Photo by couretsy / courtoisie Musinfo

Publishing: Jehan V. Valiquet, in service to the timeless Charles Aznavour

Story by Catherine Genest | Tuesday August 10th, 2021

Charles Aznavour, Jehan Valiquet

L to R: Charles Aznavour, Jehan Valiquet

Charles Aznavour is one of those artists who has stood the test of time, one of the few French-speaking songwriters able to reach an audience that doesn’t even speak their language. To this musical giant, music publisher Jehan V. Valiquet has dedicated his latest major album project.

Valiquet has been working behind the scenes of the music industry for almost 40 years as a publisher – a copyright guardian, in short – for some of the most beautiful songs from Canada, France, and Belgium. He represents, among others, the repertoires of Serge Lama, Julien Clerc, Vanessa Paradis, and Yves Duteil. Some of the most beautiful songs by Ginette Reno, Lara Fabian, Robert Charlebois, Charles Trenet, and Félix Leclerc also have a home at Musinfo, his company.

Over time, he’s earned the trust of Gérard Davoust, the epitome of the unknown soldier, and the general manager of Éditions Raoul Breton, undoubtedly France’s most prestigious publisher.

“At one point, I was able to get Serge Lama, and at that time, he was represented by Breton,” says Valiquet. “What I was doing was making an appointment with Gérard Davoust to present him with reports on what was selling, what was being played. We were always in the ‘vouvoiement,’ which is kind of normal considering brothers and sisters ‘vouvoie’ each other over there!… It was very formal, but from time to time he would invite me for oysters not far from his office on Rossini Street. Once, I said to him, ‘You know, Mr. Davoust, I would really be interested by Charles Aznavour’s catalogue.’ He replied, ‘You know, Mr. Valiquet, it weighs a lot!’ But I didn’t know that expression… So I said, ‘No problem, I have room in my suitcase!’ I thought he wanted to give me sheet music and all that. He must have thought I was a complete moron!”

Amoureuse des motsOver the years, as they met in Paris or Cannes for MIDEM, Gérard Davoust loosened up, finally switched from calling Valiquet “vous” to “tu,” and ended up offering him, almost on a silver platter, the repertoire of the great Aznavour. It’s a crucial moment that Valiquet will always remember. “As I was leaving he said, ‘By the way, I’m giving you Aznavour.’ I wasn’t expecting that. He went into his office and I was in the middle of the street. I yelled, ‘Wow!’ People must’ve thought I was crazy.”

Sixteen years after bringing together many artists – including Pierre Lapointe (who performed “Les plaisirs démodées”) and Diane Dufresne – for an album in tribute to Aznavour, Valiquet is doing it again. The new project is similar in every way, except that it exclusively features women. Among them are the spoken word virtuoso Queen Ka (a.k.a. Haitian-born Montréal-based Rebecca Jean) and pianist Valérie Lahaie. All are complete artists, grand dames, SOCAN members, and songwriters in their own right. The very definition of Amoureuses des mots.

“They’re all singer-songwriters, obviously singers, some of them musicians,” says Valiquet. “They’re all signed exclusively to Musinfo, and I’m the publisher of their songs. I had the idea during the pandemic… It’s a great opportunity to put these girls in the spotlight. They’re all doing their own thing with their social networks, Spotify, YouTube, Apple Music, all that.”

Annie Poulain

Annie Poulain

Annie Poulain is one of them, a jazz vocalist with an alto range who’s distinguished herself more than once with ADSIQ Gala nominations, and as the creator of the Dix piano une voix album released independently in 2018. She sings “Le jazz est revenu,” a title that could not be more apropos, considering the recent success of a jazz-tinged project like Les Louanges, or the recent rise of a musician like Dominique Fils-Aimé. “I just hope that Aznavour’s vision at that time was prescient,” she says, “and that jazz will really come back in a big way in the next few years!”

“La Mamma” is revived by the voice of the Italian-Quebecer Dominica Merola. The lyrics resonate in a whole new way for her, now. “With the year we’ve just lived through, deprived of our mother’s kisses and embraces, I felt this song was gut-wrenching,” she says.

