Live with Marthe & Pilani Bubu + Emel #SessionLive, South Africa x Tunisia

From South Africa to Tunisia, setting foot in France and the United States, our guests are Pilani Bubu, accompanied by the Marthe and Emel quartet, with an exclusively female team.

Martha And Pilani Bubu reveal Nay’ Indaba, the first joint album of the French trans-oriental jazz-rock collective and the famous South African singer and poet. A sonic odyssey through South Africa, its rhythms and its women activists. These two entities merge to musically tell the history and cultures of South Africa through the prism of strong women. With this first disc which brings together several musical worlds, where guitars, ancestral rhythmic elements, committed singing, captivating voices and haunting brass instruments intertwine, this new entity unveils a unique sound and human adventure. Nay’ Indaba refers, in the Zulu language, to an important conversation to have. “Indaba” is the meeting of Nguni chiefs to discuss relevant societal issues. In this album, the group is interested in social facts in South Africa, in its struggles, within a hybrid music sublimated by soul and experimental jazz influences. There is an African proverb that says that a mother feels all the pains of her children through an invisible connection from birth, through the child’s umbilical cord (inkaba yom ntana), to the navel or mother’s womb (inimba). Over the course of the album’s eight tracks, the band delves into the idea that women are the future change-makers and world leaders, due to their essence as life-givers and nurturers.

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Marthe & Pilani Bubu. © Carlos Frazao

It explores in depth South Africa’s complex history and its social ills. She shares a positive story of the continued fight against inequality, youth unemployment and poverty, and advocates for the progress and success of formerly disadvantaged black people, as did the indelible Storyteller, Pilani Bubu, while welcoming the French quartet Marthe in South Africa. Rooted in the magnetic atmosphere and memories of this country, a musicality that is both psychedelic and fierce emerges. What an honor it was to host the first leg of this collaborative writing residency in South Africa at Flame Studios on Constitution Hill at the Old Fort. Sharing the story of our past while working near the former women’s prison at Constitution Hill. Many stories are shared about our country, and during my time with Marthe, it was the most appropriate and organic place to work, which could infuse purpose and inspiration into our creative process. It contains part of the country’s history… its conflicts, its progress and its victories. And indeed, the energy and the cause at Constitution Hill found their way into music. It is an ode to the Women’s Jail, to Imbokodo (the strong women who marched to the Union Buildings in 1956) and to her children today, navigating the generational impact of our country’s history, says Pilani Bubu.

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Marthe & Pilani Bubu & Laurence Aloir. © Laurence Aloir/RFI

Titles performed at the big studio

-Asifani Live RFI

– Awuyazialbum extract

-Umfazi Live RFI.

Line Up: Pilani Bubu (singing), Florent Briqué (trumpet), Alexis Moutzouris (saxophone/clarinet), Lucas Territo (guitar), Damien Bernard (battery), Maggie Doherty (translation).

Sound: Mathias Taylor, Jérémie Besset.

► Album Nay’ Indaba _ important conversation in Xhosa language (L’oreille en friche 2024).

Asizolalala clip

Facebook Pilani.

Then we welcome Emel (Mathlouthi) for the release of her new album MRA.

Sometimes you have to know how to regain self-control. Just a little and above all, with force. Emel did it with this fourth album which is nothing like anything you’ve ever heard from her. MRA is like a dancing and percussive new birth. Since his arrival on the international scene in 2012 with his album Kelmti Horra, Emel has always offered music that intensely involves his listeners. Music whose “speech is free” (“Kelmti Horra” in Arabic, yes) and a true soundtrack of revolutions.

With MRA, Emel wanted to deconstruct to rebuild everything, to stimulate herself, “so that the music remains alive”, she says. The result is an album with powerful, saving and feminist music. Powerful by its feverish productions, hip-hop, pop and reggaeton, perfect dressing of a fight – evidenced by the title Massive Will which opens the album, in which the instruments box the ear. Saving through its evocative power and its unifying words, worthy of the greatest manifestos – “My voice has no limits / my voice has no end”, she proclaims in Souty. Feminist just by the name of this album, MRA meaning “woman” in Arabic. But a woman who would not respect the codes. Feminist too because written, thought and produced exclusively by and with women. With MRA, Emel wants to create a movement made up of tired but tireless women. Alongside Camélia Jordana, Nayomi, Alyona Alyona… Women who sing, rap, produce, write in English, Arabic or French but who agree on the same language and the same fight. “My responsibility is to carry their voices at the same time as I carry mine,” proclaims Emel.

MRA, for a feminist musician who realized that she had not given enough voice to women by surrounding herself. MRA is only the result of these awarenesses. For that, she needed to rise from her ashes (“I will rise again like a Phoenix” she mentions in Rise). Saying, as in the title Nar – inspired by the message and aura of superstar MIA – “I am a warrior, a witch, a superhero”. Deconstruct to rebuild better, yes, but together. So come and sing in unison with her on this divine interplay of voices and Arabic reggaeton in Lose My Mind. On the glorified rap of Idha, too, inspired by freedom (“If one day the people desire life, destiny must bend.”) Yes, let’s accompany Emel on I’ll Leave, electro declaration of love to her father who passed on to her the love of music but above all the empathy that, unfortunately, she does not see in the world (“Father, they have lost their mind”). With her and the Ukrainian rapper Alyona Alyona, let us honor in Mauritius this Ivorian immigrant fired for having taken a break. It’s also impossible not to escape the evocative power of Mazel with its tender synths, co-produced with Pénélope Antena. Title where we travel to a Tunisian village to tell the story of the rape of a trans woman. Let’s take back the reins of our destinies as Emel encourages us to do with this sublime MRA. Mazel, moreover, which means nothing other than “again”. Despite the threatening ugliness of the world and its violence, let us fight again. By never forgetting to do it – together – while dancing.