Living in a language can sometimes be hard to understand.

It’s difficult to imagine des personnes réelles qui vivent une vraie vie, travaillent, font les courses, etc (real people living real lives, working, grocery shopping, etc), when you’re staring at des tableaux de conjugaison (conjugation tables) for hours on end.

I recently thought about making French more real for those outside la francophonie.

Living in France, ma vie est en français (my life is in French), and I meet people every day who use French without ever having to wonder if a word is masculin or feminin.

My idea is to start a Real French series where I interview French people and have them talk about d’où ils viennent et ce qu’ils font dans la vie (where they are from and what they do for a living). It’s is a fun way to share more French voices with all of our readers!

Dans cet esprit (with that in mind), when I wrote about le jazz manouche, I hinted at a musician friend of mine who I had interviewed. Le musicien is Jean Guyomarc’h, a member of several different groups who tour around France! I first had the pleasure to hear him and his group, Alternate Cake, play at a local bar. I had no idea who they were, but I enjoyed la musique so much I had to talk to them after le concert, which is how we became friends!

I recently had a chance to sit down with Jean and ask him a few questions about sa vie et la musique (his life and music), and after a couple questions he played une chanson avec sa guitare (a song with his guitar)!

In the interview he explains qui il est (who he is) and ce qu’il fait (what he does) and goes into detail about what le jazz manouche is and how it developed in France. La vidéo is en VOST, and you can choose either French or English sous-titres (subtitles) by hitting l’icône en forme de roue dentée (the gear icon) in the bottom right corner of the YouTube player!

Voici Jean Guyomarc’h :