Mobilisation Generale - Protest And Spirit Jazz From France 1970-1976 auf 2 LPs
Mobilisation Generale - Protest And Spirit Jazz From France 1970-1976
Die gute alte Vinyl - Langspielplatte.
(soweit verfügbar beim Lieferanten)
Vinyl liefern wir innerhalb Deutschlands immer portofrei.
- Label:
- Born Bad
- Aufnahmejahr ca.:
- 1970-76
- Artikelnummer:
- 3717242
- UPC/EAN:
- 3521381527513
- Erscheinungstermin:
- 4.12.2013
Product Information
1968. France, Incorporated. The entire building was being consumed by flames and was slowly
collapsing. Nothing would survive. Out of the rubble of the old world jumped the children of Marx
and Coca-Cola, ripping the white and blue stripes off the French flag. Yet, the socialist revolution
was more mythic than real and music did nothing to mitigate people's behavior. It was time for
innovation. While singles from the Stones, Who, Kinks and MC5 provided an incendiary soundtrack
for the revolution, it was Black Americans who truly blew the world from its foundations in the 60s.
Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp left behind the jazz of
their fathers' generation, liberating the notes, trashing the structures, diving headfirst into furious
improvisations, inventing a new land without boundaries - neither spiritual nor political. Free jazz
endowed the saxophone with the power to destroy the established order. In 1969, the Art
Ensemble of Chicago arrived at the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier in Paris and a new fuse was lit.
Their multi-instrumentalism made use of a varied multiplicity of "little instruments" (including bicycle
bells, wind chimes, steel drums, vibraphone and djembe: they left no stone unturned), which they
employed according to their inspirations. The group's stage appearance shocked as well. They wore
boubous (traditional African robes) and war paint to venerate the power of their free, hypnotic
music, directly linked to their African roots. They were predestined to meet up with the Saravah
record label (founded in 1965 by Pierre Barouh), already at the vanguard of as-yet unnamed world
music. Brigitte Fontaine's album Comme à la radio, recorded in 1970 after a series of concerts at
the Théâtre du Vieux Colombier, substantiated the union of this heiress to the poetic and politically
committed chanson française (Magny, Ferré, Barbara) with the Art Ensemble of Chicago's voodoo
jazz and the Arab tradition perpetuated by her companion Areski Belkacem. A UFO had landed on
the turntables of French teens, who were discovering underground culture via publications like
Actuel, Libération, Charlie Hebdo, Rock & Folk and a vigorous free press. It was a generation ready
for any and all combats: alongside farmers on the Larzac plateau and the Lip factory workers;
fighting the Creys-Malville nuclear plant, the Vietnam War, the death penalty, discrimination against
women, gays and immigrants. For 20 year olds in the early 1970s, making music was a political act;
they grabbed a microphone to advance a cause, not to become rock stars. While the price of oil
skyrocketed and Pompidou went overboard building horrible concrete apartment buildings for
public housing and "adapting the city for the automobile," some took refuge in the countryside.
Alternative communities formed all across France, giving rise to groups (or rather, collectives) with
open-minded structures, cheerfully mixing music, theatrical happenings and agitprop, along with a
good dose of acid. Projects bordering on the ridiculous were often tolerated (progressive rock was
one of the primary banalities the era produced), while those who followed the route paved by
spiritual jazz often ended up elsewhere. The vehemence (if not grandiloquence) of their declarations
was carried and transcended by the finesse and brilliance of their musicianship. For the "straight"
France of Claude François, it was something from another world. Simultaneously spatial, pastoral
and tribal, the tracks in this collection represent an ideal intersection between a sort of psychedelic
legacy, the space jazz of Sun Ra and Afro Beat (then being created by Fela in Lagos): they are as
much incantations (often driven by the spoken word), war cries or poems as they are polemics.
1978. Giscard was at the helm. Punk and disco were busily decapitating the last remaining hippies.
Peoples' blood was still boiling, but it was already too late. The war was over, lost without anyone
noticing. Nevertheless, people still tilted at windmills or talked tough in dead-end struggles; a dream
is not so far from a nightmare. We knew that an enchanted era had ended, the hope for a brighter
future was now behind us and that we would leave behind nothing for our children but a few
records. Indeed, ghosts may still crackle from our speakers, as the 45 spins and Brigitte Fontaine
asks Areski: "Hé mais je pense à un truc, on ne va pas mourir dans une minute ?" (Hey, I was just
thinking, aren't we going to die in a minute?)
-
Tracklisting
LP
-
1 Alfred Panou & Art Ensemble Of Chicago : Je Suis Un Sauvage
-
2 Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem : C'est Normal
-
3 Atarpop 73 & Le Collectif Le Temps Des Cerises : Attention... L'Armée
-
4 RK Nagati : De L'Orient A L'Orion
-
5 Frédéric Rufin & Raphaël Lecomte : Les Eléphants
-
6 François Tusques : Nous Allons Vous Conter... (Intercommunal Blues)
LP
-
1 Mahjun : Nous Ouvrirons Les Casernes
-
2 Full Moon Ensemble : Samba Miaou
-
3 Baroque Jazz Trio : Orientasie
-
4 Michel Roques : Le Cri
-
5 Chêne Noir : Hey
-
6 Beatrice Arnac : Athée Ou A Te