The world is ever-changing, but thanks to the creative publishing work of Jehan V. Valiquet, Charles Aznavour’s words remain current, and adaptable to all the trials we collectively go through – in short, absolutely timeless.

 

Photo by Norman Wong

Emanuel and the Cinderella story of “Need You”

Story by Errol Nazareth | Wednesday August 11th, 2021

Halfway through our conversation with young sensation Emanuel, whose debut album has been called “one of the most anticipated R&B albums of the year,” we’re both furiously googling Ethiopian jazz legends.

EmanuelThe London, Ont., singer’s parents came to Canada from Ethiopia about 40 years back, so we casually asked if he’d heard any EthioJazz growing up. “Oh yes, yes!” he says, excitedly. “I love tapping into Ethiopian jazz and Tizita [Ethiopian ballads].” We rave about Hailu Mergia and Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou, and offer to send him links to their music. “I love that you brought that up! And your pronunciations are right, too. Damn!” he laughs. “My mom would be laughing at both of us right now.”

Emanuel says that one day he’d love to make music inspired by that era. Family and roots are paramount to the singer-songwriter, who’s signed to Motown, had his own gigantic billboard in Times Square, and who appeared on the world’s radar last April thanks to Idris Elba. “Those things [billboards and rave reviews] are great,” he says. “It’s amazing to feel the support from the label, but nothing beats that human connection, whether it’s people responding to you being onstage, or telling you how they felt when they heard your music.”

And how does he keep his feet on the ground? “It’s easy to stay grounded when you’re close to your roots, but I do have my moments when conversations need to be had,” he says. “My mother’s a wise woman, and she has a beautiful way of reminding me to stay humble.”

Emanuel has been hearing from a lot of listeners since his debut single “Need You,” which Elba helped promote with his legion of followers on social media last year, and his album ALT THERAPY, dropped on June 16, 2021. Emanuel says he intended the album to be “something people can sit with in times of stillness, or if they’re seeking healing – and people have responded to that. There have been days when I’ve woken up to some really beautiful messages.

“The song was speaking to a deep yearning, of how much I needed the people around me”

“Nobody can take that away from me,” he says. “Nobody can take away those moments of pure love. I’m talking about how the music healed me, and I love that people can hear that. It’s definitely a blessing.”

Emanuel, who says his interest in music has always been based on hearing people’s stories, shares some deeply personal ones on his debut album. The super-catchy “Addiction,” which he says is about “the life of addiction I was living,” is just one example. “I was reflecting on some of the bad relationships I’d been in, and my past toxic behaviour,” he says, recalling the song’s genesis. “The way I was approaching life, I wasn’t leaving room for help, and room to grow and be present.

“It was easy to scrutinize my behaviour, but ‘Addiction’ acknowledges that feeling of stopping a cycle and realizing how much it took from me. When I came up with the lyrics, it reminded me of that fear and anxiety” some of us feel when we’re in a plane that’s descending, he says, adding that the song came together shortly after his producers played him the beat one morning.

“Prodigal son fell asleep with the swine,” is one of the heaviest lines in the song. “Yeah, that’s a visceral bar,” Emanuel says quietly. “I wanted to speak from that place without wallowing in it. I wanted to show the vulnerability, without co-signing bad behaviour.”

The joy he gets from connecting with listeners, and offering his music as therapy, became evident when he released the aforementioned “Need You” one month into the pandemic. Kardinal Offishall had sent the song to Idris Elba, who was recovering from COVID. Emanuel recounts that Elba said it really helped him, and that he wanted to share it so it could help other people. The movie star asked his followers on social media to submit images showing how they were coping with self-isolation, to create an “inspirational collage.” Within a day, more than 3,000 submissions for the collaborative video were submitted by people around the world.

Emanuel calls that chapter of his life a Cinderella story. Describing the song, the singer-songwriter says he was “speaking to a feeling, a deep yearning, of how much I needed the people around me, how much I needed God, and all the other things in this world that give me life.”

