Ondine Darcyl

By Alex Teitz

FEMMUSIC: Can you describe your songwriting technique?

OD: I wish I had a technique. I just sing what I hear inside my head. I guess the muse is friendly these days.

FEMMUSIC: For your CD, how did you go about selecting the songs?

OD: I just selected songs had been working on for years. I need to feel that I made the song “mine” before recording it and that means I have to really know it inside and out.
I don’t think too much when it comes to music. I think that art is about feelings and not reason. T.S. Elliot wrote that with art, you first feel and then you understand. That has always been my experience whether I look at a painting, read a poem or listen to music.
I was asked several times, even by my label in Japan, about the selection of the tunes and if I have a musical director. The songs in my self titled CD are world standards, beautiful classics like Summertime, The Girl from Ipanema and La Vie en Rose. For me there were obvious choices.

FEMMUSIC: What was the biggest challenge making your CD?

OD: The biggest challenge was to know what sounds good in a professional recording. I was all stressed out about whether the production lived up to other commercial recordings. And it took me more than a year to release it for that reason. My co-producer Hernan Romero (also the producer for Al Di Meola) had done a great job recording his instrumental tracks but I needed a better microphone for my voice. So I re recorded the vocals at Avatar Studios in New York with Aya Takemura as my sound engineer. Thanks to them the result is fantastic and got great reviews, a record deal in Japan and now I’m considering an offer from Europe.

FEMMUSIC: What was the best experience making your CD?

OD: The best experience about making a CD is that I finally was able to fix in permanent form the work I had been doing for the last few years. “Okay, now I can move on”, I said to myself. And I did. Also, It’s a wonderful feeling of proving to yourself and the rest of the world that you are now a bona fide recording artist. The music now lives on outside your body in plastic form and you don’t even know what is happening with it or who is listening.

FEMMUSIC: Tell me about the new album(s), and how it is working with Kristo Numpuby?

OD: I just finished recording my second CD Happy Birthday. I love it! It’s for children and I had children record with me. We had a birthday party the day of the recording with a cake, candles and presents. All for Mr. Inchworm. A character I made up because we also sing “Inchworm”, the jazz standard. Miles Griffith, the great jazz vocalist, does the voice of Mr. Inchworm and scats on the song happy birthday. My little cousin Joseph Rostain sings the song in French on his own and six other children, his sister Mila, Powers Pleasant (David Pleasant’s son), Sofia and Gabriel Romero (Henan Romeros’s children) and their cousin, sing in English and Spanish with me.
Two of the tunes in the recording are my originals, one collaborating in the music with Hernan Romero. It’s my debut as a composer so it is very exciting. Now Miles Griffith and I will write some tunes together for our duet recording coming up.
I had amazing musicians play with me and that is why this recording is so cool. David Pleasant on percussion, Hernan Romero on guitar and Gregoire Maret on harmonica. Katsu, the great sound engineer, recorded the voices, mixed and mastered the CD. Now I’m ready to take it to MIDEM in Cannes at the end of January where I have a press conference to present the recording.
My next project is already on its way since I started rehearsing with Miles Griffith for our duet recording this March/April 2002. We spoke to Roy Hargrove (trumpet) and Mauro Refosco (percussion) last week and they are excited to play and record with us. Now we have to put the rest of the band together.
You ask about Kristo, I love working with him because of his talent and sense of humor. He is at peace with himself, a very rare quality in an artist. So that aura of tranquility calms me down. I need that. His compositions are filled playfulness and a wonderful array of rhythms. He is from Cameroun, Africa and lives in Paris, I am from Argentina, South America and live in New York City and we connect so well.
I recently performed with him in Paris at le “Divan du Monde” and at the Radio Africa number one. I had just finished to write lyrics to a song he already had the music for and the result was great. I wrote the lyrics in Spanish because that’s what he asked for. It is actually a feminist song; the advice to a little girl, never to wait for prince charming since he will never show up. That she should run free and jump high obstacles. The translation of the title of the song is “Don’t wait”.

FEMMUSIC: What one thing would you like to change about the music industry?

OD: I would like to see living artists in all disciplines be treated with the respect and reverence reserved only to the dead. And not only by the music industry but by society in general including the government and the private sector.

FEMMUSIC: As a woman in the music industry have you been discriminated against?

OD: What woman has not been discriminated against? I also benefited by being a woman because the world of singers is a woman’s world. If I were an instrumentalist then my answer would probably be different. I can’t even imagine being a female jazz drummer. Forget corporate America.
Please don’t get me wrong. I feel privileged. I’m doing what I like and I feel free. Had I been born a man maybe I would not have been a musician. So I don’t feel discriminated upon in the way a female attorney in a law firm may see her male colleagues make partner while she remains an associate. I feel lucky.

FEMMUSIC: What advice would you give to an artist just starting out?

OD: Follow your heart and don’t give up. Above all, don’t listen when they tell you are not going to make it.