POP GOES THE WORLD
Fellow anglos, we’ve been missing out. Daytime radio’s best music is playing on the other side of the dial, en français, T’Cha Dunlevy reports. Follow him on his musical journey of discovery.
FRANCO FARE FROM HERE AND AWAY
“We play French indie-pop,” Pogonat said, sitting down for a post-show chat, a few weeks back. “France’s music scene is mind-blowing, so we play a lot of new stuff from there, and domestic francophone fare from here.”
She rattled off unfamiliar names of artists — Eddy de Pretto, Therapie TAXI, Clara Luciani, Juliette Armanet — whom she described as newcomers with “une proposition vraiment trippante, vraiment convaincante.”
Her show is also peppered with the cream of the Quebec indie crop, folks like Yann Perreau, Pierre Lapointe, Ariane Moffatt and Jean Leloup, alongside newcomers Klô Pelgag, Alex Nevsky, Dead Obies and Gabrielle Shonk.
Toss in the odd Englishlanguage nugget such as Ace of Base, the Verve or the Cardigans, maybe even a hometown anglo like Rufus Wainwright or a random German pop-rap track — “I love German pop!” Pogonat exclaimed. “And Swedish pop! We’re so bombarded by American pop, it’s really interesting to lean toward what’s happening elsewhere. There’s some supercatchy stuff.”
She name-checked German artist CRO’s outlandishly infectious funk-pop-rap hit Traum, the video for which has been viewed nearly 50 million times on YouTube, but which, unless you listen to L’effet Pogonat, you’ve probably never heard of.
“I have that role,” she said. “I can say, ‘Hey, elsewhere in the world they’re listening to this and it’s a super alternative to the American Top 40.’ We’re able to play French pop, hybrids of hip-hop and dance, and catchy German stuff and it works super well.”
Pogonat comes by her tastemaking honestly. She was five years old when she began asking for music at every birthday, and listening to albums on repeat — everything from Abba to Acadian chanteuse Angèle Arsenault, Nathalie Simard, Michael Jackson, Boy George and the Police.
In her teens, she turned to grunge — “I wanted to marry Kurt Cobain” — while flashing back to the ’70s via The Doors and Janis Joplin. “I was a peace-punk — Indian blouses and 14-hole Docs,” Pogonat said, referring to punk uniform mainstay, the Doc Marten boot.
NATURAL STORYTELLER
After growing up with her mom and little sister in Montreal, she returned to her birthplace to study Communications at the Université de Moncton, in New Brunswick. While still in school, she was plucked up by RadioCanada to host the alternative music program Bande à part, in the late ’90s.
That was but the beginning. For six years, Pogonat hosted Montreal alt-culture program Mange ta ville, on ARTV. She did a one-year stint on MusiquePlus, and has written for Elle Québec and Clin d’oeil magazines. Since ICI Musique’s inception (as Espace Musique) in 2004, she has hosted a wide variety of programs, all centred around musical discovery.
An engaged host with a warm voice and effortless elocution, Pogonat is a natural storyteller, ever poised yet not above throwing caution to the wind for a weekly Friday karaoke session, consisting of her and whoever is rolling through the studio singing along to a tune at top volume, on Facebook Live. It’s one of her show’s most popular segments, capturing the playfulness of an otherwise composed woman who is not afraid to put it all on the line for her listeners.
“I have a big ego, in life, but not for (karaoke),” she said. “It’s too fun. And it’s no fun if you hold back.”
With its first birthday coming up in May, L’effet Pogonat was recently confirmed in the ratings as the station’s most popular program (alongside Claude Saucier’s weekend show C’est si bon). And well it should be. But it would be misleading to give Pogonat all the credit, particularly for the music.
CATALOGUE + DISCOVERY + SHAZAM A POST-WORLD-MUSIC WORLD
Fehmiu has many names for the globe-trotting mashup that has infused the early-afternoon, three-hour time slot of Vi@Fehmiu over the past seven years. “What was once called world music we now call musique metissée,” he explained. “I call it la pop de partout, because for me it’s all pop — ( blind Congolese duo) Amadou & Mariam is pop, (Algerian-French star) Rachid Taha is pop, but with accents and instruments from different places, different tones and languages. World music means nothing now.”
Fehmiu has made it his mission to update the term and everything it implies, transforming it from something quaint and “niche” into something contemporary and cosmopolitan.
“It’s the result of what’s been happening over the last few decades,” he said. “Our ear has been developed. I compare it to gastronomy. In Quebec, people ate steak and potatoes and white bread for 40 years up to Expo 67. Now Montreal is one of the food hubs of North America because we worked our palate. It’s the same thing with music. We’ve worked our ear and our capacity to enter into something we don’t know.”
Far from forcing world music on his listeners, Fehmiu is tapping into an openness that is already there, but which mainstream media tends to underestimate.
