[VIDEO] Jazzèbre Festival: in Perpignan, Anthony Joseph wants to “transmit a spiritual experience”

The artist from Trinidad and Tobago based in London, Anthony Joseph, comes to put his words full of fight and spirituality, lulled by the musical prowess of his high-flying musicians during this 34th edition of the Jazzèbre festival. He presents this Thursday, September 29, 2022 on the stage of ElMediator (at 8:30 p.m.), his latest album (the 7th recorded in the studio) “The rich are only defeated when running for their lives” during an intense show.

Anthony Joseph, the specialists agree to describe you as a musician, poet, storyteller, singer and novelist. Where do your artistic abilities stop?

(He’s laughing) That’s a fun question! I don’t really know where they stop. I do as many artistic things as possible. I never create enough. Where does all this inspiration and its influences come from? It is most certainly because I was born in Trinidad and Tobago (Caribbean). I forged myself, in the sense that I was only with my grandparents. They weren’t conventional artists. They were creative, told stories. They weren’t necessarily heard. My grandmother gave me the opportunity to express myself. I was able to have an unlimited imagination giving me the ability to express myself however I wanted. I wanted to be a musician, like Jimi Hendrix. I wanted to be a star, like Prince. I wanted to be a writer and at the same time link music and poetry. I have always had a lot of freedom. It is also a deep taste for freedom that allows me to do all this. And a bit of naivety too. I want to believe that you can do what you want and take risks to achieve it. Personally, I took risks for example by moving to the UK because I left everything behind. It may not necessarily be a risk when you think about it. But I did! You don’t have to be afraid of your feelings if you want to achieve a lot.

You are going to defend on stage your latest album entitled “The rich are only defeated when running for their lives”. It’s a punchy message that you come to deliver to Perpignan

. The album was created with great inspiration from the “Black lives matter” movement (**) but also from the place of the black community in the United Kingdom. There are many references to poets such as Edward Kamau Brathwaite and Anthony McNeill (who traced the migrations of African peoples and their oppression, editor’s note) and the writer Cyril Lionel Robert James who created “Les Jacobins blacks. Toussaint Louverture and the Revolution of Saint-Domingue” (on the European slave trade, editor’s note). He is very literary and very serious. There is not just one message, each title has its own message to deliver in a different way. It is about racial politics, yes. But not always either. I won’t say it’s an eternal fight but rather a fight for each of us. Not just for blacks. Whites too must be mobilized on this heritage. Sometimes it gets better, but the fight always goes on. And we have to look beyond the struggles for the black community. Behind it are people, their families, their personal well-being, their love. If it were only necessary to fight, it would be reductive. Being black is a skin color. It shouldn’t be reduced to being black, it’s being in the dark. A friend of mine who is a teacher told me one day:

"My skin is black. But I am not my skin color."

Is jazz music the best way to get political messages across on racial issues?

I don't think that one music is better than another to convey messages. The jazz of always does an incredible job. But the same goes for reggae, the soul of James Brown, African music… Jazz does not have a monopoly. But still, the focus on racial issues in the black community is always complicated to defend.

You who live in London, what do you want to convey to the French public?

There is no will on my part to transmit anything. I believe that people go to a concert to see a total experience of pleasure, of sharing with other people in the same place to enjoy the music in this collective moment. I have incredible musicians, I hope the public comes for them too. For the intensity of the music. It’s almost religious what’s happening. The public is shocked by all this. What I would eventually have to pass on is a spiritual experience. Music can be touched, felt. You have to operate on the same frequency to experience it.
Read also :

Perpignan and Pyrénées-Orientales: Roaming at the heart of the 34th Jazzèbre Festival

Anthony Joseph is this Thursday, September 29, 2022, at 8:30 p.m., on the ElMediator stage in Perpignan as part of the Jazzèbre festival(**) “Black lives matter” is a political movement that was born in the United States to defend the cause of the African-American community and gained momentum in 2020 after the death of George Floyd killed by a white policeman during an arrest in Minneapolis.

[VIDEO] Jazzèbre Festival: in Perpignan, Anthony Joseph wants to “transmit a spiritual experience”