E-mail a friendCorneille
airdate August 12, 2009
Singer-songwriter Corneille has legions of fans. He's had two French-speaking hit albums and won Quebec's prestigious Félix award for Best Male Artist of the Year. Born in Germany, Corneille spent most of his childhood with his parents in their native Rwanda and, at age 16, made his first recording. After escaping the '94 genocide that claimed his family's lives, he ultimately moved to Montreal, where he returned to making music. A spokesman for the Canadian Red Cross, his first widely available CD is "The Birth of Cornelius."
Singer-songwriter performs the song, 'Liberation.' (3:21)
Full interview. (13:46)
Corneille
Tavis: Corneille is a talented singer-songwriter whose much talked-about U.S. debut is called "The Birth of Cornelius." In 1994 he escaped from his home in Rwanda during a period of unspeakable genocide. In just a few minutes, he'll perform one of his new songs for us. But first, here is some of the video for the single, "Back to Life."
[Clip]
Tavis: Good to have you on, Corneille.
Corneille: Good to be here - it's a pleasure to be here.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you here.
Corneille: I love the show.
Tavis: You doing okay?
Corneille: I'm doing great, I'm doing great, thank you.
Tavis: I want to talk about your journey in just a second. Let me start, though, by asking how a U.S. debut compares to debuting elsewhere around the world, because you're known around the world in so many other places. When we say "U.S. debut," that means what?
Corneille: It means, in my case, anyways, it means the beginning of a really important chapter of my musical journey, just because I grew up - the music and the artists who gave me the passion for music were all from here. And so when I go back and try and reconnect with my youth, when I was young and innocent and naïve about the business and I just wanted to sing and write music, I meet the English language way before the French language, which is sort of my first or second language.
But English, I connect with English right away and I connect with the U.S. right away, because all of those artists came from the U.S. So to me, it really is - it's almost like the debut of - I don't want to put down my French career, because I'm so thankful for it. But again, the U.S. debut for me just means finally doing something that is - that really matches the images and the ideas and the dreams that I had as a kid.
Tavis: Give me some of those artists that you were referencing a moment ago by name.
Corneille: Obviously Michael Jackson - RIP. Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, my dad got me into some really early gospel. My dad was a music lover and he got me into Mahalia Jackson, for example, got me into jazz, got me into John Coltrane. And you have to understand that I was growing up in Rwanda and none of the other kids were listening to all of that.
But my dad was such a Western music lover; he got me into classical music as well. And those are really the artists that I grew up listening to.
Tavis: How did your dad in Rwanda develop such a love for Western music, since you say he was the only one in the village listening to -
Corneille: Yeah, I have no idea. First of all, I was fortunate enough to be brought up in a family where we were part of what you would call the social or intellectual elite. Both my parents had studied in Germany, so they were really in touch and in tune with what was happening in the West. And my dad was an engineer, but I think he secretly had wanted to be a musician himself.
Tavis: Don't we all?
Corneille: Don't we all. (Laughter)
Tavis: Don't we all secretly, yeah, yeah.
Corneille: I believe that. I think we all have an artist sleeping in us, waiting to come out. And my dad was the first one to - again, this is far from being the common rule in Rwanda. My dad encouraged me in the music career choice. He really pushed me. They paid my first studio sessions. But he always had that - he had, maybe it was a fascination. He was really fascinated by Western culture as a whole, and music in this particular case.
So I grew up listening to a lot of African American artists and watching a lot of Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington movies and all of that.
Tavis: I think that's probably true for everybody, though, and I say this with humility, but what Black folk have given the world is so immeasurable -
Corneille: It's immeasurable.
Tavis: - that you can't talk about it. It's not like it's an either-or, it's a both-and. You can't talk about Western culture without appreciating the Negroes who made it possible.
Corneille: We were talking about - I live in Montréal and the Black community have come up with this award show, it's called the Sober Sounds of Blackness Music award (sounds like) and every year they ask me, "So what does this mean to you? What are we celebrating?" And I keep saying we're celebrating Black culture.
