“Jazz is a definitive part of my musical culture. The title is a counter-echo of Strange Fruits with the positive message that there is always a rebirth. It says that spring is something you give to yourself. You can allow yourself this kind of spring and renaissance.”

Chocolate cake Gérald Toto "Spring fruits" (Mercœur music) 2011 Listen

With his lovely spring and lovely renaissance, Gérald Toto’s Spring Fruits brings us a much gayer, more festive album than Billie Holiday’s sombre and macabre Strange Fruits. The twelve tracks that comprise Toto’s inspired opus are a lot more joyful and succulent than the jazz diva’s well-known hit. A harvest not to be missed, given the West Indian artist’s scant production: with only four albums in thirteen years, including one with Richard Bona and Lokua, these are rare fruits. The musician belongs to a generation steeped in groove and Anglo-Saxon inspiration (Ruan Rozoff, Sinclair, Bruno Maman) that, with the exception of M, has never really got through to French audiences.

On this home-produced album, sung entirely in English, Gérald Toto skilfully mixes genres, from the tender, medieval lullaby My Child to the almost Sahelian groove of Freedom that could well have been cooked up in the Malian town of Ségou. “Shame on me!” exclaims the singer. “I don’t know Africa. I have toured with Lokua Kanza and Richard Bona, but I have never been to Africa. I did, however, start listening to African music at home from an early age … makossa, and Zairian rumba.”  

Read also An unusual trio

There are filigree threads of African music running through Spring Fruits, in the midst of Stanley Beckford-style reggae hues on Easily Get Lost or the Hendrix-style Black Mary (if you get the chance, listen to his cover of If 6 was 9 on the album Les jours meilleurs dating from 1998). Worth mentioning too is Dive, which takes us deep into a dream world with vocal waves and flowing acoustic guitar.

Acoustics dominate this album, with some superb backing from the Franco-American violinist and pianist Alice Orpheus. “I discovered him on MySpace, and I told myself that I just had to meet the guy! He’s the child of a couple who lived in a commune on a Greek island, then in Fontainebleau. He’s lived multiple lives, from the States, to Japan and New Zealand. Our partnership was prolific from the start. We worked into the small hours, sending each other text messages and notes at four a.m.”
A fomenting riot of notes and rhymes that generated a fourth album as fresh and sweet-tasting as a ripe spring fruit.

Gérald Toto Spring Fruits (Mercoeur Music) 2011

Gérald Toto on MySpace