Melissa on the road

Journalist at RFI (ex-DW, BBC, CBC, F24...), writer (on art, music, culture...), I work in radio, podcasting, online, on films. As a writer, I also contributed to the New Arab, Art UK, Byline Times, the i Paper... Born in Paris, I was based in Prague, Miami, London, Nairobi (covering East Africa), Bangui, and in Bristol, UK. I also reported from Italy, Germany, Haiti, Tunisia, Liberia, Senegal, India, Mexico, Iraq, South Africa... This blog is to share my work, news and cultural discoveries.

24/04/2019

"Welcome to the Rebellion!" - in film

"Welcome to the Rebellion!"

Produced and directed by All Hands On

22/04/2019

Feature / When Bristol music went 'Out of the Comfort Zone' - Epigram

My interview with Joe in Bristol for the online music magazine, Epigram:

https://epigram.org.uk/2019/04/20/feature-when-bristol-music-went-out-of-the-comfort-zone/

Feature / When Bristol music went 'Out of the Comfort Zone'

Joe Gorecki

By Joe Gorecki, Deputy Music Editor

Massive Attack's trip-hop defining album Mezzanine came out 21 years ago today and the band are still the biggest group to have come out of Bristol. Epigram Music sat down with the group's biographer Melissa Chemam to talk about their origins and her new book Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone

Bristol has been returning to its recent musical past twice recently. First Massive Attack, the biggest band of the ‘Bristol sound’, brought their ‘Mezzanine XXI’ tour to Filton Airfield to celebrate the 21st anniversary of their band-breaking trip-hop masterpiece Mezzanine.

At the same time as these homecoming shows, a new biography of the group and of the wider ‘Bristol sound’ was released. Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone by Melissa Chemam which charts the history of the ‘Bristol sound’: bands like Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky who all emerged from the south-west to worldwide acclaim during the 1990s. The book, she says, was only supposed to take six months but four years later, it has finally been published in English by local publishers Tangent Books after the French edition came out last year.

I caught up with Melissa, a French journalist and African affairs expert at the BBC World Service currently based in London, before the packed launch of her book at Rough Trade. We met the afternoon after Massive Attack’s first Bristol date at the ‘Steel Yard’, the temporary arena erected just for them on Filton Airfield. About the gig, she says it was a good performance but for her was surpassed by their sold-out appearance at Paris’ Le Zenith the month before, where the atmosphere, she says, was even better.

The book, however, is an intricate historical panorama of Bristol’s music scene from punk and reggae in the 1970s to hip-hop in the 1980s and trip-hop and drum and bass in the 1980s so I wanted to ask her why it was that it was Bristol that produced so much talent in such a short span of time.

‘Everyone I interviewed mentioned the size. Bristol is quite small and was always too close to London so for a long time nothing was happening, all in the same venue, all the hills, all gathered in Park Row a bit of the magic happening the melting pot all the migration, and that’s what I cover as a journalist.

‘I lived near the Carribean [in Miami], I lived in Africa and my parents are from North Africa so I thought it was an interesting very modern story because the migrants are the heroes and this relationship changed the city and made it better. Usually we talk about migrants when they are unemployed or when there are riots but in that situation it’s the other way around.’

What drew Melissa to wanting to write about Massive Attack and their Bristol origins was the same thing that has given the band a renewed sense of purpose: their social conscience.

Massive Attack use their light shows to make political statements with their Mezzanine XXI making use of graphic footage to raise awareness of the ongoing Syrian civil war and refugee crisis.

‘Before my book was out,’ Melissa says, ‘I was mainly focussed on the refugee crisis. I went to Calais, to northern Iraq, Sicily and the border between France and Italy and then I came here as well. Massive Attack travelled to Lebanon five years ago and visited refugee camps there, they took a journalist from the Independent with them so that they would focus on what was happening there instead of focussing on their shows. [It showed] what kind of band they were, not promoting anything, no new album. I started my research around that point.’

