Jocelyne Béroard tells her story in “Far from the bitter”. His autobiographical book co-written with Bertrand Dicale and published by Editions du Cherche Midi. The singer describes, from the inside, forty years of the group Kassav’: studio recordings, backstage, world tours, unfailing friendships with the West Indian musicians of the “group that invented zouk”.
With Kassav’, she made the whole world zouker, sang in crowded stadiums, experienced improbable tours, sold millions of albums and collected gold records. The only singer in this legendary group, Jocelyne Béroard recounts the Kassav’ saga for the first time, all these years with musicians who have become lifelong friends.
These pages are also those of a woman who takes the time to tell her story: childhood in Fort-de-France, carnival vidés and piano lessons, ouassous fishing in the rivers, classical dance, passionate discussions in student residences in “France”, Fine Arts, music, his debut as a chorister. We discover a determined personality, resolute in his choices and his fights in favor of Creole culture, equality and fraternity.
“There were no slaves among the Béroards“, said my father to me one day, while we were talking on the balcony. I was left speechless. We are black. And few black people arrived in Martinique other than as slaves. our past? I saw there the manifestation of some wounds that still overwhelm us in the West Indies: revision of history, self-hatred, shame of our origins. In fact, my father, like many others, found a way to escape his past.
The name comes from La Ciotat, near Marseille. Joseph Béroard arrived in Martinique shortly before the abolition of slavery. His grandson, Renaud, called Papa Bé in Rivière Salée, will have from his official union children who will die at a young age and other illegitimate children from several beds, as is often the case at the time. He will recognize almost all of them, belatedly.
From this point of view, my family is typically West Indian. A story of love and suffering, shame and pride, struggle and self-sacrifice. I am from a country where there is only one word to designate the color of a white man, we say: white. On the other hand, there are hundreds of words, images, insults and metaphors to go from almost white to very dark, there is an infinite subtlety of gradations and nuances: chabin, mulatto, chapé kouli, chabine kalazaza, red nigger, quarteron… I belong to the first generation of West Indians who tried to live without conditioning their whole life to their color.