Jehro

Songs

These are just preview samples. You need a valid account and be logged in to hear the full tracks.

Line up

  • JAMBA (guitarist and choir)
  • Jerome COTTA (singer and guitarist)
  • Julien Tekeyan (drummer)
  • Khalil Maouene (KEYBOARD)

Links

Fusing the style of classic French songwriters like Jacques Brel and Georges Brassens
with the sounds of rock, reggae, and calypso, it’s obvious that, Jehro (aka Jerome Cotta), has a diverse range of musical influences. He was born in Marseille and raised in a household with a father of French origin, who was a singer in the classic French tradition, and a mother of Greek, Italian, and Corsican heritage.

When he was 20, Jehro left France to pursue a musical career in London. He soon found a home in a squat he shared with many international musicians ranging from Jamaica to Spain. It was living in these circumstances where he received an intense education in rock & roll, U.K. pop, and especially reggae, as he fell in love with the voice and songs of Bob Marley.

Taking what he'd learned in London, Jehro relocated to France and began making the rounds of the city's night clubs. In 1999, he released his first album under the name Jerome Cotta, L'Arbre et le Fruit, and while it received strong reviews, Jehro spent the next several years on other musical projects in collaboration with other artists. After striking up a friendship with Christian Brun and Richard Minier of Marathonians, Jehro contributed vocals to their 2003 release, A Tropical Soul Adventure and he also wrote songs for Veronica Antico's 2002 album Les Portes du Ciel.

In order to make the most of his growing range of international influences, Jehro formed a group with guitarist Jean MBa, drummer Julien Tekeyan, and vocalists Janice and Audrey; both the group and their debut album were titled Jehro, and the album proved to be a major critical and commercial success in Europe upon its release in 2006.

Mark Deming, Rovi Cantina Paradise (?) is his 3rd album on which he sings in English and Spanish. The album was recorded in studios located in Paris and close to home in the south of France, where he has been living for the last 10 years. The variety of influences in Paradise mirrors Jehro’s own personal and cultural diversity - intertwining and transitioning between moods of light and dark, order and disorder. His broad pallet of sounds and his flirtation with different genres in Paradise clearly speaks to how Jehro has developed as an artist - a sense of his musical maturation is more than evident, and the album is all the better for it.