Christine Herin, previously known as Naif Herin and now known professionally as Dolche, is a Rome based Italian-French singer, songwriter, composer and record producer who already boasts a 20-year music career and more than 500 concerts in Europe with and key collaborations with Grammy Award winning professionals. Her work is well- known for its distinctive musical style and blending of different genres such as folk, chanson française, world music, classical music, funk, electronic. She now releases the second single of her forthcoming album Exotic Diorama (out Oct 2020) – is the bold track Big Man, out now.

Big Man throws a challenge out to society: What would happen if all the ones who feel superior took a DNA test? This is the provocative question Dolche asked her fans when announcing her powerful new song. In the end we are all made of the same imperfect mix of cultures and races. The ‘Big Man’ she sings about is a symbolic creature incarnating all differences and all outcasts. “All white supremacists, homophobes and fundamentalists will hate this song” she writes in her socials but she declares that her hope is to inspire them to think differently. We all felt excluded, feared, judged or refused for our differences but those are what makes us unique. The human race is in constant evolution. ‘Contamination’ is what makes us stronger and more beautiful.

Dolche wrote this song because she felt inspired and outraged by the spreading culture of fear and hate promulgated by too many political representatives (might it be ‘building walls’ or letting fleeing refugees die at sea). “I love the Big Man” – she sings in this song as a joyful, strong and powerful response to that. We are, despite the protestation of the metaphorical divisive ‘Big Man’, one in humanity and by recognising this fact we find our power and freedom.

In this song Dolche, who composes, arranges and plays all of her music and most of the featuring instruments, chose to enrich the sound using different types of percussions (including some traditional Japanese ones). The tribal, powerful soul of this song is a crescendo of sounds and emotions leading to a cathartic final explosion.

BIG MAN (VIDEO):
What you see in the video to the new single has literally never been done before thanks to Extreme Deep Fake technology. This is the first time that the technique is used to mix more than 2 faces and there are more than 14 face mixes here. Some of the characters have many different faces mixed up!

The video was shot in the built up, bustling streets around Union Square in NYC last November around the theme of ‘contagion’. This was the concept before Covid -19 and so the coincidence is strange and, indeed, striking. The video, created and directed by the talented Chris Shimojima (Wild Factory Production), tells the story of a ‘disease’ that spreads around people in the streets of NYC, the disease of diversity. This contagion generates fear, violent reactions and derision for the first two characters getting infected in the beginning. But it is than embraced and celebrated by the following characters. The faces of the many actors mix into a superior/wild creature that symbolizes the power of diversity and union.

The resulting effect is scary and fascinating at the same time. Genders, ages, religions, different skin colours mix up creating more powerful and free beings. In a real life parallel – the Covid-19 epidemic spread and physically divided people. But through it we are discovering that we all are truly in this together; belonging to one big world, in unprecedented times. We can see that same message of union and empathy in Dolche’s video: a call to be ‘as one’

GET THE SONG HERE: ffm.to/dolchebigman