GERALD TOTO
Gerald Toto projects an unparalleled voice: feline, sensuous, deliciously ambiguous, male and female in the same inflexion. This exceptional voice, unlike any other among the new singing voices of the French speaking world, naturally finds its kinship among the Brazilian songs, by its intimate unsettling tone. This knowledgeable experienced nonchalance is constantly harnessed in its delicious rippling, evoking now and then the Caetano Veloso's sweet tone.
This discreet congeniality is nothing of a surprise. That's because Gerald Toto's subtle music, West Indian from Paris , is undoubtedly wrought by its West Indian origins, but is far from the clichés of the contemporary West Indian music, frozen in its sunny folklore like never before. If Toto's music belongs without any doubt to a Creole aesthetics by its cross breeding, this is how it makes honey out of everything that's around, this is how it seizes all the genres which make today's popular music (Nu Soul, R'n'B, pop, jazz, folk, Caribbean music) in order to integrate them into a heterogeneous, hybrid universe, constantly wrought by the otherness but without any collision or tension – convinced that a fragile harmony will necessarily uprise from this cluster of disparate influences – that an ultra contemporary beauty is at work in this type of syncretic adventure.
It must be said that for Gerald, the notion of opening to the difference means much more than an esthetic principle; it is an authentic rule for life.
Author in 1997 of a first remarkable and remarked record, “The first days” issued at Warner stating immediately the fundamental laws of his universe (sensuality, swaying rhythmic turneries, soft enthralling ballads…); composer and artistic manager, in the same breath, of a first opus clefs of Faudel's discography (he is the author of the emblematic “I love you so much”). Gérald went on accumulating the most diverse experiences, indulging himself in a wicked pleasure of preferring the intricate ways to the beaten tracks of the music industry, the artistic and human experiences to the standardized career projects. During the past years, with a lot of talent and relish, from Smadj's electro-orientalising (enriching the ethnic grooves of resolutely jazzy vocal improvisations) to Marcel Kanche's, Lili Boniche's or Zora's very different and singular universes; he performed within all contexts, in the M's or jazz musician Roy Hargrove's openings; he recorded for the No Format labels with Lokua Kanza and Richard Bona, an amazingly fresh and inspired record, he went on buckling down to the elaboration of a musical inspired by the work of the African American film director and writer Melvin Van Peeble – Gérald Toto is today a complete artist who arrived to his full maturity.
Released in March, 2006, new album "Kitchenette" marks the return of Gerald Toto solo. This new complex seducing record, extremely refined in its making – is brilliant proof.
We can find in it pell-mell: languid ballads (“Par temps calme”, sublime opening song, poetic like a Gauguin's painting), others of a delicately spicy sensuality (“Tes dessous”), vivid Brétecher-like sketches, poetic and subtly political digressions (“No Man's Land”, “L'eau Martienne”) sensitive unsettlingly erotic portraits (“Rose ou Violet”, “Sèche”) – a whole amazingly varied range of songs, beating with delicately groovy rhythms, clad in sophisticated arrangements favouring the acoustic resonances (entwined guitars, flute, saxophone) and magnificently transfigured by the enthralling voice, angelic and hyper sexual in turn, of a Gérald Toto returning for good – at the peak of his artistry.

Gerald's performances on Nouvelle vague's Bande A Part album :
Don't go, Heart of Glass, israel and moody

Find Gerald on myspace