Jacques Schwarz-Bart

By the time tenor saxophonist Jacques Schwarz-Bart recorded Soné Ka-La in 2005 (“simply infectious” — JazzTimes), he had amassed credits with D’Angelo’s Voodoo touring band, Roy Hargrove’s Crisol and RH Factor, Erykah Badu, Meshell Ndegeocello and other greats. In the spirit of those searingly original artists, the French-Jewish-Guadeloupean Schwarz-Bart set out with Soné Ka-La “to pioneer a sophisticated modern jazz language cross-pollinated with Afro-Caribbean rhythms and melodies inspired by the Gwoka traditions from my native island of Guadeloupe.”

Now, after some 15 years of musical travels — during which Schwarz-Bart explored post-bop on The Art of Dreaming, voodoo music on Jazz Racine Haïti, Jewish liturgical music on Hazzan, and contemporary European jazz on Shijin — it was time for him to find his way back to the initial Soné Ka-La concept with a renewed approach. The result is Soné Ka-La 2 — Odyssey. Its subtitle posits Schwarz-Bart as Ulysses, who “left his island to explore different musical worlds and realities. Fifteen years later, he is back to his Ithaca, his musical landscape of Guadeloupe, with a new vision.” Equally important, Schwarz-Bart adds, Odyssey refers to the Middle Passage, and serves as a tribute to those souls “who found the strength to create art and music that have reshaped and elevated the modern world.”

Currently an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Music, Schwarz-Bart was transformed by the live experience of Gwoka music in Guadeloupe at age four. (The family later relocated to Switzerland.) “At the time,” he recalls, “I already lived more among sounds than human beings. One night, my parents took me to a Gwoka ceremony in a yard behind a row of wooden sheds. Barely lit by a few petrol lamps, the master musicians created an ocean of sounds that seemed to rise all the way to the stars. I was overwhelmed by the desire to become a maker of sounds too. This moment granted me the gift of undying love for music, and still carries me every day of my life.”

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