Benjamin Sainte-Clementine (English pronunciation: /ˈbɛndʒəmɪn ˈsən ˈkləməntɪn/; born 7 December 1988)^[1] is a singer-poet, pianist and musician from London, England.^[2] He grew up in North London before moving to France and subsequently performed on the British television programme Later With Jools Holland.^[3] He has always been described as a man of unusual intelligence, great pianistic style and deep musicality, charisma on stage and his powerfully emotional vocals mostly compared to that of Nina Simone, Antony Hegarty and his passionate delivery to Edith Piaf^[4][5][6][7] During his spell whilst singing in Paris he broke free from the traditional song structure, inventing his own dramatic and innovative musical territory. Clementine`s music is famously incisive and poetic mixing revolt with love, hope, rebellion and melancholy, sophisticated lyricism with slang and shouts, and rhyming verse with prose monologues. He is noticeably seen playing on stage entirely in black or dark grey long trench-like woollen coat with no shirt underneath, in bare feet.^[8][9]

Clementine was born in Crystal Palace, London,^[9] but grew up in Edmonton, in the north of the city. He is the last of 5 children. He grew up with his grandmother and after she passed away, moved in with his parents.^[10][11] Having suffered bullying at school, Clementine was mischievous as a child but his rebellion was rarely conventional. He found himself particularly drawn to the literature of the bible as well as poets, especially William Blake, TS Eliot and Carol Ann Duffy. He would bunk off school but spend all day at the library, picking these books at random off the shelves. His older brother Joseph was fond of music philosophy, science and english literature and will pin point out different types of books and dictionaries for him to read. Clementine will then sought out rare and archaic words, attempting to incorporate them into his vocabulary.^{[12] [13]} Joseph bought a piano when Clementine was 11 and when he had finished practicing everyday, Clementine will then play around with its keys. Eventually his brothers acquired taste for the piano had gone and he quickly moved on to another instrument. Meanwhile this gave Clementine more time and in so doing; continued practicing and playing. In a few months he started imitating the work of fin-de-siècle composer Erik Satie, learned from hours of listening to Classic FM after “becoming bored” with pop music and will go on to practice and play discreetly for the next 5 years till his parents divorced. ^[14][15][16]

He left school at 16, had a bust-up with his family and ended up in Camden Town, effectively homeless in psychological and financial difficulties . Although it was not a premeditated plan,^[17] at age 19, he relocated to Paris, France, where he spent a number of years busking and playing in bars and hotels in Place de Clichy sleeping on the streets then eventually moving to a hostel in Montmartre, where he lived in a ten men bunk-bed room. ^[13][18] For the next three years he started writing and quickly realized from the poets he admired, that they were pointless if they didn't say something about his particular experiences.^[13] Clementine managed to stay out of trouble as he spent his nights performing and his day composing and writing. After four years of living as a vagabond, he was discovered by an agent whilst walking back home from a nights performance and they quickly arranged a meeting the very next day. The agent introduced him to his friend, later on becoming Clementine's manager for a period of time. In 2012, whilst playing a gig at the Festival de Cannes they met Lionel Bensemoun, a business mogul in France. Through him, they decided to set up the record label Behind so that Clementine could record his music.^[18][19] He eventually became popular on the music scene, where he was described as "la révélation anglaise des Francos" ("the English revelation of the "Francofolies" festival").^[2] He was then invited to the Rencontres Trans Musicales of Rennes in France in December 2012 where he went up for the first time on a large stage and played four nights consecutively. Clementine eventually signed a joint music license contract between Capitol, Virgin EMI, Barclay.

Clementine's first EP, Cornerstone, was released in June 2013 with three studio tracks.^[9] It was re-issued in October 2013 with three additional acoustic tracks recorded for Deezer, a web-based music streaming service.^[19] In the same month, on an episode of the BBC television show Later With Jools Holland that also included performances by Paul McCartney, Earth, Wind and Fire, Gary Clark, Jr. and the Arctic Monkeys,^[20] he performed the EP’s title track.^[18][21] The appearance drew strong critical praise, with Paul McCartney encouraging Clementine to continue his musical career.^[2] The London Evening Standard′s David Smyth, reviewing a gig at the South Bank Centre, said that Clementine's performance reminded him of Nina Simone, particularly as he had covered her hit "Ain't Got No, I Got Life" in a radically different style.^[22]Clementine announced further tours, both solo and supporting Cat Power at the Brighton Dome, including an appearance at the O2 Academy in Brixton^[23] and at the Rencontres Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, where he worked on a special show and performed four nights.^[21] Andy Gill on the Independence album review wrote;

