Jaio.Musika.Hil claimed by the Berri Txarrak group.

Music is for me all and nothing at the same time. If I don't do anything in music, I feel bad, I get into a black spiral, and I end up leaving aside the rest of my tasks. Music makes sense of my life, and yet I know it's nothing. It's strong for me to put all my forces in music knowing that it's nothing I do. Music constantly reminds me that it's nothing I am, but at the same time it has given me the joys, emotions and euphoria that I've only felt with drunkenness or love. A CD by Michael Jackson, who had left me my cousin, opened the door to music. Nirvana changed my life and Negu Gorriak tied up what I and I wanted to be. I wanted to make music, I didn't want to be Michael Jackson, I couldn't be Kurt Cobain, and I thought it was possible to be a musician thanks to Negu Gorriak.

Negu Gorriak also awakened you to the passion to regain the Basque language in which you had a mother tongue.

I have a very complicated relationship with the Basque Country. My mother tongue is the Basque language, until the first year I was in the ikastola, but for practical reasons I went to the French school that we had on the same street and without realizing it I went on. It frightens me to think that all my grandfather's memory of Azkarate spoke in Basque and that in two generations we had gone from a Basque monolingual to a monolingual French. It was very strong for me that a 10-year-old boy would speak to his grandfather and both would not be understood in the same language. I met Negu Gorriak when I had the very lost Basque. I was already interested in music and militancy and I was awakened by the desire to re-enter that Basque community. So, I recovered the Basque, I took the Basque studies to the master's degree, I am very happy, but I fear that the Basque language will never become a natural language. I've had a bad time. At the same time, I can only sing in Basque and I can only write in Basque the lyrics of the songs. This makes me even more confused. I wonder if I'm not all seemingly, why when I turn Euskera into a public character if I'm not doing it in my day to day, if it's chance that my public part is the most personal or intimate part, why I write in Euskera if you don't see me in Basque... Sometimes everything seems like a bluf and the identity crisis is what generates me the themes.

Has becoming a professional musician caused you identity crisis?

I've never lost the touch of magic that music has, I've never started to play thinking I was working. My biggest relationship with music is to create and carve songs at home. This doesn't vary depending on what you do in the environment. It's a parenthesis that cuts you out of the world. That's why I live the leads as a moment to meet people. The most evident change in a team's life is linked to visibility rather than professionalization. We tried the same thing with Willis Drummond before we lived on music. However, when you spend two seconds on TV, when Sud Ouest's article is published to you, or when you play with an Anglo-Saxon group that they don't know but seems famous, he feels like you're a big group. That is also the fault of the groups. By becoming a professional, you learn how the problem works and start using the tools of that world to shape your team and position it wherever you want. That's why it's an eternal struggle to keep it in the music center and not lose perspective.

What about when you eat your flesh?

The magic of music is broken. You realize that music is an economic activity like everyone else. Someone who opens a hostel will find decoration and communication more important than what they serve there. Today everything is “concept” and music is not safe from that. However, in general, people are not mistaken. When a group relies solely on the image without offering anything special on the albums or the ones directly, it is soon forgotten. That's why I say that the groups that are kept, although not everybody likes them, are kept because they have something for people. Another thing is that people don't like you. Music is a phase story. You can be very good or very bad, but if you propose what people expect without realizing, you turn the spark on. So the big producers are trying to get people to know what they want, or worse, to think about what they have in their hands.

What does the mind ask of you in an artistic way?

With Willis Drummond, we've never wanted to get into a concept. Ours has been to gather, to make songs and to get what we had inside, to spread our reflection for the moment thanks to the essence of music. As I change as a person, I think it's normal for me to change my music. So I have a feeling that sometimes the song makes you unconscious. You have songs in your head based on what you've heard, what you've lived, or whatever you are. Suddenly a piece escapes and the game is to extract the word that you have at the tip of your tongue but that you don't remember. It's like going to the psychologist, letting things go without thinking about where they're taking you. It's complicated, though. From the very first moment you start to apply some filters. If something too sweet has come out to you, tell your peers that you will not like it and forbid you to stick. The easiest thing is to put a ban on others’ mouths as if it were not your business. On this solo album, the goal has been to pull out and accept everything that came to me. It's curious, you don't think you've made any decision, that there are songs that aren't yours, even though they're basically more yours than ever. It is not in vain that I feel that I am frivolous and distant from what happens. I have no problem seeing raw things and telling them crudely. When you're like that, if you don't turn to poetry, everything comes out hard, hard and pessimistic. Poetry is good for me to say Afrussians.

