So often, globalization is framed as a sort of cultural wrecking ball. As McDonald’s restaurants spring up and Phillipino children whip and nae nae the day away, centuries-old flavors slip away, washed off in a tide of modernity.
But South Africa’s Yannick Ilunga, stage name , has found inspiration in his global village hometown. Born in Brussels to an Angolan mother and Congolese father, Ilunga grew up speaking both English and French — his stage name means “little black,” with willfully mixed word-genders — and listening to everything from Joy Division to .
As Petite Noir, Ilunga paints a vivid portrait of his vantage of the Western world. Building off the novel R&B/electronica mélange on “The King of Anxiety” EP, “La Vie Est Belle (Life is Beautiful)” pulls something of a reverse Paul Simon. Like Simon’s “Graceland,” Ilunga absorbs a peculiar foreign genre — New Wave in this case — so wholly that it ends up closer to the newest chapter in its cannon rather than an unauthorized offshoot.
The album succeeds not just because of how well it executes the style of New Wave, but the flavor it injects. Where much of the genre sprang from dissatisfaction, “Life Is Beautiful” echoes its album title at every whim. Centerpiece ostensibly refers to “mort de rire,” or “die laughing,” the French equivalent of LOL. Using the album’s most danceable rhythms, the song is a confident assertion of lifelong love. Like , it acknowledges the cheesy odor that rises out of an uncompromised idea of romance — “You’re the one that I want,” a back-up singer hums, doing — as deftly as it fends it off. The sleek R&B of “Chess” proves there is joy even in heartbreak, as his protagonist revels in the simple act of smiling for the first time after a breakup.
Underlying these rosy platitudes are the dark rhythms and deep, Ian Curtis baritone that make Petite Noir ripe for comparison to the legends of the genre. Numbers like “Just Breathe” imagine Joy Division as an afro-punk band, where the sweat comes from the ecstasy of the dancehall rather than existential dread. “Inside,” meanwhile, has striking similarities to the Talking Heads’ “I Zimbra.” As David Byrne consciously channeled African music tradition in that song, this makes for a surreal meta-moment, Ilunga as the translator of a translation of a translation.
Such is Petite Noir’s lot as a worldly tastemaker. If anyone knows he’s onto something, itap him: Ilunga introduces his music as something completely new in both in the album and interviews, a genre he calls Noir Wave. It may not merit a separate category, but “Life Is Beautiful” reproduces an excitement that got you digging through music blogs in the first place: novel enough to get your attention and good enough to keep it.
