INTERVIEW
Interview by : Sebastien Jobart
Pictures by : Benoit Collin
on Monday, October 04th 2004 - 229 623 views
Jim Murple Memorial, French? Listening to their music, you would almost be surprised. With songs in English, a sound worthy of an old Jamaican two-track from the 1960s, and that scent of nostalgia, the band has spent eight years sharing its love of Jamaican and American popular music. From ska to rocksteady by way of jazz, this eight-piece orchestra has only one idea: to make people dance.
A meeting in their studio on the outskirts of Paris with Romain, guitarist and pillar of the band.
Reggaefrance / How did Jim Murple come about?
Jim Murple memorial / Initially JMM was formed by bringing together musicians of diverse influences. Originally, Denis, the drummer, had put together a band called La Barabounta with the singer of Patate. In 1991, we were in the alternative rock scene, and the guys playing rocksteady in a purist way only interested a few Parisians. Until the Skatalites became known to a wider audience in France, let's say in 1998, nobody knew the different aspects of Jamaican music. I had played with Denis in a ska band, Les Singes Hurleurs, which covered the Skatalites repertoire: Man In the Street, Al Capone, Dick Tracy… We roamed all over France back then, and nobody knew the Skatalites. But everybody agreed that the groove was good, everybody appreciated that joy in the horns. That popular side that had disappeared from jazz. Nanou already had a background as a singer, she listened to calypso, jazz… Fabrice, the bass player, had started out on rockabilly, then moved into rhythm & blues, the black music of New Orleans, Detroit… The blues, you know, the roots. Pti Louis on guitar was very into soul music, with the Stax label. Marco was a saxophonist with a big rock 'n' roll and reggae culture. Around this small team of 6 people, we decided to make a dance orchestra. With a female singer, of course. And to offer traditional music: covers and adaptations of jazz standards given a more danceable treatment. A cover of Summertime, for example. We adapt the melody to another beat. The band's leitmotif is to make people dance.
Jim Murple is an unknown singer. With that stage name, is the idea therefore to let people discover little-known gems?
That was really the idea. In the 60s, music was cornered in France by a few businessmen. These guys launched their protégés and went to feed on American popular music. They took the melodies and then readapted them in their studio with their musicians, their producer. It's cronyism. In the 60s, this phenomenon hid all the good music that was coming out elsewhere. These people had a stranglehold on a business: they put out the Sylvie Vartans and Sacha Distels, but we had no chance to hear the artists who had influenced them. Except for true music lovers, who wanted to discover this music. The general public never heard of it. Jim Murple was one of them. But in his case it's even worse, he never recorded anything. That's why we chose his name, so as not to have problems with his name with regard to his descendants. It was a way of saying: "jazz with the little finger in the air and the cup of tea, we're fed up to the back teeth with it. We're young, we want to let loose". Half-baked music of the I-invented-lukewarm-water kind, same thing. On the other hand, making music with a traditional orchestration, playing with feeling, from the heart, and paying tribute to the people who created it, is the least you can do.
When we started, people looked at us as if we were Martians. They didn't know which category to put us in. Our label is making people dance, and bringing happiness.
We can't imagine you playing any other way than with instruments…
It's the sound that matters. Any instrument was invented by people who racked their brains to design it starting from raw material. Every instrument is an incredible achievement in itself. For us, who wanted an old sound, the question didn't arise. Besides, in my view, music is something you share: the idea of the orchestra is people playing together. It's communion, everyone takes their parts, whereas the machine is more individualistic.
It feels like you record on an old 4-track… Is that the case?
In Jamaica, it was a shoestring production, there were no real means. That's what gave that sound: it's down to the equipment. We, basically, have no means. None. So we reacted in the same way: we all play together and we record. And since we have musicians who know how to make their instruments sound good, the take is good.
Speaking of which, how does it go in the studio?
There are several working methods. You also have to consider that the musicians have changed. A band, by definition, is a harmony, as in music. Of the original band, only three of us are left. So we had to find people who accept our project: not only to keep a music alive, but also to stay faithful to it. We have a double bass, drums, a guitar and a horn section, who are there to accompany the singer or the soloists. Nobody hogs the limelight, everyone is there for "the common interest". We come back to what we were saying earlier about the production methods in music today: they're very individual through the machine. There's an individualistic drift in our society today, and it wasn't easy to find people who were prepared to play the game. When, in the studio, you know how the musicians are going to play and with what energy, you don't ask yourself any questions: you plug in the mic and you record. When in certain styles the musicians are not at ease, we have to work harder to manage to play the music authentically.