‘I SEEK INTENSITY’
“Commercial radio has to be comfortable,” he observed. “But when I visit festivals, even up in the Gaspé at the Festival musique du bout du monde, people are going to see Angélique Kidjo, and they don’t know who she is. Maybe they read an article or heard her once on the radio; they buy a ticket and go. I see that kind of curiosity and I say, ‘People like to explore.’ More and more, people are ready to experience things.” Fehmiu plays approximately 40 per cent world music/pop de partout on his show, mixing it up with a hand-picked selection of mostly French song from the same ICI Musique catalogue used by Pogonat, with help from his producer, Radio-Canada veteran Diane Maheux. His version of world music is far from hippie-dippie. Underpinned with electronic beats and contemporary production values, it’s a snapshot of new sounds being made here, there and almost everywhere. “We decided to lean toward something more current,” Maheux said, “seeking out sounds that are anchored in the moment, while remaining dynamic. It’s world music with elements of pop.” A recent Friday edition of Vi@Fehmiu boasted Montreal dance band Misteur Valaire and Senegalese- Québécois singer Karim Ouellet, French rockreggae outfit Zebda, Lauryn Hill, French-Cuban sister duo Ibeyi, electro-pop crooner Peter Peter and local hero Sam Roberts, all combined into a seamless, uptempo flow. “I seek intensity,” Fehmiu said. “From noon to three, most people are working behind a desk or driving. They need something uplifting; that’s the character of my show.” Fehmiu’s contagious enthusiasm is interwoven with the music he plays. He and Pogonat are shining examples of what happens when you let charismatic media personalities be their unconventional selves. But though he’s an anomaly on the Montreal radio map, he sees Vi@Fehmiu as an ongoing conversation with our city’s broader musical mosaic, equal parts cause and effect of the sonic diversity on display year-round. “Now you see world music artists doing main events at the (Montreal International) Jazz Festival, Nuits d’Afrique and Les FrancoFolies,” Fehmiu said. “Amadou & Mariam, (Ivory Coast reggae artist) Tiken Jah Fakoly, (Senegalese singer) Youssou N’Dour draw big, big crowds. That’s how I sell it to my bosses: There’s an audience for this, because no one else is exploiting it.” The impression one gets in listening to his show is akin to wandering one of the abovementioned festival sites on a bustling summer night. Suddenly, you’re not in Montreal anymore, and yet you could hardly be anywhere else. “It’s a sound that I like, that inspires me,” Fehmiu said, while noting that, “I try to be as close as possible to my audience. I don’t just play world music; I play the Quebec hits of the moment — things that lift you up, like Radio Radio and Louis-Jean Cormier. It’s a big challenge to blend all that and play it in the same time frame. It’s the biggest feat we pull off, and what gets the biggest reaction by email.” Keeping Fehmiu grounded in his musical adventurousness is a keen awareness of his show’s gender-balanced demographic, with an average age of 47, 65 per cent of which is over 50 years old. (L’effet Pogonat draws 60 per cent men, with an average age of 49; ICI Musique’s general listenership is also 60 per cent male, average age: 53.) “I want to maintain those listeners,” Fehmiu said, “but keep them in touch with what’s happening.”
And so, though he plays three to four hip-hop songs per hour, he aims for “the most melodic hip-hop possible,” he said. “Right now there is a ton, like the new song by (Quebec rap phenom) Loud, Toutes les femmes savent danser. It’s not even a hip-hop song. It’s a song, with textures, that’s good to dance to.”
Among the new wave of artists to watch, he names Senegalese Montrealer Ilam, HaitianQuébécois singer-rapper Fwonte’s collaborations with Poirier, and Burkina Faso chanteuse Hawa Boussim.
RAISED ON RADIO-CANADA
Vi@Fehmiu’s wide reach stretches to urban music fans in their 20s and high school students, including friends of his 15-year-old daughter. And he aims to please them all. Fehmiu and his younger sister Myriam (who hosts ICI Musique’s early-morning weekday slot, Un matin pas comme les autres, from 7-8:30) grew up listening to Radio-Canada, writing and recording their own shows at home while dreaming of one day doing it for real. “When I was eight years old, I knew I was going to host Vi@ Fehmiu on Radio-Canada,” he said, matter-of-factly. “We were obliged to listen to the station when we were young. Our father and mother found the level of information to have a certain rigour, while leaving space to explore other cultures.” Born in Montreal, Fehmiu and his sister were raised on a goat farm in Ste-Thècle, in Mauricie. Radio-Canada became a lifeline, as did the regular trips to Montreal they would take with their author/ black history professor father. “It was important for him to maintain a link to African culture,” Fehmiu said. “We would return with records by Manu Dibango and Youssou N’Dour, Congolese rumba … I would buy five records and listen to them on a loop for five years.” When Fehmiu moved to Montreal at age 17, he quickly made his way into the media landscape, spending four years as a VJ at MusiquePlus and continuing to work in TV before landing at ICI Musique in 2006. Witnessing his boundless energy on the microphone, it’s hard not think that Fehmiu’s whole career has been leading up to this show; at the very least, it’s hard to imagine him anywhere else. “C’est chez moi,” he said. And chez nous, too. tdunlevy@postmedia.com twitter.com/TChaDunlevy