MUSIC
COPRODUCTION / QUARTET

BRIBES 4

Between free jazz, free rock, electronic and pop songs

BRIBES 4

The Bribes 4 quartet returns with a project that delves into the origins of blues music, with Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, but also recordings by Billie Holiday, to create contemporary improvisations, compositions and arrangements.

NEW CREATION'THE SKY IS CRYING'

It all starts with reading Blues and Black Feminism, by Angela Davis. Geoffroy Gesser then offered Bribes 4, a free jazz rock quartet, to take inspiration by blueswomen from the 20s, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith, and from recordings by Billie Holiday from the 40s, to create contemporary compositions, arrangements and improvisations. . The source is emancipatory and poetic lyrics, and the music that is both melancholy and powerful. Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith are part of the very first sound archives of the blues, which precede the recordings of bluesmen, appearing on the recording market after the 1930s. Their texts carry feminist demands, a fight mixing equality of the "races" and the gender, desire for autonomy and sexual freedom which Billie Holiday carries the legacy.

It will therefore be a question of choosing among the archives, to constitute a collection which will give rise to transcriptions. This heritage base will form the basis of compositions, arrangements and improvisations with distinctly contemporary influences (rock, noise, free jazz, etc.). Oscillating between acoustic and electric sounds, the reinterpretation will respectfully integrate snippets of original compositions and revisit the prosody of the texts, retaining Anglo-American whose intrinsic rhythm and melody feed the creative process.

Rediscover and make discover, in a contemporary aesthetic, a music whose poetic and political commitment remains marked by history.
Bribes 4 is an explosive and eccentric quartet that can play compositions with pop-rock influences (Robert Wyatt, Alasnoaxis…) as well as noise music and free jazz (Ground Zero, Albert Ayler…). The Sky is crying is a continuation of the artistic approach of the quartet, and proposes to develop improvised pieces and composed from original pieces.

The music of Bribes 4, in tune with the tradition of jazz and blues, combines seriousness and ironic distancing, a historical perspective and playful invention.