Let's talk about the opposite side. They say it's very easy to live from music -- except for musicians.

Until recently, it was very well to live with the industry. Assume there's an economy, you know how many people you can move, how many records you've made, your price depends on that... I learned how to measure and I felt comfortable. The problem is that, despite understanding how it works, it doesn't create enough money to live peacefully, warm and well. When you're at the top, you don't care so much, you have a perspective, you know why and for what you do, you have the pleasure of those directly... But you decide to take a step and for 5-6 months everything ends. You have nothing by your side, precariousness. When I'm with people, I cling to the positive part, I try to maintain my faith, but I've spent weeks and weeks believing it was enough and it was time to put it all over. At the same time, everything and nothing, is music for me again. When you touch people are happy, but when you stop, nobody is missing your chords. In addition, in music, not everything goes at once. Your team can walk a lot out there without living and others live very well touching little. In the month we played at the Olympique in Paris, it wasn't much richer than it is now.

However, it is not the artist, it is the industry that is in crisis.

Those who made the money behind the musicians don't benefit, or don't benefit as much as they did before, so it's a crisis. I think it is right that no one should be enriched at the expense of artists. It is an issue that, as things change more than ever, we seem to lose something continuously, but then there is the succession and the way it works. We always thought that before it was better, healthier, more humane. We repeat over and over again that the money pulls it all. But let's not fool ourselves, when we idealize the 1970s, let's not forget that Beatles, Jimmy Hendrix and so on. They became famous for being very good, but above all, through music we can earn a lot of money! Now that logic has moved on to festivals, and we continue to mutter that the atmosphere is not that of before or that the money corrupts everything, without realizing that when the next change occurs we will end up saying that the festivals were impressive. It's the usual thing, there are people who know where to invest their money to take advantage of the situation, and today, except for festivals, music is not profitable. So far, a banker preferred to invest money in music than in textiles, because the musical economy was strong, enriching. Not now. That is the only thing that has changed. Those who once invested in music now invest in ecological materials. They don't believe in music or ecology, but it's always the same people who make the money.

Is Willis Drummond an investment of faith for you?

Until a year ago, my life has been whole. Since we started with the team in 2004, I've had nothing else in my head. This year, I learned not to be just a singer of Willis Drummond. So far my life was a team, a team and a team, it was clear that I needed it and I was fully aware of it. The companions have always been very close people, we have always fed a family relationship, if in one moment not in another most of us have lived together, we have tried at home... We built the group on that authenticity, we passed it on, and that's why people said we were a direct group. Gradually, the change in lifestyles, the fact that everyone has followed their path, has given us a musical evolution. For a long time I have wondered if it would be worthwhile to play again without that fusional connection that was the essence of the band. Today I say it is worth it. Without insisting on keeping what we had so far, admitting that things have changed, I am convinced that we can do well. We didn't regret the school that Willis Drummond has been for us. One has been producer of the other, manager, music teacher… We recorded, we corrected the mistakes. It's a great school to rehear what you've recorded and have the voice defied. Playing with the group I've learned a little bit of music that I know and we haven't made any artistic concessions. Perhaps that need for rest has arisen because we no longer want to be judges for each other. We lost something, we didn't accept what we were doing. That is why I say that, if we speak frankly about it and admit the situation of each one, there is no reason not to start again.

While taking a solo album is a way to claim that your last name is not Willis Drummond?

Not only in the musical, but also in the personal this year I've realized that my life is not just the group. It's a tremendous vertigo to realize that your life is just a group. That's why I've felt the need to get rid of the group, so I've tried to make all the filters jump. I've had to get out of the group so that I can recognize who I am. The record picks up some of the riffs and songs I've had in mind in the last 15 years. Even though I never played in public, listening so many times in my head, it seemed to me that the songs had ended. Everything has been to take it out and give it body, without falling into self-censorship and decoration, being loyal to myself. Creating songs and listening to a disco with helmets is one of the great pleasures that music gives me. That's why I wanted to make a record for the record, without thinking about whether I'll touch it later in public or not. I'd like people to take the object in their hands and listen to the songs over and over again, feel it.