DJ GUTS will take you on a musical voyage at WOMADelaide next month

Reading Time: 9 minutes

DJ GUTS, DJ and producer is coming to Australia for the WOMADelaide festival in March where he will be performing a DJ set to close the festival on Monday 13 March. We spoke to DJ GUTS ahead of his arrival in Australia.

DJ GUTS

This may be an obvious question, but why the name DJ GUTS? Because in English it can mean courage, but it can also mean everything inside.

The guts! Exactly. Actually, it’s not such an obvious question. Basically, it’s just a tag. It’s a nickname. When I was young, it was a signature, a tag that I made on the walls to mark my territory at the same time.

 

So you did a bit of graffiti when you were young?

Precisely, I did a bit of graffiti and it’s a name that I chose at the beginning completely by chance, but in life, there is no chance. I say to myself now with a lot of hindsight obviously that in the end this name suits me perfectly because I needed courage when I was young, to achieve – to find my way, to find my path and to take my life in hand and my destiny in hand. I needed a lot of courage because when I was young, I was very shy and very introverted. And I found, let’s say, my way, my path and my destiny, I found it thanks to hip hop. So it’s hip hop that brought me out and we’ll say hip hop in its entirety.

 

It’s everything that hip-hop can integrate, that is to say its culture, its philosophy, the graffiti, the dance, the DJs, the beatmakers, the rappers. So, all the disciplines of hip-hop and all that it can represent, it is exactly what came to touch the deepest part of me and it is what gave meaning to my life.

 

And after GUTS it also means the guts. And in fact, the second brain is the gut, it’s the belly. That’s what happens there. And for me, it’s something that is very, very important because I’ve always been a sensitive person, with a lot of emotions and everything I’ve felt in my life, I feel in my guts and in my stomach. So for me. it’s also, let’s say, “emotional intelligence”.

 

On the WOMADelaide website it says that you are from France and Spain. You are French, but do you also have Spanish origins?

Actually, I don’t have Spanish blood, I have Italian and French blood, but I’ve been living in Spain for 16 years, on an island, so it’s true that after 16 years living in Spain, I feel half Spanish, half French. I got married to a Catalan woman, a Spanish woman, and my father who is Italian, but who came to Ibiza in the late 60s, at the time of the psychedelic movement, the hippie movement. So you could say that I followed my father’s path and I ended up settling in Ibiza too, like my father. That explains it.

 

Was your father a musician too?

Not at all. My father was a restaurateur, because may he rest in peace, he’s gone now, but he was an Italian restaurateur in all his splendour.

 

So what can the WOMADelaide audience expect from your closing DJ set on Monday night?

In my philosophy and in my approach to art in general, I always say don’t expect anything, but welcome it. You really have to make the distinction between a concert and a DJ set – I have a DJ set proposal since I stopped doing concerts. In my DJ set proposal, in fact, it is based on my musical research, so that means that it is based on musical discovery.

 

And what I love personally, first of all I’m a – what we call – Crate Digger and I spend most of my life, looking for music, bringing to light things that either have gone unnoticed or things that have been totally forgotten. And I like to bring them back to light and to the forefront. So what I love most about my DJ sets is not necessarily playing my own music, my records, my discography. But what I love is to play my discoveries of the moment. That is to say that, for the last two or three months, there are maybe forty or fifty tracks that I’ve been playing and I want to share them and I want to make the audience discover them.

 

So obviously, it’s not always easy for the listeners, because the listeners are often waiting to hear my songs, to hear the tracks from my albums. But it’s true that for me and often for DJs who are also producers, it’s s a bit tricky to play your own music on stage when you’re on the decks as a DJ. Because the interest of playing your music on stage is to be able to reinterpret it, to give it a new dimension on stage. And when you’re a DJ, it’s difficult to give a new dimension to your own music because it’s not played live, it’s just played on record.

 

So either I play remixes of my own songs or maybe edited and reinterpreted versions. While it’s true that I generally play very few of my own songs, my own tracks, ‘ll make an effort like at WOMAD because it’s the first time I’ve been to Australia. So we’re in a festival setting.

