“I dreamed of a discreet life”

A Coke Zero and a chamomile separate us from Ibrahim Maalouf, seated at a table at the Café Crème, in Paris. He arrived in jeans and sneakers, took the seat and found himself crowned with garlands of hearts and a multitude of dried flowers hanging from the ceiling, as if wrapped in a gift package dripping with romance. We are not really in the mysterious speakeasy that we imagined for a drink with the French jazz icon. This decorative micmac is however not without evoking the collection of adventures that shape the artist.

The summary of his professional life is difficult to state without ending breathless: author-composer-performer-writer-producer. After fifteen studio albums, the creation of his label, Victoires de la musique et du jazz, a César for best film music, Maalouf, 41, wrote a Little philosophy of improvisation (Ecuadors, 2021). In this book, as in this coffee, he tells himself since childhood through a mountain of anecdotes.

“I was a shy, calm and gentle child. Not at all made to go on stage, I dreamed of a discreet life”, he begins. Between the din of the percolator and the hand dryer of the neighboring toilets, we guess a child of the serious kind. He entered this world with gravity. On the day of his birth, in Lebanon in November 1980, the hospital was bombed. His parents emigrate to raise their children in France, taking with them the ghost of this amputated country that the family misses. Her mother and her father do not come from the same world: she was educated in a literate family, he comes from a line of peasants. But after studying classical music in France, Nassim Maalouf became a great musician, inventor of the microtonal trumpet. Two educations meet. He embodies rigor, carried by the hope that his son will follow his path: “My mom is cool, she tells me to learn on my own when I’m sitting in front of the piano. »

Music becomes young Ibrahim’s favorite means of expression. “With my synth, I made everyone dance at family parties. Like a DJ! » At the evocation of this memory, we believe we see the proud look of the child he was. From the age of 8, Ibrahim follows his father and accompanies him in concert on the trumpet, misses school and travels to be applauded by a crowd of strangers, where sometimes a few stars slip in. In college, on the other hand, he is careful not to brag about blowing in a copper on the weekends. Not very sexy, the orchestra in front of friends, especially in adolescence.

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