INTERVIEW : DAVILLE
Interview by : Benoit Collin & Alexandre Tonus
Pictures by : Benoit Collin
on Monday, October 09th 2006 - 10 240 views
Before leaving for Jamaica, we wanted to meet singer Daville, who occupied the airwaves and the top of the charts throughout September with his hit On my mind. Daville, formerly of ARP, falls into the "ladies' singer" category, with a crystalline timbre that recalls Sanchez, except that he uses it as well on reggae as on dancehall. While his fame has not yet crossed the Atlantic to Europe, it has already found its way to Japan.
Freshly landed in Kingston, we made an appointment with the singer, who agreed to meet us at Shaggy and Robert Livingston's Big Yard studio. The building, with a gate as imposing as the vehicles parked in the yard, looks like a small villa and hides a state-of-the-art studio, one of the best on the island, we are told. There we bump into Christopher Birch of the Birchill label (producer of the Military and Cry baby riddims, among others) and Shaggy, the resident artist.
Daville, who is in session that day for producer Shane Brown of the Juke Box label, welcomes us with a smile and sits down with us in the studio garden. A conversation.
Reggaefrance / Your father was a star in the 70s. How did that influence your career?
Daville / I can say one thing: he was the first person to take me into a studio to do my first song. But in terms of influence, in the sense of telling me “meet this person” or “go there and do that, do things this way” or even “my son, you’re doing good things, I like what you’re doing”, I never got any of that. So I can say that I wasn’t influenced by him in that sense.
How did you come to singing?
I’ve been singing for a long time, since childhood. But I only started doing it professionally at the age of 14. That’s the age at which I recorded my first song, while I was still at school.
You then joined the vocal group ARP.
The founding of ARP goes back to my youth, to my teenage years. At the time, I was in my final year of school. I was on a bus one day, on the way home from school, and I met a friend who knew a group was being put together. He told me it would be good if I agreed to be part of this group, because he knew I loved music and was already engaged in that path as a singer.
ARP is somewhat reminiscent of the tradition of Jamaican vocal groups, a tradition that has been brought back up to date.
Yes, exactly! And that’s why I became interested in it and became a member of ARP.
Another tradition that applies to ARP, as well as to you as a solo artist, is doing lots of covers of big international hits (such as those by Paul Young, KC and Jojo, Britney Spears, Ne-Yo); what is the point of that?
Well… I can’t really speak on behalf of all the members of the group, since I’m no longer part of it. But for me personally, I covered a few songs because they were my favourite tracks in a different genre of music, quite simply. I wanted to offer them to the reggae audience, with a reggae colour, a “Davillian” touch, so to speak.
You won a Reggae Soca Award in Miami, I believe. How did you experience that?
No, I didn’t win the award, unfortunately, I was beaten by Shaggy and Rik Rok. I was nominated alongside Marcia Griffiths for the song we did together, but we didn’t go all the way. But it was already an honour to be nominated alongside artists like Shaggy and Rik Rok. It stimulated me a lot.
Your album “In Heaven” came out in Japan before it came out in Europe, and a two-week tour of Japan followed; does Japan represent an important market for you?
The Japanese market is very important, just like the European market, the American market or the Caribbean market. I have a huge list of fans in Japan, whom I know, because I went there and saw it for myself. I have only heard about Europe, I have never been there yet. I really hope it will happen very soon, but I don’t want to go until I have new songs to present Daville to the public.
For your second album, “Can’t Get Over You”, the approach was the same. It came out in Japan first. Why is it so hard to find these albums elsewhere?
It’s very hard to find my albums in Europe, because I have a contract in Japan, which only covers the Japanese territory. I’m working on releasing an album for the European and American markets and the Caribbean one, which will capture the essence of my first two albums. I’m putting the finishing touches to this project, and my new single On my mind is doing rather well for now.
This song was recently number one in the charts in Jamaica; what impact has that had on your career?
The impact has been as positive as it gets.
You did a track with ARP and Gringo with violently homophobic lyrics, on the melody of Stand by me. That goes against your lovers style…
I’m a lovers rock artist above all. I do reggae, I make music, and when I make music, I do it for the people, for young and old, for men and women, whatever their class, colour, age or sexual preferences. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think I can dictate to others how to live their lives, I just know how I want to live mine. And I’ve been a pure lover of women since the day I was born.
Does ARP still exist, or for you is it now only a matter of a solo career?
My solo career is what I want to concentrate on now. I can’t see myself being part of a group at the moment. It’s only about Daville from now on.
Can you tell us about your different projects?
Apart from my album, my main goal is to gain ever more recognition and to have the freedom to make the music I want to make, in the way I want to make it. Alongside the album I'm still working on a few singles, but the album I'm preparing at the moment will contain exclusive tracks. I'm making sure this album is not only as strong as the previous ones, but stronger.
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