Lizzy Mercier Descloux grew up in Paris, briefly attending Les Beaux Arts before launching her professional career in a boutique in Les Halles, a neighborhood that was at the centre of “swinging Paris” in the mid-70s. In 1975, she moved to New York to be closer to the epicenter of the avant-rock scene, bought a Fender Jazzmaster guitar and began performing in Soho galleries and Lower East side clubs. In 1978 under the name of Rosa Yemen, she recorded a first six titles LP, on the cult label ZE Records. She became involved in the birth of the City’s “New Cinema,” acting in a number of short films including Amos Poe’s “Blank Generation.” She also wrote an ode to Andreas Baader for the music of Diego Cortez’ film Grutzy Elvis. Having picked up the requisite avant-garde credibility in New York, Lizzie worked as correspondent for the magazine Rock News. Her articles found her at the cutting-edge of the music scene, reporting on two new movements that emerged from the same origins: punk and new wave. Lizzy was in the front lines as Blondie, The Ramones, Television, The New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders and Patti Smith rose to wider and wider recognition.

On her return to Paris, Lizzy managed the boutique Harry Cover, an outlet for T-shirts and records, with her partner, producer and ZE Records executive Michel Esteban. The couple established themselves as Paris’ answer to Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood, and Lizzy soon earned a reputation as the muse of the city’s burgeoning punk movement. Lizzy, in her early 20s at the time, was thrilled by the raw new sound pioneered by her new friends, future members of Les Stinky Toys and Asphalt Jungle. Caught up in the no wave movement that had taken New York’s underground scene by storm in the late 70s, Lizzy went into the studio on her own in 1979 to record a debut album, Press Color. But as the French punk movement burning out in the late 70s, Lizzy began looking to new musical horizons. In the early 80s a buzz formed around what journalists at Actuel and Libération dubbed la sono mondiale, or “the world sound,” long before anyone coined the term “world music.”

After touring to promote Press Color with a funk band, Lizzy Mercier Descloux traveled to Europe with companion/filmmaker Seth Tillett. They worked in Italy on a series of short films where she met Federico Fellini during the filming of La Città delle donne, discovered the label Ocora (traditional music from all around the world) and started writing songs with help of drummer Bill Perry. In Paris they auditioned African musicians cause after wild child funk the idea was to make a record fusing African roots music, disco, swing and some obscure soundtracks. Mambo Naussau, by many accounts Lizzy’s most fully realized work, was recorded in Nassau, Bahamas at Compass point, a home of Island Records’ studios. Steve Stanley, a young engineer from Jamaica who was also working with Grace Jones and The Tom Tom Club, produced the album.

At a time when artists like The Talking Heads were dabbling in instruments from around the world and folk idioms to a slightly more primitivist effect, on tracks like “Lady O’Kpele” Lizzy and company were bringing a fresh avant-garde energy to an already lively regional folk tradition. On “Payola,” funky beats and island grooves bent slightly askew set the pace for the rest of the album. Tracks like “Mister Sowete” seem to predict female fronted acts like The Sugarcubes and ESG and made established bands like The Slits and The Raincoats seem conventional by comparison.

Lizzy eventually left France and made her home in Corsica where she devoted herself to a new career as a painter. After her untimely death in 2002 at the age of 47, interest in her work was renewed among critics and music fans as films like Downtown 81 reemerged as fascinating artifacts of the no wave generation. As one of the pioneers of the no wave movement and an artist of such range and depth across media, let’s hope Lizzy’s legacy lives on alongside the work of her contemporaries Liquid Liquid, DNA, and The Contortions.

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