James Germain

• country:
  Haiti
• style(s):
  • Traditional
• label:
  Aztec Musique
• gender:
  male
• instrumentation:
  vocal
• artist submitted by:
  Tamise

This child of Saint-Antoine, popular neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, has always had the love for singing in him. The beloved last of six children in a family with a custom to gather every evening around the parents telling stories, James Germain was always more sensitive to the sung parts which, for him, were special moments.

Born albino, it was at school where this handicap earned him a few gibes, (" at least, they do not call me dirty negro ") or coaxing, that he tried his hand at singing in public. At the age of ten, he sang in his church choir with his sister, until he met with a patron who helped him take courses. James Germain thus began very early his classical training at the ProMusica Academy of Port-au-Prince, under the leadership of Angel Mendez, who introduced him to the baroque Opera where he started as vocal soloist in the Holy Trinity orchestra and who guided his first steps toward meeting Monteverdi.

But James rediscovered his passion, the voodoo songs, which he had heard more or less secretly during his childhood, with Lina Mathon Blanchet, a great lady of the Haitian music scene. His talent noticed, he obtained a scholarship of the French Cooperation for a training course in France in 1989. He was then 22. He returned to Paris in 1990 to study classical and jazz singing, for nearly four years, successively at the Claude Debussy Academy, the Conservatoire de Paris XVII eme and at the Jazz School of the Center for Musical Initiation, encouraged by the Haitian storyteller Mimi Barthelemy and the Zaireans Ray Lema and Rido Bayonne.

Creole memory is also present in his contemporary singing, inspired by tradition, on music arranged by Marco Quesada. "

DISCOGRAPHY :
2010 Kreol Mandingue
1997 Assoto
1995 Kafou Minwi