Founded by singer-songwriter Kit Ashton, in collaboration with L’Office du Jèrriais, Badlabecques are breathing new life into traditional Jersey folk songs with upbeat pop and folk influences from around the world. Their first official gig was at Folklore Festival in People’s Park on July 1st 2012. Kit, who has been based in Brighton since 2004, working as a musician and touring with the likes of soul-diva Carleen Anderson and Mercury-award nominated Thomas White (The Electric Soft Parade, Brakes), was commissioned by L’Office du Jèrriais to set a few Jèrriais songs to more contemporary arrangements, in order to help teach Jèrriais in schools, and the band evolved from there: “Even though my Gran, who lived in St. Ouen, only spoke French and Jèrriais until she started school, I never really learned any Jèrriais myself until recently when I became interested in the folk songs and rich literary heritage that Jersey has – going back to Wace in the 1100’s. For these arrangements, I’ve kept the original lyrics and melodies to songs like ‘Man Bieau P’tit Jèrri’ and ‘Jean Gros Jean’, and connected them to our multi-cultural modern world with a broad range of danceable influences from Africa, to Latin-America, French-Canada and of course ‘Western’ pop. I’m also lucky to have found a lovely bunch of talented Jersey ‘crapauds’ to form the Badlabecques band sound. The result is somewhat quirky but really fun!” Geraint Jennings, of L’Office du Jèrriais, says: “Jèrriais is one of Jersey’s treasures that is too often overlooked, and polishing up its gems of poetry and song through a revitalised folk-rock sound will help to arouse wider interest in our living heritage. The old folks may be more familiar with the words, but it’s the youngsters who play the loudest tunes. Hèque Badlabecques! Long live Badlabecques!” Tony Scott Warren, also of L’Office du Jèrriais says: “Getting young people aware of Jèrriais is vital to its survival, and what better way can they start to enjoy our language than through music? Badlabecques have taken our traditional songs and given them a fantastic new spin which will appeal to everyone!”
