Alpha Blondy: “I don’t have the skills to be a politician. God gave me a mission: to play reggae”

Strongly inhabited by spirituality, but also by political demands, the Ivorian musician returns with an abundant double album.

Your new disc, “ Eternity”, is a double album of eighteen titles. Does inspiration never leave you?

No, because I have the chance to benefit from the favors of God, who is the supreme inspirer. I made this album with the same musicians as usual. It is my family. With some, we have shared our joys and our sorrows for fifteen or twenty years. We recorded some of the songs remotely, between Abidjan and Paris, during the pandemic.

Your records are always richly orchestrated. Couldn’t you run to the economy?

My musicians and I hate monotony. We do reggae, sure, but we don’t copy Jamaicans. We like to innovate with instruments like the balafon, the kora, the bagpipes, as well as with our cultures and our languages… This is our contribution to world reggae.

The eponymous track, “Eternity”, is subtitled “The Pilgrim’s Song”. What is it about ?

It is a prayer that pilgrims recite in Mecca, when they go to the Kaaba. When I went there, this song, taken up by a million people, touched me. So I composed this song and called it “Eternity” to glorify Abraham.

Even if it evokes spirituality, the album is above all very political. For example, who is “Arsonist firefighter” aimed at?

I denounce the hypocrisy of the United Nations Organization, which was created in 1945 to avoid wars, but whose five permanent members of the Security Council (France, United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom ) are also the main arms dealers in the world. There is a conflict of interest! Just look at what is happening in Ukraine.

Are you worried about the future of humanity?

When each other is blackmailing the nuclear bomb, yes. They are not the only ones on board this planet! They have no right to do that. Here again, the United Nations is failing in its mission.

The title “Epistemicide”, which lasts seventeen minutes, denounces the subjugation of African peoples to colonialism and includes speeches by Cheikh Anta Diop, Aminata Traoré and Fatou Diome. Why them?

Because I couldn’t sing their words as well as they say them. It is a question of rebuilding the African man, of giving him back his confidence, while denouncing the States which behave like assisted people, who think that all that is good comes from the West. Let’s first learn to depend on ourselves. We cannot at the same time claim our sovereignty and ask the other to feed us.

Is it on this condition that “fewer Africans will drown in the Mediterranean”, as you sing in “Les Immigrés”?

These drowning young people are proof of the incompetence of policies that do not create jobs or the industries needed to transform raw materials. Think that the Ivory Coast, where I come from, is the first cocoa producing country in the world, but has practically no chocolate factories. Niger produces uranium, but there is no civilian nuclear power plant that could supply all of West Africa with electricity.

Why did you never get into politics?

Africa is a victim of “ultracrepidarianists”, those people who talk about subjects they have no control over. I can criticize what I observe, but I don’t have the skill to be a politician. God gave me another mission: to make songs and reggae, to give love and hope.

You start your tour at the Bataclan. Is the choice of this room dictated by the symbol it embodies?

Yes, because we preach peace. Given what happened at the Bataclan, my guys and I wanted to honor the victims, who are music lovers, who make the musicians that we are and who had just come there to have fun.

This year we celebrate the 40th anniversary of “Brigadier Sabari”, the hit that made you famous in 1982. Do you sometimes look back?

If I look in the mirror, it’s to go forward. The past is the fuel that propels us into the future.

Do you already have the feeling of accomplishment?

We are all on a mission on this earth. I put my heart and my soul in the one that God has entrusted to me. When it is finished, the Creator will appreciate. For the moment, as I tell my wife, I am paid to sing. As long as the supreme inspiration and the fans trust me, I go for it.

Have

July 9, 7 p.m. Bataclan, 50, bd Voltaire, 11^e. €41.80-52.80.