"With someone else, it would have been more conventional, but here I sing my songs in a different universe and setting depending on the title, while Yvan only uses pianos. I was surprised at every time", rejoices with AFP Louis Chedid, met alongside Yvan Cassar in Paris.

"Louis Chedid & Yvan Cassar - In black and white", which comes out on Friday, is not a simple best-of of the first.

First, because next to revisited standards like "Thus be it", we rediscover lesser known gems like "These words are for you".

Then because the piano-voice exercise, instead of leading to a simple stripping, here gives a new relief to a repertoire that we thought we knew.

"It's not just another record, it's a milestone, like + Entre nous + (released in 1994, acoustic concert recorded in the Parisian hall of Bobino), which is a very important album for me and my public", says the septuagenarian singer.

Cassar and Chedid father (three of his children are also singers, Matthieu dit -M-, Joseph and Anna dit Nach) have been around each other for a long time since a first meeting at the birthday of a mutual friend about fifteen years ago. years.

When Kenny Gates, co-founder of the Pias label, offers Chedid to join his collection of piano-voice albums (the duo formed by Arno and pianist Sofiane Pamart had paved the way in 2021) the latter accepts on condition that Cassar be adventure.

"This guy is sick"

Little known to the general public, this musician with the hair of a druid is a benchmark in the profession, a shadow designer who dresses the songs so that the light is reflected differently.

The CV of this fifties impresses since we meet the names of Vangelis, Johnny Hallyday, Claude Nougaro or Charles Aznavour.

Cassar is an obsessive, which gave Chedid cold sweats during the first working sessions.

"The sound is essential for him. It destabilizes at the beginning, he spends a lot of time on the sound. When you get there you say to yourself: + Damn what is he right + but, when you live, you say to yourself: + But this guy is sick +”, laughs the author of “You’re beautiful not being beautiful”.

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"I was very anxious at the beginning, I was afraid of being boring, that people would say to themselves: + Yeah, well, there, it's been four songs that I hear the same thing what +", confides Cassar.

To avoid this pitfall, the musician drew on the full range of pianos - from those that sound like percussion to those more subdued - and juggled with instruments from different eras.

"I have a passion for old pianos, those of the years 1910-1920, which approach a certain pop soul, with a singular resonance, a scent of nostalgia", unfolds Cassar.

The musical atmospheres that parade have nothing of a gadget and the voice and the texts of Chedid only come out of it more.

The singer-songwriter is poignant on "So alone without you", serious on "Dancer socialite" and prophetic on "Anne my sister Anne", a reference to Anne Frank and a warning signal in the face of the resurgence of nationalism/extremism.

© 2022 AFP