Street Battles, Invented Tongues and Gigs in Mental Institutions: France's Forgotten Rock Revolution of 1968

This massive effect that the month of May 1968 had on the France's culture has become widely chronicled. The youth uprisings, which broke out at the Sorbonne prior to spreading around the country, hastened the end of the Gaullism government, politicised France's thinking, and spawned a tide of radical movies.

Far fewer recognized – outside France, at minimum – about how the radical ideas of 1968 revealed themselves in sound. One Down Under performer and reporter, for instance, was aware of not much about French non-mainstream music when he found a box of vintage vinyl, categorized "France's experimental rock" during a pre-pandemic journey to Paris. He was astonished.

Underneath the non-mainstream … Christian Vander of the band in 1968.

There existed Magma, the multi-personnel ensemble making music infused with a jazz legend groove and the symphonic pathos of the composer, all while vocalizing in an invented dialect known as the language. There was Gong, the synth-dabbed cosmic rock group created by the musician of Soft Machine. Red Noise included protest messages within compositions, and yet another band produced poppy arrangements with bursts of instruments and drums and flowing experiments. "I never encountered thrill similar after encountering Krautrock in late 1980s," recalls the writer. "This was a truly hidden, as opposed to simply alternative, culture."

This Australian-born artist, who achieved a amount of artistic success in the mid-1980s with indie band his previous band, absolutely developed passion with these groups, resulting in further trips, long conversations and now a publication.

Radical Foundations

His discovery was that France's artistic revolution came out of a discontent with an already globalised English-speaking norm: art of the fifties and 60s in western the continent often were uninspired carbon copies of American or UK artists, like French singers or Les Variations, France's answers to Presley or the British band. "They believed they had to vocalize in the language and sound like the band to be capable to produce sound," the journalist says.

Other aspects influenced the intensity of the period. Before 1968, the North African struggle and the France's authorities' harsh suppression of opposition had radicalized a youth. An emerging type of French rock performers were against what they regarded as oppressive surveillance apparatus and the Gaullist administration. They stood searching for fresh inspirations, without US mainstream material.

Musical Roots

They found it in African American jazz. Miles Davis was a frequent figure in Paris for decades in the 1950s and 60s, and members of Art Ensemble of Chicago had sought refuge in France from separation and cultural constraints in the United States. Further inspirations were Ornette Coleman and the musician, as in addition to the experimental fringes of music, from Frank Zappa's his band, the group and the progressive band, to the experimental artist. The minimalist approach of the composer and Terry Riley (the latter a Parisian resident in the sixties) was a further inspiration.

The musician at the Belgian festival in 1969.

One band, among the trailblazing experimental music groups of the French underground scene, was established by the siblings the Magal brothers, whose relatives took them to the renowned Blue Note jazz club on Rue d'Artois as young adults. In the end of 60s, between playing jazz in establishments including "The Sinful Cat" and journeying around the country, the Magal brothers encountered Klaus Blasquiz and the future Magma founder, who eventually establish Magma. A scene began to take shape.

Artistic Transformation

"Groups including Magma and the band had an immediate effect, encouraging additional individuals to establish their own ensembles," says the writer. Vander's ensemble developed an entire genre: a fusion of jazz fusion, orchestral rock and modern classical art they called the genre, a word meaning approximately "cosmic power" in their created language. It continues to attracts bands from across Europe and, most notably, the Asian nation.

Following this the urban confrontations, begun following youths at the Sorbonne's suburban campus resisted challenging a prohibition on integrated residential visits. Almost every band discussed in the volume participated in the uprisings. Several band members were creative individuals at the institution on the Parisian district, where the collective printed the now-famous May 68 artworks, with slogans such as La beauté est dans la rue ("Art is on the public spaces").

Youth leader Daniel Cohn Bendit addresses the Paris gathering subsequent to the evacuation of the Sorbonne in the month of May 1968.