A new record, a television series being filmed, concerts, notably at the Palais des sports, in Paris, on March 25 and 26 : Michel Jonasz claims to have never worked as much as today. For more than fifty years, the great bluesman of French song has assiduously frequented stages and sets. A way to tell, in its own way, a family story marked by exile, pain and a deep love for music.
I wouldn’t have come here if…
… If I had been good at studies. But I didn’t like school. I had a problem with discipline, homework, lessons to learn. I did not feel free. So I left my Parisian high school in 2ofat 15.
Clinging to a crazy hope, my parents, who did not have much money, enrolled me in a private establishment, in Sceaux [Hauts-de-Seine]. I left too. In the middle of math class, I thought no, really, it was useless. That evening, when I came home, I said to my mother: “Don’t wake me up tomorrow morning, I won’t be going to school anymore. I never set foot there again.
You drop out of school, but to do what?
I didn’t really know anything about it at the time. Wondering how I was going to make a living, my father introduced me to a costume jewelry representative friend, and said, “It can be an interesting job, can’t it? I accompanied this man for a day and understood that it was not for me!
Instinctively, I imagined that being an artist couldn’t be bad, because you’re free, you don’t have a boss. I first wanted to paint. I like the Impressionists, Van Gogh, Vlaminck… So I ask my mother for some money to buy oil paint, and I start copying these great painters. But I can’t draw. One day, my father said to me: “Do you want to be a painter? So take it seriously. And he signs me up for a drawing class. For several weeks, we draw hands.
Then, to open us up to other forms of art, the teacher asks us to learn a scene from Scapin’s trickery, and play it in front of him. Around the same time, my sister, Evelyne, offered me to accompany her to Guy Kayat’s drama class, which she was taking in the suburbs, in Malakoff. [Hauts-de-Seine]. I still remember a monologue by Corneille that I learned by heart: “Despite our surprise, and my insufficiency/I will obey you, lord, without complacency.” The teacher had a positive reaction: “You have a good voice. This is how I started to take a liking to performing plays, provoking emotions, laughter. It was my first contact with the scene, in a way. Though. At school, I was already a bit of a clown. And upstream still, there was something else.
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