Ëda Diaz

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm Ëda Diaz. I'm French and Colombian. My mother is from Little Brittany and my dad is from Medellin. They met in a plane between Montevideo and Paris. So, like my story started, like the bridge in the air, you know.

My music starts with a kind of feeling that I need to connect my two countries, my two homes, my two hearts. Like, I feel that I can have both of them around me, so I have to build something that is my world, like the French-Colombia Republic, or FranColombia, if you can say that.

I started to sing really young, maybe at three or four. And my dad used to listen to music in every moment, like cooking. I remember on Sunday listening to Colombian music, but also classical music, jazz music, and world music, even if I don't like this term, but all of kind of music. So, music was all the time in my house.

My grandma, who lived in Colombia, we used to organize tertulias – like, how can I say that? –family meetings with friends. And we used to sing around the table. And I learned songs like that listening to this music. And at the same time, we used to sing in Paris with my mom, just because we had to walk 10 or 15 minutes to go to the underground, just to pass time.

I studied at conservatory, classical music, piano. I started to sing in Spanish because I've been in a Spanish school in Paris – so in the day I was in Spain with Latin American people too, and outside I was in Paris. So that was the ambiance when I was a little kid and that's the beginning of music in here in my world.

At this moment in the late 90s, it was not so evident that it was good to learn two languages at the same time. A lot of people were saying, “No, I'm going to be lost learning two languages." But when I was starting to read things, and I was reading the stations: “Rue de la Pompe, Marcel Sembat, Trocadéro,” but I had this Spanish accent. So it was really funny. I think I didn't have this discrimination because I'm white, so nobody sees in me that I am Colombian too. Sometimes it is the contrary. I had to prove that speaking with a perfect Spanish, you know, that was a way to being Colombian in the distance.

But every year, my father tried to send me there in Colombia. When I was four or five, I had travels like four weeks, even. And the violence was really huge at this moment in Colombia. I remember moments of shots, shotgun in the streets. I remember stories, because everybody in Colombia lost a lot of people, family, friends who were kidnapped. So I heard a lot of stories, but they were stories for me. It's like in a movie, you know? Because people were protecting me. I felt so, so safe, but I can't remember that it's so real because it was so different of what I was living in Paris. But I had all my family, like my father, sisters, my uncle, my aunts, my grandma, my grandfather, and it was so, So beautiful to see them playing the guitar and singing together.

At ten years old in Medellin, I had this ceremony in the church to be, I have to say, bautizar – baptized. But right now I'm not Catholic anymore. But it's this kind of stories that I did it because I was Colombian and I had this kind of feeling that I could be closer to my family in Colombia and to share things. And nobody does that in Colombia but, yeah, I did it at 10 years old.

Maybe at 11 or 12 we were visiting a great aunt. She is a Carmelita and this is a closed convent and you can't go out you live inside all your life. And she called all the nuns. And I started to sing for all the nuns. And so they were so happy to see a French girl – French for them – singing in Spanish and I remember all the monjas, the nuns. It's so weird. It's a huge memory for me.

So it's this kind of stories that, you know, it's not French, but at the same time it's because I'm French, I did that. And everything is melted and you don't know why, but you know that because you are French and Colombian, it happened.

When I was four in Paris, I remember that I fell in love with the double bass. Maybe it was a jazz band, but I only remember the double bass player. I told to my dad, “I want to play this instrument.” And after I forgot completely and I started at eight to play piano.

I think I liked it at the conservatory, but it was a really stressful ambiance and I really felt that I was not in the right place, but my dad was telling me: “Oh, you are going to regret if you don't study music!" And I studied until 16 years old, classical piano, but I don't know how I did that because it was really hard for me.

When I was 16, I was really, like, lost, trying to understand how to play music with pleasure. And I met people that was rocking and improvising, but they had no theory. Everything was autodidact. And I saw that they had a pleasure to play that I couldn't have doing all these studies. And it's been shocking for me. It was a shock at this moment because I was seeing, for the first time, people having fun doing music. And I was like, “Wow! And they don't know anything about theory in music.” So that's been the first moment I could see that music is not only classical music and you could play other things and in another way. So that's been the first revolution for me.

So at this moment I was less listening to Latin music, because I've learned all this Latin music when I was a child with my father. And it's the moment when you're a adolescent that you're starting to have your own music. And I started to listen to rock and electronic music. And I put like a pause on Colombia. It was like, “I don't want my parents to tell me what I do, what I am.” I felt like I, maybe I needed to just take a distance, find what was my own way. But also I had this feeling that maybe I was not accepted by my friends at this moment as a Colombian, but maybe as a French person, and maybe it was my way to be closer with them and to have these friends... and maybe that just have one identity, not like combining things. And it was a moment for me that I could feel maybe more confident like that.

