Paris (AFP)

Playing together is not the exclusivity of the classic. After the live alone at home, here is the era of pieces of current music composed in groups, up to 20 or 40!

From the start of confinement, Taur, an electro-pyrotechnician, launched the "Project 40", or "40 artists in quarantine for 40 minutes of music".

"In this moment of anxiety, unconsciously, I looked for a way out, through music, he portrayed AFP. Many artists are in the same boat - more concerts, blocked projects, etc. - I thought it would go through a brighter episode. "

Among the forty roarers, we find the elegant Malik Djoudi, named to the last Victoires de la Musique, the iconoclasts Naive New Beaters, the studio animal Alex Gopher and electro agitators like Jabberwocky or Canine.

"What drove me to do it was to share with people from all walks of life, whether I knew them or not, it was exciting, and besides this originality, it took me to places where I didn’t 'Was never gone, "rejoices with AFP Malik Djoudi.

After receiving the first ideas from everyone, Taur has a nice inspiration: "I made each proposal anonymous and sent it to someone else to work on it, blindly, with two or three round trips to every time".

- "It's pretty crazy" -

So as not to drown in waves of sound and voice files, "my girlfriend helps me and manages an enormous Excel table", laughs Taur. He is the architect and the manager. "In my job, IT, I already know how to do it with developers, but here they are artists, so you have to be careful with ego and frustrations (laughs)".

Malik Djoudi is admiring: "It's pretty crazy, managing 40 artists is like making three albums at the same time. And Taur does that naturally, in a cool way".

"We are going to an album, between 14 and 16 songs, where everyone participates in at least one title", anticipates Taur, who dreams of "a nice conclusion, with a release around May 11", the date of progressive deconfinement set by the government.

Another river project is already online. It's "Love together (a confined suite)", an enveloping song of almost 10 minutes, with rich jazz and soul twists, in a clip bathed in moonlight.

A total of 20 artists participated under the leadership of singer and actress Sandra Nkaké, assisted by her accomplice Jî Drû. We find in the cast Anne Paceo, artist of the year at the Victoires du Jazz 2019, the free electron Thomas de Pourquery or Pascal Danaë, leader of Delgrès, heavy-blues and Creole fusion.

- "Collective combat" -

"It starts from a deep conviction: we must put the community at the center of creation, not stay locked in our heads. And the desire that friends meet," dissects Sandra Nkaké for AFP.

"We started from the themes of collective combat and love, then we sent a model saying + we imagine you there, but you are free to invent, reinterpret +", she continues.

The constraints of confinement sometimes played a role. Anne Paceo, drummer deprived of her percussion, gave in the piano-voice formula. On arrival, "the song, in its harmonic structure, has changed, it's quite magic", says Sandra Nkaké.

Pascal Danaë, a long time friend of the initiator, accepted with closed eyes "this bet a little crazy": "With the indications of Sandra - whose risk I like - I put my guitar thinking of the direction the song could take. " "It's like sending ingredients to a chef and seeing which dish will come out," he compares to AFP.

Sandra Nkaké draws from this experience benchmarks for the future, "to unite, because the situation of intermittent workers will be very difficult".

© 2020 AFP