"This debut EP offers a taste of one of 2014’s most promising new talents. With just Benjamin Clementine’s impulsive piano figures accompanying his dark, powerful voice, there’s a soulful solemnity about these searching songs. But there’s also a wealth of imagination at work: “It’s a wonderful life, traversed in tears from the heavens,” he observes in “I Won’t Complain”, surveying the emotional turmoil that renders his heart a “melodrama in fact”; while over flurries of piano, his urgent delivery of “Cornerstone” blends the sensitivity of Antony Hegarty with the wracked passion of Nina Simone, admitting loneliness as his “home, home, home”, but biting off the word to sound like “hope”. A distinctive and impressive new voice."^[6]

His first studio album At Least for Now was mainly released across Europe on January 12th, 2015.^[12] On the 13 of February 2015, Clementine was given an award from the Victoires de la Musique, a French award ceremony equivalent to that of the grammy award, as the best new artist.^[24]

Clementine is a spinto tenor.^[25] A warm graceful voice with a bright, full timbre that is strong but yet heavy that ranges from approximately the C one octave below middle C (C3) to the D one octave above middle C (D5). His lower range extends two octaves below middle C (C3).^[11] With the expressive but exact enunciation of a stage actor, Clementine allows his lyrics to spill and scatter out of sync with his hands in a way which warrants the endless Nina Simone comparisons. Yet as an atypical singer-songwriter with a strong sense of grandeur, an impressively broad tenor range and more than a dash of dark humor. ^[26]

Clementine is entirely self-taught musically. Growing up, Clementine had little exposure to music and it was this naivety that now made his singing so confusing to classify. In his teens he had caught Anthony Hegarty performing Hope There's Someone on television; then on the radio he'd heard the avant-garde French composer Erik Satie. Unconsciously, he had married the spirit of these two influences with poetic lyrics to produce his own material, both original and epic. He accompanies on hypnotic piano vamps ^[25] with mostly minimal instruments ranging from little voice breaths, a brushing of coat for percussions as in his song Edmonton, to a vicious string stride confrontation in his song Adios.^[27]

He said;

^[28]

Clementine claims to have been mainly influenced by writers such as William Blake, Carol Ann Duffy and C. S. Lewis^[27] He delivers his introspective lyrics about integrity and vulnerability and explores both in everyday experience. One of his frustrations returning to Britain was how little ambition there was in most song lyrics. Having had a spell in France, he realised that most of their artists put a lot of detail into their lyrics. Talking to the Guardian journalist Tim Lewis, he said, "it's very important down there (France) because most of the time they [the audience] pay more attention to what the singer says and what they are trying to express."^[27] On his song Winston Churchill`s boy, sees him rewrite and repurpose the wartime PM's oratory, lamenting "never in the field of human affection had so much been given for so few attention". It's a melodramatic beginning which harks back to the alienation he felt from family and friends on the eve of his emigration to the City Of Light. For a Gallic darling, Clementine certainly gazes wistfully across La Manche a lot and one senses that, despite the obvious French influences, there is more of the spurned Londoner in him than the flâneur.^[29]

He exposes it in songs such as Cornerstone and I Wont Complain:

[1]

[2]

On 17 June 2014 Clementine performed three songs live throughout the Burberry Prorsum Menswear Catwalk show^[30][31] - the first musician to perform live throughout a Burberry show. An album was scheduled to be released in 2014,^[19] but Clementine announced that he will be releasing his second EP called Glorious You, on 25 August 2014.^[1]

On 17 July 2014, Clementine performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival.^[9][32]

On 5 October 2014, Clementine performed at TedXSalford 2014 in Salford, one of the largest independently organised TedX events in the UK.

On Sunday the 12 of October 2014, Clementine performed and spoke at the Observer Ideas at the Barbican Centre, a festival to share ideas to the public, in a line up that included Edward Snowden, David Simon, creator of the acclaimed HBO series The Wire and multi-award winning musician Tinie Tempah^[33]

On Tuesday the 28th of April 2015, Clementine performed at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater in New York City.

C a vous 21 Janvier 2015 Cornerstone

Le Grand journal Janvier 2015 Nemesis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Benjamin Clementine.

• Benjamin Clementine discography at Discogs
• Benjamin Clementine on Facebook
• Benjamin Clementine - Cornerstone - Later... with Jools Holland - BBC Two HD on YouTube
• Benjamin Clementine - Live Deezer Session (Cornerstone) on YouTube

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