Tomaz - Biographie musicale

TOMAZ BOUCHERIFI-KADIOU is a composer/singer/songwriter in his mid-twenties from Paris and one of the best kept secrets in France. But not for long!

An only child, he grew up absorbing two distinct cultures in his home. Breton from his mother's side (Kadiou) with summers spent at his grandmothers in Brittany; and Algerian (Boucherifi) on his fathers. Currently, the senior is a singer/songwriter in Berlin.

His teen-age years saw him embrace the hard rock/thrash scene in Paris with Mindrage; before realising jobs were few and far between. This new insight caused Tomaz to pursue acoustic music, and then turn exclusively towards Celtic (Britain in particular). Armed with guitar, an exquisite silk voice (comparisons to Yann Fanch Kemener are in order) and a natural inclination to play well all styles of music on the bombarde (Breton reed in oboe family); he formed Dreaming in 96 and then Tornaod in 97 to continue the attack. This group with its folkloric roots, has had fans finding Arabic, Celtic, Yiddish, Western, and Cajun influences in their repertoire.

Being at the threshold of wider recognition, thanks to the release of their first CD, and already well-known in the Paris Breton community; Tomaz immerses himself in the culture by taking Britain language classes and teaching the bombarde twice a week at neighborhood centers. At this point in time, the musical director of Tornaod (cliff in the Brittany tongue); is standing on a cliff and finding that the stars are firmly within his grasp.

Bio par Stephen

THE WAY, THE DOUBT, THE ANGER, THE LIGHT.

or how and why I write

Roots alone rotted out of ground, a cut trunk, it is a died force, a separate foliage of the tree fades...
A tree deeply enraciné in its origins and with the sharp force, whose foliage collects brandy: here how I conceive the music...
I seek the universal vibration.
And I find it in all things, like the parts of a puzzle which, once assembled, would make it possible to contemplate the Great Whole and to apprehend his direction of them.
I refuse to enter a kind and to lock up my music in a category.
It is opened, but without concession, lends to being influenced, but not being transformed.
I keep it sincere with respect to me and of what is revealed to me during experiments which inspire to me...
One could say that I make Breton or Celtic music, but it is not the case.
I make initially Music.
I defend by it the life, for the universe, wisdom.
And if I do it by the Breton language and the traditional modes, it is because they are of my fascinating roots and thus parts of the experiments which inspire my music.
To write, compose, play is to take the weapons. It is to carry out a spiritual war for what one believes just, without asséner of certainty, without launching bombs.
The only weapons are the instruments and the words, the only duty : to be intensely sincere by its work.
It is for that that I write, to illuminate the ears and the hearts of the listeners, to give them, and to give me, hope and heat.
To point finger what oppresses us in these times of underhand oppression; and the time in a concert, them in the room and us on the scene, being Linked Towards...

Tomaz BOUCHERIFI-KADIOU, November 06, 2003