play are left with the impression that I have spoken to them, that I have sung something to them. With Kali Sultana, I wanted to champion the idea that my music is a song, and I also wanted the voice and the lyrics to emerge at a particular moment. All of that crystallises out around Maria’s voice and takes on even greater importance because she appears so little.”
In its many individual details and in its structure as a whole as well, the story of Kali Sultana thus reflects the visions and aspirations of a musician who, step by step, digs down ever deeper into the very substance of his desires, his experiences and his impulses. It is precisely because Titi Robin has plumbed the burning heart of his being that he is able to arouse the most ardent and sensitive feelings in his listeners. “I am searching for an ideal form of music that will be the mirror of my inner sky. We feel no greater solitude than within our deepest emotions. But the magic of art is that the expression of our most private feelings can build bridges to the solitude of others. In general, people sense this: there is an echo in the audience and among those who listen to the album, and it creates a bond. That intensity produces incredible pleasure, which helps both the one who causes it and those who receive it to live. This search will go on forever. Are we closer today than we were before or than we will be tomorrow? We don’t know, but this search is what keeps us alive, just like our search for love and beauty.”
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photo Louis Vincent
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JAADU (magic)
NOUVEAU DISQUE ET NOUVEAU SPECTACLE EN 2009:
La rencontre entre Titi Robin et Faiz Ali Faiz s’est faite au sein du Festival Les Escales à Saint-Nazaire en 2006 puis s'est concrétisée en 2008 grâce aux Festival de Saint Denis et au Traumzeit de Duisburg.
Les deux musiciens ont créé bien plus qu’un simple dialogue entre deux répertoires. Ils ont décidé d’aller plus profondément vers un travail de création commune. Titi a donc composé pour ce projet un ensemble de mélodies originales, choisissant avec soin les modes et les rythmes illustrant son rapport personnel à l'univers du qawwali, et Faiz Ali a cherché des inspirations dans les textes poétiques ourdous pouvant s’allier parfaitement à ces créations instrumentales. Puis il a façonné l’ensemble pour qu’il se prête à une interprétation par un groupe de qawwali. Ensuite, ils peaufinèrent arrangements et orchestrations.
Cette création commune est une première. Elle permet à une des plus grandes voix du Pakistan de sortir du cadre strict de la pratique soufi et des cérémonies de qawwali pour s’épanouir au contact d'un répertoire mélodique inédit. Et l’on se rend compte que, de la France au Pakistan, il est des pistes insoupçonnées qui mènent à des échanges entre chant et musique parce que les cordes vocales et les dix doigts de chaque être humain aspirent sans doute à la même plénitude.
C’est alors que s’opère la mise en commun : une voix, une guitare ou un rubab, le chœur et le tabla de l’un, l’accordéon et les percussions de l’autre, une clarinette, un harmonium… Et chacun s’écoute et chacun s’épaule, s’étonnant presque de la fusion possible. C’est une sorte de chant long qui s’appuie sur la structure musicale, ce chant qui habille volontiers une seule syllabe de plusieurs notes pour laisser parler les sentiments, en faire le tour et souligner chacune de leurs couleurs. Ce type de chant que se partagent les chanteurs de flamenco, les Gitans de Hongrie, les castes du Rajasthan, les chanteurs classiques de l’Inde ou du Pakistan. Un chant qui prend le temps de dire ce que ne dit pas la parole. Et la musique vient comme vient la guitare en Andalousie ou le rythme au Pakistan. La musique s’en mêle et parfois la guitare, le bouzouq ou le rubab afghan s’embrasent, flambés de flamenco, gorgés de tous les orients, assoiffés de partages et d’échanges, allumés de la voix de Faiz Ali Faiz. Et la guitare s’impose, monte, interrompt, heureuse, tendre, sensuelle. On dirait que les doigts de Titi s’agenouillent sur les cordes pour que l’instrument s’incline et lance un chant de dignité et de respect en réponse à la voix du qawwal. Et le chanteur poursuit, emportant les notes qui viennent d’illuminer son chant, soulevé par cette danse instrumentale subtile, parade amoureuse irrésistible des cordes de l’instrument à celles de la voix. Parfois les deux s’envolent ensemble, enlacés dans la même ascension, comme si chacun aidait l’autre à atteindre l’extase puis le repos nécessaire qui s’ensuit dans le silence retrouvé avant l’étreinte suivante.
Thierry Robin et Faiz Ali Faiz ont la maîtrise du langage qui rend ce genre de rencontre possible. Loin d’être une démonstration massive de vocabulaire et de dextérité, cet échange se fait, comme il se doit, sur une écoute mutuelle, sur un respect et sur une soif du même nectar, celui qui permet aux musiques de s’approcher à petits pas, en confiance, sans jamais se toiser. Mais en finissant par s’aimer dans un même élan.
