Jacques Coursil (March 31, 1938 – June 26, 2020
Early life
Coursil was born in Paris, France, of
Martinique parents.
At age nine, he began studying the violin, but switched to trumpet as a teenager.
His earliest musical influences included classical composers such as
Anton Webern and Schoenberg, jazz, especially that of New Orleans musicians such as
Albert Nicholas and
Sidney Bechet, and liturgical music, as well as Martinican-influenced
biguine.
At the age of 14, Coursil had the opportunity to hear saxophonist
Don Byas, who made a deep impression, "with a white suit, white shoes, a shiny saxophone, playing so sweetly."
In 1958, Coursil left for Africa, spending three years in Mauritania and Senegal, where he befriended Léopold Sédar Senghor, politician, poet and theorist of Négritude.
New York
In 1965, following the assassination of
Malcolm X, and drawn to the
free jazz he'd heard on records, Coursil moved to New York.
Upon his arrival, he took up residence in a building in lower Manhattan where his neighbors were drummer
Sunny Murray, saxophonist Frank Wright, and "a blues guy from the South" who "made such a sound that the whole building would be shaking."
During this time, Coursil supported himself by working as a bartender and dishwasher at the Dom, a club that would later be called the Electric Circus, and by playing jazz and rock music.
He also studied with pianist
Jaki Byard and composer
Noel DaCosta.
Regarding his musical interests at the time, Coursil stated: "I firmly intended to deconstruct the whole apparatus of rhythm. I wanted to 'destroy' the beat and harmony too. So, I wanted to play atonal without any rhythmic framework. I also wanted to stop playing scales, to get away from melody."
Later that year, Coursil joined Sunny Murray's band, leading to his first appearance on record as part of the January 1966 session for the drummer's eponymous album on ESP-Disk.
Coursil also began rehearsing with Sun Ra's band (he recalled, "the saxophone section was so great, the best since Duke Ellington"), and joined Bill Dixon's University of the Streets orchestra as well as the Judith Dunn/Bill Dixon Company.
Academic career and hiatus from music
In 1975, Coursil departed for France, where he resumed his studies, leading to an Ph.D. in linguistics in 1977, and a second Ph.D. in applied science in 1992, both from the University of Caen, where he also taught literature, linguistics, and philosophy of language.
During these years, aside from occasional gigs with pianist François Tusques, Coursil abstained from performing in public.
In 1995, he accepted a teaching position at the University of the West Indies in Martinique.
Over the coming years, he established a reputation as an expert in the literature of Édouard Glissant as well as Saussurean linguistics,
and published a book titled
La fonction muette du langage: Essai de linguistique générale contemporaine (
The Silent Function of Language: Essay in General Contemporary Linguistics) (2000).
From 2002-2005, Coursil was a visiting professor of Francophone Literature and Cultures and Postcolonial Critique at Cornell University.
While at Cornell, he published a number of scholarly articles on
postcolonialism, Négritude, and writers
Wole Soyinka and Maryse Condé.
During his time in the United States, he also taught at the University of California, Irvine.
Return to music and later life
Coursil recalled that, during his time away from performing in public, he "practiced trumpet like a painter trying to find his colors."
He reflected: "The music was still there... I never left the instrument. It was part of my well-being, my breathing. If I don't have a trumpet I might just have a stroke. So I kept on playing. It's like a subterranean river that suddenly reaches the surface."
In 2004, at a studio in a wooded area near Cornell, and with the encouragement of John Zorn, he recorded
Minimal Brass, an album of multiple, overdubbed trumpet parts on which he employed circular breathing, a technique he learned from fellow trumpeter Jimmy Owens before leaving New York.
The album was released in 2005 by Zorn's
Tzadik Records.
Minimal Brass was followed by an oratorio titled Clameurs, recorded in Martinique in 2006 and released by Universal Music France the following year.
In 2015, Coursil published a book titled Valeurs pures: le paradigme sémiotique de Ferdinand de Saussure ( Pure Values: The Semiotic Paradigm Of Ferdinand De Saussure).
Discography
As leader or co-leader
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Way Ahead (BYG, 1969)
-
Black Suite (BYG, 1971)
-
Minimal Brass (Tzadik, 2005)
-
Clameurs (Universal Music France, 2007)
-
Trails of Tears (Universal Music France, 2010)
-
FreeJazzArt (Sessions for Bill Dixon) (RogueArt, 2014)
-
Hostipitality Suite (Savvy, 2020)
-
Ave B Free Jam (Inky Dot, 1967 2021) with Laurence Cook, Warren Gale, Perry Robinson, and Steve Tintweiss
With Burton Greene
With Sunny Murray
-
Sunny Murray (ESP-Disk, 1966)
With Rocé
-
Identité en crescendo (Emarcy, 2008)
With Frank Wright
-
Your Prayer (ESP-Disk, 1967)
-
The Complete ESP-Disk Recordings (ESP-Disk, 2005)