He says the pandemic helped him learn how to appreciate stillness, and to embark on a road to self-discovery and healing. “I’ve been taking time to think about how I can have better relationships and build stronger ones, and it’s given me time to think a lot about my future,” Emanuel says, adding that it’s also provided time to “heal from having a negative view of myself, and a chaotic lifestyle [he once led].

“I strongly believe that everybody goes through this on the road to self-discovery, and so I felt it was the perfect thing to talk about on the record.”

“Who Could Say No” to Olivia Lunny’s debut album?

Story by Beatriz Baleeiro | Monday August 9th, 2021

A new pop singer-songwriter has entered the conversation. After two years of dropping consistently listenable singles, Olivia Lunny has handed listeners the key to her diary with a self-titled debut album.

Introduced to music early, the singer-songwriter hasn’t stopped since her first strum of a guitar. At 14, Lunny landed onstage and performed for 40,000 people at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. From a passion for writing poetry in Grade 4, to scoring a deal with Universal Music in May of 2021, Lunny recognized early on the possibilities created by slowly adding some chords to turn her poems into songs. “I came home from a hard day at school, I sat down with my guitar, and played to de-stress,” says the singer-songwriter. “That’s when I started writing full songs. Then one thing kind of led to another, and I guess now I’m here.”

Fast-forward a few years from her start, and the Winnipeg native was like any young adult trying to navigate life in their early twenties. As Lunny experienced life, she wrote lyrics and created melodies reflecting her major influences: Fleetwood Mac, Coldplay, and Ed Sheeran.

She got her foot in the door by participating in the nationally televised singing competition The Launch in 2019 – which she won. Then, in April of 2020 (shortly after COVID-19 struck), she was hand-picked to sing alongside Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne, and Michael Bublé in a cover version of “Lean On Me” (which became a Top 40 hit), to benefit the Canadian Red Cross’s COVID-19 initiatives. The same year, adding to her growing list of accomplishments, Lunny earned a SOCAN Foundation Young Canadian Songwriters Award for the song “Bedsheets.”

Lunny’s career is just beginning to blossom, but her list of collaborators already includes some musical heavyweights. Discussing her 2021 single “Who Could Say No,” she explains how the collaboration with Grammy-winning producer Boi-1da (Drake, Rihanna, Lana Del Rey) and hit music-maker YogiTheProducer (Kehlani, Jessie Reyez) happened in the studio.

“I was with YogiTheProducer and Boi-1da, and it was late at night,” she says. “There were some really cool studio lights, and he just put on this really cool beat. I wanted to write a song that was happy, empowering, and fun. Especially because the pandemic has been a dark time for so many of us. That’s how we came up with ‘Who Could Say No.’”

“That break was really important for me, because I put so much pressure on myself to write”

An ode to heartbreak and open wounds, Lunny’s debut album aims to introduce herself to listeners, offering them a deep, authentic, and vulnerable dive into her personal journey. “I hope my music can be the soundtrack to people’s lives,” she says. “I just want it to be a part of people’s journeys.”

Lunny says the pandemic has impacted her songwriting, and led her to recognize that she needed a break from music. “The first few months of lockdown, [it was] actually really hard for me to write,” she says. “After two months, I picked up the guitar and started writing again. That break was really important for me, because I put so much pressure on myself to write.”

 According Lunny, her writing process is spontaneous, filled with random bursts of creativity. “I either write a song in 20 minutes, or in three days,” she says. “It’s all over the place, but that’s still kind of the most fun part, because it keeps it so interesting. I think the hardest part for any songwriter is writing really unique, cool, smart lyrics. I would argue it’s really easy to write a bad song.”

Lunny looks forward to life after COVID, so she can venture out and share her love for music and songwriting with the world. “I would love to write some songs for other artists, travel the world, and play shows in many different places,” she says. “I’ve never actually been on a tour. So definitely, playing shows all over is a huge goal.”