Marc, you come from a family of musicians, what are your earliest musical recollections?
I’m told I got my first taste of the stage when my mother, who was heavily pregnant with me at the time, was hauled onto the stage at the Zurich Volkshaus to play percussion during a Jimmy Cliff concert. Evidently, I was destined to be a musician! As far as my own memories go, I recall the big Brazilian parties which my Swiss father and my Brazilian mother used to organise. I was up on the stage singing and playing percussion from the tender age of three!

Have you always wanted to be a professional musician?
I actually wanted to be pope as a child. But when I found out that I wasn’t catholic and that I wouldn’t be able to get married if I were pope, I fell back on my alternative plan of becoming a musician.

You recorded the percussion for your album, “Way Back Home”, in Rio. How would you describe the album?
I wanted to make an album with a certain bohemian feeling, a bit like a summer party where friends and family get together to dance and have a good time outdoors. The South American percussion instruments add just the right touch of spice. It’s a cosmopolitan album which mixes Brazilian rhythms with European pop; as such, it reflects my own personality. Being a blend of two continents and cultures myself, I often find myself dancing between them.

How do you decide which language –German or Portuguese – to sing in? Do you have a preference?
The song usually determines the language. When I get the beginnings of a new melody, the language comes about automatically without me having to think about it. But I do feel a close connection with Portuguese. Like Brazilian culture, Brazilian Portuguese is very flowery, soft and warm. German is much harder and more precise. Depending on the song, I find it easier to sing in one language or the other.

In the title track of “Way Back Home” you sing “saudade”, meaning homesickness in Portuguese. What’s your particular connection with that emotion?
Saudade is such a wonderful multilayered word. It means homesickness, yes, but it also conveys feelings of longing, yearning, melancholy – and of wanderlust. It’s an age-old and yet modern phenomenon which people can easily relate to. At home, one dreams of faraway places, whereas one dreams of home when one is far away. As a musician who is constantly travelling, I often experience saudade. I try to acknowledge it, whilst also living in the present moment.

So, when you sing “Way back home ...”
... I don’t mean a one-way ticket, but rather a return trip! Home is a place we can find in ourselves. In another song on the album I sing: “Home is where my heart beats.” Over the years, I’ve come to realise that home is more of a feeling than a place. The people who are dear to me are a big part of that home feeling.

How well known are you in Brazil?
I’m working on it (laughs) – and I still have a lot to do as there are over 200 million people living in Brazil. Obviously, I’d love to take my music to my second home!

What should my final question be?
If you want to find out about a musician, then you should listen to his music! That will tell you so much more than any questions ever can. My music is extremely personal and sincere. Luckily, a veil of fiction saves us artists from standing in front of our public entirely naked; not everything I sing about in my texts has actually happened to me in exactly that way, but I’ve certainly seen and observed what I sing about, and can empathise with it. Sometimes I also like to keep my music very open, leaving listeners free to use their imagination to end the story themselves.·