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Hi there! And Welcome!
I guess you are here to listen to music, right?!.. So I will spare you the details of
my early life and I will only talk about the creative period of my life from 19 years old till now. The goal of this section is not to talk about myself, but to explain, for those who are interested in this, how the songs on my player were born.
It all started a long time ago, in a city far far away called Douala in Cameroon. (My name is JP, by the way ... :-) )
To make a long story short, after growing up in Cameroon, I moved from this exotic sunny country to a grey and rainy place in Europe at age 19. That’s when my musical life really started!
(That’s it, starting from here I’m 19, so now, I will give you all the details on how the ideas of these songs came to my mind, so if you don’t like reading, maybe you should skip this part and just listen to the music…… there will be interesting information though… :) ) Feel free to leave me some comments!
So here I am, a 19 year old teenager leaving my family behind in Cameroon, and arriving alone in the city of Rouen in France (~100km from Paris), where I stayed for 3 years! There, I started to write my first song talking about a homeless who one day found a gold bullion in the street…....................... I’m joking of course!… :). No seriously, it was actually about a homeless, but unfortunately for him he didn’t find anything. The song was called: “A sad story”. I wrote this song because at age 19, living in a developed country for the first time, I was surprised to see homeless in the streets…. in a so-called “developed” country. Even though I had good intentions when I wrote this song, I wasn’t satisfied with the melody; it was not really catchy, so I’ve decided to look more carefully at the way pop songs were written to learn how I could write a catchy song talking about something serious. I started to listen to French and English Pop/Rock artists like Jean-Jacques Goldman, Robbie Williams, Coldplay (My favourite band!!) Radiohead, Seal, The Beattles, U2 (my 2nd favourite band!!) and even some German Pop/Hip-hop singers like Xavier Naidoo.
Then, after listening to and studying pop/rock music, I have decided it was time to write a new song! I still wanted to talk about a serious issue, so I’ve decided to write about something I still don’t understand today and something I think shouldn’t exist in the 21st century: the death penalty. The song was called “When it is time…”. You can listen to it on my myspace player. It talks about someone who has been wrongly sentenced to death. And throughout the song, that person shares his state of mind with us, on his way from his cell to the room where he is going to be executed. Each verse represents a different moment on his way to the execution room.
As it was only the second song that I wrote, it was far from being perfect…. (actually I found it was not good at that time), so I wrote and rewrote the song many times to find a pop melody, not too sad (it has to remain pop after all!), easy to listen to and to remember, and who could support very sad lyrics. If you try to listen to the song “When it is time…” , if you don’t pay carefully attention to the lyrics, you could think that it is just a melancholic song. My goal was to make the song appealing to as many people as possible, even though it was talking about something very serious, and very sad.
I know that I am nobody in the music world, and that my opinion may not be very important, but I think the death penalty shouldn't exist anymore nowadays. So the song "When it is time...", for what it worths, is my small contribution in the fight against the death penalty. May it encourage other people to take initiatives!
After staying in the rainy city of Rouen in the north of France, I decided to move to the south of France, in the city of Nice: a Sunny place at last! :)
But then shortly after my arrival in the south of France, I had the opportunity to travel to the USA in New York first where I stayed 4 months and then in Boston, Massachusetts. So, I eventually left the sunny city of Nice in the south of France, to move to the cold city of Boston where I stayed for 1 year. (for your information temperatures can go down to 8.5° Farhenheit, in other words -13° Celsius in winter!) I moved to Boston partly because the music scene is quite developed there (Berkeley College of Music is in Boston), but mainly because I wanted to discover the USA. And I have to say that it worthed it :)! Except for the cold weather in winter, it was really a great city to live in! Beautiful places and nice people!
