AS YOU LISTEN TO CANADIAN POP SINGER KAYA, you immediately detect an intensity far deeper than the euphoria once associated with a stage performance by the engaging artiste whom Canadians knew as Francis Martin Lavergne.
Kaya opens up and allows you to look into his soul. He has gone beyond entertaining, because he believes the man that he has become is the instrument through whom it is intended to reach and inspire others.
At age six he was singing in his church, giving concerts and performing to audiences of 25 000. His first record at age ten was a major success, a Christmas album that went gold. At age 11 he did the rock opera Starmania, which became a major opera in Paris, and by 18 he signed a multinational contract with CBS Records, now BMG Records.
But early turbulence in his personal life saw him walking away from the fame and fortune to become a recluse and find himself. It was during this period that he also discovered his ability to interpret dreams.
On the day before he performed at the Virgin Atlantic 2012 Holders Season, Kaya sat with EASY magazine to talk about his experiences during and since that period in his life.
“I was going through a very difficult period of time. I was going through a separation with the mother of my child and I was going through a very intense period where I was receiving dreams and very intense nightmares.
“I went through sort of a depression but without taking any medication. It was just prayers and all the years I had in church. I started to pray and to try to find an answer to all these dreams and to all the messages I was receiving.”
The superficial aspect of show business became “meaningless”.
“I was not happy. At the age of 26 years old I was really famous. I had cars, houses and the life that everybody was dreaming about. For me it was like having an intense life as a singer and star, 20 years of an intensive career, and I decided to turn the page and walk away.”
People reacted with surprise because the young singer was then approaching the zenith of his career. He was by his own admission “a very good artiste, no drugs, no alcohol, never complaining, always working”.
But that hiatus has led to his today becoming an international best-selling author on dreams and symbols, travelling the world giving lectures on the subject.
“I started to travel and to meditate and I lived a life of solitude as a hermit for many years, just trying to solve the enigmas of my dreams and this was a very intense and a very difficult period of my life for many years.”
But while he was trying to find himself, the international audience who had earlier embraced his music kept calling for Kaya’s return to the stage. On the 50th anniversary of French Canada’s national television station, he obliged the station with the performance of one song.
The excitement of that reception prompted him to record his first album after 15 years entitled Born Under The Star Of Change. It reflects the transition of an artiste who confessed, “It is a great joy for me to travel around the world sharing with people positive songs.”
The new message he wants to convey through his music is spirituality in day to day life.
“For me to apply qualities and virtue and to become a better person, I have learnt that through my dreams,” says Kaya.
“With dreams we always see pieces of ourselves, positive or negative. We see our weaknesses and we try to improve ourselves to anticipate things, to know ourselves much deeper and the more we start thinking like that the more we can apply this to day to day life because life is like a dream.”
Kaya’s songs are intended to bring “a very, very profound message” because he observes “mostly in the music right now we see a lot of negativity and the young generation, especially, sometimes they just listen to things that create confusion and fears for them, and they are not even aware of that.”
“I think we need more and more artistes that are being aware of the lyrics of the songs. That [songs] are not just bum, bum, bum. That they are bringing values to the new generations.”
And he believes the artiste community has a responsibility “because we raise questions, we are there to help people, to make mirrors from singing and sharing our own life and our own experience”.
“We are there to inspire people. We are like mirrors of the society in the positive or the negative aspect,” says Kaya. He suggests any negativity conveyed by artistes in their songs should be conveyed with humility and expressed in a way that indicates they want to help find solutions.
“This is really something that is for me quite important right now. To bring that kind of inspiration to the world,” Kaya said. This, while he embarks on another major project, working with a team of 75 doctors, teachers and others
to produce the first dictionary to interpret dreams.