 

I’m not very, very fond of festivals, especially DJ sets. I like festivals when I go to see a concert, but I don’t actually go to a festival to see a DJ or to listen to a DJ. When I go to a festival, it’s mainly to see and listen to live bands. So the DJ’s task at a festival is always a bit tricky. In any case, this is the proposal and what I propose in my DJ sets.

 

Where do you look for the new stuff, the tracks that you’re going to share with the audience?

It’s quite a different way of searching. I have a bit like everyone else, I go snooping, hunting, searching on Discogs, on YouTube, on blogs, on mixtapes of DJs who are other diggers. So I spend a lot of time listening to that. I do a lot of research on Bandcamp. I love Bandcamp, it’s my favourite Bandcamp platform.

 

Otherwise, I’m also very much in touch with dealers around the world who are dedicated to finding rare vinyl in their country and then selling it to DJ diggers, like me. So there’s a whole network of “vinyl dealers” and I have my networks in Paris, in Sao Paulo, in Brazil, in Africa, in the Caribbean, in South America.

 

Are there any Australian artists you have discovered that you would like to sample or work with?

That’s a good question. The last few days I’ve been in touch with a beatmaker/producer from Adelaide who I really like, called Inkswell. And he knows my music very well. He told me he was very happy to welcome me in Adelaide, so we were going to exchange, we’re going to spend time together. I’m very happy to meet this artist.

 

And there’s a band I like that I discovered not so long ago. This group called Black Jesus Experience. Of course, there’s a rapper I really like in Australia. Her name is Sampa The Great. She’s really amazing! I love her!

 

So you can enjoy it a little bit. That’s good, but what are you looking for in the music that you sample?

What I’m looking for, of course, is either a sound or a melody that will come to me immediately. To touch my soul or to tell me a story, or to bring back a memory because I’m very nostalgic. But in fact, it’s something that will simply touch my soul and that will inspire me to tell a story around this sample.

 

I often start by composing the music with a sample. And once I have my basic sample, which is a bit of a foundation, then I’ll build around it and I’ll tell a story around it and I’ll sublimate the sample and make it into something beautiful and, why not, something moving or touching.

To talk about your music now, your last album Estrellas, which brought together 25 artists from Senegal, Cuba and France, is linked to the music of slaves, isn’t it?

It’s related to that. It’s the heritage of this music obviously, because Cubans were deported from Africa through the triangular trade. By having Cuban artists who themselves came from Africa through the slave trade… Inevitably, the fact that Cubans come back to Africa to record a record, a project, this history and this heritage will both feed the project and above all, it will float around. It’s something that’s going to hover around us and obviously it’s going to be present in a totally unconscious way, but it will be present. In addition, France was a colonising country, a country that also engaged in the slave trade. Africa, which suffered slavery, was also an accomplice because it was they who sold their own people. There were also Africans who were in business and they themselves sold people from their own country. So they were victims and at the same time accomplices. All this means that the legacy of slavery is still very much present.

 

Why did you decide to make an album related to this music and its roots?

My first idea was to make an album in Cuba because Cuba represents for me the place where the music is the strongest, the most powerful and where the musicians are the best. So for me, it’s really the Mecca of music. It’s where the musicians are the most rigorous, the most brilliant, the best trained. So I thought maybe once in my life I would go to a place that for me is perhaps the most musical place in the world. And with the pandemic, with COVID, we could record, but it was so complicated that I had to find a plan B. And the plan B, I said to myself simply that since it’s too complicated to record in Cuba with Cubans, I’m going to record in Dakar, in Senegal, with Cubans.

 

Cubans who lived in Senegal?

No. Cubans from Cuba who were brought to Dakar. It was very complicated to get them to go there. So we came up with the idea of Cuban artists from Cuba coming to Dakar to record the project.

 

And how did you find these musicians?

