Zaho de Sagazan

or Fanboy

Zaho De Sagazan, Paléo Festival Nyon 2023. ©Paléo/Anne Colliard

Next month, I'll be going to my first concert in several months, and only the second since the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Anyone who knows me knows that music and concert-going has been a major part of my life for the last thirty years or so. Not just because music has always meant so much to me—that friend when I didn't have one—but because it was also my job for a long time, booking a thirty-a-year concert series for almost ten years, and then a traditional arts festival for seventeen, with a couple of years in which I did both. I also managed an artist's first year or more as she began her career.

As a booker, I often went to shows to check out talent. One of the perks of the job was being able to call up an agent to get comped into a show just because I wanted to see someone for my own enjoyment.

After I was rather unceremoniously dumped from the festival job, my interest in music took a big spike. As noted above, the pandemic also helped [sic] in that regard, I suppose, but mainly, there was a certain loss in joy as it pertained to live music. Hell, I don't listen to music as much around the apartment anymore, something I never would have foreseen twenty years ago. And on top of that, the 2016 election sucked so much joy out of life.

But a few months ago, this video popped up as a reel on my Instagram feed, likely because I follow a number of French teaching accounts. The singer's emotion hooked me immediately; as did the melody; as did the words. The experience was something akin to discovering Dar Williams almost thirty years ago. I had to find out more about this person, this Zaho de Sagazan.

The song she sings in the video is "La symphonie des éclairs" or "Symphony of the Lightning," and for days, I listened to it over and over and over again while on my way to jobs or while out walking. Because I so desperately want to understand French—I've been trying to learn it for going on twenty years now—I listened hard to the words to try to make sense of them without the aid of a translator. Indeed I understood most of them and got the gist of the song, thanks its slow-ish pace and the fact that she pronounces almost everything clearly (to my failing ears). It moved me in a way that I can't explain. Maybe it's because she considers herself to be a hypersensitive which resonates with me to a degree?

I looked for live versions of it in addition to that reel clip. I found this one, a performance at Les Victoires de la Musique, France's equivalent to the Grammy Awards. I was knocked out by her presence, her movements (she took eight years of dance), her ease with having a camera in her face as she performed, her intensity. That said, the musicians behind her bewildered me somewhat. I found it interesting that they had their backs to the audience, and—because I'm not hip to electronic music—I had no real clue as to what they were doing with those boxes. I spoke with a musician friend of mine in Paris about it and he told me that the boxes were synthesizers. Such is modern music, I guess.

I was so excited by this discovery that I shared the Les Victoires video with a few friends, but unsurprisingly, I suppose, it didn't have the same impact on them because... French. I soon learned that Zaho's recording had been out since 2023, and that she had won five awards at Les Victoires. She most definitely was not une chanteuse inconnue in France.

All of her songs are not of the variety of 'Symphonie.' She is indeed a child of her time, so dance-techno is a big part of her shows from what I've seen on YouTube. I think back on my trip to Paris in the fall of 2007 when I attended the massive annual Techno Parade and the—I'll say it—unbearable volume that ripped through my body, no doubt damaging my ears, makes me wonder what I'm going to experience next month. I'll definitely be wearing ear plugs during certain segments of the show. (I'm still pondering whether or not to wear a mask, leaning towards yes.)

When I initially looked her up, I found this video in which she meets Tom O'Dell, an English pop star whose name sort of rings a bell, but I can't really say I'd heard of him. There is so much about their ideas about music and being musicians that resonates deeply with me. Perhaps the one thing that really hit home with me was when she said, "What I find a little crazy about Tom's music is that it can make us sad or comfort us and it's the same person that's making you sad and comforting you at the same time." In fact, lyrics from the bridge of "La symphonie des éclairs" translate to: "I will make people dance to the rhythm of my tears | The torment of my songs will come to warm hearts, to warm my heart." From that same meeting, there is a video of the two of them performing the song together at the piano, and her expressions throughout are as touching as their performance. Her joy at singing with her mentor is quite moving.

I have listened to her record dozens of times already, and every now and then a new video of her performing "La symphonie des éclairs" pops up, and it's clear to me that the song is going to be performed for a long time, and not only by her. Its message seems to be universal. I hope she never tires of singing it. At the moment, it seems as though she's entirely thrilled to have her audiences sing with her, so much so that she now extends the song to include them.

But it doesn't end with that song for me. Zaho was selected to perform at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Greta Gerwig had been named as president of the festival's jury and in her honour, Zaho, who speaks little English, sang David Bowie's "Modern Love". Perhaps the most astonishing thing to me about that performance was how she made it all look so easy... at twenty-three years old.

When the Summer Olympics kicked off in Paris earlier this year, I was surprised (and frankly, a little put off) to find that Canadian Céline Dion—and not a native-born French singer—had been selected to perform at the opening ceremonies. But I was later delighted to find that Zaho would open the closing ceremonies with a performance of "Sous le ciel de Paris" (Under The Paris Sky), made famous by possibly the most renowned French singer, Edith Piaf.

Recently, Zaho released a revised version of her record to include eight new songs, one of which was co-written and performed with none other than Tom O'Dell. (It's a little schmaltzy, but also moving in its own way.) At first, I thought the additional tracks would alter the feel of the record, but no. I was concerned, too, that she'd change the sequencing, but was pleased to find she'd tacked them on to the end.

I mentioned earlier that she seems so completely at ease in front of the camera, whether on French TV or—as with the Olympics—in front of the entire world, but social media was coming of age at the same time she was—she was 10 when the iPhone was born (Twitter, too, I think)—so having a cameraphone in her face probably has been second nature with her for most of her life. One of my favourite video moments occurs during a performance of "Aspiration" on C à vous, a French television show hosted by Anne-Elisabeth Lemoine (who I can tell LOVES Zaho). The moment comes at about 2:05 in the video when she approaches co-host Patrick Cohen and makes a face at him.

I realize that this is quite the long post in praise of a musician that most—if not all—of my handful of readers will shrug their shoulders about, but the last ten years in this country have been nothing short of hell. I'm expecting that the next twenty—if I even live that long—will be considerably worse. So I'm glad to be able to rave about one thing that brings joy into my life.

I plan to post photos and/or videos from the concert next month.