Ash Wednesday 2024 marked by the disappearance of Rudy Benjamin. He gave us his last look at his tireless cultural quest.
As an exclamation point to close Carnival, one of Guadeloupe’s cultural events that he would try to defend in all possible ways and according to his inspiration, Rudy Benjamin passed away this Wednesday, February 14, 2024, a victim of pulmonary edema. Always looking for a new voice, he was never afraid to disagree with others, even if his last words were to inspire love in Guadeloupe.
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The news broke in the early hours of the day. As Guadeloupe prepares to experience the final stage of Carnival 2024, the Black and White Parade, Rudy Benjamin, who was not afraid to deviate from the usual mood color to display all the other finery with his group VIM, will not be there to add. His sharp accent.
The man himself, already the victim of two consecutive strokes, was cautious and careful not to overdo it, even though, the day before, during the Mardi Gras parade in Basse-Terre, he had arranged an endless program, which would have him until the end. And this Wednesday he plans to wear Madras colors and feathers to proclaim: “We are mixed with love”. He has a message for all who claim to be his father.
However, in the ears and in the heart, his “Porcelain Symphony”, which is considered “the most beautiful music of the carnival” on social networks, is already echoing almost everywhere.
See: VIDEOS. Guadeloupe Carnival 2024: VIM innovates with its “Porcelain Symphony”
Limiting Rudy Benjamin’s personality to the creation and management of the VIM Group would not give him its full dimension. A dimension he finds in his culture of difference. She would take him from Akio to Question Mark and Bindu to VIM because he always had to find something else.
This led him one day to found the group Dissonance in the late 80s, in which he, along with others, embarked on this endless search for a new sound, a new sound. Perhaps that’s why the group entrusted the mission of being this voice to Jose Carrabi, who will die in March 2021.
In December 2014, while answering questions from TV Philos, he explained what he wanted to do by creating Dissonance.
But Rudy Benjamin also saw himself as a passer-by. What he received from others, from everyone else, he did what seemed right and yet temporary. In return he wanted to transmit.
In recent years, recent months, recent days, he has tried to support this transmission.
In itself, the “Porcelain Symphony” was a revelation of this pedagogy. Bored, the man had already delegated the task of continuing his work to his son Axel. But it is all the musicians of the VIM group who carry his DNA within him.
On January 25, he received a team from Guadeloupe la 1ère to explain the composition of this symphony and behind it, the whole philosophy of the man, his ambition and above all, his passion that he wanted to transmit that is expressed. This final visit. almost desire.
We have chosen to publish the full interview here.
Perhaps he did not imagine that “Porcelain Symphony” would be his final issue, but it is certain that it alone gives a completely different vision of this death.
And Rudy Benjamin’s fight, his tireless pursuit of music, will not be in vain. Its fruits are now a living part of Guadeloupe’s heritage.
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