French band Delgres, who combine Guadeloupean heritage with New Orleans Creole and blues, have announced details of the release of their second album, 4.00AM. The album is scheduled for release digitally on Friday, April 9, 2021 on Le Label / [PIAS].
Taking their name from Louis Delgrès a major force in the fight against slavery in the French Caribbean, Delgres formed in 2016 when singer-songwriter and guitarist Pascal Danaë met drummer Baptiste Brondy and soubassophone player Rafgee.
The new album, 4.00AM explores a number of autobiographical themes: the difficulties of a father adjusting to a new world so far from his own, the pain of a mother confronted with the passing of a child (Pascal’s older brother passed away in a car accident) on ‘Ké aw’, the incomprehension of a sister confronted with racism at the age of ten on “Sé mo la”, the separation of a family following the father’s emigration from Guadeloupe to France “Aléas”…
As lead singer Pascal Danae explains: “I’m doing a bit of my own therapy with all this. Even if it wasn’t as extensively explored, it was already present on the first album. Reconnecting with Louis Delgres, a forgotten hero sacrificed in the name of the fight for freedom and against slavery, regaining a form of dignity as a West Indian who too often felt like an invisible emigrant, was already part of the same process. It is this approach that is pursued here, in continuity but taking different routes and forms. But always on the bases and principles that founded the group, namely to evoke things in a peaceful way, pull something positive out of it and together.
4 AM also explores other themes dear to the trio: departure, exile, uprooting, modern slavery which has replaced another… Once again, the Creole words becomes manifests, while the sound of the guitars, the rhythm of the drums and the breaths of the sousaphone serves as a soundboard to express feelings of pain, hope and despair.”
Sung mostly in creole, Delgres’ first album “Mo Jodi” was released in August 2018
Author: World Music Central News Room
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