Sunday Interview. Singer Corneille: "I found no healing in fame."

Why would you want to forgive people who killed your family?

“The idea of ​​forgiveness only came to me at the end of writing the book. At first, I was mainly looking for an answer to the question I was asked most often since the release of my first album: “How do you manage not to be completely overwhelmed by hatred and how do you still manage to find love?” Indeed, I carry a lot of trauma, but I have never been driven by a feeling of revenge. This question obsessed me for more than 20 years. I wanted to find answers to share.”

Did you succeed?

“I looked to my suffering, where I found a lot of lessons. If I can still love, it’s because even if my tragedy seems incredibly brutal, it’s perhaps less so than that of those who hurt me. What things could those who take the life of an entire family have experienced to reach this level of inhumanity? Who had the worst life: me or the executioner? I think it was the executioner. I didn’t do too badly after the horror and injustice. I have a wife, children, a comfortable life, and a place in a profession where it’s difficult to make one. In writing the book, I realized that the only person I can truly forgive is myself. I hope others find forgiveness.”

You write that the height of your musical success was even the most unhappy period of your life. Why?

“Fame is like parenthood: there's no training. They sell it to you in a very romantic way, you can't wait to get there. But it was a false promise. I was unhappier than before, I found no healing in it. Plus, I lost a lot of my freedom. Now, I like to make music in the studio, away from the spotlight, creating for other artists. I don't have the profile to be a famous person at all, but I didn't know that until I became one.”

Throughout the book, you involve your father, who helps you navigate your questions. Why this choice? You answer your own questions, don't you?

“He was already in my first book, and part of my motivation for writing this second book was to find an excuse to talk to my father again. It gave me the impression that he was still there to give me advice. But I was also afraid of being too cynical, all alone, on a question as delicate as forgiveness. Now, my father was a very fanciful person, who saw the world in an offbeat way. He was an engineer, but I think he was also an artist who had missed his vocation! The dialogues I imagine are an extrapolation of his personality and correspond to what I imagine my father would have answered my questions. Then I also wanted answers that were off the beaten track on all the things I criticize, that are imposed on us, like values, identity…”

On the subject of values ​​and identity, your father tells you that you shouldn't see yourself only as black, telling you not to "victimize" yourself. Isn't that the discourse of the far right, which can make similar statements while reducing categories of population to a simple skin color, a religion, a gender?

"I understand that this may be shocking. Some far-right people say what I sometimes say: 'We must not reduce our humanity to the color of our skin.' Just because a racist says it doesn't make it any less true, but he says it for the wrong reasons. Many black people like me only feel black in the eyes of those who send them away, when we hear 'go back home.'

These invectives end up coloring our view of ourselves. I'm trying to free myself from that, but it's hard, I don't even know if it's possible. But it's an ideal. It's a real problem for groups of individuals who have been oppressed, that society has constantly put back at the bottom of the ladder. At the same time, my father is right: it's an absurd way of seeing oneself and seeing others, and it's all just a construct. Being white is also a social construct.

How so ?

"That's the genius of white supremacy: it keeps peoples opposed. It gives a superficial reason for some, poor whites in social misery, to feel superior to others who are even more in difficulty, but who are of a different skin color, of a different religion. It keeps everyone in a state of inertia, including poor whites. Because if they join with other oppressed people, powers fall. We're experiencing the same mechanism all over the world. In Rwanda, it wasn't blacks versus whites, or Arabs versus whites, but Hutus versus Tutsis. That's why it's important to return to my father's idea: we are ONE. There's a universality to seek out. The day we touch it, we realize we're in the same boat."

You write that after slavery, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide, you hoped the world would "learn." This isn't really the case...

"Many brilliant people reduce the world to the West, saying that we are living in the most peaceful era in history. This is not the case in Sudan, Palestine, the Congo, or Yemen. After Rwanda, I said to myself, 'I hope this is one of the last times.' But we don't seem to be in a hurry to learn; the violence starts again and again. Perhaps the hardest thing is to realize that this violence is part of humanity and that we don't know how to do anything else."

The Melody of Forgiveness , by Corneille, released on May 14 by XO editions, 20.90 euros.