These are musicians I dreamed of collaborating with. Cucurucho Valdés is an incredible pianist, who is the nephew of Chucho Valdés. So a legend, a legendary pianist in Cuba is Cucurucho Valdés. For me, it was a dream to collaborate with him. When I went to Cuba to meet the artists before working with them, I went to see the musicians who made me dream and with whom I wanted to collaborate. So it started because the pianist Cucurucho Valdés was the absolute priority for me and when he said yes and gave me his agreement, and then I went to see Brenda Navarette, who I wanted to work with.

 

And then I went to see other artists with whom I wanted to work and I asked them if they would agree to come and record in Dakar, since it was not possible to record in Cuba. And they all agreed and they were even very, very happy and very proud and honoured to go for the first time in their lives, to go back to the land of their ancestors and to go and record a record in Africa, in Senegal, in Dakar. For them, it was an honour and a privilege.

 

I can imagine. Personally, when I think of hip hop, I think of rap. For people who think that hip hop is only rap and that your DJ set is only going to be rap, what do you say?

I’ll tell them that my musical background is hip hop and it’s rap, but in a very natural way now there is very little rap in my DJ sets now. Now my DJ sets are a lot of African music, South American music and Caribbean music. So we’re going to listen to music, sunshine, music from many countries – music from Colombia, Brazil, Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, Cuba, Trinidad, Cape Verde,. We’re going to travel and it’s going to be the music of the sun, the music of the islands and it’s going to sound like that.

We thank DJ GUTS for this interview and can’t wait to see DJ GUTS peform his DJ set at WOMADelaide.

 

KEY INFO FOR DJ GUTS IN AUSTRALIA

 

AT WOMADELAIDE 2023

WHAT: DJ GUTS in DJ SET at WOMADelaide 2023

WHEN: 10pm Monday 13 March

WHERE: Botanic Park, Adelaide

HOW: Buy your tickets via this link: https://www.womadelaide.com.au/tickets

HOW MUCH: If you wish to see the DJ Set, you will need a Monday ticket.

Because Saturday tickets are now sold out, it is only possible to buy single day tickets for Friday, Sunday and Monday. They are available at the following prices:

 

Friday

  • Adult $166
  • Concession $148
  • Youth (13 to 17 years old) $103
  • Child (under 12 with an adult) free

 

Sunday

  • Adult $225
  • Concession $198
  • Youth (13 to 17 years) $137
  • Child (under 12 with an adult) free

 

Monday (the night of the DJ GUTS set)

  • Adult $225
  • Concession $198
  • Youth (13 to 17 years old) $137
  • Child (under 12 with an adult) free

 

IN MELBOURNE

WHEN: Sunday 19 March – time to be confirmed

WHERE: Section 8, 27-29 Tattersalls Lane MELBOURNE

HOW: Just turn up

HOW MUCH: Free

LISTEN: You can listen to DJ GUTS on Spotify while waiting for his DJ set at WOMADelaide here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5mMkUZv8uUrlH0SHX89BeS?si=PVuyxDmnRHGn1d6FKkkK9A

WATCH: Subscribe to GUTS’ official YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-4GEnYaEHfPyOswJPejdbA

Do you know DJ GUTS?

 

MORE WOMADELAIDE 2023 CONTENT

San Salvador from San Salvadour in France will play WOMADelaide 2023

French-Moroccan group Bab L Bluz comes to Australia for the first time

Madeleine Peyroux brings her Careless Love Forever tour to Australia

 

 

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Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) inspires a dance performance based on the poetry of Baudelaire

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) based on the poetry of Baudelaire is a dance performance which debuted, and sold out at Avignon OFF festival, and which has just had its Australian debut at Adelaide Fringe. 

Les Fleurs du Mal

Baudelaire was a French poet in 19th century Paris and Les Fleurs du Mal was banned on the grounds of obscenity and public decency. He and the publisher were both prosecuted for it!

