‘Euterpe’s Living-room’ is a new concert series at Batavierhuis, hosted by flutist and Batavier Aura Rascón, where she invites special musicians from different musical traditions with whom she wishes to collaborate in order to explore cross-cultural musical dialogues.
To inaugurate these series in a special way, she invites the rising West African star: TITA NZEBI, also known as ‘The Voice of Gabon’, and her band.
TITA NZEBI
Biography
« It is a tiny woman with a powerful voice. She has an outstanding stage presence and for everyone it is as if one has known her for a long time (…). There are sometimes encounters with people who radiate something extraordinary. Tita is one of them : even singing in nzebi (a Bantous language) she communicates magically with her audience” Emmanuelle Viora, La Renaissance du Loir et Cher n°2754, Applying the mould of the African artist is impossible with Tita Nzebi. She has got many sources of inspiration in Gabon where she was born. For a long time this young woman has not paid attention to music. In her village of South Gabon, CDs belonged to this category of rare things and in her family, the priority was given to education and studies. It is at 20s that she became aware of the beauty of the ethnic black music. And …she started apprenticing in music in Paris where she arrived in 1998 for postgraduate studies. She started alone in bars and clubs of the French capital. There she met more and more interesting people and she learnt to control increasingly larger audiences. Tita has now become more and more aware at last that she is a genuine artist and she dedicates herself entirely to her trade. Her success is certainly due to her strenuous work. Her meeting with exceptional musicians like Sec Bidens, Paco Séry, Luciano, Faya Horns, Bost l Bim and the Libreville Gabonese Choir singers gives her music a delightful coloration.
Metiani, her 14 track record produced by BIBAKA, has an invisible thread of her trajectory. The path she is exploring using her own terms with a limited musical culture, her desires she tries to translate, confer to the album a form of artistic freshness and unfeigned innocence.
Accompanied by her musicians in a perfect synergy, Nzebi makes us live the bewitching rhythms of her country with her body, her powerful voice and her so expressive gesture. Because of her staggering stage presence, the audience is energized and motivated by Tita. Everyone joins in for a sing-along as a chorus line. Even singing in her native language (nzebi) she communicates magically with her audience.
Beyond the beauty of the ethnic black music, in her most recent creation, Tita reveals us the horrifying reality of her country where, as she sings, freedoms are in chains and lives are destroyed. An interpretation expressing the desire to live a dignified life and respect for people; the passionate appeal of a citizen… This is not a commercial music, this is a music to like, a music to be felt deeply within ourselves. In 2017, she played a series of concert before travelling to India where she could meet, create and perform with the famous Baul , the mystic mistrels from Bengal. The artist coming back and performing in the famous venues in Paris : Café de la Danse and La Clef – St Germain en Laye has changed. She has gained a new dimension. It is through the nzebi language that she is quite alone to use in a sublime way that Tita generates a certain pride in the Gabonese identity. She brings reconsideration of the culture of her country where this pride has been lost because of the melting of the population. This is her frame of mind she has just finished her new album “From Kolkata”, the city where she has created some songs. In this amazing and powerful new album Tita addresses some of her dear themes, family and motherhood, respect for people, the silence of prim and proper persons facing the atrocities in her country. It was released on April 6 th , 2019 in France and presented during summer/autumn festivals in France and Switzerland. “She belongs to the most interesting African talents of taday” E. Van Dombuy Scipio. Popmagazine heuven.nl 2019.
Copyright : Marianne Wenger
“Tita is well on her way to becoming one of the great divas of African music” Pieter Wijnsteckers – Heaven #4 – 2019 From Kolkata has got a 4 start appraisal in Songlines and Jazzism.
