* En anglais uniquement
French music producer and DJ Jérôme Fouqueray (aka Praktika) has twelve years of music experience and was on the hunt for new sounds and influences when he turned his ears across the Mediterranean. In 2014, he took his music machines for the first time to the warm lands of West Africa - a musical playground so full of possibilities that he settled there. Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Nigeria, Benin, Chad, Senegal. It took him five years to develop sound outside the box, often through live improvisation sessions and jams with local instrumentalists.
Since April 2020, the producer finally sets his long worked album: Benkadi «the good entente». The title sums up his character and sincerity. Here, no «world» collage or «misplaced benevolence». Praktika invents his own music, makes his way with his road friends, whom he knows well, very well even. The speech is lucid or explosive, it sweats the long hours of jams, concerts or studio sessions with the multi-intrumentist Burkinabè Simon Winsé, the master percussionist Tutzi N’Zoré de Bassam, Bamako Malian djely Assaba Dramé. And when the instrumental versions are there, Praktika invites immediately the flamboyant Fatim Kouyaté or the powerful Cheickné Sissoko, but also the sounds of the bus, trips, bats, moment of repit to compose this new opus.