INTERVIEW
Rapper, composer, writer, director, director ... Abd Al Malik is a complete artist with multiple awards including four Victoire de la musique. While his first novel "Wicked Injuries" (Plon), has been in bookshops since last August, he will tour with his show "The Young Black Sword" from December 14. Abd Al Malik tells how this idea was born at the microphone of Philippe Vandel.
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"When I saw this painting, it upset me"
"Le Jeune Noir à l'épée" is both an album and a beautiful book, co-published by Flammarion, Présence Africaine and the Musée d'Orsay. And it is also the name of a painting by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, painted in 1850, that Abd Al Malik discovered on the occasion of the exhibition "The black model of Géricault at Matisse", at the Musée d ' Orsay between March and July 2019.
"When I saw this painting, it upset me," says the artist, who continues: "it is a little weird this picture.It is a young man who has the head of a child and the body He's holding a sword on his shoulder, he's sitting on a blue cloth, and with his black skin and his red Phrygian cap, it's like a counterpoint to the red-white blue. "
"I wanted to tell a long poem"
"Behind him, it burns a bit and he has a serenity, and I thought, it's funny because he's black but he could have had any color, and holding the sword as a free man symbol, somewhere I saw myself in there, "says the rapper.
Poet, Abd Al Malik sees an allegory: "I told myself that despite the chaos, in a way, we should keep this serenity, continue to fight and also pacify his relationship to the other." A painting he inspires to create a multiple work: "I wanted to tell a long poem around that and I made this album which is both an album and a beautiful book."
With the Burkinabe choreographer Salia Sanou at his side, Abd Al Malik will sing his album throughout France until April 2020.