You get the sense that this is something fundamental for you…
These are black, popular musics. Those guys played trance: with drums, with saxophone, bass, vocals. If you want to let loose on this simple music, you have to be able to go into a trance. All popular music has a rhythm that makes you forget the awareness of the present, and you go off into the music. With or without psychotropics. Normally, you can get there without (laughs). It's an aspect of popular music that mustn't be neglected. I would define it as sacred: a strong feeling shared by everyone, the fact that man moves forward and music must move forward. With music, you have to enter modes of communication that are abstract but based on feelings, things that touch you. It seems trivial, put like that. If on top of that there are pretty, well-written songs, with messages of hope… it's even better. But with the music alone, there's already something. An orchestra is people playing together: a beat, a breath, a heartbeat…
Who writes the tracks?
Everyone brought their themes, their arrangements… Everybody shares the same conviction. These are very generic musics. These beats, these ways of singing… We take inspiration from the spirit of a music created 40 or 50 years ago. We compose, we create new melodies. Everyone brings their parts, and then we all sign together.
The concept has won over not only the public, but also the music critics, who all praise your work.
Today, in the year 2000, there are no more bands. I'm not talking about a guy surrounded by four lads, but about a band, a real one. What gets produced and promoted, in 90% of cases, is individuals. With musicians behind them, people who know how to play an instrument and who play what they're asked. With Jim Murple, you can feel that people are involved. I think people sense a strength. It's unity that allows people with a slightly different way of life to protect themselves. To be able to make that intellectual independence concrete. Today, the more time goes on, the more the media and the schools tend to give as the only goal a method of personal emancipation. And one based on individualism, since school is based on competition. People are happy to see a football team that plays well together, and wins. Collective spirit, you know. It's becoming almost a utopia.
Can we expect to see you on television?
I don't feel like getting into the business. We did the 4-track EP, Trop Jolie, a beautiful song in French. The version on the record was sad, whereas the original is a bit cheeky. When we recorded at the time, our bass player and arranger was already doomed, and everybody knew it. We decided to redo a more cheerful, livelier version. The temptation would have been great to tell ourselves: "this track is a hit". With Nanou's voice, a studio sound, a guy who's used to working on big things, and boom, off we go. But to me those are dangerous things for a band. We're not here to make a hit, but to exist. To be in a good average, so that the promoters book us because we all have to eat. The ideal is to be able to last as long as possible like that. If you have a smash, your image is ruined. You sell 100,000 copies, and then you become part of the collective unconscious. People put you in a box.
Have you been approached by a record company?
No. Quite simply because the production method is rudimentary. With songs in English on top, it doesn't interest many people. Today, record companies are more and more timid. First they made a lot of money, then lost a lot. Right now, nobody knows what music is going to become. By force-feeding people, you devalue. The daily output today is such that there isn't enough time to listen to everything that comes out. And I'm not even talking about everything that came out in the past. It's also a mode of consumption. Today young people listen, if they like it they record it, otherwise they forget it. There's no longer that phenomenon of focusing on one artist, or one musical genre, like when we were 20. Maybe that's the good side of it.
Do you consider yourselves part of the French reggae scene?
Completely. We play reggae, rocksteady… We saw the thing more broadly. Only the great artists can do a reggae concert where you keep your ears wide open for an hour and a half. It's very difficult, staying within the same musical field, to manage to carry people along. When we vary the styles, we can keep the audience awake. We don't limit ourselves to reggae. What we bring is a popular energy played the old-fashioned way. Not played loud, with a singer who keeps her orchestra together, everybody at the service of the guy taking his chorus, improvisations… And it lives, sometimes it goes wrong, we don't care. In the 8 years the band has existed, I'd say we've played 90 songs in concert, with plenty of covers. We don't want to stay stuck to a fixed model.
After pressing your latest 45 in Jamaica, are you thinking of recording over there?
Me, I don't much like flying: it pollutes, the sky is full of planes and it's the air we breathe. It depresses me. If I can avoid it, I do. Going to record over there would be a trip for me. But I think that at root, there's a misunderstanding. We Westerners…(he pauses) There's a legacy. I find it hard to travel, to go to Africa… I don't feel responsible for the world's misfortune, nor do my ancestors. All that is diluted by time. But the responsibility is shared. Arriving over there with your cash… The trip cost the equivalent of a year's work for a guy from there. It's hard for me to go there and feel on an equal footing. I may be wrong. Bringing music, happiness would please me, but we'll see if it happens. I'm not a globetrotter.
So you're sticking to dates in France?
France, Europe… I like travelling by sea or by land. But flying really pisses me off. It may sound hopelessly old-fashioned, but for me it's a nuisance. And on top of that they want to develop it because it's the most profitable for them. Fast modes of transport only shorten distances for people with money, but they lengthen them for those who have none. It pisses me off, everything that's going on. You don't see it in our songs, because we're precisely there to forget all that, but there are things that get on my nerves. And I don't want to take part in certain things. Making music, having a blast, giving people happiness… For me that's what's good. The rest, better not to talk about it.
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