Biography
Pascal Bokar
"Top flight performer:, "A true world musician, musical traveler and collector", "a new sound in Jazz oriented World music", "..guitarist Pascal Bokar animates Bebop with African rhythms"…a winner". These are some of the rave reviews from the critics who have seen Pascal Bokar perform live and have enjoyed his recordings. Check out the audience at any of the many clubs or festival appearances by Pascal Bokar and you will see World music fans of all ages moving to the irresistible beat of his fresh new sound.
Pascal's music invites the listener to a musical banquet from around the world from his native France to his Senegalese and Malian roots. Along the way, one samples bits of Jazz, R&B and Afro Pop, Bebop mixed with African harmonies and infectious West African rhythms. Born in Paris, France, Pascal Bokar Thiam was raised in France and in Senegal. This dual cultural experience has infused Pascal's tremendous compositional skills that lend themselves to a natural sense of musical cultural fusion evident in all of his recordings but notably in the last one "Savanna Jazz Club".
At the age of seven he began studying at the School of the Arts in Dakar, Senegal, and later will attend the National Conservatory of Nice, France, under Andre Borly, Henry Dorigny and Frank De Luca. At the age of 19, Pascal Bokar is the youngest Jazz guitarist on the European Jazz festival circuit as a member of the Barney Wilen Quintet (saxophonist formerly with Miles Davis and Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers). After his formative years at the National Conservatory of Nice and with Barney Wilen, Pascal decides to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston. For the next two years, he is the guitarist of the acclaimed Back Bay Brass Orchestra, one of the top two Big Bands of the Berklee College of Music directed by Faculty Trombonist Ben Elkins.
Pascal Bokar is the 1983 Recipient of the Jim Hall Jazz Master Incentive Award for Guitarist presented by Faculty and Guitar Department Chair William Leavitt of the Berklee College of Music. In 1984, he receives the Outstanding Jazz Soloist Award from the hands of Dizzy Gillespie and James Moody. After his studies at the world-renown Berklee College of Music in the early eighties, Pascal performs with such Jazz luminaries as Dizzy Gillespie, Donald Byrd, Roy Haynes, Donald Brown, Art Matthews, Donald "Duck" Bailey, Tommy Campbell etc…While pursuing his studies and touring with Jazz masters, Pascal participates in the development of Afro beat music by blending Jazz with West African rhythms which prompted the US Jazz press to acknowledge this new twist prompted by this new artist.
Pascal returns from his playing days with the masters with a new determination to forge his own sound, one that blends his African sensibilities with his considerable skills as a Jazz guitarist and vocalist. In 1995, Accurate Records Jazz Division released Pascal Bokar's first record entitled "Beyond the Blue Sky", distributed worldwide by the Rounder Records label. Critics applauded Pascal's debut album with comments like "...a first rate musician" (Night Vibe), it's West Africa meets Van Morrison." (New England Performer). Other commented ..", "..Guitarist Bokar animates Bebop with African Rhythms" (San Jose Mercury News).
Currently, Pascal is scheduled to release a new album entitled "Savanna Jazz Club" in which he blends African rhythms and sounds with Jazz standards in a unique and revolutionary way. Pascal, the composer is forging a new trend in establishing an unparalleled conceptual framework for Jazz and Afro beat musicians. He is accompanied by a stellar cast of musicians stylistically spanning from Jazz to Afro beat, with legendary BeBop drummer and Blue Note Recording artist Donald "Duck" Bailey, bassist Kaj Eckardt-Karpeh, pianist Mike Greensill and percussionists Djibi and Malik Faye, Ousmane Gueye and Babou Sagna and guests Grammy nominated vocalists "The Cunnighams".
Pascal Bokar, the guitarist shows off his formidable skills in a smooth and almost effortless style reminiscing of the great George Benson to which he adds floating vocals in the style of Nat "King" Cole. Well schooled in musical traditions, Pascal, however adds a unique personal West African dimension and signature that shows that this is one artist with a strong foundation in the roots of Jazz and West African music and a unique perspective on how to blend the two.
An innovator in motion!Pascal Bokar Thiam has earned a Master's Degree from Cambridge College, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a Doctorate Degree in Education with honors from the University of San Francisco, CA. He is currently a faculty in the Visual and Performing Arts Division of the University of San Francisco, CA, where he teaches Jazz and World music.
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