LIVE FREE OR DIE

The project

Unicum Music, a French music label with longstanding expertise in the digital field, has spearheaded the release of a connected vinyl with museum Mémorial ACTe in Guadeloupe, to honour the victims of slavery by creating an interactive experience at the crossroads of various artistic forms, technology and an institution.

The project’s starting point is « L’Histoire en Marche » (‘History Marching’), one of plastic artist from Guadeloupe Shuck One’s works exposed in the Mémorial ACTe since its inauguration by French President François Hollande in 2015. His work is part of the museum’s permanent collection, as well as its very own sound illustration « Mémorial ACTe I & II », composed by composer Maxime Lenik and performed by violonist Yorrick Troman.

Mémorial ACTe in Guadeloupe is a site dedicated to the collective memory of slavery and the slave trade, as well as a research center trying to bring together all the components of the French population around its shared history and past, to focus on their quest to understanding what freemdom, all freedoms, and living together as a functional society mean.

Shuck One’s installation « L’Histoire en Marche » specifically addresses a long hidden episode of French History : the battle of Joseph Ignace, Louis Delgrès, Solitude and their fellow fighters against the napoleonic troups that came to reinstate slavery on the island in 1801 and from which came out the cry that still resonates to this day : « Live Free or Die ! ».

Shuck One

Plastician & Street Artist

His first visual memories of graffiti can be traced to the freedom fighters in the Antilles. Upon his arrival to Paris, this initially visually shocking experience caused him to reflect on graffiti’s Parisian modus operandi. Why did it appear in Paris, and how was it being used? In terms of his graffiti involvement, from that moment on, things happened quickly.

An Activist at the forefront of the Hip-Hop movement, he claimed its ideology as a continuity of his own experiences, past and present. Shuck, a Parisian underground writer of the Eighties with a powerful and aggressive tag, has been, for a long time, a powerful pulse that dominated the subway arteries, either alone or with his crew DCM.

He left behind mural prints in a city boiling with the emergence of Hip-Hop. During this period of dynamic creativity, he founded Basalt, a collective of authentic graffiti artists, a group who wanted to ensure that their work would be done across borders. In 1995, Basalt was dissolved and the relationship between Shuck and the movement Hip-Hop shifted directions.

Shuck acquired an increasingly militant philosophy nourished by his mixed background, that evolved into a progressive view about the role of graffiti in effecting emancipation. He invented the “graffic artism”, developing his work on canvas with what he called a graffic resonance, which expressed the soul of graffiti. He created abstractions–suspended bodies and objects not clearly defined– that never lost the sensibility of the street.

He has been aggressive with color, with stimulating the sensibilities, and with painting and writing themes and events that cause him alarm, including natural disaster and economic injustice. In his work emerges spontaneity, the spirit of vindication, and rhythmic vibrations that arise from contemporary African American music.

Shuck reconciles in his material this spirit and color, in the hopes of escaping the oppressions and indifferent systems that exist in contemporary society.
-Enrick Weissman. 

Yorrick Troman

Violinist

Born in Paris in a family of Baroque musicians, Yorrick Troman started playing the violin aged 4. He studied in the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Lyon with prof. Boris Garlitzky, graduated in 2002 with the highest award ( Mention Très Bien ), then studied with prof. Itzhak Shuldman in the Norgemusikhøgskole, Oslo, Norway. Later on, he studied at the Academie de Saintes (Philippe Herreweghe) and followed clases with Emile Cantor ( Orfeus Quartet ) and Joseph Swensen.

Always attracted by the musical diversity, he stepped many times on stage with pop, rock and folkmusic bands, among others as guitarist of the trio Nomad Lib’ (2nd Prize in the Fnapec Chamber Music Competition, Paris 2003, and 1rst Prize in the Torneo Internazionale de Musica, Roma 2004), and in 2015 with flamenco artists Fuensanta La Moneta and Luis Mariano.

In 2004 Yorrick has been teaching the violin in the conservatoire du VIe arrondissement de Paris, but turned his interest to the orchestra world. He started in 2005 with the chair of Second violin Leader in the Copenhagen Philharmonic, Denmark. From there on he moved to 2nd Concertmaster of Århus Symfoniorkester (Denmark), Leader of Second violins of the Flemish Philharmonic Orchestra (Belgium), from 2010 Concertmaster of the Orquesta Ciudad de Granada (Spain).

With the OCG he has developed his function playing as a soloist, conductor, and teaching in the chamber music academy of the orchestra. Since 2015 he became First Concertmaster of the Orquesta Sinfonica de Navarra (Spain) Yorrick Troman has played in various festivals and projects, with partners and friends like Yann Dubost, Olivier Marron, Roland Pidoux, Pierre Fouchenneret, Elissa Cassini, and of course his brother Daniel with the eclectic trio Les Tromano, and take part regularly in the sessions with Les Dissonances (David Grimal) or Le Concert Olympique (Jan Caeyers).

In 2014 he has been invited as assistant teacher of Joseph Swensen in his summer academy in Vermont (United States). In 2017 he is invited to teach the orchestral repertoire to the Orquesta Joven de Andalucia, and since 2016 the Spanish Association of Violinists (ASESVI) made him Honorary Member. He has been teaching violin orchestra repertoire at the Universidad de Navarra (Spain) since 2018.