biography in English

YAPA: ‘PARIWAGA’
Release 8 January on Chapa Blues Records/ Naïve
The band:
(Fabrice Bourgignat, Simon Chenet, Christophe Combet, Xavier Hamon)
Yapa is a genuinely independent band, a group of four friends (three guitarists and a
percussionist) who have been going to the same gigs and the same bars since they were
at school together (in the Paris suburbs). At a time when hits and ringtones sound as if
they’ve rolled off some production line, Yapa try to preserve a hands-on approach to making
music. In the last eight years, the band have brought out two self-produced instrumental
albums (3,000 copies of each, no less), reinvesting the fees from gigs to make first
‘Chroniques d’Endoo’ and then ‘Can I Talk To You?’, a live recording of a tour through the
Balkans. They regularly set the stage of some of the best clubs in Paris alight
(L’Entrepôt, Le Sunset, L’Etage, La Java, Le Baiser Salé) and have gained a certain
underground reputation and a small band of loyal fans. Yapa have always written songs
that take the listener off on a journey, and these musical postcards from Burkina Faso tell the
story of their greatest adventure to date.
The album ‘Pariwaga’:
As its name suggests, this album was recorded in the capitals of France and Burkina Faso.
This was the first journey to black Africa by Yapa’s four French musicians, who came
to Ouagadougou for the festival ‘Jazz à Ouaga’. As well as performing live, they made
the most of this opportunity to do a weeklong studio recording of some vocals. (The
story of these sessions and their African travels are told in detail in the 16-page booklet that
comes with the album. It is a travel log illustrated with photos.) The band had composed some
blues/folk/funk instrumentals before leaving France and then adapted them to the sensitivities
of their guest singers and musicians once they arrived in Burkina Faso. The album contains
two collaborations with the now-famous Victor Démé and his guitarist Issouf Diabaté, the
balafon player Ali Diarra and his brother Salif Diarra, a kora player and backing vocalist for
Démé, who this time takes over lead vocals on the song ‘Kanata’. As the tracks play, we meet
other talented troublemakers on the Burkina Faso music scene: black punk with a burning
afro-beat touch by Baba Commandant, the storyteller KPG, and the ragga toaster
Wendlamita Kouka in a duet with Julien Bordier, who was travelling with Yapa. The
Algerian band Djmawi Africa (a famous band in Algeria) were also in Ouagadougou for the
same festival, ‘Jazz à Ouaga’ and they teamed up with Yapa in the studio to play two of the
album’s best songs, ‘Djwad’ and ‘Bania’ that also featured the excellent Tuareg guitarist
Koudédé (winner of the Best New Musical Talent prize at the ‘Festival du Désert’ in
Essakane in 2009). Even after a week of recording together, Yapa brought back several
instrumentals to Paris with them that they hadn’t used with the African vocalists. They
decided to put them on the album anyway and to allow themselves one final whim: they
invited Patrice, the famous reggae singer, to sing the last vocals on the album (‘Move And
Give Way’). The entire project was then filtered through sound engineer Sylvain Biquet’s
console before Sodi (Fela, Femi Kuti, Rachid Taha, Les Négresses vertes, FFF) did the
final mix.
The label Chapa Blues:
Yapa’s album is the second released by the label Chapa Blues after the amazing
success of Victor Démé’s album (elected Best Record of the Year by France Inter listeners,
for example). As well as showcasing the obvious talent of this group of four French guitarists,
‘Pariwaga’ also gives an idea of what some of the many artists who regularly record at the
label’s Ouagajungle studio sound like. (You can listen to them on the label’s website:
www.chapablues.com). Having signed a three-year contract with Naïve, Chapa Blues
Records hopes to release albums by several of the guest artists appearing on Yapa’s
album such as Baba Commandant.
Websites:
www.yapa.fr / www.chapablues.com / www.naive.fr