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Les Nubians soak up success
(CNN) -- The sun is shining on sisters Celia and Helene Faussart. The duo from Bordeaux, France, blend R&B, soul, hip-hop, reggae and "Afropean" rhythms to make the distinctive sound of Les Nubians. The pair's second album, "One Step Forward" (OmTown), made the highest Billboard Top 200 debut of any French language album in the last 20 years, entering the chart at No. 79. Their debut album, "Princesses Nubiennes," made a similar splash, peaking at No. 100. The sisters, born in France to a French father and a Cameroonian mother, spent seven years in the African country of Chad as children. Part of the message in Les Nubians' music is cultural understanding. "If you don't know more about yourself, you won't be able to meet somebody who's different than you and understand him right without feeling frustrated or having a complex that he's superior or inferior than me," Celia said. TMR caught up with Les Nubians recently in Atlanta, Georgia, to talk about the new album and the pair's rising success. TMR: How has your music developed from your first album to the current one? HELENE: We really think that between "Princesses Nubiennes," the first album, and the second album, "One Step Forward," we've been one step forward (laughs). In terms of production and lyrics, we took great care of music in the second album. And more than having a lot of featurings and a lot of different artists on the project, we preferred to work with great musicians and to have music that's a language in itself and [music] that will carry the emotions and the feelings more than the words. So it was more about music. TMR: Why is it so hard for French musicians to make it outside France, and why do you think you have succeeded?
HELENE: I can't really give you any reason or explanation for how Les Nubians broke through internationally 'cause if I had the recipe, I would sell it and maybe be rich from that. No, but it's very hard to tell. We did our music the way we wanted to do it. ... When we recorded the first album, we didn't have any plan to break through in America. It was really like, "Let's do our music and we're just gonna see what happens." At that time we wanted to put the message out to the music scene in France. That was our goal, to do something different. So I don't know. I think the question should be asked to the audience that bought the album. But what we have as feedback from them is that they don't really understand the words, but they love the melodies, they love the harmonies, they love the music and the emotions that the music carries. ... People will sometimes say, "I don't know what you're saying in that track, but I feel pain or doubt," and this is what we are talking about. We are maybe talking about abortion or war or something very sad. And we feel happy to realize that we succeeded in doing music and that the emotions that we put in the music have been identified even without the words. TMR: So how did you get into music? HELENE: OK, so we're sisters and we used to sing together for years and years at home, and a friend of ours brought us to sing in front of an audience. This is how we began, a cappella because at that time we were young, and the musicians, they didn't trust us. So they were asking us to do their backing vocals, but they didn't want to come and play for us. CELIA: So we said, "No. We're not going do your backing vocals if you don't want to play our music. So we'll be alone, we'll do a cappella." HELENE: So this is how we began, we began a cappella. We were at that time proposing to the audience a travel into black music, and if we consider black music as a tree, we are going from the roots to the leaves. ... We were doing covers of traditional African songs and then gospel, blues, jazz, bossa nova, reggae, hip-hop, jungle music -- all the different kinds of music the diaspora created around the world. And a cappella, and bit by bit we started to do our own compositions to include into the show. And at that time we were not at all searching for a record deal. We were more driven by the experiences of the jazz singers, and we were more into "OK, this is [the] experience we were talking about, so we'll go and perform and perform again and maybe in 10, 15 years we'll record something." And finally we had a terrific proposal and we did it. TMR: What's it like working together as sisters? Do you fight ever? CELIA: Good. It's like everything. There are some ups and downs. What is better in doing music with your sister is [the bond never breaks], you can't fight. And also we understand each other in a blink. She does that and I know where we're going. HELENE: We're very complementary. I used to say that I'm more the earth and she's the air, or I'm the architect and she's the painter. CELIA: And we never feel alone when we travel. It's like we have home with us. We have our family so we are rooted. We never feel lost. Never, never, in this planet, which is great.
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