We do not have the luxury of not having hope, believes Paul Kunigis, whom we met more than 20 years ago with his group Jeszcze Raz. The vaccination campaign is progressing, spring has set in and, in his own little world, a big step will soon be taken: he is back on stage this Friday to present Yallah, his beautiful record released in March.
Posted on May 14, 2021 at 11:00 a.m.
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“It does me a lot of good, I find myself very lucky,” he insists on the other end of the line. Reasons to rejoice, the singer with the drawling voice finds a lot. Yallah – which means “forward” – is not a pandemic album, in the sense that its themes are not inspired by it. Except that it wouldn’t have sounded like that without the health crisis. Maybe he would never have seen the light of day.
Paul Kunigis is used to taking his time between two records. However, during the eight years that separate Yallah from his previous album, 1 moment (2013), he questioned himself a lot: continue singing in Polish, his mother tongue? and in Hebrew, when he left Israel for many moons? and then, basically, what is the point of making more records in our time?
I haven’t stopped working in music. I have given a lot of concerts in Europe. But I didn’t see the need to make a new album…
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Paul joined
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Then COVID-19 came along and kind of rearranged his thoughts. “The pandemic has refocused me on my origins,” says the musician, born in Poland but raised in an Arab city in Israel where he attended school in French. “Maybe not being able to travel made me realize that I am fundamentally Polish-Israeli. ”
The right to comfort
The other positive effect of the pandemic in his recent career is that it allowed him to reconnect with musicians with whom he worked at the time of his record. Balagane, an album that took him out of the shadows in 2002. Yves Desrosiers (guitars), Marie-Soleil Bélanger (violin), François Lalonde (percussion), Caroline Meunier (accordion) and the others had time ahead of them. He seized the opportunity.
Yallah is not a reheated version of Balagane. It’s the same swing, the same forays into klezmer, jazz and gypsy music, but with a slightly different frame of mind and calm confidence. “There was someone who told me it was like going back to old comfortable slippers,” says the singer.
This right to comfort – which is not a synonym of “ease”, he specifies – Paul Kunigis claims.
It was a long walk, we are tired of the context and it is pleasant to find a certain comfort, without nostalgia. Like when you put on an old shirt that you love. Or that we return to a dish that we like.
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Paul joined
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His most recent songs, which tackle sometimes harsh themes such as the fate of migrants in the Mediterranean, still carry the very Slavic melancholy of the Polish singer, but also a very well channeled force. “We’re all 20 years older. There is a maturity that emerges from that, a depth that we did not have before, judge Paul Kunigis. Sure Balagane, we played 20,000 notes to the measure. There, it is more calm. ”
And behind the melancholy that envelops many songs of Yallah, there is also a desire to celebrate life. We understand that this is what will animate the band that will surround Paul Kunigis on the stage of the Ministry this Friday, the day which marks the world release of Yallah in digital format (via Audiogram). “It touches me, admits the singer, because it makes me think that we did something good. ”
Paul Kunigis, this Friday, 7 p.m., at the Ministry and on webcast. Replay Saturday at 2 p.m.
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