Jet Black Pearl

So here she is... a one-woman dynamo, traveling around the world, singing and accompanying herself on the accordion, playing the flute, human beatbox, music box, toy piano and loop station... But where did it all start? Jetty Swart, a native of the Netherlands, was taking off in a career as a graphic designer when she fell in love with a dusty old accordion in a hidden corner of a second hand shop in Prague. She took it home, mostly for its flowered bellows and its woodcraft Read more on Last.fm …read full bio

So here she is... a one-woman dynamo, traveling around the world, singing and accompanying herself on the accordion, playing the flute, human beatbox, music box, toy piano and loop station... But where did it all start? Jetty Swart, a native of the Netherlands, was taking off in a career as a graphic designer when she fell in love with a dusty old accordion in a hidden corner of a second hand shop in Prague. She took it home, mostly for its flowered bellows and its woodcraft, but when she tried to play it, she discovered a beautiful melancholic sound. And her fingers seemed to like its mother-of-pearl keys much more than the plastic computer ones they were so used to... Packing her bags, she traveled to the south or France, where, seduced by the weather, the nature, the lovely villages and a charming town called Montpellier, she decided to stay for a couple of months, singing and playing the accordion in the streets. Months turned into years, the street gave way for real stages where she met other like-minded musicians and in 2000 she started her band, Yeti. First covering old French songs and then creating her own, she has sung with her band at hundreds of festivals, theaters and clubs all over Europe, recording 2 CDs. Yeti's music-style has been described as a cabaret gypsy party with Nina Hagen and Edith Piaf on hip hop pills. Meanwhile she continued her solo-performances, allowing for closer contact with her audience and... to travel more easily! And so one of her trips took her to San Francisco in 2010. The Californians loved her music, but what the hell was she singing about? Her new songs had to be in English, so that the crowd wouldn't miss a word of these little dramas full of dry wit and flamboyant characters. 
Now she presents her trilingual (Dutch/French/English) solo show accompanying herself on the accordion, flute, kalimba and toy-piano. With her loop-station she records brief loops, which she layers with her unrecorded voice, turning herself and her minimal equipment into a cabaret orchestra. A new country, a new language, a wedding and a new show... time for a new name!
 Jetty is pronounced Yeti in Dutch, a spelling she has always used in France, but since this ape-fur coat has gotten a little old now, she has chosen instead the direct translation of her full name: Jet Black Pearl. And she'll wear this one with delight through all musical seasons... Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.

User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.

…shrink me down again