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 a dead end, Tusques founded the Inter Communal, an association that would allow the country's different communities to come together and compose, simply. If, in its early days, the structure was made up of professional musicians from the jazz scene, it quickly turned to seeking talent within the teeming world of MPF (Musique Populaire Française). Composed 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 illustrates with the most exuberance the "social function" that then permeated free jazz and popular music. Especially since, to carry out this project, the group (made up of wind instrumentalists 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 popular song improvised on our music, inspired by current events." L'Intercommunal kicks off the festivities: on "Blues pour Miguel Enriquez," Thelonious Monk is invoked in homage 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 together France and Spain, the Americas and Africa on the same frequency: "L'heure est à la lutte" is the new piece proposed by the Intercommunal Free Dance Orchestra... As if one needed proof that their music is still burning with relevance!