A female heritage : meeting with Sarah Lenka and Mach Gharibian

How do history, past tragedies, music and ancestral words find a resonance in the music and work of artists? Rather than a theoretical debate, the festival will give the floor to two musicians who are particularly sensitive to these issues.

Sarah Lenka will talk about what has been the common thread running through her albums Women's Legacy and Mahala, as well as her first two on Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith : the desire to shed light on those women who opened a path, who liberated speech and bore witness, leaving behind a legacy to be passed on.

She will talk about her research work, which led her to study the work of ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) who collected the words and songs of men and women in prison farms during a trip to the American South.

The women were singing to their souls," Sarah Lenka notes, "sometimes they were singing about everything but their conditions, they were singing about love, a story they heard, a folk song. They were bearing witness. Women, instinctive singing, art through transmission," she confides, "have always been my guiding principle since the beginning of my singing life. Singing is a certain victory over abuse and silence. Singing is transmitted, it leaves a trace, it allows us to make a claim, to soothe, to lull... when words are no longer enough.

Sarah Lenka will make us listen to some of the voices wich have moved her. Voices that, without words, manage to move us and tell us stories. A way of paying tribute to their courage which inspires so many women today who are still silenced.

The music of the pianist Macha Gharibian, with whom Sarah Lenka regularly collaborates on stage, echoes Sarah's sensitivity and questioning. Her jazz universe blossoms at the crossroads of three cultures : the Armenia of her ancestors, the Paris of her heart and her adopted New York. She sings, plays and writes about her family heritage, inviting us to take an ancestral journey in her notes and musicality. This is precisely the path taken in her latest album Joy Ascension, released in 2020. She will come and share her views on the subject.

The meeting will be hosted by journalist and author Gaëlle Renard. After working for France Inter and France Culture, she is now a presenter at FIP.

This event is organized in partnership with the Festival Jazz à Saint-Germain-des-Prés Paris.

With the support of the Fondation des Alliances Françaises and the Institut Français.

Can't join us at the Alliance Française de Paris ? Participate online by clicking on the following link: