All eyes are on her as she enters the café.
With her makeup-free face and sweet smile topped by a huge halo of hair Paris’ latest star Cyrs is turning heads and not only for her undoubted personal charisma.
As a singer, writer and poet with a deep emotional approach to her music we caught up with her for an intense in-depth conversation. To explore her career and approach to singing, writing and life just as she’s transitioning from the stage to recording artist and now completing her new songs and planning to shoot a video…in an old woman’s prison!
So what drew you to the music industry?
Music came to me very early, when I was a little girl. I fell in love with singing, it was the only activity that could contain and channel my energy. It just made me so happy… singing makes me forget all my problems. It’s the best way I know to express my feelings. I arrived in Paris in 2006 and two years later I met Raphael and started the band HUSHH and produced our first album.
Please tell us a little about your musical career?
I started as a professional back in 2009 when we created the HUSHH and crowdfunded from people from all over the world to produce our first album “Jamais Perdus”. We toured with the album for many years until 2017 when I was chosen for the role of Maria Magdalena in the French musical Jesus of Nazareth. We played on a huge Parisian stage in front of 5000 people every night and I learned so much about acting, stage presence and about being able to keep up the pace! After this show I signed in 2018 my first solo contract for an album and I’ve been working on the album since then and it’s just been released about obsessional love and psychological violence on women.
How does your dual nationality reflect on your way of creating your lyrics?
I feel equally Arabic, African and European, and I think in order to be authentic my music should reflect what I am. It’s not really about lyrics, because I write stuff about human feelings that are universal, it is about the colours in my music, beats, percussions, melodies and the energy of the songs. When you listen, you can easily guess I’m a traveller. I actually want my music to be like a plane ticket for my listeners and make them discover those 3 homes I love so much.
Who are you inspired by ?
I’m a very emotional person and just like a sponge, I get inspired by every moment of my life and every event that happen to me or to people around me. When I feel moved by a situation, I have to write it down. I can get inspired by anyone as long as I sense there is an untold story to tell, or an unclear message to reveal or just and emotion that must be released. Music is here to grant freedom.
Please explain your creative process?
I don’t follow any rules, and I hate rules by the way… I just create spontaneously when music comes to me. When I feel musical energy tinkling from inside, I just grab a paper or sit on a piano or open a new music session on my computer, and I just let the energy flow, for as long as it takes. Music is not work to me, it is pure passion.
Is there a hidden meaning in any of your music and lyrics?
Of course, my project “Mirage” is all about hidden meanings. it is about how something beautiful often hides pain and suffering. About the darkness behind the light.
In how many languages can you sing ?
I sing in three languages, French, English and Arabic. But French as my mother tongue is the language I prefer to express my feelings.
Do you collaborate with others? What is that process?
Yes I love collaborations and I would love to do more. Music is just like love, the more you share it, the more it grows and makes you grow with it. Producer Pierre Bianchi, a master of World Music and Jo A Touch a genius in urban music and a talented young producer Hugo Morhain Granval together with a wonderful video maker Lodel Saint Marc are my favourite collaborators. I also started to collaborate with amazing people from the fashion world to work on my image… their advice is precious to me.
Please discuss how you interact with and respond to fans?
I don’t really consider my followers as fans, as see them as friends and I am really grateful for their interest in my work. Without their ears to listen to my music, my work will be pointless…I think God gave me this gift because He wants me to have a positive effect on the people around me, and this is what I try to do.
What is your favourite part about this line of work?
My favourite part of work is being on stage. This is when I feel completely myself and completely alive. The adrenaline, exchanging high dose of energy with the audience… this is the best feeling ever.
Your least favourite?
I’m a bit afraid about getting really famous. Celebrity is not something I look forward to, because I’m afraid of having my every move watched, and being judged by others. I fear to lose my freedom, and without freedom I would be totally lost.
Have you ever dealt with performance anxiety?
I did and it was really hard. It was before starting the show Jesus of Nazareth. I experienced many panic attacks, felt like I couldn’t move… I was literally petrified by the fear of not being good enough. But when the day of the premiere arrived, the minute I stepped on that stage… I felt home, I felt this was where I belonged.
What is your message in songs and your goal in life?
I think God sent me music to help me connect with Him and to make me a tool to spread love to the world. Bring joy where there is sadness, bring comfort where there is pain, bring love where there is loneliness, bring hope where there is despair and bring truth where things are fake. Just… light up the darkness.
What got you to write songs?
I started to write when I was still a little girl. I wrote poems, because I just loved to play with rhymes and words. It was like a game and it actually still is.
Can you remember the first time you wrote a song? Describe it to me.
When I was 15, I wrote a very special poem. A story about a man who is afraid of love, who can do everything: sing, play de piano, write poems, dance, who is blessed by every talent one can dream of but when it comes to saying “yes” to love, who gets petrified. Many years later, I realized that man I was talking about was just a projection of myself. It’s always very interesting to discover the hidden meanings in your own work…it’s just me, talking to myself.
Who gave you the support to keep writing in the beginning?
My family have always been very supportive of my art and passion, even if sometimes they might have got afraid for my future. My father loves to sing and my mother on the other hand made me discover poetry through artists like Edith Piaf, Jean Jacques Goldman, Jacques Brel, Leo Férré, and many more… both of them were really happy I loved to sing because I was a terrible child and music was the only way to calm me down.
Who did you play the early songs for?
I started singing for my family. We used to sing for hours with my father during long car trips. My grandfather was also very happy to hear me sing when we had big family gathering. It was always a very pure moment of joy.
What do you feel like when you play one of your songs and people applaud?
Well I feel grateful when I see people happy, I feel like I’ve contributed to put smile on their faces and it makes me proud. It’s not the applause but it is when I see some people deeply moved by my voice, helping them express their feelings, make their sorrow flow out through those tears you know? I care for people because I know how hard it is to feel lonely.
What is better about a song sung by the writer?
I think a song sung by the writer can have a more authentic feeling. But it is not a necessity. So when a singer sings someone else’s song from his heart, it just becomes his, no matter who wrote it. That is my point of view.
Interview & Stylism by Suna Ahmed – Photographer: Nahoko Spiess