"Paso Paso.” It's the first song I composed with my double bass. The song is about when you sit a moment and you look back and what happened, what did you build, what did you lose. It's like asking me questions, where I am at this moment, where am I in my life. At the beginning I'm a little bit anxious, you know, but at the end I'm like, "Let's go! Paso paso! Things are going to be cool and don't worry."

At 18, I graduated and I was like really mad with Paris and I went to Nantes and I studied law there and political sciences. But also I fell in love with a person who was not a musician like me but who loved music and who played with this autodidact way. And after one year of law, I was like: Uff! I'm dying! I'm really bored! So we started to play with these friends. And I had a psychedelic band, and I played keyboards, and I was a singer. We did that like two years or three years. And it was the first experience or touring in bars. And it was my kind of way to explore what I am, you know?

And after that, I came back to Paris and I started to meet people who was playing Latin music. And it reminded me that I had Latin roots and could understand that that was my place. I met this guitarist who asked me if I would like to sing with him in bars, boleros and tangos, just with guitar. So I was started again to sing in Spanish.

And I was looking for a new instrument because I was singing a lot but I couldn't play piano anymore in this way. And at this moment I discovered a photo with me with a bass, and I remembered that I would like to play double bass. I asked to a friend – he was double bassist – to give me a class. And when I took the double bass, I understood that that was the good instrument.

I realized too that it's been like three years I didn't came back to Medellin. And in this moment, I started to study urbanism so I decided to do an internship in social housing in Medellin. And there, I opened the paper and it was an announcement “Huge Latin Jam.” You can apply if you want to sing or play. It seems like to be really cool. I can meet maybe musicians and this kind of stuff. I applied and they told me, “Yeah, you can come and sing.” They were masterclasses from musicians I really admired. Juancho Valencia, Maiteón Tele, Jairo Andrade. And they asked to each singer to sing a song – but just a cappella. And I told them that I was from Paris, and I started to sing a bolero. And they were like, “Wow! How do you know this music? It's really old music!” And everybody knew me at this moment – they knew “the French girl who sings in Spanish.” And a long friendship started at this moment with these people who really pushed me to be musician.

In this moment, “Paso Paso,” I think the message is the same. I think it could work at this moment to ask me questions that where am I now. And I think I always have new questions and I have to try to answer. I feel that the young Ëda listened to these questions and tried – even if I was scared. I found that music was the solution. So “Paso Paso” is always like present. Now when I look back, I understand that it's kind of a mantra and I will always have questions.... But the only difference is that the questions change.

When I talk about being 100 % French and 100 % Colombian, first I thought I was half-and-half. But with this album Suave Bruta, I could find that it was not that. Because when you say to somebody he's half, I don't know, German and half Spanish, you are fragmenting his personality. And who... he... is? I thought I was fragmented, but I'm not. Because if I accept all of my parts and if I take care of all of this part of the puzzle, I can find a unity, something harmonious, all of these parts, even the parts I'm scared about.

So, "Toutandé", it's one of the late songs I did in the album. And at this moment, I understood what was the album, and I understood that I am all the things at the same time. So I am just one. You can't cut something that is love, like sausage, you know?

With “Tutandé,” I talk about the beauty in the chaos. Like, I had all of this images, symbolism in this song that talk about what I am. For example, when I say: “Limon verde, caramelo, mantequilla saltada” – lime with salted butter and caramel – it's like a way, with humor, I try to say was when I feel like I'm going to lose my head and to be centered again and to feel like I'm just one is to do my galette. And it's a kind of symbol of Colombia and little Brittany, you know? But there are a lot of symbols like that in the song that talks about this kind of personality I have. It's not about Colombia, or being Colombian, or French, it's just about being, maybe, this kind of feelings. And there are always contradictions when, at the same time, you just want to be seen as a person. And at the same time you have to talk about your identity. Because people talk about that. Some people will tell you that you're not enough Colombian or not enough French. So at the same time you don't want to talk about that, but you have to because if you feel that you want to be connected with other people.

It's like music can be a way to accept what you are with the contrasts, you know? You are that and that, or you are that, so you are not that. You can say I'm that.... AND I am that too.... but I'm not that. And you can just be.... more you. And it's okay. Yeah yeah.