We Sat Down With The President of Kadebostany

Guillaume on identity, escapism, timeless music & building a world of his own. Some artists walk into a conversation exactly as you imagine them, while others completely pull you into their world. When we sat down with the artist behind Kadebostany, Guillaume, the conversation quickly stopped feeling like a traditional interview, and became something far more reflective; a discussion about identity, escapism, creativity and what it really means to build a life around art.

What struck me almost immediately was how intentional everything surrounding Kadebostany feels, not manufactured, not overly polished, but intentional, every visual, every performance, every reinvention of the project feels tied to a deeper philosophy about freedom and creation.

I told Guillaume something I had always associated with his work: although many people view Kadebostany as a band, there’s something similar to projects like Tame Impala in the way he operates; a singular creative vision that continuously evolves by bringing different people into its universe. And that universe is exactly what Kadebostany has become.

“I want 100% freedom,” Guillaume told me. “I can’t stand doing the same thing over and over again.”

For him, reinvention isn’t aesthetic experimentation for the sake of staying relevant, it’s instinctive, necessary even. While many artists today build around familiarity and formulas, Guillaume seems almost allergic to repetition, every tour, every staging, every arrangement is approached as an opportunity to reshape the experience entirely.

His current live show, one he describes as his most ambitious yet intentionally challenges audiences from the very beginning, the first twenty minutes contain no drums or bass, relying purely on acoustic instrumentation.

“At first I thought maybe people wouldn’t understand it,” he admitted. “But after the first shows, people were completely connected to it.”

As he spoke, it became clear that Kadebostany was never designed to simply function as a music project, it’s closer to a fictional state of mind, an immersive world audiences slowly step into during his performances.

“I don’t want people to come and think, ‘Okay, I knew it would be like that,’” he said. “I like when people leave saying, ‘It was mind-blowing, and I don’t really understand it, but it was something.’”

That sentence stayed with me long after our conversation ended because it perfectly captures what makes Kadebostany feel different from so much of modern music culture, because in an industry increasingly shaped by algorithms, fast trends and immediate consumption, Guillaume is creating experiences built around mystery, emotion and longevity.

And underneath the theatrical world-building lies something deeply personal, born in Switzerland with French and Algerian roots, Guillaume revealed that he only discovered his Algerian heritage later in life after being adopted. Growing up, questions about identity followed him constantly, questions he never fully felt he could answer.

“People always asked me, ‘Where are you from?’” he told me. “And I didn’t really know.”

Rather than trying to fit into a predefined identity, he built his own; the name Kadebostany itself came from a moment of coincidence while watching a documentary about underground Turkish music. Guillaume noticed the name of a taxi boat in Istanbul, “Caddebostan.” He changed the spelling slightly, searched it online and found nothing attached to it.

“It was a blank page,” he said. “And I liked that.”

That blank page eventually became the Republic of Kadebostany; complete with flags, passports and its own fictional symbolism, but as Guillaume explained it to me, the concept goes far deeper than aesthetics.

“I never really felt I belonged to this or that country,” he said. “And I realized that flags, borders, all of it is a creation. So I thought, let’s play with it. Let’s distort reality.”

Throughout our conversation, he continuously returned to the idea of blurring fiction and reality, of creating spaces where audiences stop trying to define everything logically and instead allow themselves to simply feel, and honestly, I understood exactly what he meant.

At one point in the interview, we began talking about the emotional role music plays in people’s lives, and I found myself sharing how music became a form of escapism for me growing up. I told him how, as a child, I would put headphones on during difficult moments at home and completely disappear into another world, and music became that safety for me. Guillaume immediately understood the feeling. His entire life philosophy is built around creating that same kind of temporary escape; a space where, for nearly two hours, people enter a different emotional reality together.

“My dream is that slowly, people begin to believe they live inside this republic,” he said.

And maybe that’s what makes the concept resonate so strongly, beneath the symbolism and cinematic performances, the Republic of Kadebostany is ultimately about belonging; about creating a place, whether fictional or not, where people feel understood, transported and emotionally connected.

What I appreciated most during our conversation was Guillaume’s complete lack of interest in following trends, at a time when so many artists are shaped by aesthetics engineered for virality, he spoke instead about wanting to create music that lasts decades.

“I try to make music that is solid,” he told me. “Music you can listen to in fifteen, twenty or fifty years.”

Not trendy, but timeless. He described his favorite music as the kind that slowly grows inside you, songs that don’t immediately reveal everything on the first listen, but instead deepen over time. It’s a philosophy that feels increasingly rare today, where artists are often pressured to constantly chase relevance instead of building longevity.

By the end of our conversation, what stayed with me most wasn’t necessarily the scale of Kadebostany’s performances or even the conceptual brilliance behind the Republic itself, it was Guillaume’s perspective on passion.

“To me, the number one rule is finding your passion,” he said. “Once you find it, you are saved.”

It’s a simple idea, but hearing him speak about creativity made it feel entirely believable, he talked about music not as work, but as something inseparable from who he is; a process he genuinely loves regardless of outcome, recognition or success, and for me personally it is exactly the same, so hearing him say that made me feel both proud and understood.

And perhaps that’s the true foundation of the Republic of Kadebostany, not escapism for the sake of fantasy and not performance for the sake of spectacle, but the freedom to create a world entirely on your own terms, and invite others inside it.