Asfar Shamsi

It is said that it is better to be a bird of the hedgerow than of the cage. In a hedgerow, the bird is free to be itself — just as Asfar Shamsi is in her new EP, cui cui. Free to offer music somewhere between rap and electronic music, between intimacy and modesty, between pop and the organic. Free to offer us all her colors, shaped since her childhood as a guitarist at the Strasbourg Conservatory, as a schoolgirl with Népal or Orelsan in her ears, and today by her life as a young adult capable of writing the words of an era. Asfar Shamsi is that artist who cites Laurent Voulzy and Luidji as readily as Stromae as references. Artists who never fit into a single box, a single palette.

After Au Revoir Février and Le Dilemme du Hérisson, Asfar Shamsi also wanted to say things freely but above all simply: in a raw, sincere way, as a lucid and disillusioned observer of this world in permanent tension. Without making it a sad project, cui cui aims to be the testimony of a search for identity as well as balance. In the midst of a period of reflection and transition, Asfar Shamsi is building with cui cui who she wants to be, as an adult and as an artist.

Asfar Shamsi also builds her freedom on stage. A winner of the Fair and then a participant in the Chantier des Francos, she has shaped her colors as much as her live performance: a powerful show, both rap and electronic. As a trio on stage, accompanied by her co-composers Wolby on drums and Loufox on keyboards, Asfar Shamsi intends once again to do nothing to lock herself in a box. At the same time… why choose?