(soft music)
- My name is Jetty.
And I play music!
Jet Black Pearl is my stage persona.
Actually it's my real name.
Jetty Swart is my name, Swart meaning Black.
Pearl is the guy who I'm married to,
Louis Pearl, the bubble man.
So if that's in your plate, you just eat it.
I feel a little shy.
I mean, I really wouldn't like to talk
in front of 10 people.
But I can sing songs in front of 2000 people.
I think a lot of performers have this thing,
(playing flute)
like the overcompensating of shyness.
It's easier to have a mask on, just a persona.
Yay, it works!
I don't know where it comes from.
(Jetty singing)
Maybe when we were kids we were not able
to let out all these things because we were too shy?
But then we found out a way to over-scream all that,
like "Hey! Here am I!"
And then "Oh, that works!"
(pigs oinking)
("Porcherie" song plays)
(singing in French)
I come from the Netherlands.
And then I moved to France
and I discovered the musette music,
the typical accordion music from France
and I kinda dived into it because I really loved it.
(singing in French)
I traveled to Cuba.
I spent a month playing flute with the people there
and then I went to India to take singing lessons.
I don't know, it's a whole mishmash of things.
(crowd clapping) Hey, thank you!
Woo-hoo!
♪ I've got Acropo-lips when standing on a hill ♪
♪ Necropo-lips when I want to kill ♪
♪ Catac-lips to destroy ♪
♪ Apoca-lips now ♪
♪ The fire is burning ♪
♪ And so are the spare ribs on the grill. Wah! ♪
When I write music,
I like people to get a different view of things,
things like, "Oh I never thought about that before!"
My name is Gertrude.
♪ What's your name? ♪
Gertrude.
Ger - trude
And you?
You have a name?
♪ What's your name? ♪
I like to play with assumptions
and turning them around and putting them in a new place.
Gertrude.
Thank you.
And sometimes Aunt Gertrude kicks in there.
(singing in Dutch)
Aunt Gertrude is little bit the opposite of Jet Black Pearl.
She is a bit cheeky, and a little bit naughty.
She behaves very well usually
but sometimes she loses the control.
♪ Break it down. ♪
(vocalizing)
Woo!
Voila!
♪ Look at me I'm super chic ♪
♪ The chicest chicken de la clique ♪
♪ I got a big Botox beak ♪
♪ Shiny feathers nice and sleek. ♪
♪ I'm ready, ready! ♪
♪ My heart is bu-booming ♪
♪ I'm ready, ready! ♪
♪ My loins are bu-blooming... ♪
A lot of my songs are about animals.
But they're not only about animals.
♪ I'm broody, I want to lay ♪
I think it's funny to talk about the love life of animals.
♪ I'm broody, I want to lay... ♪
It's a much nicer way
to express really crude things going on.
♪ I'm broody, I want to lay... ♪
♪ Menopause is just three eggs away! ♪
(imitates chicken sound)
(laughs)
I am a middle-aged chicken!
♪ I better do this on my own ♪
♪ I'll just be a mom alone ♪
♪ I found some seed on Amazon ♪
♪ Next day delivery by drone ♪
♪ Bok! ♪
I never intended to become a musician.
I was becoming a graphic designer
and I was doing an internship in New York City
and I didn't know anybody there.
But then I had this accordion with me
and I knew a couple songs.
So in the evenings and the weekends,
I would go out and start busking in the streets.
It was just pure for fun.
(singing in French)
And then I moved to France.
I didn't speak French.
So, it may sound bold,
but it was just really naive basically.
And I was lucky.
I had a band.
And then we started touring.
I got an agent.
A booker.
I just had to open my emails and get on the train and play.
I was a little bit spoiled in France.
(audience clapping)
I met Louis in Edinburgh at the Fringe Festival.
We fell in love.
And I started playing music for the bubble show.
So, then we moved here in 2014.
It was a good place.
Lots of musicians and good community.
At the beginning of the pandemic,
we had planned six months in Europe with a hundred shows.
And there we were, April and nothing to do.
But you know what?
There was something like knowing
that everybody was in the same boat
and it was there's something so huge going on
and we couldn't do anything about it.
I...somehow I got really inspired by it.
And so...I started drawing.
I started making little videos
Being creative really helped me.
♪ Today is my day ♪
♪ I give my brain a hand and I put my thoughts far away ♪
♪ Today I open a new bag of human ♪
And first of all, frankly,
I did it just for myself for fun.
♪ Of all the places that I know ♪
But then people started sending me emails like,
"Hey, thank you so much."
"This is-- you're lightning up my days!"
Really?
That's cool.
It's just silly stuff that I put out there.
♪ One, two, three, four. ♪
But apparently,
silliness and stupidity can take the edge off life.
♪ Good morning, my new town ♪
I should have started making videos a long time ago
because that's the thing that goes so well
with music, right?
Now that I've started, they're not gonna stop me!
(laughs)