LES YEUX NOIRS SHARE SORROWS, JOYS OF EXILES
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London Free Press, LES YEUX NOIRS SHARE SORROWS, JOYS OF EXILES >>
When it comes to music being the universal language, France's Les Yeux Noirs knows its marvellous sounds need little translation.
"It's like Esperanto . . . we can speak to musicians everywhere," the group's co-founder and co-violinist Olivier Slabiak says from Paris. His brother, Eric, is the other founder and violin player in the septet.
Slabiak and his bandmates don't need to use the artificial "universal language" developed almost 100 years ago to help reduce cultural and linguistic barriers. They can rely on their French and Yiddish lyrics -- and their undeniable Gypsy drive.
Their effect on audiences around the world is overpowering. They play the Hilton London tomorrow night as part of Sunfest's winter concert season of world beat stars.
A typical number by Les Yeux Noirs starts slowly and builds to a fast and furious conclusion. "It's like life . . . many Gypsy (tunes) are like that," Olivier Slabiak says. The movement from rustling beginnings to rapturous endings mirrors the progress of the day, he says.
In song after song, a slumbering start leads inevitably and deliriously to a dance-like finale.
There is a deeper meaning to all that musical movement, too. At the end of a performance, Slabiak says, audience members will tell the French band they have felt some of the Gypsy and Jewish experience and their shared joys and sorrows.
Eric and Olivier Slabiak began studying violin as young boys. Both first-prize winners of the Brussels Royal Conservatory of Music, they soon discovered a fascination for Gypsy traditional music.
They have also become singers as part of Les Yeux Noirs' multi-voiced chorales and shouts.
It all reflects the brothers' heritage, as does their lifelong interest in Jewish music.
The musical styles of the cultures have much in common, scholars say. Dispersed and persecuted through their respective histories, both Gypsies and Jews share a story of exile that created a special connection with music.
Since founding the group in 1992, the Slabiaks have steadily added other musical influences.
Jazz is revealed in the group's name -- taken from the title of a tune played by the great Belgian Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. In turn, its title derives from the French version of a Russian folk tune praising a dark-eyed beauty.
There is klezmer. While the jazz style -- called manouche jazz -- developed by French Gypsies is based on 1930s American jazz, klezmer reflects much older sounds and rhythms from Jewish and Eastern European culture.
There is rock. Slabiak lists the somewhat unlikely troika of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Bowie and Tom Waits as being on his playlist. He also loves guitar.
Seven musicians make all these sounds and traditions speak in one voice. In addition to the Slabiaks, they are Franck Anastasio, bass/voice; Marian Miu, cymbals; Francois Perchat, cello; Pascal Rondeau, guitar/voice; and drummer Aidge Tafial.
In their global touring, Les Yeux Noirs' seven stars appear to have found a happy ending to the forced wanderings of the peoples who inspired their music. "We are living a dream because we are travelling all the time," Slabiak says.
02/05/04
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