Le Chant du Monde
The song of the world...
When I was in Den Haag in 1991 for the North Sea Jazz Festival, I stopped at the Jazz Inn RecordShop and bought an album by Steve Lacy, who I had been reading about in The Wire magazine.
The album I bought was Points, recorded in February 1978 at a studio located at 162, rue du Faubourg St-Denis in Paris for the French label Le Chant du Monde:
The first song on the album is Duke Ellington’s The Mooche, dedicated to another soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, who lived in Paris from 1951 until he died in 1959:
Sidney Bechet recorded The Mooche in 1941. It was Bechet’s soprano saxophone on this song that inspired Lacy to take up the soprano, and it was Lacy’s soprano playing that inspired Coltrane in much the same way Bechet inspired him:
While we’re at it, in October 1928, Ellington recorded the first and perhaps best of four different versions of The Mooche:
In 1970, Lacy moved to Paris and became a widely respected figure on the European jazz scene. He remained in Paris until the last two years of his life. Points was not only my first Steve Lacy album, it was my first Le Chant du Monde album.
Over the years, I would find many more interesting and diverse albums in the Le Chant du Monde catalog, which ranges from field recordings, contemporary classical music, protest songs, and both straight ahead and free jazz. In all cases, the catalog’s music was aimed at the spirit of the people.
This week on that Big River called Jazz we dig our paddles in an explore the eclectic world of the French label Le Chant du Monde.
Le Chant du Monde was started in 1938 by Léon Moussinac, a writer, art and film critic, and film historian. Five years earlier, in 1932, he co-founded the Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires (AEAR), the French section of the International Union of Revolutionary Writers established in 1930 by the Comintern in the Soviet Union. As part of the French Communist Party (PCF), the goal of the association was to bring together the various currents concerned with revolutionary art and culture. Le Chant du Monde grew out of this association.
After the occupation of France in WWII, Philippe Petain arrested Moussinac for communist propaganda. After he was released he was forced into hiding in the south of France. While in exile, he eventually fought for the French Resistance.
After World War II, Moussinac’s label acquired les Éditions sociales internationales, the main publishing house of the PCF. As a result, they became the French editor for Russian composers Sergei Prokofiev, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Aram Khachaturian, and also the first producer of French composers Léo Ferré, Marcel Mouloudji, and a singer and songwriter named Colette Magny.
Colette Magny was a charismatic performer who did not record until her thirties. Her work encompassed blues, jazz, protest songs, experimental music, and spoken word recordings. In 1963, Le Chant du Monde released her first 10-inch album Frappe Ton Cœur :
Based on the strength of the album, Magny recored a full-length album with CBS. Her song J'ai suivi beaucoup de chemins gives us a feel for the appeal of her music at that time:
Above all, Magny sings about the little people and the great anger against her time. As a result, she was censored by the Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française (ORTF) and her records were scratched with a stylus. In defiance, in 1964 she broke her contract with CBS to join with Le Chant du Monde, whose close ties to the PCF made her feel more at home - a family far from the CBS bourgeois model.
Her third album, the experimental "Avec" Poème was released in 1966 on Disques Mouloudji, a progressive record label established by Algerian actor/singer Marcel Mouloudji. It contained both spoken and sung texts over electro-acoustic music and musique concrète by the Surrealist-influenced composer André Almuró. Disques Mouloudji also released François Tusques’ seminal Free Jazz in 1966.
You can read more about Tusques here:
In 1972, Magny and Tusques collaborated on the politically charged Répression for Le Chant du Monde:
The first side of the album features a nineteen-minute jazz “suite” entitled Oink Oink, consisting of a series of short pieces composed by Tusques over which Magny recites fragmentary statements culled from the speeches and writings of various leaders of the Black Panther Party. From the album, here’s Magny singing the suite’s fourth movement Libérez Les Prisionniers Politiques:
The year before Répression was released, Magny recorded Feu et Rythme, a nice collaboration with bass players Barre Phillips and Beb Guerin, who both appear on the above Libérez Les Prisionniers Politiques. From that earlier release, “listen” to the provocative à l'écoute:
In 1989, Magny released Kevork, her final album. It included a song in praise of the turkey, which once released from domestication can revert back to its wild state - a theme she could identify with. In later years, Magny suffered from health problems and a spinal disease that confined her to a bed or wheelchair. She died in 1997. She was 70 years old.
