beforehand. Like all of Tazartèès’s albums, Transports deals in lurid contrasts of the authentic and the synthetic, pitting his vocals against synthesizers and drum machines. But this isn’t a deliberate ploy, and often the choice isn’t even a conscious one. “It’s difficult, and I feel a real difference, but I’m just looking for a sound that I like from the instruments. Sometimes it’s very modern. And the way that I sing is more natural.”
Tazartèès has always been determined to make a living from his music. But both Diasporas and Transports were released in editions of just 1000 copies and their uncompromising nature ensured poor to middling sales. 1983’s Une ÉÉclipse Totale De Soleil was released by Celluloid, who disliked it so much that they initially refused to put it out. Tazartèès was only able to persuade them by agreeing to waive his fee. The album sold “nothing at all, of course”. Its two sidelong tracks shift restlessly between passages of percussion, multitracked chameleonic vocals and heavy guitar riffing. Discussing the album, he references, of all groups, The Sex Pistols. “I’ve always liked pop music, up until Sex Pistols, the last great pop group,” he explains. “Pop music stopped before The Sex Pistols, it finished with Jimi Hendrix. Jazz continued. The Sex Pistols were a revival. I loved this group. I still like them, though I didn’t like the ideology. After The Sex Pistols, I started listening to World Music.”
At various points in our discussion Tazartèès describes his work as “a kind of World/folk music” and “a sort of soul music”, as well as referring to himself as a “jazz musician” and confessing that “I’ve always thought of myself as a pop singer, even though I’m not on the TV or the radio”. Regardless of how it’s defined, his music is something he feels rather than analyses. However baffling or arcane it might sound, for him it’s perfectly natural and logical. Tazartèès’s albums are full of references to dozens of different ethnic musics. But he isn’t trying to mimic or appropriate them in a schematic fashion, to be stylistically diverse or to escape the strictures of a musical identity. On 1987’s Tazartèès, for instance, the vocals and instrumentation noticeably tilt toward Africa. Was he consciously attempting to make a kind of African music? “The only explanation I can give is that it’s just natural,” he ponders. “I never thought, I have to make music that’s like African music or Indian music. I listened to a lot of African music at the time. Maybe it was just the fashion of the times, or in my head. But when I listen, I feel it.” He listens to these World musics and they become part of his own, in an osmotic way. As he modestly explains: “They’re just different characters, all inside my head.”
Tazartèès is part of the Jewish diaspora – his father, an Auschwitz survivor, was born in Istanbul, and both his parents grew up in Greece, before moving to Paris – but he doesn’t regard his music as an
expression of his ethnic identity. “It’s true I’m Jewish,” he comments. “But I don’t set out to sing in a Jewish style. I don’t observe Sabbath. We all have the same origin. Ethnic identity isn’t something to get yourself stuck inside.” Perhaps the most profound paradox of his music is that for all its complexity and outright weirdness, its multitude of identities and idioms, in a literal sense it’s totally incomprehensible, because his lyrics are sung in his own private language. “Most of the time I sing in a language which I invented myself, for my own music,” he confesses, “so that I could sing something other than ‘la la la’. It’s a language I’ve always used, since my childhood. My parents spoke Spanish together so that the kids wouldn’t understand. I invented my own language so they wouldn’t understand me.” Though Tazartèès’s conception of his music is essentially apolitical, his fifth album, 1990’s Check Point Charlie, has a political resonance. Appropriately, it was refracted through an encounter with an extraordinary voice. “I was in Berlin, and I went to Checkpoint Charlie to see the museum,” he relates. “On the other side of the Wall there was a guy who was screaming his head off. I didn’t understand a word of what he was saying because it was in German. And his voice was so loud, I stayed to listen. He cried until his voice run out, until he went hoarse. I thought, I want to do something on fracture and breakage.” It could easily be argued that all his
26 THE WIRE GHÉÉDALIA TAZARTÈÈS
