Martin Luminet, battle cry

Our interview with Martin Luminet

By Mathilde Beaugé

We arranged to meet up in a brand new Lyon pastry shop. Is eating important for you?

My grandfather is a chocolate maker so there’s something sacred to it. Chocolate was central in his and our family’s lives. 
Food holds an important place for me because meals were the only time of the day when we were all together. I grew up between my grandfather’s chocolate shop and my grandmother’s pastry shop. 
They’re people who didn’t speak a lot but put a lot of love into their dishes.

You grew up in Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure, what do you still remember about it? 

When I was little, there wasn’t any cultural activity. No cinema, no concert hall, etc. We felt there was no policy at that level, unlike in Bron with the Cinéma des Alizés and the Espace Albert Camus. When emancipation doesn’t come through art, it comes more through sport. So I played basketball like mad, without really knowing why. 
When I was born, my grandfather had reached a certain age and was thinking about what was going to happen after him. Plans very quickly took form for me to to take over the chocolate shop. Very fast, everything was thought through and sketched out. Basketball was the same. Members of my family had made a career out of basketball and I was signed up, too. 
This preordained plan was never challenged all through my childhood and teenage years, until I started making music at the age of 18. It was then that I realised I was living in a golden prison.

"When you spend 18 years ignoring your emotions and finally give yourself permission to take
a look at them, it’s like a whole dam giving way"

How did music enter your life? 

With my sixth-form friends we had decided to do every sport possible. The year of our baccalaureate, the boys decided to make music. They all drew lots to pick an instrument, but it never crossed my mind to make music. I had no musical culture, my parents listened to Alain Souchon and Laurent Voulzy to pass the time on long journeys but nothing more than that. To start with, I hung out at my friends’ rehearsals, but didn’t join in. I saw them reveal themselves intimately, telling each other more and more things. 
It’s quite rare for guys to lay themselves bare. I saw them open up, I found it really beautiful and was afraid of missing out on something. 

They were looking for a singer and one day, I don’t know what got hold of me, I told them that I had written some lyrics and was ready to go for it. It wasn’t true, but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t have any say in it any more so I started writing, and that really opened something up. When you spend 18 years ignoring your emotions and finally give yourself permission to take a look at them, it’s like a whole dam giving way. It was crazy.

© Suzie Waroude

When did it turn into a solo adventure? 

My friends began to thrive at work and I started writing songs on my own. I enjoyed studying political science but took less and less of an interest in it over time. Music made me much happier. I took three years to manage my family breaking up, taking it little by little. I worked in a bookshop next door and eventually signed up for the Lyon Conservatory. When I felt people were showing an interest in me and support was an option, I was ready to give it my all. I was 23 years old. I went there without a parachute or flight plan.

What do you remember about your first gigs and experiences with audiences in Lyon?

I got a lot of support in Lyon, like at the Salle Léo Ferré, which is run by the Vieux-Lyon youth cultural centre. Lorette Vuillemard (cultural coordination manager and booker for several venues in the area) fought to prevent artists from stagnating in Lyon and to encourage their progress. 

It’s thanks to her that I was able to start telling myself that my success was going to spread beyond my own city: being able to earn a living from making music, having a tour manager, a label, building something sustainable, etc. Opening at the Marché Gare then led to me opening at the Transbo[rdeur], and I rose all the way up through the ranks like that in Lyon. The wonderful thing is that they were venues where I had been to see concerts, where deep down I dreamed of playing.

Which artists were most fundamental for you?

In Lyon there was the folk singer Frédéric Bobin who I liked a lot. Otherwise I saw Dionysos an untold number of times. At the Transbo or Fourvière, I was blown away time and time again… But above all what nourished me in Lyon was that my uni was next to the Comoedia cinema. 
That’s really where I developed my culture in every sense. Like for music, I had missed out on a whole side of the art of cinema. One day, between lessons, I went to see Christophe Honoré’s Love Songs. I was stunned. It changed everything in my life and in my head. I saw live music, live cinema, actors singing, a kind of tension, a human and intimate adventure that overwhelmed me. Before, I listened to a lot of rap, like Youssoupha or Diam’s. There were conscious lyrics, anger, but there was no relationship to intimacy, broken hearts, sensitivity, etc. 

I was missing something that I’d never had access to through music. And then along came key influences like Alex Beaupain, Vincent Delerm, Jeanne Cherhal, Barbara, etc. 

Your first album, Deuil(s) came out in 2023. What did you want to say with it? 

Initially, I wanted to write about what the times were doing to us. We were at the height of the pandemic, with the resurgence of loads of international and social conflicts, etc. In the meantime, I lost my grandfather, who I was very close to. I didn’t want to be swallowed up by sadness and was determined to keep writing. 
At the same time, I also experienced a magnificent love story, which ultimately ended. So I started writing about grief, absence, emptiness and also a generation, my generation, which was not the carefree generation it thought it was and which was facing climate changes and new forms of chaos. I still wanted to write optimistically, because I’m deeply optimistic about these issues. Even when we think we’re floored, there’s something that gets us back up again. I tried to understand this movement. You played at Nuits de Fourvière this year for the first time.  

 “There’s nothing more beautiful than playing in a place where you had dreams” »

You played at Nuits de Fourvière this year for the first time. How was it?

It was the craziest thing I’ve ever experienced. Hearing I was going to be playing the Olympia was really emotional but hearing I was playing Nuits de Fourvière? That was next level. As a teenager, I went to see lots of concerts there and hardly dared to dream of playing there. There’s nothing more beautiful than playing in places where you yourself had dreams and experienced strong emotions. It comforted so many things in my life. I had loads of friends and family in the audience. We’re one of the rare openers where the audience requested an encore.

Biography

© Suzie Waroude

Martin Luminet was born in 1989 in Rodez. Very soon, his parents moved to the outskirts of Lyon in Saint-Bonnet-de-Mure. 
While still very young, his family planned for him to take over his grandfather’s family-run chocolate-making business. 
But then music came into his life, at the age of 18. His friends were looking for a singer for their group and Martin promised them he’d already written lyrics (a downright lie). That provided the impetus to go for it, building a solo career just a few years later at the same time as studying political science at Lyon 2. 

A Thou Bout d’Chant and the Salle Léo Ferré in Lyon booked him for his first concerts. “In 2017, I really bought into only wanting to make music. Opportunities awaited me in Paris so that’s where I headed,” he explains. 

His first album, Deuil(s), came out in February 2023. Currently touring and writing his next record, he sang with Gaëtan Roussel on stage at Les Francofolies de la Rochelle and got the audience dancing at Nuits de Fourvière opening for Louise Attaque this summer.
He’ll be performing live in Lyon on 23 November 2024 at Marché Gare.
 

Martin's address book