Hector Zazou
Chansons Des Mers Froides

In the 1990s, World music enjoyed a huge amount of credit among musicians, critics, and the public, sometimes undeservedly. Not always, in fact, did music productions reflect real ethnomusicological research, but sometimes they resulted in trivial market operations.

This cannot be said for Hector Zazou, a multifaceted musician and composer of French-Algerian descent, who at the time was working on challenging and well-defined thematic projects, such as, for example, the study of Corsican polyphonic songs (Nouvelles Polyphonies Corse, 1991), the imaginary journey between the Sahara and the poetry of the "accursed" Rimbaud (Sahara Blue, 1992). "Chansons des mers froides" (1994), on the other hand, represents a revisiting of the musical traditions of the Arctic countries. A journey through the northern seas, a research project that lasted more than three years, a complex and difficult work. Zazou takes us by the hand and leads us to a land where music identifies with nature.

To do this, he joined forces with numerous musicians, some native to the cold seas like Bjork, Lena Willemark, Ale Moeller, the Varttina, others completely alien to them, such as Suzanne Vega, John Cale, Siouxsie, Jane Siberry, the Balanescu Quartet, to name a few.

The result? An extremely fascinating album, due to the heterogeneous but not confused structure of the sounds amalgamated on an electronic background and composed of voices, keyboards, percussion, guitars, mandolins, etc. Take, for example, the dialogue between Bjork's voice and Renault Pion's clarinet in "Visur vatnsenda-rosu" or the hypnotic "Song of the water" interpreted by Elisha Kilabuk. But what is even more striking is the very idea of the journey, already conveyed by the package of the album itself. Indeed, for each track on the CD, there is a mobile card inside containing, on one side, the description of the piece and the names of the performers, on the other side, a beautiful photograph of the lands evoked by the music: fragments of sky, migratory birds, portions of sea, bodies of water, sand, stones, and mountains. A beautiful album overall, which could accompany real and imaginary journeys of this warm summer.