INTERVIEW : TAIRO
Interview by : Sébastien Jobart
Pictures by : Aurélien Chauvaud
on Thursday, June 27th 2013 - 29 982 views
With a broad smile, Tairo, whom we know well having followed him since his beginnings, is relaxed when we meet him for this interview. With his successive street tapes (volumes 2 and 3), Tairo has gone back to the fundamentals of his music and rediscovered pleasure along with success. Catchy melodies and effective riddims govern his new album, "Ainsi soit-il", whose contagious lightness contrasts with the more serious mood of "Chœurs et Âme".
A second album that suits him like a glove, and with which he will take on a new challenge: filling the legendary Paris venue L'Olympia. "I'm full of energy and motivation at the idea of playing there. How do I fill this huge hall? How do I please the audience? Which guests will I bring in? Those are my concerns." Interview.
Reggaefrance / You're back with a new album, "Ainsi soit-il" ("So Be It"). It's a strong title, so what lies behind it?
Taïro / Two things: a song called Ainsi soit-il, and also the idea that we started making this record independently, as we had done with all the street tapes I had produced. We started this album with my former manager, Gilles, who had invested some money. I could see the buzz building and I was surprised that the record companies weren't intrigued by it, because I was myself surprised by the numbers showing on YouTube. After the two independent records, I could see there was a possible way to make a living from this. At the same time, I told myself it would be hard for us to move up a level, given our limited means. Even though it's easier today to communicate and distribute your music thanks to social networks, they still have a network and resources that are considerable and more powerful than ours. So I said to myself: "So be it". It was a bit difficult… When you're a musician, a singer, a writer, you want to focus on that. When you wear several hats, it's hard to live up to every role. And so (when it came to joining Polydor, Ed.) I told myself "come what may".
Unlike "Chœurs et Âme", the album was produced entirely by the duo T'NT.
With "Chœurs & Âme", I had tried to write songs that weren't tied to a particular time. I wanted to concentrate on the lyrics and, to a degree, the melody, to present myself to the public in the most honest way possible. In the end, I found it lacked consistency because I had almost a different producer for each track. For "Ainsi soit-il" I wanted coherence, something more unified. I also wanted the album to stand the test of time, to catch up with the "urban" wagons and bring myself up to date. I knew that T'NT could both play reggae according to the classic canons and also bring a modern touch, playing dancehall or hip-hop.
Listening to the album, you get the feeling that you're fulfilled, happy…
You're right. It's my latest album, so it's the one that resembles me the most. It's also the culmination of a whole progression up to now. Having made the previous records freed me from a certain pressure. For "Ainsi soit-il", I wanted musical effectiveness: the riddim plays, you hear the melody and it works. I wanted lightness. It's true that in "Chœurs et Âme", some of what I was going through at the time is transcribed in that record, and then perhaps some apprehension, the fact that it was my first album. Maybe you can feel it, even though there are plenty of songs on it that I love.
 J'ai même pensé à arrêter la musique. Je n'avais plus de plaisir, aller en studio était devenu une difficulté, une angoisse. 
"Chœurs et Âme" was quite serious, you seemed almost tortured.
That's right, that's what it was like. My position regarding that record, the fact that it was the first, made me anxious somehow, I think there was a tension. Having put out the three street tapes helped me a lot. Now this is going to be my fifth record under my own name, it's starting to sink in (laughs).
Were those street tapes a way of rediscovering the fun?
Once I had done "Chœurs et Âme", where I had opened up, I just felt like having a blast. When I found myself alone, I went back to doing what I did in my early days: taking the riddims of the moment and voicing over them. And then there was the cover of Bonne Weed, then Une Seule vie. All of a sudden, there are millions of views on YouTube!
You even got some people thinking that Tarrus Riley and Konshens had covered your song!
(laughs) At the start, Bonne weed was a joke. I was with a mate, who was telling me about Good Girl Gone Bad and said he had got hold of the instrumental. I went for it, but I wasn't happy with my melodies, and he suggested I cover it Jamaican-style by making a weed tune. We had a blast, and an hour later we had done the track. The next day, we shot the video, edited it and put it on the web. A year later, it has become an anthem for weed smokers. I don't even need to sing it any more, people know it by heart. Like Une seule vie (on the riddim of Gyptian's Hold You, Ed.), for that matter. Going back to that did me good, because I found again that playfulness there was at the beginning, which I had lost… At one point, I even thought about giving up music. I no longer enjoyed it, going into the studio had become a struggle, a source of anxiety. When I found myself all alone, I found a bit of air and joy again, the pleasure of making music. You have fewer doubts, because it's more instinctive. Whereas when you're in something a bit more anxious, you think, you question everything all the time, and it blocks you. It did me a lot of good, and on top of that, seeing that people were buying into it, it re-motivated me.
Let's come back to the album. Aime la vie, with Youssoupha, shows some perspective, a more serene side.