Le Chant du Monde also released two 45rpm series: the late 1970s “Chevance” series devoted to experimental songs by independent songwriters playing with French free jazz musicians; and the 1980s “Sonoriage” series devoted to raising sound awareness of teen audiences. The motto for the Sonoriage series was, “Introduction to today’s music based on special awareness to everyday sounds.”
An interesting disc from Sonoriage is Renaud Gagneux’s Musiques sur la Place:
The French contemporary music composer Renaud Gagneux studied with Stockhausen and Olivier Messiaen and in 1970 joined Pierre Mariétan’s Groupe d’Etude et de Realisation Musicale (GERM). You can read more about Pierre Mariétan here:
Gagneux also attended electro-acoustics classes directed by Pierre Schaeffer. You can read more about Pierre Schaeffer here:
What I find amazing about Musiques sur la Placeis is that through all of Gagneux’s success as a composer, he was also, as they say in France, the "owner" of the carillon of the Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois church in Paris - in other words, he played the church’s bells. which are heard on the record:
The bells are nicely integrated with street noises, people passing by, cars, and even sirens. Brilliant.
The breadth of Le Chant du Monde’s catalog is stunning. That’s why I find it such a compelling label. For example, in 1974 Le Chant du Monde released a killer album by French composer and musician Jean-François Quiévreux, better known as Jef Gilson.
After struggling to find commercial success in Europe, in 1968 Gilson moved to Madagascar. He returned to France in 1971 and in 1973 founded Palm Records, one of great independent jazz labels. Palm concentrated on free jazz that included recordings by many American musicians like Khan Jamal, Frank Lowe, Byard Lancaster, David Murray, and Butch Morris.
In 1974, Gilson teamed up with expatriate American saxophonist Hal Singer and recorded the consistently great Soul of Africa, released by Le Chant du Monde. From this killer album, this is Garvey’s Strut:
Here’s one more for the road. From Magny and Tusques’ Répression, I’ve always liked Chronique du nord (Chronicle of the North) and the wonderful bass work of Barre Phillips and Beb Guerin:
Chronique du nord, recorded in 1972, is a slice of the melancholy and tragic life of a family of miners from the North of France during post-war coal mining strikes. When Magny cries “Bou bou bou yé yé,” a disguised way of shouting “Long live the strike!”, she is echoing the cry of the wives of striking miners. That cry freakishly reminds me of "Ali Bomaye”, which in Lingala, a Bantu language of the Congo, means: “Ali, kill him!”. It was chanted by the Congolese (Zairian at the time) audience at The Rumble in the Jungle, a 1974 fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
The French miners’ strike is chronicled here by the BBC:
Magny’s Chronique du nord must have been France’s equivalent to Bob Dylan’s North Country Blues, released nearly a decade earlier:
I have always admired Le Chant du Monde’s diversity - that was its strength. Few record labels maintained the courage of their conviction while recording so many important historical and educational documents. They understood that music has a social and political function, and they stayed true to their mission: Bringing music to the people. In 1993, Le Chant du Monde merged with Harmonia Mundi, which was more focused on classical music. As a result, the spirit of Le Chant du Monde slowly faded away. However, it left behind an important and valuable legacy.
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig in our paddles to explore the world of the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
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thank you. great dive into this. been a fan of that Hal Singer & Jef Gilson record but didn't know much about the original label, got it on a reissue.
Absolutely fascinating read, thank you. I had no idea of the label's political stance. This article may be the impetus to investigate Magny whose music has always intimidated me a bit, not understanding French nearly well enough probably doesn't help. I have a great album by Kent Carter on the label, well recommended.