It is a sunny Friday in July that we find Emmanuel Maizeret, rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine in the 11th arrondissement, already in the process of installing his “sound truck”. "I install the sound system at the back of the truck," explains this fifty-year-old, beret screwed on his head. Generally, it takes me between 50 minutes and an hour, there is a little handling and a little wiring ”. A part "which is not the most pleasant" but which does not seem to bother this moving craftsman, fascinated since his adolescence by reggae music. “I was inspired by what I saw in Jamaica and wanted to reproduce the sound systems I had seen while traveling. But I had the idea to adapt it to the back of a truck, and I saw that it worked ”. In 2014,Emmanuel buys a Mitsubishi pickup truck that he cuts and repaints in yellow to make it a real traveling sound system. He then named his truck “Daddy Reggae”. Now at the wheel of his renamed “Juke-Box” truck, Emmanuel is ready to “brighten up” the streets of Paris and pace his wanderings with a carefully composed playlist.
Once or twice a week, he roams the streets of Paris or Nantes, where he recently settled, to share his passion with passers-by.
“The idea is to share the music,” he sums up.
"It's great to arrive like that and see the gaze of people, it's very gratifying and it even repairs some scars of city dwellers not very inclined to share crowd movements", confesses the fifty-something.
Today, his van is making a short stopover in the Château-Rouge district, in the 18th arrondissement of Paris.
For the occasion, Emmanuel is broadcasting a Congolese classic from the 1980s, the effects of which are immediate on the passers-by who come to shop in the neighborhood.
Titina knows the lyrics by heart: “It's an old song!
It's nice to pass it!
".
The van then goes through the Pigalle and Montmartre district before joining République and the 11th district. “I just discovered the effectiveness of Chic's song“ Freak ”, explains Emmanuel. Barely the disco song spit out by the sound system of the van, passers-by and people at tables in cafes begin to dance. Brice, having a drink on the terrace with a group of friends, immediately starts dancing and even does a wheel in front of the van. "He brings joy, we want that!" I saw the van, the color yellow, the sun, suddenly I wanted to make a wheel! »Laughs the 30-something. “Put some joy in the streets of Paris! "
An acrobatics that warms the heart of the mover: “Guys like me, who are truck drivers in the suburbs, they all have zero morale there… Life is over. This truck reconciles me with life, with the crowd. That is my medicine. "