Biography
Born in 1958 in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Paco Sery grew up in a household of eighteen children and first took up drumming at ten, fashioning instruments from whatever household objects came to hand. Entirely self-taught, he never acquired the ability to read notation yet performed regularly around his hometown throughout his teenage years. In 1980 pianist-organist Eddy Louiss invited him to Paris for a recording date; Sery remained in France thereafter. He soon became a fixture on the French scene, lending his drums to projects by Manu Dibango, Claude Nougaro and Nina Simone. During the nineties he joined Joe Zawinul’s Syndicate, contributing to the album World Tour; Zawinul later described Sery as a complete musician and the finest drummer with whom he had ever shared a stage. In autumn 1998 Sery left the Syndicate; toward the end of the decade he also recorded with Eddy Louiss’s forty-one-piece Fanfare ensemble on Sentimental Feeling and with Italian trumpeter Flavio Boltro’s Franco-Italian group Road Runner. Shortly afterward he began fronting his own band on European dates.
In summer 2000 the Paco Sery Group appeared at jazz festivals in Paris, Tabarka and Brignoles. For his first album under his own name Sery enlisted vocalists Dianne Reeves and Angélique Kidjo. In 2003 the ensemble traveled to South Africa for a performance at the Newtown Music Festival. Speaking to the French drumming magazine Batteur, Sery emphasized the value he places on spontaneous contributions from his sidemen, an approach that accounts for the music’s vitality. A left-handed drummer, Sery also performs on the kalimba, an instrument of South African origin whose metal tongues, mounted over a box resonator fitted with sound holes, are plucked with the thumbnail to produce the haunting sonorities he deploys with characteristic flair.
In summer 2000 the Paco Sery Group appeared at jazz festivals in Paris, Tabarka and Brignoles. For his first album under his own name Sery enlisted vocalists Dianne Reeves and Angélique Kidjo. In 2003 the ensemble traveled to South Africa for a performance at the Newtown Music Festival. Speaking to the French drumming magazine Batteur, Sery emphasized the value he places on spontaneous contributions from his sidemen, an approach that accounts for the music’s vitality. A left-handed drummer, Sery also performs on the kalimba, an instrument of South African origin whose metal tongues, mounted over a box resonator fitted with sound holes, are plucked with the thumbnail to produce the haunting sonorities he deploys with characteristic flair.
Albums