Star Feminine Band: A First Journey Out, and Then the Return

Producing a record can be an adventure. Doing it with young girls from northwestern Benin is a real gamble. That was the first challenge taken on by Born Bad, hardly a world music label, when it released the Star Féminine Band's first album in late 2020. Praise poured in, the whole shebang, and then everything collapsed: the tour that was meant to bring all the band's hopes (and those of the people around them) to life on stage was cancelled because of Covid. Still, the pandemic didn't put an end to the sweet desire to see them on European stages. A year later, the band was back on the bill at Les Transmusicales, the high point of a first tour despite all the hardships and mishaps [...]

[...] So what comes next for the adventures of these new UNICEF ambassadors? They persist and sign on to the same path: a feverish, energetic soundtrack in which Nabo, Fulani and Waama rhythms are given a lift by rhythm-section arrangements and spiced with more "modern" sounds, carrying a message of tolerance and kindness in their own words. Simple and direct, the lyrics speak of their reality, of the hardships of young women who don't always have a choice. Often out of school and expected to sell peanuts, bananas or gari by the roadside, most of the region's young girls have hardly any future. Forced marriages, early pregnancies... "These kids are heroines!" says JB, who, by welcoming them into the studio, lets them sharpen their formula, a kind of garage band enriched with Afro-flavored spinning grooves. Thanks to the English lessons that Jérémie Verdier, their manager, has given the girls by video call every Sunday evening for two years, they even try their hand at songs in English, with "We Are Star Feminine Band" and "Woman Stand Up." In Paris, then, this is the story of a bet that paid off.

It is also the start of new adventures, the promise of tomorrows that could blow everything away, as a dazzling summer tour is announced: Dour, Les Eurockéennes, Roskilde and Les Nuits de Fourvière. When they returned home, the welcome was triumphant. Their videos played on a loop on TV, the radio devoted features to them, and Benin's national channel ORTB even aired their concert filmed for Arte several times. This group of unknowns has become a national reference. "So this time, getting the visas is easier."

Jacques Denis