A listen to the French-sung “gypsy jazz” of Isabelle Geffroy, better known as “Zaz”, reveals smoky-voiced chanteuse whose fanciful blend of jazz-pop includes plenty of Piaf, French variety, folk, blues, and soul. It also evinces two more things: lots of musical wanderlust and lots of sass. The Tours-native’s ebullient gypsy jazz wanders from chanson-like ballads to jazz to folk to pop to big band throughout her 2010 self-titled debut LP, with Zaz’s husky vocals taking chameleonic strides in front of a lush backdrop of acoustic instrumentation. In the upbeat album opener “Les Passants” (“The Passerbys”) Zaz sings with Piaf-like rapid vocal vibrato flair, while in “Je Veux” (“I Want”) she lilts like Natalie Merchant and scats a la Ella Fitzgerald, and in the folksy, guitar-led “Trop Sensible” (“Too Sensitive”) she reminds of Tracy Chapman.


In other words, Zaz’s music is up there with the best of them and we’re not the only ones who think so. On the strength of breezy, bouncy singles “Je Veux,” “Le long de la route” (“Along The Road”), and “La Fee” (“The Fairy”), Zaz perched itself on the charts of France, Belgium, and elsewhere in the continent and has reached diamond status.


Photo by Raphael Frydman