Alice, Fred, Léo, Sam et Mathilde Burguière forment le quintette des Ogres de Barback. Maxime Ardilouze
Sam, Alice, Mathilde, Fred and Léo Bruguière defend with brilliance and sincerity, the colors of independent and libertarian French song. After their concert with La Rue Kétanou this Saturday at Zinga Zanga in Béziers (sold out), they will return under the big top with their show Pitt Ocha from April 4 to 6 at La Calmette and from April 11 to 13 at Gignac. We took stock with Alice Burguière.
Les Ogres celebrate their 30th anniversary. What does that inspire in you? ?
Alice Burguière: It makes you feel old! It's actually a recurring topic between us: damn, 30 years old. At the same time, we have an excuse: we started very young. Mathilde and I (Editor's note: her twin sister and she) were in the second year of high school when the group started. So 30 years is a long time, but since we started early, it's okay. We haven't been bored at all during these thirty years, we've had lots of projects, a thousand lives, it's been great. We're not about to stop, even if we're going to calm things down a bit for organizational reasons. But so far, it's been great, let's say!
What do you think is the secret to your longevity… apart from the fact that you are brothers and sisters?
That’s part of the reasons, actually! We asked ourselves the question a lot. Seeing all these groups around us who ended up arguing or who stopped for different reasons, life choices, etc. We, as we had the same education, we are really close and we wanted the same kind of adventures… it obviously played a role. In addition, as we are siblings, none of us have ever said I’m the boss! Afterwards, the fact that we are independent helped us a lot because we were and still are in democracy, we chose everything together all the time. We must always agree before doing something. Finally, even if it is not necessarily obvious at first glance, we have changed projects a lot.
It is indeed very particular to your group to be both curious and loyal, changeable and permanent…
That’s exactly it. That is to say that when you look at the Ogres, basically, you say to yourself that well, they’ve been doing concerts for thirty years. But when you look more closely, you see that we’ve really changed projects about every two or three years. To name a few, there was “Un air, deux familles” with Les Hurlements d’Léo, the tour under the big top, the Pitt Ocha show, the Beninese fanfare Eyo’Nlé… and today we’re touring with our friends from La Rue Kétanou. In short, we’ve renewed ourselves a lot, and for that reason, we’ve never gotten tired of it. And every time we’ve started a project, we had a beginning and an end. We never said to ourselves if it lasts 10 years, it lasts 10 years; we rather say to ourselves we’ll do 50 concerts and once we’ve done them, we’ll move on to something else. We don't get bored and we always think about the next project.
Let’s return to the subject of independence, which is a strong choice, which requires a lot!
It's true that it's not easy every day, but we couldn't see ourselves doing it any other way. We're maybe a bit stubborn or spoiled children, I don't know how to say it, but in any case, we like to do exactly what we want to do and we knew that from the beginning. In addition, we were very supported and followed by our friends from that time who are still friends today and who have worked with us for thirty years. We were really lucky to be very well surrounded by motivated people. The people who were part of the “Latcho Drom” project, when we were 20, embarked on the adventure with us and are still there. We built ourselves like that with a whole bunch of people, and now we have a structure that is quite solid. We are all the more pleased because we couldn't have done otherwise!
As a life project, it's still not bad to opt for coherence, right ?
Yes, that's why we have meetingitis (which is the slightly annoying side of all this) because we always have to be in agreement before undertaking anything. So much so that we work a lot more, I think, than a normal group. There are about ten of us working on the project and we take care of everything together. Everyone has their well-defined role but the whole team participates in all the decisions. So, it's true that it produces coherence.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000Are you aware of being exemplary and of being loved for that too ?
Yes, we realize it, especially with the other groups: there are quite a few who, wanting to get started on their independence, ask us for advice, since we've shown that it's possible, and that's great. Afterwards, we don't live in the same area but each of us is involved in our personal life at the associative and even political level… We have this kind of thing in us that makes us not want to give up.
In thirty years, fashions have passed, your instrumentarium has been enriched but you remained attached to the song…
Yes, that's true. So, our children look at us strangely. They also make music but something completely different! At the same time, we find it funny because our audience has always been eclectic. We've always had little ones, more and more children even at our concerts (and I'm not just talking about Pitt Ocha), but also old people like us, and elderly people. In short, we have a very large audience. So our song may be old-fashioned but we're all always super happy to play it in concert. It's a pretty lively song anyway!
You say “old-fashioned” but “timeless” would be more accurate!
Yes, that's it! And the people who come to our concerts are delighted to share this timelessness. It reminds some of them of their youth, high school; others discover us and it works too. Basically, we don't focus on that.
If we absolutely had to look for modernity in your music, we would find it in its openness to others, to the world…
Yes, that’s it. We listen to a lot of different music, but a lot, a lot of world music. And we like to mix all that in our music. It doesn’t necessarily sound modern but mixed; which makes sense!
Let’s talk a little about Pitt Ocha. What originally motivated you to try the adventure of children’s songs? ?
Sam and Fred, the two eldest of the band, had their first children. I think it was Fred who said “I have a nursery rhyme” first, then two, then three, so why not make a record out of it ? What really motivated us to follow through with the story was the reaction of our musician friends, who told us “Great idea, we're following you”. So, for the first “Pitt Ocha”, some brought one song, others contributed another, it was cool. Knowing that people in the music industry told us it was better to drop it, that it would never work. In the end, it was the Ogres project that was the biggest hit! (laughs) It was about six years before we did another one. We picked it up again. Plus, afterwards, we, the two little sisters, had lots of kids too; it motivates me to do more!
What's nice is that there's basically no difference between the Ogres albums and those of Pitt Ocha ?
Because we write in the same way. Let's say that Pitt Ocha's recordings are more substantial because we are more than ever in travel and crossbreeding mode, since in the story, Pitt Ocha is a little boy who goes on a trip, meets people from all over the world and collects sounds, music, instruments. Hence very mixed records and open to collaborations. But in any case, we give it our all, and we try to offer beautiful objects, with copious booklets, well-told stories, and everything.
Just as records are more than songbooks, Pitt Ocha shows are more than singing tours….
The show we are giving for Pitt Ocha 4 is a proposal designed for the big top. We were talking about it with our friends from La Rue Kétanou this weekend. On Pitt Ocha, everything is really measured, worked to the max, because we really want the children to have stars in their eyes, already just by entering the big top, but especially by leaving. So we put in everything we had always dreamed of putting in. It's really what we would have liked to see when we were kids. We are all big fans of the circus, especially the new one, Cirque Plume style. It's this magic that we want to share with the kids!
Basically, what is the stage for you?? Life ?
It's the basis of everything! We make records, OK, we also have fun with that, but the real thing is the stage. As I said before, we love seeing the little stars in the eyes of the people in front of us, who are partying, who are meeting, who are talking to each other… It’s also the place where we can talk about certain subjects, sometimes with 500 people, sometimes with 10,000. Here, for example, on the tour, we try to have the SOS Méditerranée stand with us, to slip in a quick word like that, casually, but important.
In concert with La Rue Kétanou this Saturday, February 8 at 8 p.m. at Zinga Zanga in Béziers (sold out), then from April 4 to 6 at La Calmette (Gard) and from April 11 to 13 in Gignac (Hérault). I subscribe to read the rest