All kinds of different breakups
Quebec singer Safia Nolin talks style police and fear of the CAQ victory
Safia Nolin knows a thing or two about intolerance and she says that’s why she’s super scared by the majority victory of the Coalition Avenir Québec this week.
Nolin — an extraordinary singersongwriter who pens emotionally wrenching songs about loneliness, broken relationships and heartache — endured years of bullying in high school in the workingclass Quebec City borough of La Cité-Limoilou because her father is Algerian. She’s also lived through a whole other kind of bullying since becoming a vedette ici.
She was savaged in the media and by online knuckle-draggers for daring to show up at the ADISQ Gala two years ago wearing a Tshirt, with these idiots saying she should be wearing a designer dress. It was straight-up sexism with gusts to misogyny and that’s exactly what Nolin called it when she responded to her critics.
And the intolerance keeps coming. My colleague Marc Cassivi published an interview with Nolin on the weekend in La Presse Plus, in the lead-up to the launch Friday of her much-anticipated second album of original material, Dans le noir. As soon as his piece went online, Cassivi’s inbox began filling up with hateful homophobic emails from readers asking why he was devoting space to, and I quote, “this fat ugly lesbian.”
For the record, Nolin is openly gay and does not fit the stereotype of the thin well-coiffed female pop star.
Two years after the ADISQ controversy, Nolin still has a hard time believing her appearance drew so much venom.
“It was super weird,” said Nolin, in an interview Thursday at a café near her home in Rosemont. “It was like I’d killed someone. It was a huge story in the media. It was tough. I really didn’t think it would be such a big deal. My reaction was — ‘Voyons donc.’ I was really surprised. I didn’t really understand it.”
I wondered aloud why she thinks she is such a flashpoint for this anger. Fellow Quebec singer Coeur de Pirate, for example, is openly queer yet doesn’t receive nearly the same amount of violent hate as Nolin.
“Visibly, I’m physically different,” said Nolin, 26. “I don’t try to fit in. People are shocked because I don’t look like everyone else.”
We agree that what happened at ADISQ, with people freaking out about her wearing a T-shirt, was all about a double standard in our society. You’re allowed to dress like a rock ’n’ roll bum if you’re a guy — hello Jean Leloup — but not if you’re a woman. I suggest to her that there is this strange contradiction. That we have come so far forward in terms of women’s place in the world yet in some ways — hello Donald Trump — we’re regressing back to the dark ages.
“There are two things happening at the same time,” said Nolin. “Yes, we’re moving forward as a society but we’re going backwards in other ways. Look, the radical right is growing. All you have to think is much of Quebec voted for the CAQ. It makes me so afraid. It traumatizes me. I just feel despair when I think of the CAQ victory. It really makes me question the whole idea that Quebec is supposed to be such a welcoming place ... to talk against
immigration, that’s just going to allow people to become more and more racist.”
That’s Nolin. She tells it like it is, in interviews and in her songs as well. Like her 2015 debut album, Limoilou, Dans le noir is a collection of scathing, no-holds-barred mostly stripped-down folky tunes that is anything but light, fluffy pop fare. It’s also pretty great. Produced by Nolin with her faithful collaborators Philippe Brault and Joseph Marchand, it’s a strong collection and, hard as it is to believe, it is even darker than the first LP.
Much of it was inspired by what she calls her first real breakup and the set includes bilingual track Lesbian Break-up Song, a duet with La Force a.k.a. Ariel Engle from Broken Social Scene.
“I wanted to do a bilingual song just because I haven’t heard many songs in English and French,” said Nolin. “And I thought, ‘OK a bilingual lesbian song that’s a duet is a great idea.’ I like being a bridge between anglos and francos. It’s funny. I’m friends with lots of anglo artists. Pat Watson. Half Moon Run. When I was a teenager and had dropped out of school, I learned English on the internet, I had online friends, so I’ve never been shy about talking in English.”
But the album is not just about one relationship. Maybe the most moving song, Sans titre is about her father, whom she hasn’t spoken to or seen in 13 years.
“Yes, it’s a breakup album but it’s about all kinds of different breakups,” said Nolin. “It’s not just a romantic breakup. There’s the breakup of the family. The breakup of friends. A breakup with myself.”