Seychellois music teacher retires after 37-year career

Jerry Souris, 60, has been an instructor and recently administrator of the National Conservatoire where he has mentored and taught several generations of music students.

“As a teacher I have taught children as well as adults and some have become musicians,” Souris told the Seychelles News Agency.

“Michel Farabeau was one of my students who became an accomplished musician and a teacher at the school.”

The former instructor said that many years ago students who came to the School of Music – the former name of the National Conservatoire – learnt how to play wind instruments like the trumpet and saxophone.

“Nowadays students don’t like wind instruments. So we are trying to promote these instruments and we are finally getting some students to learn them,” he said. “This is a result of the way the media promotes musical instruments and how parents motivate their children.”

Souris was introduced to music in the early 1970s by an Englishman who had started a small music school. He then began to play the trombone and the double bass.

“I was already in employment but there was an opportunity for me to get a scholarship to study music, so I did,” Souris said.

He joined the School of Music in the country’s capital Victoria in the late 1970s. Souris went on to acquire a degree in music and teaching and while studying in France he played in various French orchestras. Upon his return along with three other graduates, he took up the task of reviving the school, which closed again in 1980.

Throughout his musical career Souris has directed the Seychelles National Brass band. The band performs mostly at national events such as the Annual Parade to celebrate the 115-island archipelago’s National Day.

However, most of his years of service have been at the School of Music where many Seychellois musicians were nurtured. Souris worked to promote the traditional music of Seychelles and also helped establish a traditional music band.

Terry Havelock, one of Souris’ students from 1999 to 2001, said: “Sir Jerry motivated us a lot to learn classical music. He was one of the teachers who helped me appreciate classical music. Before that I didn’t know composers such as Mozart and Beethoven.”

Havelock said he was now a teacher in a primary school and had 15 years of experience under his belt.

Souris said he would now focus more on his choir and part-time work with the conservatoire.

This article was first published by Seychelles News Agency