Over the course of writing the book Melissa managed to interview most of the key players of the Bristol scene and trip-hop movement but I was keen to ask what it was like meeting the band, duo Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja and Grant ‘Daddy G’ Marshall, seeing as they prefer to remain elusive and only rarely give interviews. ‘[It was] surprisingly casual, I came to the studio and they were really cool’.

The bizarrest thing about it, she says was that ‘we couldn’t stop talking – I thought they would be grilling me with “what do you want?” [but] 3D has an amazing memory and his main worry was about representing [the whole scene] and everyone.’

‘At the time the Wild Bunch [Massive Attack’s precursor collective] were being completely revolutionary in the Dug Out and the graffiti scene was so big and it seemed to be happening by magic, so I was trying to find out how it was possible. I wanted to ask them ‘how did that happen?’ but obviously when you’re the ones doing it, it sounds so normal to you.

‘Also, how Banksy and the band work together. I was very surprised how people are still writing about the rumour that they’re the same person.’

I ask her if she’s not convinced by the rumours that 3D is actually Banksy which was seemingly confirmed by Goldie in 2017. ‘It’s not that I’m not convinced,’ she responds incredulously. ‘It’s obviously not possible. When Banksy was starting out, he left Bristol for East London and hardly anyone knew him and he was graffitiing intensely.

‘[At that time] Massive Attack were touring the world – they were super famous and best mates with Blur and Kate Moss and were in Japan and America for months, definitely not living in a dump in Hackney’.

At the book launch, Melissa confirmed that she had not knowingly met Banksy personally but that she couldn’t be sure. Before letting her go and begin signing books as the buzz for her book launch builds at Rough Trade, I wanted to ask of all Massive Attack’s diverse output, which album was her favourite?

Many would go for their first 1990’s Blue Lines an astonishing genre-defining album which somehow still sounds fresh or Mezzanine and it’s industrial rock-imbued darkness.

‘It’s really hard, I love them all but I have a special love for 100th Window which is funny as it’s not really appreciated here. I think it’s their most experimental and daring, but also their most gentle.

‘It’s also their post 9/11 album and inspired by all the changes [brought by] the internet in politics and society but it’s the redemption album: you dig down and then find yourself again, it’s something really deep.'

'Massive Attack: Out of the Comfort Zone' is out now from Tangent Books

Extinction Rebellion - Day 7

Extinction Rebellion in London, Day 7

21 April 2019

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Waterloo Bridge
2pm

Parliament Square
4pm

Procession towards Marble Arch for the species risking extinction
5pm

Marble Arch
7pm
Greta Thunberg, people's assembly and music

Twice Best Seller!! 'Massive Attack: Out Of The Comfort Zone'

Massive Attack: Out Of The Comfort Zone

by Melissa Chemam

Best Sellers in Musical Philosophy & Social Aspects

#1

Melissa Chemam

4.6 out of 5 stars 6

Paperback

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/14596645031/ref=zg_b_bs_14596645031_1

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Best Sellers in Electronica Music

#1

Melissa Chemam

4.6 out of 5 stars 6

Paperback

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/14596631031/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_books

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Customer reviews

Rich Drew

5.0 out of 5 starsBedtime Read.

21 April 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Heard them seen them, now gonna read about them!!
Bliss.

Carter Brune

5.0 out of 5 starsWell worth waiting for... terrific!!

7 March 2019

Format: Paperback

The last time there was a collaboration of such cultural enormity between the UK and France was the building of Concorde. Thank Tangent Books for picking up on this text and what a prize. Melissa Chemam is giving us two books for the price of one. On one level it’s easily accessible, a good read, a real page turner but kicking it up a gear it has an academic quality and would be a brilliant research tool, of this genre, time and place.

