Dominique Fils-Aimé
Stay Tuned!

The 36-year-old from Quebec, of Haitian origins, after participating in “La Voix” (“The Voice”) in 2015 took her time before releasing the EP “Nameless” (listen to “Birds”: WOW!) in 2018 (blue cover symbolizing black slavery), the first of a trilogy conceived during these years of cultural and musical study, followed by “Stay Tuned!” (red cover paying homage to the bloodshed for the civil rights obtained, but also symbolizing the warmth and spirit expressed by women and men in their daily struggles) in 2019.

This latest album has given her a certain notoriety and multiple recognitions at a North American level in the R’n’B and Soul genres, including the "Vocal Jazz Album of the Year" at the 2020 Juno Awards.

Dominique Fils-Aimé is simply magnetic, able to capture attention with sparse yet never trivial arrangements, with a volume almost of accompaniment, which arouses the curiosity of the listener. This is absolutely an album to dissect audibly and sensorially (so much so that the singer asks at her concerts to save applause for the end of the entire performance, leaving silence or some readings in the spaces between songs).

Minimal, essential, these are the adjectives that best define this work that begins with less than a minute of “Feeling Good” (by Nina Simone) to give an auspicious start (“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day”) that revisits the stories of crucial figures, like Emmett Till, the “Little Rock Nine”, Rosa Parks, Joséphine Baker, Lena Horne, and Martin Luther King, in racial disputes. There are not only social and historical interweavings but also musical ones, these acoustic intertwines between loop station, choirs, trumpet or piano interventions, well-suited to fill the voids purposely created by the harmonic stasis, just as the percussions of Elli Miller Maboungou and Salin Cheewapansri are fundamental and truly well-balanced, straddling world music and more enticing sounds closer to more familiar musical experiences (Alicia Keys or Joss Stone).

Jacques Roy, bassist, producer, and sound engineer, manages to perfectly blend the atmospheres Dominique Fils-Aimé wants us to experience. From Gospel to Jazz, from Soul to Rhythm and Blues, from World Music to Pop. This is the solution anticipated by the Canadian singer: a cultural (and musical) melting pot as the only solution for the inclusion of every genre.

Melancholic pop is touched upon in “Revolution Serenade,” linked to soul and jazz elements, while gospel can be felt in “There is Probably Fire” or “Joy River.”

In “Big Man Do Cry,” I see brushstrokes of Mahalia Jackson, while “Some Body” might be the one that attracts the most radio attention due to its intro-chorus, which blends with “trumpet blasts” reminiscent of Miles Davis.

The mantra of “9LRR” (Nine Little Red Rocks) refers to the story of the nine black students who, due to segregation, in the mid-50s could not attend the high school in the city of Arkansas, Little Rock. It required the intervention of President Eisenhower and the Supreme Court to allow the students to attend the educational institution.

In “Free Dom,” there is the entire musical, vocal, and conceptual repertoire of the album, a true summary of this girl's artistic capabilities and sensitivity.

In this period when the “Black Lives Matter” movement is taking the stage in the United States and around the world, I felt compelled to briefly present this album, very significant and of absolute musical calibre.