Charles Pasi

Zebra is Charles Pasi's second album for Blue Note. It was composed over the course of two years while touring Bricks, his previous album. He's performed around a hundred dates all over the world: in China, Tunisia, the Netherlands, Turkey, La Réunion, Mauritius... it has to be said that Charles Pasi has flouted borders and boundaries from the very start. A finalist at the 2006 International Blues Challenge in Memphis, opening for Neil Young, signing with Blue Note in 2015, Montreux in 2018: it's a kid's dream come true.
The zebra is an unusual animal. Neither king of the jungle, nor the hero of animal documentaries, it discreetly travels long distances clothed in black and white, the symbol of an endangered, hybrid species.
Charles Pasi's music is the same. It is simultaneously acoustic and electric, telluric and dynamic, colourful and dark. Generous and fragile. It combines emotion and grooves. It vibrates with the intensity of velvet, removed from fashion and constraint. The new album from Charles Pasi, who remains at Blue Note, has been composed between Istanbul, Paris, Casablanca, New York and Mauritius, with Cyril Atef on drums, Vincent Peirani on accordion, and Fred Dupont on organ and keys, and is a borderless migration with shifting, free-moving stripes. It is an album that refuses to be pigeon-holed or reduced.
"I wanted to make a "wild" record, with no demos, no rehearsals, I called musicians that I respect but some of whom I didn't know personally, and who had never played together. Just a meeting in a studio to find out what's going on, with all the risks and the excitement involved in that. In the era of producer as king, I wanted to hear musicians playing. I wanted to deviate from the trend towards the metronomic. These days, everything is too thought-out. It's as if we no longer have the right to make mistakes. Or have mishaps. We play out our lives on a single track. It's a shame."
“Why does the zebra migrate? To feed itself. I also travel so that I can eat. And the zebra just follows its instincts while trying to avoid the crocodiles… ” adds Charles, amused."Zebra" is also an anagram of "braze" (or weld, in the language of John Coltrane). Or when several elements merge, giving birth to an unclassifiable record.