L'Inter Communal

Description

The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by François Tusques, an emblematic figure of French free jazz. Free Jazz was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded French musicians (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais) in 1965. But six years later, Tusques had had enough of free jazz. After wondering, with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), whether free jazz was not a dead end, Tusques founded the Inter Communal, an association that would allow the country’s different communities to come together and simply compose. If, in its early days, the group was made up of professional musicians from the jazz scene, it quickly turned toward seeking out talent within the thriving world of MPF (Musique Populaire Française). Made up of excerpts from concerts given between 1976 and 1978, L'Inter Communal is not the first album by the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra. But it is the one that most exuberantly illustrates the “social function” that then permeated free jazz and popular music. All the more so because, to carry out this project, the group (made up of the wind players Michel Marre, Jo Maka, Adolf Winkler and Jean Méreu) called on the Spanish singer Carlos Andreu. Andreu, Tusques claimed, was a griot “who created a new genre of improvised popular song over our music, inspired by current events.” L'Intercommunal kicks off the festivities: on “Blues pour Miguel Enriquez,” it is Thelonious Monk who is invoked in tribute to one of the emblematic figures of the Chilean revolution, a victim of Pinochet. If the circumstances are serious, the music is not. The musicians light a bonfire to bring France and Spain, the Americas and Africa onto the same frequency: “L'heure est à la lutte” is the new piece offered by the Intercommunal Free Dance Orchestra... As if we needed proof that their music is still as urgently relevant as ever!