Étienne Daho at the Transmusicales of Rennes, 40 years later

Étienne Daho on the stage of the 41st Rencontres Trans Musicales in Rennes on December 4th, 2019. © Pierre René-Worms

06/12/2019

The Transmusicales de Rennes will take place from December 4 to 8, 2019. The occasion as always to make many musical discoveries from all over the world but also to celebrate those who made the history of this festival, as the original singer Rennes, Etienne Daho who was performing on December 4 and 5 at the Théâtre National de Bretagne.

"Hypersexy!" Here is how some spectators described the dashing sexagenarian Étienne Daho at the exit of the concert he gave this Thursday, December 5 at the National Theater of Brittany in Rennes within the framework of Transmusicales. Dressed in a black suit that only a border of glitter came to enhance, the original Rennais found the public and the city that had seen him become an artist in the late 70s.

Preceded in the first part of a young local artist, Rouge Gorge, who was given his chance in front of an already enthusiastic public before the first notes of his synth pop started, Étienne Daho celebrated here the fortieth anniversary of his first transition to Trans. A first scene in a collective with the improbable name, Between the two bare son of the dynamo, followed in 80 of a second passage under the name of Étienne Daho Junior - with some musicians of a group become the legendary Marquis de Sade- were his first experiences as an artist.

Daho, 40 years later on the stage of the National Theater of Brittany, it seems an eternity. And yet ... From the opening, it pays homage to the initiators of these musical meetings Jean-Louis Brossard and Béatrice Macé, duo at the head of the festival as well as to Hervé Bordier, another founding father, today in retreat. "They made it a demanding appointment" . And if one can consider that Etienne Daho is the boss of the French pop, he remembers without a doubt that it was a distant day where he himself was a discovery for the public Rennes.

Pop essence

The reunion with this audience is moving and touching. A room quickly up, came to sing, dance and applaud the pop flights of the album Eden , since Etienne Daho decided to go back a tour around this opus, which had not, at the time, met with the expected success . He revisits, reinterprets and rearranges the songs sung in order: From the beginning to A very happy farewell . He summons amicably, but nonetheless virtually, the singer Astrud Gilberto on the banks of the Seine or The Swingle Singers on Shy intimacy (" portrait of a shy congenital that I am no longer since last night, " he says!).

If the voice has not changed since 1996, date of release of Eden , the arrangements have been reviewed quite drastically sometimes, like these dazzling dance, supported by lights that shape the scenery like a parenthesis on a dancefloor. It suits perfectly to the master of the evening that the room ovations so much and more.

False distraction with the song De flames flammes , a title dedicated to his mother, never played live by the author himself, but was recorded in London at the very moment of the recording of Eden . Étienne Daho recognizes that the exercise is "pretty enjoyable" .

The singer changes his jacket to mean that after 45 minutes devoted to Eden , he embarks on another path and therefore another repertoire, that of the mini-album Résérection, made with the British group Saint Etienne, in 1995. The Weekend interpreter in Rome, a song he takes on this occasion in English, seems to be delighted by these trips between past and present, in front of an audience that was quick to adhere to this project.

And if one could suppose that this reinterpretation of Eden was motivated by a form of comforting nostalgia, Etienne Daho did not engage on this path and did once again, the demonstration of his unique style.

Official website of Etienne Daho / Facebook / Twitter / Instagram

By: Valérie Passelègue

Etienne Daho

French song - album - concert - France

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