CHANTAL ACDA BAND

CHANTAL ACDA BAND

Saturday Moon (2021), I wanted to make with a clear plan in mind:
Songs with small, rather everyday, stories of our fellow man. And I would record with only 1 microphone in the room. Small and intimate. The first part of the plan stuck, the second part failed miserably. I regularly lose myself in enthusiasm and fun, as it turns out.

I collaborated for these recordings with the people I love so much around me. Both musically and personally. I needed that closeness just when we were so thrown back on ourselves.

Eric Thielemans, Niels van Heertum and Alan Gevaert, who also assisted me on stage, as well as Bill Frisell and Shahzad Ismaily, who have become established musicians, are the driving forces behind Saturday Moon. I also worked intensively with Borgar Magnason (Sigur Ros, Damien Rice,…), not to mention Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (Low). A wonderfully colorful composition of people. But I wanted even more celebration.
I looked further.

The delightful singers Madeena Dicko and Sylvie Nawasadio (ex- Zap Mama) and guitarist Rodriguez Vangama provided surprising ingredients from Congo and the Ivory Coast. They also taught me that recording and dancing go well together. We gladly took the creaking floor with us.

Pieter van Dessel (Marble Sounds), Beatrijs de Klerck, Gerd Van Mulders (Isbells) and a delightful group of classical singers with whom I also worked on my Pūwawau performance, completed the amazing circle.

You get the idea.
By then, the idea with the one microphone in the room had failed completely. I wasnevertheless so convinced.
It became a musical journey through my rooting soul.

We shaped 8 stories.

About that woman behind the window.
About the endless search for that one love.
About the lonely man.
About the power of nature and animals. The wolf woman.
About the children of divorce who are not really at home anywhere.
About love through windows. Using only the gaze as a weapon.
About that one girl, looking for her way to connect with others.
And ultimately about my own inner contradictions.

A story. A commitment. A gaze.