 |
| |
www.lolalafon-et-leva.net
Photograph: Jean Marc LUBRANO
What about folk rock music being born in the East…
After a childhood spent in Romania and Bulgaria, fiercely listening to the old Stones, Patti Smith, then Jeff Buckley, Lola invented LEVA in 1999. Songs were born in her bedroom, and then Lola Lafon & Leva grew up in bars, little concert rooms, and humanitarian concerts, anywhere.
A Macedonian playing guitar, a Serb for the accordion, a French for the bass, a Belgian with samples, a French-Byelorussian girl singing…All O.K. to deal with compositions in French as well as with Romanian traditional music: folk rock guitar and Balkan accordion on Prokoviev’s shadowy samples, among others.
There were talks about “incandescent”, terribly infectious concerts, mixing notes with words and emotions with a “not negotiable” rage.
Following her need to write more and longer, Lola writes a book, which is published by Flammarion in 2003: “ a fever impossible to negotiate”, a novel full of songs scores, which are to be found again in the album.
In 2003-2004, LEVA performs over fifty reading-concerts (at the Olympic, Lavoir Moderne, FNAC, as a first part of a Têtes Raides’s concert and other “K.O. Social”).
“Growing up inside out of nothing” reproduces the atmosphere of such concerts with Lola’s speaking voice, almost an off voice of an intimate diary, Rimbaud as a prelude to a Bulgarian song or an unexpected duo between her and the poet Dylan Thomas.
Some dusky tunes use silence and amplified strings squeaking to give the impression of
A breathing being held. Songs often calmly tell a story.
On an acoustic basis, Tchaikovsky’s, Stravinsky’s , Bartok’s, the Beastie Boys or Maria Tanase’s strange interventions form an often melancholic and epic texture.
From the harshest (as a guest star, Sarkozy…) to the Bulgarian fairy tale played by an electrified accordion, percussions with a saucepan and little spoons creating a chaotic brass band, Lola Lafon & Leva speaks French, Romanian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, English, but the whole of it seems to be the soundtrack of a time full of dreams, fears and doubts. Lola’s texts may be intimist, they do not deal at all with daily life. Sometimes forceful, they reflect our time but “not as a mirror, rather as a shield” (Marina Tsvetaïva).
“If a woman sings, this means that she really needs it” used to say Janis Joplin.
On this album, the voice alternately speaks, sings, confesses, beseeches and murmurs. Lola’s uncommon voice enables her to recreate on her own Bulgarian choirs, to mix different harmonies in order to emphasize her phrases.
From intimist tunes, between confessions and appeals, to other more nervous accelerations, this pure voice swings between softness and frenzied tensions.
Lola Lafon & Leva’s album expresses violence with a soft voice and rather violently talks about fragile human beings.
“Growing up inside out of nothing” is marked by emergencies.
Contacts
Agent
Country: France
Name: Virginie Borgeaud / Double V Management
E-mail: iris@doublev.fr
Adress: 2 rue Navarin
75009 Paris
| |
|
|
|
