MUSIQUE NON ECRITE - FOLK -
NON WRITTEN MUSIC
Expression Spontanée, 1976, ES 35
The man behind this album is Gérard Dôle who was one of the pioners of the French folk revival. He was one of the first French musicians to go to Louisiana and meet some of the big names of Cajun music such as the Balfa Brothers. Dôle has been playing Cajun music on the melodeon for decades. At the time of the release of this album he had already produced three Cajun albums in France.
This album is a kind of manifesto; the title ''musique non écrite'' was an expression to name something that was not classical music. He says on the back cover that these three words had the power to get on professors' nerves in conservatories who coudln't understand how one could play without reading a score of music. This is still now the position of some of them. By calling popular music ''non written music'' was to bring French trad and other musical expressions onto the side of ethnic musics from Africa and elsewhere and out of the normal creation process through classical teaching.
For Dôle the main point in the revival was to tell people to pick up whatever instrument and try and do something with it the way they want.
Here we have some of the other pioneers of the French revival like Michel Hindenoch, Patrick Lemercier or Michel Legoubé. The majority of the tracks was recorded by Dôle in his flat in the center of Paris between 1975 and 1976. Two tracks were recorded live including Dewey and Rodney Balfa; one was recorded in Louisiana and another one in the street with a blind accordion player. Tunes and songs from Vendée, Lyonnais, Poitou or Morvan are part of the album along with some Cajun repertoire by French revivalists and Cajun singers.
The label Expression Spontanée (literally spontaneous expression) was a left-wing friendly label founded by Jean Bériac in 1968
No comments:
Post a Comment