Manu Katche featured in LA Times article

[drum4fun]

While I was reading the Sunday, November 27 Calendar section of the LA Times, I stumbled on an article featuring Manu Katche. The article dealt with the unrest in Paris and how artists deal with the division between the housing projects of African and Arab immigrants and the well-to-do Paris suburbs. The division is both physically by neighborhoods and culturally. The article profiles several French artists of African and/or Arab descent. Manu Katche was one of the artists profiled. The article talks about Manu's experiences growing up, going to music school, his career, and how being on France's "Nouvelle Star" has given hope to other French citizens of Arab/African ancestry. I wish I had a scanner so I could share the article on HOD. It is an interesting article. If I have time, I will try to type up the section of the article dealing with Manu.

[drum4fun]

I found a copy of the article on the web. Please click here.

[juanexpo]

Manu Katche Part:
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"Musical deliverance

MANU KATCHE is 47 and a top pop and jazz drummer. He has played with many of the greats, including Peter Gabriel, Sting, Miles Davis and the Bee Gees. But it was his classical musical training in the Paris suburbs that helped him distinguish himself.

He too was born in a banlieue, southeast of Paris, to a French mother and immigrant father from Ivory Coast. He was an only child ? and the only child of mixed race in his public school. The other kids were from big families, some French but mostly immigrants. The kids all played soccer in the streets and stole motor scooters. Their parents had jobs in factories and stores. There was not quite the poverty or the crime of the apartment towers where the Naceri kids ran wild, but there weren't books or musical recordings either.

Katche's escape had mostly to do with how he was raised ? and his musical talent. His grandmother started him on piano at age 7. A cleaning lady who sold potatoes on the weekends, she had been given music lessons at a young age and saw to it that her grandson practiced. Soon Katche was winning local piano contests and by 15 had moved on to classical percussion ? the timpani, xylophone, vibraphone and anything else he could strike ? and was studying at a regional conservatory; at 19, he won a scholarship to the Conservatoire National Sup?rieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris and went over that invisible wall to live in the center of Paris.

But after a year he dropped out, and with a drum set strapped to his back ? which might explain why this small, elegant man walks slightly stooped ? Katche trudged through the Paris metros looking in vain for work.

As he recalls, he was the only person of color at the conservatories and even years later, as he began a career in the recording studios, rapidly becoming a highly sought call-session drummer for records and tours, there were few minorities around. "For getting studio work, what mattered was that while I could play jazz and rock, I could play Debussy and Ravel, as well," he says.

There were many great French African and Arab musicians around Paris then. But it is nearly impossible to win a place in the mainstream without the training and the financial support of the state that for three decades has been resisting the new culture streaming into it.

Through studio work Katche was able to hook up for almost 10 years with France's prince of swing, singer Michel Jonasz, and eventually with Gabriel, who got him a ticket on two international tours to assist Amnesty International. Known for his "ornamental groove," as one critic described his style, Katche has since played on 250 recordings.

Shortly before the riots erupted, Katche released his own recording in Europe and Asia titled "Neighborhood." The music was not inspired by his experiences growing up in Paris' outlying multiethnic neighborhood; rather, it is an ode to leaving France ? to playing throughout Europe, where he found like-minded musicians with classical knowledge and a love of jazz

"I don't feel very French, you know. It's hard to if you're always treated like an outsider." It was only in the last few years, when he started appearing on TV, that Katche began to realize how important his personal success could be to the people he knew growing up.

Three years ago, he was asked to be a juror on "Nouvelle Star," France's "American Idol." Since then he is often stopped on the streets by black window washers and Arab grocers saying that, because of his example, they're going to allow their sons to take up drums.

In fact, it is rare to see ethnic minority faces on television in France. "When they offered me the gig I thought maybe I could help a poor kid find a record deal," says Katche. "But it is better to have a colored guy, half-black, half-white, someone in between two chairs, on prime-time television talking with great experience."
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Thanks.

[spaceotter]

Wow--cool article, and interesting sociological study of how drumming functions in an individual life and a community. I had not realized until these riots that race was such an issue in France. Because of my Turkish friends in the Bay Area, I was aware that the French and the Germans didn't always treat Turks well, but did not know about the rest. One of my friends, who is African American, said that Paris was the only place he didn't feel like a "black man," i.e., the only place where his race *didn't* seem to matter. I guess he was an anomaly?

Chris W posted a site yesterday that linked to Manu's official site, so I was plunking around there and remembering how much I appreciate this guy. In a world of chopsmonsters, his attitude about voice is pretty inspiring and has been a great example for me. His thing is that your personality/voice is your trademark, and what always got him gigs. Coming from classical roots myself, I've appreciated a lot of players who had kind of a "classical" attention to drumming, like Bozzio and Manu.

Anyhow, thanks for the article.