Etienne Bours
CD ACCORDS CROISES
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photo Louis Vincent
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the tryptic RIVER BANKS 2010 / 2011
I have never felt comfortable with the economic, social and cultural order that reigns over the field of ‘world music’, that makes Western artists travel to countries in the East and the South that posess rich musical traditions. They collect music, repertories and musicians from there and return to fructify this godsend in the privileged world of the well-off West, where the art market is structured in a sufficiently rational manner to allow musicians to develop their careers and live of their art. None of us find this strange. The audience in those countries rarely have the opportunity to judge the results of our work as it is almost unavailable to them. Perhaps the time has come to reverse this trend. In any case, I feel the need to do so in order to preserve the coherence and balance of my own journey as an artist and as a human being. - Titi, Gulabi Sapera, and Dino Banjara, a few years ago … (photo Véronique Guillien, Jaipur)
Project I am working in the following three countries: India, Turkey and Morocco; three essential phases in my creation and three countries in which I have often performed and with which I have a strong artistic and personal link. The end product, a music CD, will contain my original repertoire, representative of my style and of what it owes to each country. It will be the expression of what I owe to each of these cultures, the influences that have nourished my personal, original creation, the sources of which I would like to share (cf. see below). In each country, local musicians and a sound engineer will be working together in a studio. We are producing, creating and mixing the CD (including its visual aspect) in collaboration with local partners. The CD will first be released in that particular country, with the support of the local media and whenever possible it will be accompanied by a concert tour. In each case, we are working with my repertoire and interpreting it in a mixture of local and my own styles. A number of French partners (embassies, Alliance françaises, Culture France) have already committed to supporting this project. I have suggested to my record label (Naïve) to assemble the three Cds “import” in a compilation box which they will distribute in France and the rest of the world (the practical details and territories would need to be defined between the production partners).
The final object will be “visibly” an imported object (graphics design, language). The music CD will be sold under cellophane, as in its country of origin. The international compilation box will also contain a booklet with the translation of the texts from the original covers. A DVD sharing this adventure will be included in the compilation edited by naïve. It will be shot by the indian documentarist Renuka George.
This project can exist as for once – contrary to the usual market rules – aesthetic and philosophical interests are in harmony with the economic aspect because the producers from the three countries are guaranteed a distribution abroad in advance. This has made it possible for them to counteract the fragility of the local system and to recoup their investment more easily. Moreover, their product will be distributed abroad. The musicians will also benefit from this record as they will become better known thanks to my Western audience and my distribution system. Finally, it will allow me to reach audiences which I would like to touch through my music.
From a musical and stylistic point of view, there are a number of correspondances between the repertoires on each of the three CDs they will serve to highlight stylistic differences as well as what is common to the three countries.
Certain themes will be performed on all three CDs, certain poems will be translated into all three languages, with an arrangement that is different each time, depending on the musicians and their instruments. There are, of course, also links with the already existing interpretations in France.
This is above all an artistic creation which attempts to integrate and “digest” geographical and social constraints. It does not aim to be exhaustive with regard to a countries musical styles; the artistic expression remains deeply personal. Example for India
Creation of a music CD in India followed by a concert tour on its release:
The project has begun with an artist residency to prepare and produce the recording of the new themes that I have composed, destined for an orchestra conisting excusively of Indian musicians.
The CD is being produced in collaboration with the main partner in India: BLUE FROG LABEL (recording studio, record label and distributor).
The result will be an “Indian” CD by Titi Robin. 
Production Process 1) one or several trips to finalize the selection of musicians and the production partners (recording studio, record label, distribution, patronage, promotion) and the place for the residency and recording
2) artist residency to rehearse followed by recording
3) mix and product fabrication (including graphic design) In progress
4) CD release and concert tour in India
5) Delayed release in France and abroad in the form of a triptych compilation box published by Naïve
Partners:
Culturesfrance is supporting the totality of the project for the three countries (Gaëlle Massicot).
In India, the confirmed partners are the French Embassy in New Delhi (Bénédicte Alliot), Alliance Française in New Delhi ((Myriam Kruger), Alliance Française in Mumbai (Anne Dubourg), Blue Frog Mumbai.
Titi Robin
(2) A booklet will be included in the international compilation box containing an introduction to each artist, translations of the texts in the different languages, as well as a presentation of each participating record label.
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photo Louis Vincent
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Thierry “Titi” Robin is a fringe artist. He is placed within a “World Music” movement that he does not acknowledge, as it seems to him to be motivated by a profound ethnocentricity, creating a barrier between Western “ethnic” music (rock, jazz…) and others! For him, the crossing of music is not a value in itself, but quite simply a reality, his reality. The main thing is to find the right path between the feeling giving rise to the creation and the artistic form used to express it, whether it take a purely traditional form or one that explodes all established codes. Forging his own path, he has taken heed of the encouragement given by eminent artists such as flamenco singers Fosforito and Chano Lobato, as well as the virtuoso oud player Munir Bachir, who have seen in this atypical approach sincerity and authenticity that go well beyond any differences.
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photo: Bill Akwa Bétoté
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