Bio:
Singer-songwriter, poet, cultural activist, environmentalist, Zachary Richard is best known as recording artist and performer. With 20 albums on his roster, including several « gold » and « platinum » albums, his musical career is international.
In 1996, Zachary Richard founded Action Cadienne, a non-profit organization devoted to the promotion of the Acadian culture and French language of Louisiana. In March, 1997, he is decorated Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the Republic of France. That same year, he is initiated into the Ordre des Francophones d’Amérique by the government of Québec. In the course of his career he has received four honorary doctorates from the University of Moncton (New Brunswick), the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, l’Université Ste. Anne (Nova Scotia) and the University of Ottawa (Canada). In response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Zachary Richard founded SOS Musiciens to come to the aid of the musical community of Louisiana. In 2009, he is decorated with the Order of Canada, one of very few Americans to receive Canada’s highest civilian award. Following the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe of 2010, Zachary Richard founded Gulf Aid Acadiana to help restore the Louisiana coast and support its communities. The Cercle Richelieu Senghor awards him the Prix Richelieu Senghor in a ceremony at the Senat de France in 2013. In 2015, Zachary Richard is named Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowmment of the Arts. The following year he is decorated Officier des Palmes Académiques by the Republic of France and promoted Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres.
Zachary Richard is producer, narrator, and composer of several television documentaries. In 2000, Against the Tide, the story of the Cajun people of Louisiana is awarded Best Historical Documentary by the National Educational Television Association (USA). The French version, Contre vents, contre marées, is awarded the Prix Historia by the Institut d’Histoire de l’Amérique Française in 2003. Other documentaries will follow, Cœurs Batailleurs, a 26 part series that investigates the Acadian diaspora around the world, and Migrations, which studies bird migration in North America and is awarded the Liriot d’Or (first prize) at the Festival International du Film Ornithologique of France in 2008. More recently, Zachary Richard narrated and composed the music for Kouchibouguac, which examines the social upheaval that accompanied the expropriation of 250 Acadian families for the creation of a Canadian national park. In 2016, in the award winning documentary Cajun Heart, Zachary Richard explores his roots and examines the nature of Acadian / Cajun identity into the 21st century. In 2017, Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) broadcasts Attakapas, the Cajun Story, a multimedia concert with tells the story of the Acadian / Cajun people of Louisiana in song.
Fiercely attached to the French language and Acadian culture of his native Louisiana, Zachary Richard is the author of four children’s books as well as four volumes of poetry (Faire Récolte received the Prix Champlain and Feu the Prix Roland Gasparic in Bucharest), and the History of the Acadians of Louisiana (UL Press). He is Louisiana’s first French Language Poet Laureate.
Contact Information
Management/Booking:
Label - RZ Records
802 Cayret Street
Scott, Louisiana 70583 USA
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).