BIOGRAPHY ENGLISH
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Carrie -
> first female rap artist in Bern/Bern and Biel/Bienne City since 1988 (Kanton Bern/Switzerland).
> conscious rapper.
> a.k.a. MC Carree, Cary, MC Carrie, Carree, Carrie Montandon, Carrie, de la Carrie, dela C.
*****
Made in Paris, born in Fribourg Switzerland (CH, 1972), grewing up in the region of Fribourg and in a suburb of Bern (Switzerland). Victim of compulsory social measures and placements, the catholic church & colonial politics.
Music herritage:
My Bernese adoptive father (1944- 2005) performed in the 60ies as singer with his guitar in the City of Bern (Kursaal, ...) aside his bread job. Until his death he composed songs and performed as a solo- entertainer with his keyboard on parties (Kornhauskeller, ....). In total he played six instruments. His eclectic musical style was a combo of Rumba, Mambo, Bequine, Gospel, Charleston, Foxtrott, Schlager and Schwyzerörgeli (swiss traditional- folkloric music). He got inspired by musicians like Harry Belafonte, Louis Armstrong, Elvis Presley, Freddy Quinn, The Humphries and others. His mother wrote poetries and played as a semi- professional actress in plays at the old Käfigturm- Theater in Bern before its renovation in 1980.
My adoptive father discovered my musical talent and promoted me to sing(age 3), to play electric- organ (age 5; first gig on stage age 12), ukulele, guitar, keyboard and to learn piano by my self (age 31).....I started with Beethoven.
Rap history:
The old school of the hip hop movement of Bern (Switzerland) invited me becoming definitiv an active member of that new youth culture in 1988 - I have heard and read about that movement already before. After having tried out all of the hip hop arts I have choosen to rap. Soon I got put on stage in the City of Bern and surroundings at local and privat parties (Bümplizerchilibi, Lyssbachmärit, ….). Due to sexisms in the local average music scene with its taunt for rap in the city of Bern there was no opportunity to jam with the guys. Therefore my homies connected me to the rap group "Cut da Rock" (CDR) in Biel/Bienne - the hip hop Mecca back in time. From '89 until 91 I have jamed with the CDR Crew (Jazzy, Yancoo, DJ Shook, Yuyu) and was still on stage performing in solo shows i.e. at the Coupole Biel/Bienne, Medora (Bern), ..... In 1991 the live funky band "Salmonella Quintet" from Biel/Bienne asked me to join them. First as a feature, later as a steady member we performed together in over 150 shows until 2001; still doing my solo shows, jaming or freestyling (i.e. with Naughty by Nature, ...) and realising different solo- CD- productions ("A.C.A.O.", "BN"or MT ( "Watch ya back"), .....). After 2001 I tried out some live bands in the City of Bern without feeling home. In the same year I've edited my first solo- CD "Carrie's delay" - see below. Since then I do some side productions with different producers and DJ's. Details see www.hiphopmuseumschweiz.ch/bern "Künstlerbiographie Carrie".
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International artistic networking "hip hop culture":
Basquiat († Paris) in Paris, Lady Pink (NYC) in Biel/Bienne, Lionel D († Paris) in Bern, DJ Deenasty (Paris) in Biel/Bienne, Koma (Berlin) in Hannover, Lazy-K (NYC, Bern) in Bern, DJ Dan & Abdel (Ticaret- Paris) in Paris and Biel/Bienne, Saliha (Paris) in Bern, DJ Fab & EJM (Paris) in Bern & Biel/Bienne, NTM (Paris) in Biel/Bienne and Paris, IAM (Marseille) in Biel/Bienne and Marseille, .......
Why in english?
At age 8 my dutch adoptive- grandmother thought me english in Rotterdam while watching the coolest US TV- Afroamerican sitcoms ever. That was the fourth language I was about to learn. I grew up with swiss-german, french and dutch. On school we had to learn high-german, later I have learned Spanish and Italian plus three old languages (Latin, Sumerian, Acadian.
The mission of the hip hop culture at the end of the 80ies was to spread that movement over the world in its origin language "English". Local identities - spitting in a local language - was not accepted by the old school in Europe and Switzerland at this time. Besides, Switzerland has its special "cultural- situation". The land is situated in the middle of Europe with four different languages and cultures. After Second World War the average language in contemporary music was English, even though there was a strong folkloric swiss-german music tradition. The German language in Europe was generally considered as the language of the offender- Nazi Germany, which had no space in a new culture built up with the Marshall- plan by the US after Second World War.
For me rapping in English was also the possibility of "freedom of speak". Rapping about social torture and lacking women rights in perfect Switzerland would have been censored in German, which I was afraid of. The other reason was to spread my messages worldwide how the swiss- government is torturing their slaves. In example the song "respect" talks about laking women rights in the hip hop scene and the average society in Switzerland and would never have been produced when rapping in German.
