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Les Anges Compagnie
(Brussels/Belgium)
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In General
 To think history against the grain can be a rewarding activity. Here it is a case in which a chapter in history has been re-imagined from beginning to end:
In 1684, Evgeni, the brother of the Tsar Peter the Great, held a secret meeting with Zadek Ibn Farouk, the famous Guinea-based black slaves trader, to negotiate the purchase of 2 500 slaves for house and fields labour.
Evgeni Nicolaievitch, an eccentric person, had decided to replace all of his slaves and servants with Africans. The slaves arrived one year later via the Baltic sea and were settled in Kazan, 500 km from Moscow, where Evgeni and his household resided.
Problems soon arose and a mere three years after their arrival Evgeni drove all of the Africans out of Kazan. A long odyssey scattered them in the Ukraine, the Urals and the Balkans, where they founded colonies now no longer in existence due to the epidemics and famines of the nineteenth century.
THE BLACK SLAVICS represent the music of those Africans and their descendants who settled in Russia. Czaristic law prohibited them from singing in their mother tongue or singing their own religious music, which was considered too rhythmic for the church's liking.
THE BLACK SLAVICS have adapted Russian songs to their own style and you will hear that long transformation from Russian into African song, rescued from oblivion by the Georgian musicologist Kajnun Marimov.
Music Fiction?
THE BLACK SLAVICS project is an example to the of "Music-Fiction", a concept invented by Thierry Van Roy : the re-writing history and, in the process, the creation of the music which might have developed if history had taken that route?
This new form of musical creation is unlimited : if you change one or several elements of the past, the present or the future, you arrive at a fictional change in the face of the world and thereby in music, for music always results from the interaction between cultures that takes place at the mercy of the transformations in the history of civilisation.
Unlike "world music" in its geographical and multicultural sense, "Music-Fiction" uses the vertical notion of time and history ; the music of "The Black Slavics" originated in the the imaginary encounter between the African and Slavonic cultures in in 17th century Russia.
In this context, we have also been thinking about how popular Western music (Rock, Pop etc.) would sound if history had decided that Christopher Columbus and his three caravels had sunk off Portugal, leaving America a "terra incognita" for a long time, without the African slaves and their musical influence. And if the "Black Slavics" had been deported to Russia and really founded a new style of music whose influence continued to be felt down to the present?
The songs
In most of the songs, the first part presents the traditional version in polyphony and in the original language (Russian, Croatian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian or Hungarian), while the second part traces its evolution as brought about imaginarily in Lingala - one of the most widely spoken languages of central Africa - by the Africans of Russia. These interpretations of the Slavic songs were all improvised on the day of the recording.
THE BLACK SLAVICS-project is interpreted by the choir LES AGNES COMPAGNIE (L. A. Cie).
The singers are:
Ange Nawasadio (Congo-Kin.) - artistic director
Gyle Waddy (USA) - choir leader
Sylvie Nawasadio (Congo-Kin.)
Alexia Waku (Congo-Kin.)
Guy Waku (Congo-Kin.)
Marie-Ange Teeuwen (Burundi)
Dju BB' (Congo-Kin.)
Epolo (Congo-Kin.)
Jojotte (Congo Brazza)
Lionel Sonna (Cameroun)
William Wright (USA)
Borys Cholewka (Ukraine) as a guest.
LES AGNES COMPAGNIE (The missing link of Black music)
The Compagnie was founded by Ange Dialot Nawasadio in Brussels in 1994.
The underlying idea was to define the missing link in Black Music with two words : "Afro-Soul".
It is the musical expression of the Africans living in Europe - in the squeeze between the influences of African-American and continental African music.
The Compagnie decided to set about realising its goals by involving professional artists in its various projects (concerts, performances) and basing all creative process on improvisation.
Our repertory covered three different directions :
1. Popular Black Music : Stevie Wonder, Bob Marley and old African songs.
2. Original compositions (written primarily by Ange D. Nawasadio)
3. Sacred Music: gospel, spirituals, etc
And now we can add it to the BLACK SLAVICS-project which emphasizes our will to define the musical expression of the Africans living in Europe as the missing link in Black Music, Afro-Soul.
Thierry van Roy
Thierry Van Roy is musician (keyboards), sound engineer and independant producer. Specialised in multicultural music, he has produced recordings for Yehudi Menuhin and his international foundation, featuring i. e. Noa, Myriam Makeba, Stephane Grapelli, Ravi Shankar, Trio Loyko, Yehudi Menuhin. He is also the producer and co-manager of Abdelli ("New Moon", Realworld Records), and producer of Basti Sevedneya (Azerbaijan).
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CDs:
The Black Slavics - 1997
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