St. Germain

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

St. Germain · St Germain is the artist name of the French musician and DJ Ludovic Navarre, born in 1969 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye near Paris. He began releasing music in 1991 and was one of the first French artists to sign with the label of Laurent Garnier and Eric Morand. Under all kinds of names he made techno and deep house. From 1993 he used St Germain for his deep house. As influences he named, among others, Bob Marley, Toots & The Maytals, Miles Davis and Kool and the Gang.

Music and breakthrough

In 1995 the album Boulevard was released, which the British magazine Mixmag chose as album of the year. That success brought him to Blue Note, the jazz label from 1939. There he made Tourist, which came out in 2000, with songs such as Rose Rouge, Sure Thing and So Flute. The album appeared just as lounge music was on the rise, and brought St Germain to a large audience. After that it went quiet for a long time. Only in 2015 was the album St Germain released, recorded with African musicians, with the kora, the balafon and the ngoni from Mali alongside electric guitars, piano and saxophone.

Influence

St Germain's music blends house with jazz: a continuous dance beat and electronic loops, with real instruments such as horns, piano and flute over the top, and samples from old blues and jazz recordings. In this way he belongs to the nu jazz that emerged around 1990 in London and Paris, in which DJs and producers brought jazz back to the dance floor. That a jazz label such as Blue Note signed him shows how close those worlds had come.

Listening

• 
  So Flute · St. Germain, 2000
  Apple Music ↗
• 
  Rose Rouge · St Germain, 2000

Discography

Studio albums

• 1995Boulevard: The Complete Series
• 2000Tourist
• 2002Chaos (soundtrack)
• 2015St Germain

In School of Rock

The chapters, maps and magazine stories of School of Rock are currently available in Dutch only.

• Mixtape 5: Jazz Festival^NL Reader