By the way, the government apologised to me an my family only now in 2018.
Moraliser?
In my rhymes I mostly criticise social- problems, like drugs & crime, sexism, racism, colonialism, mobbing, the harm of gossips, false informations and so on. All of this, spiced with irony, sarcasm, humour, metaphors and crushed in role-plays. Back in time they used to call me "moralizer"; I still can live with it. Nowadays I try to build bridges between cultures & religions, bashing all sort of discriminations.
Mission:
To integrate rap art into the swiss average music scene since 1988. Because of sexism it didn't happened in Bern, instead it happened in the much more open minded City of Biel/Bienne. Other female musicians didn’t exist at the 80ies in Bern City, besides Sue from "Peter, Sue & Marc" and later Asita Hamidi (90ies).
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Salmonella Quintet (SQ):
Over more than a decade we have enlarged our group from five up to fourteen musicians (incl. string- and horn- sets). In the beginnings we were strongly influenced by p-funkers like Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, George Clinton, Bootsye Collins, Pee Wee Ellis or Jazzers like Eddie Harris. Later we have explored James Brown, Prince, Elvis Presley....disco-pop, country, film-music and others. Our style has transformed from an analog- rough- funky- music stirred with female rap to a partial knick-knack disco-pop-fever- funky- beat rap machine music, partially made by computer.
We have realised more than 150 live- gigs in clubs & festivals all over Switzerland: Atlantis (Basel), Palais X-tra (Zurich), Kiff (Aarau), Dolce Vita (Neuchâtel), Case à Chocs (Neuchâtel), Gaskessel (Bern), Coupole/Chessu Biel/Bienne, Café Mokka (Thun), Chandolin - Snowboard contest (VS), Horizont- festival Lausanne, Barbaries and Podring- festival in Biel/Bienne and others......and worked together with musicians like Hans Koch, Sebastian Piekarek from Defunkt, Daniel Erismann, Andi Marti, Silber Ingold, Lucien Dubuis, Edgar Laubscher, Ursula Grossenbacher, Guitol (G & the swing maschine, Indians in the snow) and we have got in touch with Human Spirit (F), Malfunction, Lovebugs (Adrian Stern), Noï, Krokus (Chris von Rohr), Imadman, Crank and others; our third bassist Simon Gerber ("Computermusik") has among others performed with Sophie Hunger.
Aside we were in TV- and radio shows, realised tape- and CD productions (> the rap song „move some“ was on the playlist of Couleur3 and DRS3 in 1996) and helped out to produce a price winner music-video „kill the dj“ („Computermusik" 1998) by Karim Patwa. The video was on the playlist of MTV, VIVAswiss, STAR TV and had been shown at the „Images Festival" in Ontario/Canada,1999, the „Filmfestival Locarno“ in Switzerland (09.08.2000), the „Europäisches Medienkunst-Festival" in Osnabrück 2001, the „Media Forum“ in Polen 2001 and at the 6. Lichtspieltage in Winterthur 2002.
First solo project:
"Carrie's Delay. Deep. strong. clear" (2001), produced by B-note entertainment (Ben Mühlethaler, Bern) > powered by "Kultur Stadt Bern", „SEVA" (Fonds de loterie de canton de Berne)“ and „Migroskulturprozent“.
The songs „matrix“ (english) and „cafar“ (french) won both the gold medal in the category R&B/Rap/Soul out of 1500 competitors at "The Song Expo. The Benelux international song & culture festival" in Holland 2001.
> There was absolutely no press or radio feedback in Bern as solo female rap artist winning an international price.
Future?
Dealing with a Master degree in Art History & Museology at the University of Bern there was no time for making music aside (2010); as orphan you have to study five times harder than the privileged- ones. Besides the music scene in Bern has become more corrupted by sexist- and racist- mother-sons or church fanatics celebrating their poor local culture, where I didn't feel home. Plus the transformation from the analog to the digital music world has created new marketplaces and strategies. Trap was coming up, male rappers made 50 millions a year, social medias got hyped by algorithms and their new way to success.
2015 I founded the www.hiphopmuseumschweiz.ch, created my first digital art installation “Laundry service”, played a dying zombie in a music video (www.thejackets.ch; "Keep yourself alive" with Jackie Brutsche), exposed paintings in oil, gave a rap- workshop, danced in a music video, wrote articles for an urban art project (Attisholz), investigated my knowledge and time for victims of compulsory measures and placements and victims of the catholic church, was invited in different local radio broadcast- shows (i.e. RABE), dropped some freestyles with new young fresh rappers at
cyphers, spitted on house music bashing colonialism, participated on the "second art" project and so on.