But anyway… you are on this page because you like music right?! So let’s go back to the music: It’s in Boston that I recorded the song “When it is time…” that you can listen to on my player. After writing “When it is time…”, which was a really dark song, I felt that I needed to write something lighter, more chill. That’s when I wrote the song “My Night Fairy” with the alternate title “Midnight Fairy”. If you listen to "Midnight Fairy", you will realize that it is really completely different than "When it is time...". I really needed to talk about something happy at that time :)! The inspiration for this song came during a one week-end trip to Montreal (Canada). I went there to visit my brother who was there at that time. I saw a figurine of a beautiful Night Fairy in a souvenir shop, and her face stayed in my mind. When I went back to Boston, I felt I had to tell a story about her. You can listen to “My Night Fairy” on my player. Please feel free to leave your comments on each song!
After this great experience in the USA, I moved to Shanghai in China, where I stayed for a little less than 6 months. But unfortunately for me……….. I went there at the wrong period of the year! At least now I know that winter is also really cold in Shanghai…(around 32 degrees Farhenheit, in other words 0° Celsius! :)). But it also worthed it! There we created a band with a French singer, two Chinese guitarists (one of them, Hanlee, didn’t speak English, which created some funny moments in our communication!) and me playing the drums. I kept on writing new songs, but felt I should wait to have more material before going in studio again.
After my stay in China, I went back to Europe, more precisely in Denmark where I stayed for 1 year. (Also a country with cold weather.... :( ). I kept writing new songs, using my trips and my every day experiences as a source of inspiration. Then I decided to go back in studio to record 2 other songs in my catalogue. The songs are called “No Matter What!” and “I’m Going West”. You can listen to them on my player. The song “No Matter What!” was inspired both by one of my visit in a protestant Church in Harlem (when I was in New York) and by my determination to keep writing music and singing and try to make a living out of it. Being Catholic, going to the church in Harlem was my first time in a Protestant church. Even though I disagreed with half of what the reverent said during his speech, he talked about something really interesting: he talked about (actually he was yelling at the audience… but it was fun to watch! :p) how we used to see our problems in our everyday life as mountains that we cannot overcome. And instead of being cowards and giving up on ourselves, he said we should face our problems and even ask Jesus to give us more mountains to overcome in our life! Because overcoming mountains makes us stronger!
I have liked this part of his speech enough to start writing a song about never giving up to achieve our dreams in life “No Matter What!” happens. And I wanted to have a choir singing in this song because I have really enjoyed the choir in the Church that I have visited. So I have looked for a choir in Denmark when I was living there, and I have hired them for this song.(To listen to it check out my music player)
You can find the list of people who worked with me on these songs in the "Band member" section of my myspace page.
The song “I’m Going West” is half inspired by my life and half a fiction. It is the story of a young man who leaves his country and his life to go and find a better place to live. Though he is not certain of what will happen to him in the future, he decides to leave everything behind because he couldn’t bear his everyday life anymore: he needed more adventure in his life! More excitement! (To listen to this song, check out my music player)
I’m currently ending my journey in Denmark; I will soon have to leave this beautiful but cold country in winter to go……………. where I will have an opportunity to go.
I know that I will one day go back to the UK, that I’ve visited many times when I was living in the North of France. I really fell in love with London! And I also would like to go and live some time in the USA again (I also fell in love with the USA!): I hope my music will drive me back there one day.
Are you still there???!.......? If you are still reading my attempt to explain the writing process of these songs, I thank you for your time, and I hope you’ll enjoy listening to my music.
I have more songs that are already written and ready to be recorded, but I just don’t have the budget to do the kind of productions I have imagined for these songs.
Feel free to leave me some comments on my wall or to send me messages. Your opinion WILL actually really help me in improving my music! And since my music is very important for me, I’m always curious to hear other people’s opinion on what I am doing.
Cheers,
1016
JP
P.S: 1016 is pronounced "ten- sixteen": the 10th letter of the alphabet is the “J” and the 16th letter is the “P” so 1016 = JP.)

To contact me: by EMAIL: TENSIXTEENSONG@HOTMAIL.COM or you can message me on www.purevolume.com/1016 or www.myspace.com/tensixteensong

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JP