The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20070212042221/http://www.rocambujazz.com:80/aboutrocambu.html
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| New Orleans trumpets growl while clarinets swoon under the palm trees of the Caribbean. Guitars make a web of koras and thumb piano like sound while drummers bring Congo Square, New Orleans back home to Africa. | |
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| | Rocambu Jazz displays the various forms of jazz throughout the African and Afro Diaspora world
in the earlier years of the twentieth century. A true populist music, early jazz was derived from
dance music i.e.. biguines, rhumbas and congas. Be it from New Orleans, Martinique, Puerto Rico,
Cuba or the Congo, Rocambu Jazz brings it all together in their very fresh and festive Retro-Afro-Caribbean sound. Although we may be playing musics that are over a hundred years old in some circumstances, the music remains fresh and beckons you to dance. | |
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| The name Rocambu has a history from an old Ki-Kongo expression "rocamambu", meaning one who looks for problems and ways to deal with them. Like the prodigal son who is kicked out, and comes back later rich. One who is a sort of misfit, and causes spirited conflict, a necessary element in all Creole musics. An excellent band had a similar name in Congo in the 1950's by Jean Serge Essous and Rossingol, the famous "Orchestre Rock a Mambo" | |
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| Yves Francois et Rocambu Jazz was formed in 2001 by jazz trumpeter Yves Francois Smierciak and several other like minded musicians. The mission of Rocambu Jazz is to explore the rhythms of African and Afro Diaspora musics. We are finding the common bonds between music from West Africa (highlife and the Guinean and Malinky music of Senegal and Mali), Congo (old school rumba, soukous), Martinique (biguine), Haiti (compas), Cuba (son, conga ), Jamaica (ska), Trinidad (calypso), Brazil (choro, samba, bossa nova) and New Orleans (early jazz/dixie land). Rocambu Jazz exploits the common bonds of the musics in our unique interpretations of the various forms. Essentially we are speaking of the various creoles all these nations provided when the African rhythms and phraseology met the melodies of Europe (France and Spain). The African musicians reshaped the great popular music vocabulary of the 20th century musics. These musical forms have many names, but they are all a musical creole broadly known as jazz.
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| Our approach to performing the various forms is interpret the spirit and flavor of the music and not to imitate.What do we mean by that? A lot has happened in music since some these forms were created. New forms and phraseologies have come about and can not be ignored. The musicians in Rocambu Jazz come from different backgrounds and have all had different musical experiences. We like to take advantage of these differences just like the musicians that created these various forms of jazz. It is the spirit of sharing ideas and culture that keeps the music alive and fresh. To imitate or try to recreate the music totally as it was originally performed would be to deny the essence and spirits of the people that created it. To cling to tightly to the original forms would effectively render them dead.
We try not to do that. | |
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| | Yves Francois: band leader and trumpet
Frank Youngwerth: trumpet
Jim Christopher: clarinet, tenor sax, and bari. sax. Mark Smierciak: clarinet and alto sax.
Dave Smith: bari. sax.
Ben Lansing: guitar
Joe Spilberg: upright bass
John Knecht: djembe and percussion
George Lawler: bongos, congas and percussion
Michael Tooles: drum set and percussion | |
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| | Listen to the Music | | | |
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