He returns from a mini-tour across the Atlantic where “he took his temperature”, he tasted the reception reserved for his new album capacity to love, available on November 4. For this 15th studio album, trumpeter Ibrahim Maalouf wanted to “get out of [sa] comfort zone, get far away from their bases and rub shoulders with the American urban culture. For Ability to Love, he even changed his way of working.
• A desire to go elsewhere
For this album, recorded between Paris and Los Angeles, the musician accustomed to working alone has surrounded himself for the first time with two collaborators, the Frenchman NuTone and the American Henry Was.
“I invited two very young artists, little production geniuses, true geeks, super musicians, super producers. They had a more modern and sharp look at urban culture than I did.”
As a result, the album is peppered with collaborations with American hip-hop artists, Erick the Architect, who accompanies it on two tracks, Moneythe first single from the album, and correct timeto De La Soul (Quiet Culture).
His two young collaborators introduced him to artists he did not know, such as Alemeda, a young American singer of Ethiopian origin with whom he performs better on my own o D Smoke, revealed by telecrochet Rhythm + Flow on Netflix.
For this album, Ibrahim Maalouf was moved by the desire to “go elsewhere”, to “take risks”, with artists that “nobody knows in France”, such as Dear Silas.
• A title as evidence
It was the American singer Gregory Porter who came up with the title of the album. “We were at the Revival studio in Los Angeles, historically the Earth Wind and Fire studio, and I told him about the philosophy behind this album. And he said ‘it’s about being able to love each other, really.’ said for half an hour in two words, we recorded a title called capacity to loveAnd very quickly, I was like, ‘That’s the title of the album!'”
• The voice of Charlie Chaplin
At the beginning of the album, the voice of Charlie Chaplin resounds. This is an excerpt from the famous final speech of the Dictator. A speech that Ibrahim Maalouf has “in mind for years.”
“This speech moved me when I was little, when I saw the film with my class at school, then years later. And I have often thought about it, and especially in recent years when I saw a kind of increase in extremes and intolerance that was It’s becoming commonplace.”
Deeming it “still so relevant” 80 years later, Ibrahim Maalouf decided to include it on his album. Opening the album with this speech then became “obvious”.
He then made contact with the “Chaplin sons tribe” through his grandson James Thiérée. “I asked them to listen to the music, they loved it. They thought it really showed the story of Chaplin.”
Title Our flagat the end of the album, whose clip premieres this Friday at the same time as the album, is the result of a rather unlikely collaboration with the American actress Sharon Stone.
“I discovered a few years ago that Sharon Stone listened to my music and that she liked what I did. She started like this. So I sent her a message saying that I would like her to listen to some music that I would like her on. her to put her voice. She agreed and we met in Los Angeles at her house. I made her listen to the music, she started crying.”
The musician then asked him to write a text to put his voice in the piece. A text “that echoes” that of Charlie Chaplin at the beginning of the album, but with modern accents.
“Immediately it made sense to me, because she is a woman who is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood, who also altered the way we see women in American cinema. […] She is also a great humanist. She is very engaged.”
Source: BFM TV
