INTERVIEW: Delgres trio reflect on global refugee crisis on new album ‘4:00 AM’
Photo: Delgres features, from left, Baptiste Brondy, Pascal Danaë and Rafgee. Photo courtesy of Boby / Provided by Cindy Byram PR with permission.
For Pascal Danaë, the founder and leader of the power roots trio Delgres, the band’s new album, 4:00 AM, is a personal affair. Yes, it may be talking about global issues involving refugees, migration, identity and forgotten heroes, but the impetus for these songs is the story of his own family and heritage, going back to the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.
“For us, it was a continuity between the first and second albums,” Danaë said in a recent phone interview about the genesis of the project. “On the first album, [Mo Jodi], we were addressing the situation I would say of forgotten heroes like Louis Delgrès that nobody knows about anymore. Most people in France don’t who he is, so he was totally forgotten in history.”
Delgrès is actually the namesake of the trio. He was a Creole officer in the French Army who died in Guadeloupe in 1802 after fighting against Napoleon’s army, according to press notes. He was the inspiration behind the band’s name and the first album, while 4:00 AM addresses lesser-known heroes from today, including Danaë’s own father.
“He was a working-class man coming from what used to be the colonies and coming to France, working hard for his family,” Danaë said of his father. “There’s a lot of people doing the same thing now, and those people are kind of forgotten right now because everybody is focused more not only on COVID, but even more generally people look more at the big picture, the celebrities and all that. And everyday you have everyday heroes, and nobody talks about that. So that’s kind of the angle we have on this album, starting with my father’s story and then zooming out into more general and universal stories of hardship, of being from a hard-working family and all the problems you might have when you migrate from one land to another.”
Danaë — who is the band’s singer, songwriter and guitarist — said that many families around the world have either direct or indirect experience with the many themes brought up on the album. Stories of struggle can be found throughout these tracks, and Danaë and his bandmates — drummer Baptiste Brondy and trumpeter Rafgee — focused on the narratives of everyday parents, grandparents, siblings and people they saw in similar situations on television.
“In America, there are a lot of talks about the border with Mexico, but here in Europe, it’s more about the people crossing the Mediterranean Sea to come to us,” he said. “So people can relate to that situation one way or another. … My personal family history makes it something I’m directly related to. It’s part of my family history, so the way I speak about it, the way I sing about it comes from my heart. It’s my blood really, and I suspect that people can actually relate to that emotion. They can relate to that emotion somehow, and then of course when they get the lyrics, they go, ‘Ah, OK. So that’s why I was feeling it.'”
4:00 AM features many different musical styles, including Creole blues, with African and French influences, plus some New Orleans grooves thrown in for good measure. Danaë said the combination of genres was fun from a musical perspective, and he found a commonality among the different instruments and approaches to the music.
“It’s more than natural to mix all those different influences and have fun with them,” Danaë said. “It’s always the same feeling, the feeling of the blues, the feeling of somehow after all this time you don’t belong totally where you live.”
He added: “That’s the kind of blues that comes from very deep down, and then you can have this feeling in all the songs, whether you play the blues or Afro-Caribbean or whatever the style of music is.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Delgres’ new album is called 4:00 AM. Click here for more information.
