France's Mina Agossi deconstructs jazz standards

By Geert De Clercq

PARIS (Reuters Life!) - To French-Beninese singer Mina Agossi, there's nothing sacred about jazz standards.

She beatboxes on "Ain't Misbehaving", breaks into French in "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and boils down Thelonious Monk's classic "Well, You Needn't " to the point of reciting it.

And if that were not enough to scare away jazz purists, Agossi has done away with piano, guitar and a brass section, and sings with only drums and double bass for accompaniment.

She also takes on rock material, including several songs by Jimi Hendrix, in which she imitates the screeching, distorted guitar solos with her voice.

One of the rising stars of French jazz, Agossi has toured extensively in Europe and the United States, won a string of prizes and was the subject of a documentary on French-German arts TV channel Arte.

This week, she plays in London jazz club Ronnie Scott's and the 36-year old makes no apologies about her bare-bones interpretation of the classics.

"I arrange the songs as I feel them, without betraying the roots. I get easily bored with straight ahead jazz. What is the point of playing like (John) Coltrane in 2008?," Agossi told Reuters after a concert in Paris.

"We don't arrange songs, we de-range them," Agossi's base player Eric Jacot added.