A cross-cultural weaving of a string quartet, a wind quartet and two percussionists with brilliant solo voices from West and Central Africa (the dazzling Guinean singer Sekouba Bambino, the Congolese rumba maestro Ballou Canta, the Franco-Togolese singer Tina Kloutse)

Sekouba BAMBINO, vocals
Ballou CANTA, vocals
Tina KLOUTSE, vocals
String quartet (2 violins, cello, double bass)
Wind quartet (bassoon, 2 clarinets, horn)
Drums and percussion

Christophe CAGNOLARI, arrangements and artistic direction
Julien REYBOZ, sound

Modern Africa has its classics, who would dare to doubt it? Certainly not Julien Reyboz and Christophe Cagnolari, who initiated this unique project. Both had worked together on the Bal de l'Afrique enchantée: a show that made the extraordinary repertoire of the great African orchestras resound on stages in France and elsewhere: those who accompanied - in the 60s and 70s - the breath of hope of independence and invented a sound that was both electric and inspired by tradition.

The first - a sound engineer - and the second - a composer - had the intuition that these emblematic pieces arranged for a European classical orchestra would work wonders. Christophe Cagnolari therefore set to work to dress these songs in the colours of Western classical music, entrusting the strength and beauty of the pieces from this golden age to two quartets: one with strings (violin, viola, cello, double bass) and the other with winds (horn, bassoon, clarinet, bass clarinet). To regulate the pace of this vessel, which is rather rare on the African coast, two percussionists from both sides of the Mediterranean bring together zarb and nkoul, drums and marimba. This is how, armed with patience and a spirit of adventure, this joyful troupe, christened Afriquatuors, was to land on the shores of Guinea and its epics, on the banks of the Congo where rumba flows, in Nigeria in the polyrhythms of Yoruba music, to finally return to Paris, one of the cradles of soukouss.

In this journey that makes us forget genres and borders, this orchestra, as classy as it is classical, is guided by the voices of those (Sekouba Bambino, Ballou Canta) who were as much actors as witnesses of those heroic times when the Ok Jazz and Bembeya Jazz orchestras shone, as well as IK Dairo, Francis Bebey and a few others of such great talent. Between Paris and Kinshasa, Berlin and Lagos, Afriquatuors invites you to enter a room where Africa and Europe are in dialogue, or better still, in an enraged philharmonic where we can finally get up on the tables. And dance!