Bristol has a special place in my heart and Massive Attack has accompanied me over thousands of miles in many dodgy motors, but I could always rely on them. There is something exceptional about Massive Attack even before a superb chronicler as Chemam gets near them. I remember seeing Grant around St Pauls and in the local pub off Jamaica Street. The brilliance walked amongst us and that counts for a lot. Built from the ground up on a foundation of hard learnt experience and this comes over in the writing. This book is Bristol in many ways, the diverse music and cultures coming together and creating something truly unique. The real deal.

Everything works: The cover, I think it’s brilliant and I’m reasonably qualified I work at a major London gallery, the content and the context.

Night Runner

5.0 out of 5 starsEssential for fans of Massive Attack

19 March 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

This is essential and great in many levels. It’s a must for Massive Attack fan base. For budding and forged artists it will provide an insight in the inner workings of the multi dimensional collective of artists that make up the ever involving project that is Massive Attack. From a socio-political and culture point is provides turths and insights into how the contribution of the sons immigrants played a significant part in changing and shaping UK culture, and still continue to be ahead of the creative and cultural curve. A must read.

David Horler

5.0 out of 5 starsA definative read

11 March 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

A fantastic piece of journalism. widely researched and very well informed, there were some parts in the early text that I had forgotten about the scene then and it was lovely to be reminded of them. A difficult story to tell but the author stays with it throughout. the only thing that could have been added for me was an index as I am sure I will return to this book again and again.

John Murphy

5.0 out of 5 starsA great read!

31 March 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Was desperate to read this book ever since I heard about it. Love Massive Attack and the Bristol street art scene. A great read with a lot more detail than expected. Would definitely recommend.

Rich Drew

5.0 out of 5 starsBedtime Read.

21 April 2019

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Heard them seen them, now gonna read about them!!
Bliss.

"And then came the Massive, out of the comfort zone."

First review of my book from Italy :)
In English

Recensione cliente

Argya L.

5,0 su 5 stelleAnd then came the Massive, out of the comfort zone.

2018 (and 2019, thanks to their belated tour, in perfect "lazy Bristol bastards' style") has been the year of Massive Attack's Mezzanine's twentieth anniversary. The publication of the English version of this book by journalist Melissa Chemam couldn't come in a better time. At last, I got it and came to read it. The story of this mixed-ethnicity group of youngsters, passionate about music, vinyls, crate-digging, street art is rightly set in the social, political, even musical background of the time, both in Bristol and in the UK, and this is something valuable, which never fails to be taken into the appropriate consideration. While focusing mainly on Massive, all the bands that formed in the Eighties and Nineties are given their space, included those, especially in the punk movement, that hugely came to influence MA music tastes.

The beginnings and subsequent rise of the guys, first as The Wild Bunch and then as Massive Attack, with their unique music style, are narrated fluidly and with great accuracy. Beware, this is not a peeping-Tom, gossipy book, so if you are looking for scandals or members' love affairs, this is not the book for you!
Melissa put a great effort in reading and collecting the great amount of interviews given by Grant Marshall and especially Robert Del Naja - the spiky-haired mastermind and dynamo of the band, the pioneer of graffiti art in Bristol, whose stubborn, fascinating and willing personality emerged throughout the years, often colliding with that of the other band members, leading them to leave the group - and had the chance to interview them personally. Song lyrics are also analyzed, thus throwing an interpretative light (one of the many that can be thrown) on their often enigmatic, cryptic meaning.

Not to be forgotten is the fact that the author translated herself the book from French, her mother-language, into a very flowing, good-to-read English. Is this a book for fans? Well, yes and no. If you're a fan of the Bristol sound forged by MA and fellow groups in the Nineties, this is a must-read to get the full overview on the matter. If you're not, it surely adds to your music culture and is likely you'll feel like listening to some of those revolutionary artists' music after -or better, while-reading it. And get a little bit out of your comfort zone, as the Massive did and still do. Big ups!

https://www.amazon.it/review/R233LZNSBV6JAK/ref=pe_1640261_66412381_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv?fbclid=IwAR352kG4hhrc_H94VcwkVuQ77CNsJx5QKhkyodE2JTqt4yjoxUpFVRTpm6w