Bruno Blum
| Bruno Blum | |
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Bruno Blum shows his Don't Drink and Drive, Smoke and Fly artwork picturing a sound engineer mixing dub music. Click to enlarge.
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Doc Reggae |
| Born | October 4, 1960 |
| Origin | Paris, France |
| Genres | Reggae, rock, blues, dub |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, guitarist, songwriter, music producer, musicologist, cartoonist, painter, photographer, writer, speaker, vegan activist |
| Instruments | Guitar, vocals, bass guitar |
| Years active | 1977–present |
| Labels | Human Race, Rastafari, Ménilmontant International, Out Here, etc. |
| Website | [14] |
Bruno Blum (born October 4, 1960, Vichy, France) is a French singer songwriter, guitar player, music producer and musicologist sometimes nicknamed "Doc Reggae." He is mostly known for his work in the reggae, rock music and African musics fields, and also works as a comic book artist, illustrator, painter, photographer, writer, interpreter and speaker.
Originally renowned as the enfant terrible of French rock critics based in London in 1977-1982, Bruno Blum gradually embodied an adventurer-musician globe-trotter figure, a free-spirited, astute lyric writer and a remarkable guitar player, as well as a historian of English-speaking popular music and graphic artist. A fully bilingual (English-French) vegetarian and ecologist, he has lived without drugs or alcohol for over twenty years. In the "Human Race" CD booklet, a Blum production, noted American reggae historian Roger Steffens described him as "a virtuosic polymath" and concluded: "An artist, producer, director, archivist, musician as well as author of and contributor to dozens of books [including 'Jamaïque, sur la piste du reggae,' where Blum tells his own account of his musical adventures in Jamaica], Doc Reggae stands supreme among France’s reggae chroniclers in his perceptive observations and the impressive variety of his accomplishments, not the least of which can be found on the album you now hold."
As a teenager bass player he was part of the late seventies London punk movement and was later the first French musician to record and release dub music, as well as afrobeat. He has released several French songs albums (including the classic Nuage dÉthiopie) in a wide variety of styles. Blum is known, among other things, for his work with the press-acclaimed Asmara All Stars and on Serge Gainsbourg's three reggae albums, which he has produced new mixes of, as well as dub and deejay versions in 2003. He produced a new mix of Serge Gainsbourg's Gainsbourg Et Cætera Palace live album in 2006. In 2015 two 'Super DeLuxe' triple CD sets were released in the form of books: Gainsbourg and the Revolutionaries (Gainsbourg's three reggae albums in the Blum mixes form, including 8 previously unreleased tracks) and Gainsbourg in Dub, which contains 50 previously unreleased dubs. Blum also performs steadily with his rock/soul/blues and reggae bands as a singer and lead guitar player.
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