RFI Musique: To create this disk, you set up your own record label, Mystic Rumba. Were you hankering for independence?
Arthur H: I was keen on regularly producing the things I want, which isn’t compatible with the way a record house works. Having said that, I can see that I’m throwing myself into a utopian, risky project at a time when funding for music is drastically shrinking. I still try to make quality records, even though my budget has been cut in half. So it’s like squaring a circle, and it breaks my heart to pay the people I work with peanuts in comparison with their talent and what they put into it. Is it just a result of the fact that music’s moved into the digital era? From now on, we have to make do with “economical” projects, like my future collection with Nicolas Repac on West Indian poetry, since he’ll be doing everything in his home studio. Mystic Rumba is an organisational nightmare but it’s also really exciting to manage it all yourself: I feel like we’re a bunch of mad adventurers.

Basquiat Arthur H Baba Love (Polydor) 2011 Listen

Are you planning on producing other artists?
Why not, we could do… But to produce other artists we’d need money. People have got completely the wrong idea when they think that artists are “free” today. Yes, maybe you are more “free” but you’re completely broke, which limits your scope!

But you’ve got quite a name, Arthur H. From the outside it looks like things are going pretty well for you.
You’re joking! France is very conformist, it’s a reactionary country. Artists like Dominique A and myself aren’t going to get the crowds moving! So of course we’ve got an image because we put together some quality creations. But there’s a pretty big gap between our reputation and the reality of economics and the media in society.

For Baba Love, you completely changed your team of musicians. Did you feel like starting all over again?
It’s not every day that you separate from people you like. I’d got into a lot of habits with my old musicians, whom I loved, but I wanted to explore other paths and get lost on the way, brush shoulders with the unexpected, feel a bit of danger, and get hold of some new energy. My new “mates” brought along their emotions and their worlds and we’ve had some really artistic exchanges. Knowing how to regenerate is only polite. Artists always turn round their favourite obsessions: so you have to know how to attack things from a different angle and to do that you have to be radical.

Where, when and how did you record and compose this new album?
I composed it in the Bastille neighbourhood of Paris in a mate’s apartment crammed full of Latin American objects. Then I went to Contis in the Landes area for a fortnight and lived like a hermit. I played at being an old writer, frying up eggs for myself, with the wind and the immense beach and the sunshine as my only companions. I wrote a huge amount, and I felt good. The Black Box studio was located in the middle of the countryside. I used to love going to have a pee in the trees in the evening, and Derya (Ed.’s note: the sound engineer) would turn the volume right up so that the cows, hens and toads could hear it too. The smell of the apple trees in bloom and the ducks crapping in the kitchen all went into the making of the album.

Biography Discography

On this album you’ve said that you composed all of the music before writing the lyrics...
I usually do everything at once, but this time I wanted to go about things a different way. I wanted to get away from the particular melody of French, and my own prosody, and liberate my breathing and my rhythm, so that it could slip effortlessly over the notes. The music called for certain words and sounds, and the lyrics evolved on their own. I felt like I was just writing them down, as if they transcending me.

For the instrumentation, you chose a whole clutch of old keyboards. Why?
We were looking for a warm sound to take in ghosts, people and stories, so we chose old instruments like an antique Steinway and a load of legendary keyboards like a Hammond, a Vox Electro (Ed.’s note: the organ used by the Doors), a Mellotron. I had fun practising voodoo and white magic and calling up the spirits. It fills up the music and gives it life.

You put the emphasis on a dance groove with an almost sexual content.
I love black American sounds. For me, the soul of music lies in the hypnotic pulse that surges up, something like a heartbeat, or breathing, pulsation.

You called your disk Baba Love. Was that your state of mind?
No, but sometimes that’s how I feel. “Baba Love” is a very gentle feeling, a bit sweet, a mix of tranquillity and excitement so that things suddenly bubble up and you’re a bit drunk: they’re rare innocent moments when you blindly believe in life.

© diane sagnier Arthur H website

You also seem to have freed up your voice on this album. Do you work on it?  
I worked with Martina Catella, who specializes in Indian music: it’s an approach to singing that doesn’t demand too much effort. And then, for the first time, I warmed up my voice before the sound takes. I used to block it in my throat too much.

You also invited some prime guests to take part: your sister Izia, Claire Farah, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Saul Wiliams... What did they add?
For me, all four of them are great vocal artists: they master their sound, their diction and breathing. They put their whole self into their singing. I see them as wonderful colours making up a superb palette.

Baba Love is full of optimism. Would you say it was a desire to be happy?
When I came back from Montreal, where I performed with Nicolas Repac, I felt completely recharged. Over there, there’s a really good energy that stimulates you. Here, despite the negative climate, I think you have to force yourself to be happy. With practice it works, it’s like training a muscle, and perhaps ultimately the result is more worthwhile.

Arthur H Baba Love (Polydor) 2011
Playing live at 104 in Paris on 27 October and on French tour.

Translation: Anne-Marie Harper