Dub Inc (as in Incorporated) could just as well have been called Dub Ind (as in independent). That is one of the messages of "Rude Boy Story", the documentary directed and self-produced by Kamir Meridja.
The fruit of three years of adventure alongside Dub Inc, "Rude Boy Story" feeds on a paradox: Dub Inc is both popular and little - or not at all - represented in the so-called traditional media. "We're not fashionable", can be heard in the film. An observation that is a source of "frustration", but also one that is accepted: "We've never played the game, the single game for example", says Aurélien "Komlan" Zohou, the band's other singer, to camera. The singularity of Dub Inc - and of Kamir Meridja's documentary - lies in this permanent in-between. It is, moreover, very well explained by Mike of Sinsemilia, whose testimony also highlights the difficulty of life after overexposure.
Word of mouth, closeness to the audience, resourcefulness, hardships, great encounters…: Dub Inc is the art of organised, joyful making-do. "For me, the aim was to bear witness to this band's approach. It's a film that presents another way of making music, and of carrying a project in 2012", Kamir Meridja confided on Tuesday 18 September, at the documentary's preview in Paris, at the Le Balzac cinema, just off the Champs-Élysées.
Obviously, we discover various facets of a band's life: interviews, studio recordings or dubplates, trips (including the one, so unifying for the band, to Jamaica in January 2009)... The concerts, too (and the signature tracks that go with them: Rude Boy, Murderer, Métissage…). The ones that draw crowds, on stages in Barcelona, Berlin, Ostrava, Algiers…; the ones that take place in bars of varying warmth (you have to see the gulf between the coldness of a bar in NYC and the fervour of a Portuguese dive); or the meaningful concerts in Saint-Étienne, at the Palais des Spectacles in 2004, then at the Zénith in October 2008.
"No limits"
Kamir Meridja interviews artists who orbit, closely or from afar, around Dub Inc: Mike of Sinsemilia, David of Babylon Circus ("They chose "do it yourself", and "they did it!") and Tiken Jah Fakoly, who hails the Saint-Étienne group's "exemplary career". The Ivorian singer, who collaborated notably on the album "Diversité" (2003), appears during his concert with the Saint-Étienne band in March 2004, a concert that made it possible (through the association Synapse) to build a school in Touroni, in Ivory Coast. "It's a band with a message, that doesn't just sing", adds Tiken.
Those messages are distilled in interviews given to the media (including an amusing one, recorded in the offices of the New York radio station WHCR), but also by the band members themselves: "Independence, for us, is this: having fun doing what we want, because we feel like it. We don't set ourselves limits", sums up Zigo, the drummer, whose colourful and funny plain speaking hits home at each of his interventions. The story of this "bunch of school friends" (as Jeje, the guitarist, puts it) is thus skilfully summed up by Kamir Meridja, in a successful documentary, capable of enlightening both the initiated and the uninitiated about the "Sainté" band.
Saint-Étienne, we come back to it. In the first chapter of "Rude Boy Story", entitled "Day after day", the director zooms in on the roots of Dub Inc, through archive footage of the local Saint-Étienne scene, or interviews with players in associative life. When it came to summing up Dub Inc's adventurous side, Kamir Meridja no doubt found the best interlocutor in Rachid el-Hadak, a Saint-Étienne boxer: "It's about giving it everything, like back in '76, the great era of Les Verts!" For Dub Inc, it is the green of a regenerating hope.
"Rude Boy Story", screenings:
25 September: Cinéma Le Club in Grenoble (38)
26 September to 2 October: Cinéma le Comoedia - Lyon (69)
26 September to 9 October: Cinéma le Méliès in Villeneuve d'Ascq (59)
27 September: Espace Louis Aragon in St-Vallier (71)
29 September: Cinéma Family in Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert (42)
And still showing at Cinéma le Méliès in St-Étienne (42)
The trailer:
Word of mouth, closeness to the audience, resourcefulness, hardships, great encounters…: Dub Inc is the art of organised, joyful making-do. "For me, the aim was to bear witness to this band's approach. It's a film that presents another way of making music, and of carrying a project in 2012", Kamir Meridja confided on Tuesday 18 September, at the documentary's preview in Paris, at the Le Balzac cinema, just off the Champs-Élysées.
Obviously, we discover various facets of a band's life: interviews, studio recordings or dubplates, trips (including the one, so unifying for the band, to Jamaica in January 2009)... The concerts, too (and the signature tracks that go with them: Rude Boy, Murderer, Métissage…). The ones that draw crowds, on stages in Barcelona, Berlin, Ostrava, Algiers…; the ones that take place in bars of varying warmth (you have to see the gulf between the coldness of a bar in NYC and the fervour of a Portuguese dive); or the meaningful concerts in Saint-Étienne, at the Palais des Spectacles in 2004, then at the Zénith in October 2008.
"No limits"Kamir Meridja interviews artists who orbit, closely or from afar, around Dub Inc: Mike of Sinsemilia, David of Babylon Circus ("They chose "do it yourself", and "they did it!") and Tiken Jah Fakoly, who hails the Saint-Étienne group's "exemplary career". The Ivorian singer, who collaborated notably on the album "Diversité" (2003), appears during his concert with the Saint-Étienne band in March 2004, a concert that made it possible (through the association Synapse) to build a school in Touroni, in Ivory Coast. "It's a band with a message, that doesn't just sing", adds Tiken.
Those messages are distilled in interviews given to the media (including an amusing one, recorded in the offices of the New York radio station WHCR), but also by the band members themselves: "Independence, for us, is this: having fun doing what we want, because we feel like it. We don't set ourselves limits", sums up Zigo, the drummer, whose colourful and funny plain speaking hits home at each of his interventions. The story of this "bunch of school friends" (as Jeje, the guitarist, puts it) is thus skilfully summed up by Kamir Meridja, in a successful documentary, capable of enlightening both the initiated and the uninitiated about the "Sainté" band.
Saint-Étienne, we come back to it. In the first chapter of "Rude Boy Story", entitled "Day after day", the director zooms in on the roots of Dub Inc, through archive footage of the local Saint-Étienne scene, or interviews with players in associative life. When it came to summing up Dub Inc's adventurous side, Kamir Meridja no doubt found the best interlocutor in Rachid el-Hadak, a Saint-Étienne boxer: "It's about giving it everything, like back in '76, the great era of Les Verts!" For Dub Inc, it is the green of a regenerating hope.
"Rude Boy Story", screenings:
25 September: Cinéma Le Club in Grenoble (38)
26 September to 2 October: Cinéma le Comoedia - Lyon (69)
26 September to 9 October: Cinéma le Méliès in Villeneuve d'Ascq (59)
27 September: Espace Louis Aragon in St-Vallier (71)
29 September: Cinéma Family in Saint-Just-Saint-Rambert (42)
And still showing at Cinéma le Méliès in St-Étienne (42)
The trailer:
Report written by FX Rougeot
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