Okali, French Cameroonian duo
The band's name, Okali, is inspired by the singer's original Cameroonian name.
Adopted at the age of 12 and sent to France, Gaëlle Minali-Bella met French multi-instrumentalist Florent Sorin and they worked on their music for years before presenting a first five track record this month. A self-produced project, it offers a mix of sounds but also a symbol of a return to African roots.
I met the duo for RFI:
Okali means ‘pay attention to others.’
"It’s the name I had until I was twelve, before my adoption, and it’s coming back to life today," Gaëlle Minali-Bella told me.
Together with Florent Sorin, she formed the Franco-Cameroonian duo named after her given birth name. She is originally from Cameroon, and sings in multiple languages. He is French and creates the instrumentation.
The duo wants to offer a borderless music where African sounds, trip hop and dub meet. On 20 February, their first EP, titled Okali, eponymous name of the band, was released in France, and some of their songs are already available online on all platforms.
It has five tracks in English, French, and a Cameroonian dialect called Eton.
"I would say it’s the beginning of introspection because, with a lot of metaphors, I tell a little bit of my life story," Gaelle/Okali said. "I went back to my roots a bit, to dig into certain things. It’s introspection, the beginning of introspection."
Reconnections
Gaelle's native tongue, Eton, comes from the Beti ethnic group. It can be heard notably on their track “Deep”.
Gaelle says she first forgot the language as she grew up with her French adopted family, but it came back to her when she started creating music more seriously.
"Music helped me rediscover my dialect, rediscover my origins, and therefore, inevitably, my history, my childhood memories," she told me. "And it was natural that I would sing in all the languages I had heard, at least during my childhood, and those I could understand. So it's not a conscious decision; it's a choice from the heart."
"I don't express myself in the same way in my dialect as when I sing in French or English. The feelings aren't the same, they aren't the same. But that's precisely what cultural mixing is all about."
Gaelle says music goes back to her earliest memories, as a little girl. "I was born in Cameroon, and music was always a part of my daily life at home," she added. "The family was playing outdoors, and even without me realising it."
"Because there are no musicians in my family, but music has always been present. We always listened to music and danced, and even created music. That's it. We liked making all sorts of noises… that went with the rhythm."
She arrived in France at the age of twelve.
"I discovered Western music, if I may say so, through my arrival in France, and the fusion happened at that time because I had a foundation that was primarily Cameroonian, African."
Then, she started working with other musicians who opened her up to other sounds. "But Okali was truly born with my meeting Florent," she added. "Okali wouldn't exist if I hadn't met Florent."
Afro trip-hop
Florent Sorin took charge of the composition of the songs, work instruments and with a sampler or looper.
"I like the idea of sampling a snippet of an instrument," he told me. "I use a guitar, a bass, a keyboard connected to a computer, a piano; and I even sample vocals, actually. Something about it appealed to me, the trance-like quality.
He found inspiration in similar rhythms and repetitive trance-like partenrs in Afrobeat and Jamaican reggae. They're all about repetition," he said.
"I've had the opportunity to go to Africa, to Cameroon a few times. I think that experience really struck me."
Okali’s other musical inspirations range from the Bristol trip hop collective Massive Attack to the Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk, by way of Radiohead, Tracy Chapman and Manu Dibango. “Deep,” their track driven by a guitar riff, was also influenced by the metal band Tool.
Another song from the EP, “Traveler”, explores the different cultural exchanges the singer has been through and invites listeners to pursue. The song titled “Gathering” celebrates togetherness and sharing.
The band will be touring all the way through the summer in France and Switzerland.
"We love having free rein in our interpretations on stage," Gaelle said. "On CDs or vinyl, the music is fixed, but live, we like to push the boundaries a bit. I don't always do the same vocal versions, I don't always use the same structure. That's what's so great about it."
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Concert:
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