We're not celebrating the idea of being Black or Blackness, because it doesn't really mean much. We're celebrating a culture that is so big and omnipresent; it's all over the world. And growing up in Africa, we are aware of what's going on in the U.S., namely, because we're so into the African American culture.
Tavis: You have referenced your father a number of times in this conversation, for obvious reasons - his impact on you, musically. You referenced him in the past tense, and you have done that because you are so connected - put another way, affected by the Rwandan genocide.
I know you've told this story a thousand times, but give me the short version of what happened to your parents.
Corneille: I was one of those people who until the last minute didn't think that the Rwandan genocide was going to take such crazy proportions. And so my family and I stayed after April 6th, which is when the president at the time got shot down from his plane, and when the killing really started happening my parents and I stayed in Kigali, the capital, because my father thought it's never going to be that bad. This is not the kind of country we live in.
And obviously, we were all wrong; a million people dead after we realized we were all wrong. But long story short, people came into my house and they started shooting at anyone who was in the house at that point. So my family, who had some people over who were helping out in the household, and I was - I can't even say that I was spared. I think they just left me for dead, thinking that - because it was chaos.
There was no way to really - there were a lot of raids that would happen where people would come in and kill entire families, but it was not that strategic and it was not all that well thought-out. So they thought I was dead, and I had to leave the house and I had to - I stayed in Kigali, in the capital, for the three months, the whole duration of the genocide, and then I managed to walk out of the capital, and those are the images that you all saw.
Tavis: That exodus.
Corneille: The exodus towards Congo. And so I reached Congo and I managed to get in touch with a German family, friends of my family, who took me in that same summer in '94.
Tavis: In the summer of '94, your parents are both murdered. You're how old at that point?
Corneille: I was 17.
Tavis: You were 17.
Corneille: Yeah.
Tavis: I ask that, and I thank you for indulging me - I know you've been asked that question so many times. I raised that, though, because so much of your music is autobiographical. You don't run away from this. It's in your music.
Corneille: It's in my music, and I've tried. This is my first English record, but it's my third record because I've had two previous records in French. And every time I write, I try - I try, because it's hard to - honesty with yourself is not such an easy thing to achieve, but I try, and that's what I strive for.
And I try to be as honest with myself on my records as possible, and so this album, "The Birth of Cornelius," is the result of an evolution, and mainly a psychological one, because 10 years after the genocide - and I can talk for myself, but I can talk for a whole generation of Rwandan people who were my age at that time who were forced to either leave the country or stay in the country as orphans or who - an entire generation of young people who had to disconnect from their emotional selves and had to stay in denial for a long, long time.
And I think with this album I'm coming out of that denial. I'm letting myself be. I'm saying things that I didn't think I was allowed to say.
Tavis: I could talk to you for hours. I want to make room for you and this performance here that the audience, I'm sure, is waiting on, since I promised it. Before I let you do your thing, though, what do you think your dad would make now of your being here on U.S. television with your U.S. debut?
Corneille: My dad would be ecstatic. He would be ecstatic. First of all, he would - he would definitely be into the show. I'm sure he'd be into "Tavis Smiley" and be like, "Oh, you did the 'Tavis Smiley Show,' that means you're all right now." (Laughter) So I can see him, I can hear him say that.
And it's a great accomplishment, it's a pleasure to be living this dream and know that he's looking down and he's proud.
Tavis: It's quite a journey. You think about the fact that his father developed in him a love for our music and our culture, what we've given the world, and here he is now doing his own thing here in the U.S. His name, Corneille; the project, "The Birth of Cornelius." Up next, a special performance from Corneille - stay with us.
Corneille: Pleasure to be here.
Tavis: Oh, I enjoy talking to you.
From his critically acclaimed new CD, "The Birth of Cornelius," here is Corneille performing "Liberation." Enjoy.
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