 

The description of the show offered on the Fringe website is: “A confession of hopes, dreams, failures and sins, The Flowers of Evil attempts to extract beauty from the malignant.  One must evoke the artificial and paradoxical aspects of life.  Beauty can evolve on its own, irrespective of nature and fuelled by sin. The ideal transcends over the harsh reality where all senses are united in ecstasy.”

 

At the very end of the show, when lights come back up, Shakti explains a little about Baudelaire’s view that we are all good and evil, and the paradoxical nature of beauty and the grotesque. That he thought we all had what it takes to be both good and evil, lightness and darkness. For future presentations of the show, audiences may enjoy having the option of a program which summarises or quotes some of Baudelaire’s verses. 

 

In the performance of Les Fleurs du Mal, three dancers appear on stage, but one, Shakti, is the lead, the other two her backups, her assistants at times. Opening the performance, the two other dancers wear black tops with a red skirt and a green sash, and Shakti is all in red. Later, the two other dancers reappear changed into long dresses with Japanese characters painted down them. Shakti has costume changes too but hers are more of an unlayering, firstly coming down to a g-string bodysuit and later to toplessness and later still complete nakedness.  If you’re afraid of nudity, you might want to avoid this show but you really shouldn’t because it’s not nudity done in a tasteless or provocative way. 

 

Shakti claims to have created her own form of dance being “a unique hybrid form of dance blending eastern dance traditions and yoga with western contemporary dance resulting in a exotic and erotic effect.” There is a lot of gesturing upward, palms outstretched like offering or praying to the Gods, from which we could also see hints of saluting the sun poses from yoga. The dance itself is at times quite energetic, particularly the thigh trembling, stomping movements. 

 

Red satiny fabric, and later pleated metallic silver fabric, is used to great visual effect particularly when it’s being twirled. It’s used to contort and control the dancers at times and at others thrown and twirled in celebration. At one point the metallic fabric gives the appearance of angel wings on Shakti. 

Les Fleurs du Mal

Occasionally, Shakti has a cheeky, flirtatious grin perhaps representative of evil (le mal). The other dancers wear darkly coloured Venetian style masks for one part of the show, also embodying the darkness, the evil. Later still, brushing her hair and looking into a mirror, Shakti is then representing beauty.

 

The music for the majority of Les Fleurs du Mal appears to be of Indian origin/influence with the exception of one song with a male vocalist singing in English.

 

In our interview with Shakti she said that she is “not young, I am ageless.  I revel in growing old and withering away in perfection.” We can only hope to look so good and have such vibrance and energy in our 60s! She dances for almost the entire 45 minutes!

 

Overall, Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) based on the poetry of Baudelaire is an enjoyable, short performance but having more information available to the audience about Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal or Shakti’s vision for the performance would be useful.

4 CROISSANTS

Matilda Marseillaise was a guest of Adelaide Fringe

 

The season of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) based on the poetry of Baudelaire has now concluded. 

 

If you’re interested to know more about Les fleurs du mal there is a great website with all of the poems that are contained in the various editions of the book. Plus there are an impressive number of their translations. You can view them at https://fleursdumal.org/ 

 

Adelaide Fringe content 

Adelaide Fringe 2023: 23 shows with French and francophone links to see

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Interview with Eliane Morel about Carmen the cabaret here

A Night at the Musicals 3: Summer Lovin’ Tour with Le Gateau Chocolat and Jonny Woo is a must-see this Adelaide Fringe

The Party, the new show from Strut & Fret, is no Blanc de Blanc

Louise McCabe will present A Night to Baguette at Adelaide Fringe next month

Les Commandos Percu Silence! is a must-see show this Adelaide Fringe – last chance tonight

Bourgeois & Maurice: an extra-terrestrial sibling duo comes to Adelaide Fringe 2023

Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) based on the poetry of Baudelaire is a new dance show coming to Adelaide Fringe

Stefanie Rummel is bringing Chansons: Piaf, Brel & Me – A musical Cabaret about France to Adelaide Fringe 2023 from Germany

Les Commandos Percus bring their show Silence! to Adelaide Fringe 2023

 

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