My ambition for my songs is that they can be of service to the people who listen to them. More and more, I want them to be entertaining. That comes from my background, which I need to explain: my father is a Moroccan political revolutionary who went to prison, spent 17 years in exile, and whose younger sister died in prison from a hunger strike. When I was fifteen, there was no question for me of talking about anything other than the injustices of the world and carrying on his fight. With time, I said to myself: "Who are you to say what is right or not?", and then in the end people have as much information as I do. That's why in "Chœurs & Âme" I chose to talk about myself, telling myself that talking about my failures, my cracks, everything we're supposed to hide to keep our heads held high, might help people overcome their difficulties and get through their darker moments. This time, I told myself: "People are in a reality that may be difficult, wouldn't the best way to serve them be to let them escape from it, thanks to music, for the length of a song?" To take a breath of fresh air, while being musically effective.
Je m'en fous ("I Don't Care"), which opens the album, tells a bit of your story. Did you go into music against other people's advice?
I started making music around 15-16. Everything was going very well since I wasn't yet thinking of making it a career. We simply spent hours and hours singing, and I went to school on the side. The first criticisms didn't come from my family circle; my parents were rather pleased. They came from so-called specialists, other artists and all the music scientists who always have something to say. They weren't wrong about some things, because when I started I had few musical notions. A lot of desire and energy, but an enormous amount of gaps! And yet I was sure of myself, in my head I was going to become the new Bob Marley (laughs). The further I went in music, the more I learned, and the more I realised how little I knew. But rather than being encouraged by people, I attracted quite a lot of jealousy… that's the feeling I had. After the baccalauréat, the question came up again with my parents, but shortly afterwards I did "Taxi 2". That reassured them. Overall, my parents have always supported me. I was so convinced, so motivated, so sure that this was my thing and that it was going to work… It was rather astonishing, and rather naive, actually.
One inevitable theme with you is love…
Inevitable is exactly the word! (laughs) It's something that's in my life. I received a lot of love when I was little, notably from my parents. It must be something important for my balance, and I must be looking for it. When I was in a relationship, it inspired me in my songs, and when I'm single, women and love in general are very present in my mind!
That's what you sing about in Dilemme, it can cause problems…
(Laughs) Yes, it sometimes causes me a lot of problems. I'm sometimes a bit polluted by all that. It's one of the strongest emotions I've had to live through. It's something we all share. I even try to hold back when I'm preparing an album. And the producers do too! So I try, but it's difficult. When I hear artists who are totally in rebellion, denouncing the system, or else in "I carry my balls" mode, "I've got the biggest muscles", I tell myself that somehow they've been overtaken by their persona. Those people also go through love stories, successes, failures… I find it astonishing that you don't find that on their albums. Personally, an album with no variation bores me stiff, what is he giving us of himself? At the same time, music doesn't necessarily need that, sometimes all it takes is a good melody and a good riddim.
That's the case on the album, the melodies are catchy.
That was really one of my goals on this album, and even in the longer term. In "Chœurs et Âme", I had perhaps favoured the lyrics, though it depends on the tracks… On this album I managed to free myself from that. With time, you move forward and become a better musician. It perhaps gets easier. For this album I told myself that the lyrics were a pretext for the melody. If afterwards you write a beautiful song, with beautiful themes, or an interesting point of view, that's a bonus, it makes them beautiful songs and gives your music some cachet. But what mattered, what I wanted, was really this: melodies that work and that stand on their own.
There are also more serious subjects on the album, such as Justice, where you sing "They ask us for peace and make war on us, they promise us security but what are we going to do with it?"
We're not going to eat it, security! It's a track I wrote under Sarkozy. There were all those statements about insecurity, but the insecurity is social! People are struggling, and I had the feeling that those politicians, in the end, look at us with a great deal of cynicism. Behind closed doors, you must be able to hear some pretty cynical things… I don't get the impression there's much love. We come back to it, but shouldn't those people love us? I don't want to caricature, and it's hard in a song to say something fair about these things. It would take a lot of words to say that, yes, there are some who try to do things right. But when you're caught between the media-political ego, the work on the ground, the desire for a career, the urge to make money, the need to communicate… It's certainly not an easy job. But it's blatant that some people have no desire at all to serve, only a personal interest. People may tell us not to be demagogues, but for some it's staring you in the face. Maybe some people are fooled, but I don't want to be. Lots of things were coming back to me: the law on the benefits of colonisation, for example. Up to now, colonisation was given just one tiny chapter in school books. If on top of that it's to say it was a good thing, it's a total slap in the face. All those peoples who were exploited and still are today… I felt like saying that. Since I grew up in this activist culture, every now and then I can't escape it.
Ainsi soit-il, which closes the album, tells the story of a man looking back on his life and taking stock.
It's the idea of my hypothetical last day… Trying to remember the good things. Everyone has to face death… This lyric came to me from a very spontaneous inspiration and was written very quickly. That's what happens to me most often: the pen takes me somewhere. I thought of Brel's song Le Dernier repas, where he says that for his last meal, he wants to see people having a party. I like that mix of emotions, it's sad and smiling at the same time. Once again, it's like in a love story: when the end comes, it's better to remember what was good rather than let yourself be polluted by what is difficult. We part, but we remember the good things…
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