Jean-Paul Bourelly
b. 23 November 1960, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Raised in Chicago, Bourelly's parents were first generation Haitians—he learned about Yoruba music from his grandmother while imbibing the electrified blues of Muddy Waters. It was a musical family. His brother Carl became house keyboardist with Def Jam (the rap and heavy metal label). When he was 10 years old he sang Rossini at the Lyric Opera House in whiteface (‘to make us look like little Italian boys’). He had piano and drum lessons with Von Freemanbut took up guitar in 1974 after hearing Jimi Hendrix. In 1979 he moved to New York, sharing an apartment with Steve Coleman. Chico Hamilton was the first bandleader to hire him: gigs with Muhal Richard Abrams, Roy Haynes, McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones quickly followed. The latter particularly impressed him with his understanding of the African polyrhythms at the heart of jazz. He was also welcomed by the new generation avant garde—trumpeter Olu Dara and alto saxophonist Henry Threadgill—and acted in Francis Ford Coppola's COTTON CLUB. In 1989, Miles Davis had him play on AMANDLA. Bourelly calls his music Blue Wave: ‘a natural progression from growing up in the '60s, going through the '70s and putting up with the '80s’. Without perhaps the harmolodic detachment of James Blood Ulmer, he is a better popularizer, and his blues-drenched, stinging guitar fuses jazz outreach with gutter groove more convincingly than '70s fusion ever did. Hope You Find Your Way on JUNGLE COWBOY shows why: Bourelly's voice and guitar are a genuine extension of the expressionist intensity of southern blues.