Francophone
Funk
French harmonica
player Frédéric Yonnet
reverses the cultural migration
pattern, bringing French soul to
U.S. shores.
Written by Abdul Ali as published
on The
Root.com February 5, 2009
“You may not think I’m
French, but I am,” said a
latte-colored man with frizzy hair
over a loud speaker hidden in a
sculpture garden on the Mall in
Washington, D.C.
At the performance last fall, there
were no signs leading to the concert
where French harmonica player Frédéric
Yonnet performed. The only giveaway
was the ground moving under your
shoes. A mass of people hugged the
contours of a water fountain. Candles
adorned a bowl-shaped dish. A makeshift
stage stood in front of the restaurant
at the National Gallery of Art -
Sculpture Garden. A woman tosses
her shoes, dances by herself wailing
“Tell Me Something Good.”
An all-male ensemble samples a number
of soul hits—the likes of
Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder and some
original scores. After a while,
the singing fades and Yonnet blows
his harmonica and I’m thinking
how could someone born in France
have so much soul? A simplistic
thought, for sure, but the conventional
artistic wisdom holds that it was
black American artists who went
to France taking the soul, not the
other way around. But globalization
is not just an economic force; it’s
cultural, too.
Growing up in the suburbs of Paris
in an artistic family, born to a
white Frenchman and a Guyanese black
woman, Frédéric Yonnet
was primed for a life of performance.
His grandfather, Jacques Yonnet,
was a noted author. Before his teenage
years, he and his father had put
together a two-man show and performed
it around town. He would eventually
move almost every four years, soaking
in the musical speech of the influx
of immigrants in France. During
a segment of his performance, Yonnet
talks about his visit to Senegal
and plays a tune that was subtle,
muffled, and beautiful still.
Before moving to the District, Yonnet,
whose last album was entitled Front
and Center, was a part of a bourgeoning
underground jazz movement that swept
across Europe. It was in the night
spots in the heart of Paris where
Yonnet found an audience for his
harmonica and ebullient spirit.
“I use to hang out with all
of the immigrant musicians in Paris.
There was solidarity in not looking
French.”
Frédéric Yonnet has
broken barriers with his harmonica,
earning himself a spot on stage
with Stevie Wonder, Prince, John
Legend and Erykah Badu, connecting
with diverse audiences. Yonnet’s
sound is a cross between Ray Charles
and Stevie Wonder with the tethered
edginess of a Lenny Kravitz. At
36, he’s what music connoisseurs
would consider eclectic, funky and
hip.
In a clip of him in a concert hosted
by Dave Chappelle, you can hear
the blues aesthetic at work. There
is something not from this time
or planet in his performance. He
reaches what many jazz musicians
call the “sublime” in
relatively short breaths. This is
just a sample of what it’s
like to experience his performance
in person.
His virtuoso performance aside,
his music left me dumbfounded, the
way he could slip into a tune and
make it his own. To see Frédéric
boogie-woogie on his harmonica over
a Chaka Khan song or a Stevie Wonder
song shattered any notions I had
about what it means to be black.
I’m convinced this “soul”
that infuses this black Frenchmen’s
music is something you cannot learn
or imitate. Something happened that
moment I heard Yonnet play his harmonica.
Just as we have all heard Billie
Holiday play “God Bless the
Child” so have others across
an ocean. And how beautiful it is
to hear the tune played without
words with the harmonica capturing
every nuance of blues feeling that
only Billie Holiday can pull off.
“I want to expand the perceptions
of the instrument” Yonnet
told me. “It’s a toy
that I must convince everyone that
it’s an instrument, and it’s
possible to create music with and
make a living.”
As Stevie Wonder once said, “music
is a world within itself, with a
language we all understand.”
Watching Yonnet perform proves that
maybe blackness is large enough
to reach across an ocean.
Abdul Ali is a freelance writer
living in Washington D.C.
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