Commissioned by Bruno Pancek, Caroline Delume and Jérémy Jouve.
Creation on the 27th May 2026 at the Regional Conservatory of Boulogne, 22th Rue de la Belle Feuille, by students of the Regional Conservatories of Boulogne, Versailles and Paris.
Kekereke – “my Love” in Fon, a language that is specifically spoken in the South of Benin.
This piece was written between Le Cendre, Cotonou and Paris. During the process of writing this piece, I felt in love. This piece is named Kekereke as a way to remember that in this precise period of time, I had the privilege of falling in love. The name of the piece is therefore not directly linked to the artistic project of it, but refers to the fact that I consider a composition as a diary, testimony of my state of mind during the composition process.
Music history teaches us that instruments have a tendency to evolve. The Renaissance guitar, the baroque guitar, the romantic guitar the classical guitar, the folk guitar and he electric guitar are all variations of the same simple idea : plucked strings attached to a wooden stick with a resonator.
The project of the piece is to find a way to make the classical guitar, the folk guitar and he electric guitar coexist.
My personal history with the guitar involves these three different variations. As a child, I saw my father play the folk guitar at a very young age. Then I was introduced to the electric guitar by playing in bands and then I learned the classical guitar, at the Conservatory. I personally love them all, for what they each have to offer : the subtile voluptuousness of the classical guitar and its complex diffusion characteristics, the sharpness and brightness of the folk guitar, the deepness and infinite possibilities of the electronic sounds offered by the electric guitar.
As a child with three beautiful toys, I don’t want to give up on any of them. I do want to find a way to make these three beautiful instruments coexist rather than making them compete.
The focus is put on finding musical ideas that could be materialized on the three guitars, making their differences of sound qualities, timbre and dynamics, a point of convergence rather than an object of competition.
Kekereke is the paradox of having three instruments, which belong to different eras, working together in the same direction.
Video : Jeremy Jouve