Feb 19, 2019
Jacques Schwarz-Bart says that he never fit neatly into any one
category. He says, “I knew early on in my life that I could not go
down a regular path. It would be hard for other human beings to
totally accept me the way I am.”
From the very start, Jacques’ life was unusual. Born in the
Caribbean island of Guadeloupe to a pair of writers (his mother
the Guadeloupean novelist Simone
Schwarz-Bart and his father, the French-Jewish writer and
intellectual André
Schwarz-Bart.)
The family traveled widely, living in Senegal, Switzerland,
and Goyave,
Guadeloupe. Young Jacques was an excellent student, and he was
thought to be destined for greatness. In his universe, that meant a
life in politics and, after studying at the prestigious Parisian
school of Government, Sciences Po, he began a career as a Senator’s
assistant in Paris. He was an inspiration: young, successful and
smart - a beacon of hope and a shining representative of his multi
cultural background in France.
So when he walked away from all that at age 27, moved to Boston and
pursued a career in jazz saxophone at the Berklee College of Music,
it was not a surprise to him that his family and friends thought he
had literally lost his mind. People started to talk, and to invent
all kinds of reasons to explain the choice. He says, “I admired
them for finding a rational reason for my decision. Nobody could
come to terms with the fact that I loved something and I just
decided to pursue it despite that fact that I was new and not very
good at it.”
It’s true, he was new. He had only picked up a saxophone for the
first time a few years earlier. But as he tells it, there was an
instant connection between the young Schwarz-Bart and the and horn.
He was off and running.
Much like everything else in his life, Jacques musical path has not
followed a straight line. His work with Roy Hargrove led him to the
world of neo soul, where he worked as a session player with the
likes of D’Angelo, Erykah
Badu, Eric Benet,
and Meshell
N’degeocello.
But it was stints with Danilo Perez, Ari Hoenig, Bob Moses, and
Giovanni Hidalgo that informed his search for authentic, coherent
music that built bridges between his cultural and musical worlds. A
series of exploratory projects ensued, including the Gwoka Jazz
Project (exploring the music of Guadeloupe); Jazz Racine Haiti
(bringing together Haitian Voodoo music and jazz); and most
recently Hazzan, featuring his original arrangements of Jewish
liturgical music.
We got together on a cold January afternoon following his
performance at the Winter Jazz Festival in New York to talk about
identity, authenticity, and how “the artist is first and foremost
someone who has the guts to be himself”.
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