CD of the Week
YANNICK NOAH
When Africa Meets Nepal
Paris, 5 September 2003 - Yannick Noah, former French tennis player turned music star, is currently back on music's centre court with Pokhara, an album with a distinctive Zen feel about it inspired by Nepal.
Fittingly for a music star who began his career in sport, Yannick Noah was invited to play at the closing ceremony of the World Athletic Championships in Paris on Sunday 31 August (bringing the house down just around the corner from the Stade de France where he supported Johnny Hallyday a couple of months back). This not only brought Noah's career neatly full circle, but also gave the former tennis champ the opportunity to present the songs from his new album, Pokhara, released on Columbia on 25 August.
Noah's music career has been no easy ride. While fans worshipped Yannick and his flying dreadlocks on the courts as he made his name as the last French player to triumph at Roland-Garros, then went on to captain France's national team to victory in the Davis Cup, people seem to have been loathe to take him seriously as a singer. Noah's music career got off to an impressive start on the commercial front, however, with his first single, Saga Africa, being adopted as the TV channel TF1's 'hit of the summer' in 1991. This undoubtedly boosted sales of the single but tarnished Noah's image somewhat, Saga Africa being dismissed as a catchy Afro-pop ditty with no real substance. Noah went on to record a series of unsuccessful singles and poor-selling albums, then finally hit the jackpot three years ago with the simply-titled Yannick Noah, an album which spawned a whole string of chart-topping singles including Simon Papa Tara, La Voix des sages and Les Lionnes. The album ended up selling nearly 1.5 million copies, establishing the definitive Yannick Noah sound as cool, laid-back rhythms inspired by reggae and Noah's African roots.
Climbing the summits
Listening to the 13 tracks on Noah's latest offering, Pokhara, one has the over-riding impression that the former tennis champ has slipped into this easy rhythm once again ? and feels no need to pull out any new shots to impress anyone further! This approach will be enough to keep Noah's (admittedly large) circle of current fans happy, but Pokhara is unlikely to gain any new Yannick converts. Si tu savais, the opening track on the album currently being promoted as the first single release, sets a decidedly uncracking pace, supported by a video filmed in the capital of spirituality and Zen resistance, Nepal. Up until now the sleepy little village of Pokhara was best-known as the starting-point for mountain treks to the snow-capped summits of Annapurna, but thanks to Noah's album title (not to mention a colourful CD booklet featuring picturesque travel shots and passport stamps) a whole new generation of musically-inspired trekkers could soon be venturing thither.
Noah has made much of his passion for Africa and his Cameroonian roots to date, but the songs on Pokhara find him playing up the spiritual side of his personality this time round. Don't go expecting Tibetan chants or Nepalese bells in the musical arrangements on the new album, however. Pokhara remains true to the definitive Noah sound, featuring laid-back reggae beats, African rhythms and plenty of catchy percussion. The continuity with Noah's previous output is further marked by the singer having decided to work with the same production team as on his last album (notably the famous Benzi-V?n?ruso-Kapler trio from Jean-Jacques Goldman's stable).
Designed to appeal to a "broad cross section" of the public as they say on TF1 (the channel which has invited Noah to appear on its Star Academy on 13 September), Pokhara offers little in the way of deep spiritual truths. "J'essaie des violons/face ? la violence" (Why not meet violence with violins?) as Noah suggests on Laissez-nous essayer is hardly a world-changing statement and the humanism he offers up on songs such as J'aurais d? comprendre, Quand ils sont l?, Au niveau du sol and Mon Eldorado is perhaps a little too slick and simple. Let's all just sit down and love one another makes a worthy sentiment, but an all-too-glib statement! No, musically speaking, the one real outstanding and truly adventurous track on Pokhara is Noah's cover of Georges Brassens's 1961 accordion-backed classic Dans l'eau de la claire fontaine.
Will French music fans be rushing out to venture into Noah's Pokhara? Well, only time and sales figures will tell. But given that the former tennis champ is one of the country's current big hitters and his record label are organising a massive promotional campaign in the run-up to a tour (which should kick off in March 2004 and include a stop at Bercy Stadium in Paris), we predict Yannick Noah will be volley-ing his way up the French album charts very soon.
Gilles Rio
Translation: Julie Street
Pokhara (Sony / Columbia)
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