During his exploratory travels in the southern United States, Rapha\u00ebl Imbert met painter, university professor, musician, folklorist and ethnomusicologist Art Rosenbaum in Athens, Georgia. This meeting opened doors for Rapha\u00ebl to opportunities for his own path as an active musician-researcher who experiments by combining free music, free expressionism, and the bop language (which in a way is comparable to bluegrass virtuosity). He has learned one thing: music is everywhere, and if each encounter is a celebration, anything can happen, and anything can be created! \u00a0<\/p>\n
‘Music is My Field\u2019 is the field project to demonstrate this liveliness, this popular art of hospitality, improvisation, and alterity, specifically within the musical styles of the Southeast and Appalachia. The project redefines the cultural bonds that exist between the musicians of a music with an established geographical origin and a recognized universal dimension. Between France and the United States, a comparison between popular and avant-garde, sacred and profane, industry and creativity, memory and innovation, and rurality and urbanity that will allow a rich and deep reflection for all participants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In this context where the conception of professional and amateur does not matter, there is a diversity, an inventiveness, and a heterogeneity that must be nourished and shown. In 2023, Rapha\u00ebl Imbert returns to the road of his past explorations and future encounters through a program of four filmed recording sessions with the most emblematic artists of these burgeoning aesthetics. The outcome is an album, a documentary, a podcast, and then a tour in the United States and Europe. First stop: Atlanta, Georgia!\u00a0<\/p>\n