Street Battles, Created Tongues and Gigs in Psychiatric Hospitals: French Lost Rock Movement of 1968

The seismic effect that the month of May 1968 exerted on the French lifestyle has been broadly chronicled. These student uprisings, which started at the Sorbonne before expanding around the country, accelerated the conclusion of the Gaullism regime, politicised French thinking, and spawned a wave of avant-garde films.

Far less is known – beyond French borders, at bare minimum – about how the radical concepts of 1968 revealed themselves musically in music. An Down Under musician and reporter, for instance, understood not much about French non-mainstream scene when he discovered a crate of old vinyl, labelled "France's progressive rock" on a pre-pandemic journey to the French capital. He felt astonished.

Beneath the underground … the musician of Magma in 1968.

One could find Magma, the multi-personnel collective creating sound infused with a jazz legend groove and the musical pathos of the composer, all while singing in an invented tongue called Kobaïan. Additionally Gong, the synth-dabbed space-rock outfit co-founded by Daevid Allen of the band. Another group included anti-police phrases within tracks, and yet another band produced melodic arrangements with bursts of instruments and drums and continuous experiments. "I never encountered enthusiasm similar after encountering Krautrock in the end of the eighties," states the journalist. "This was a truly subterranean, instead of simply non-mainstream, culture."

The Brisbane-native artist, who achieved a measure of creative success in the 1980s with alternative ensemble Full Fathom Five, completely developed passion with such artists, resulting in more journeys, long conversations and presently a volume.

Transformative Foundations

His discovery was that the French musical revolution emerged from a discontent with an formerly worldwide anglophone establishment: sound of the fifties and sixties in western the continent tended to be bland replicas of Stateside or British groups, such as Johnny Hallyday or Les Variations, French equivalents to Presley or the Rolling Stones. "They thought they must vocalize in English and sound similar to the Stones to be able to create music," Thompson says.

Additional aspects played into the passion of the era. Before 1968, the Algerian conflict and the France's authorities' harsh stifling of protest had radicalized a generation. A new breed of France's rock artists were opposed to what they considered fascist police-state apparatus and the Gaullist administration. They stood looking for new influences, detached from US whitewashed pulp.

Musical Roots

They found it in US jazz. The legendary trumpeter became a regular presence in the city for years in the fifties and sixties, and members of Art Ensemble of Chicago had relocated in France from discrimination and social restrictions in the United States. Further influences were Ornette Coleman and the musician, as in addition to the avant-garde edges of rock, from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, Soft Machine and King Crimson, to the experimental artist. The pattern-based approach of La Monte Young and Terry Riley (Riley a French capital inhabitant in the 1960s) was an additional influence.

Frank Zappa at the Amougies event in 1969.

One band, among the pioneering psychedelic music groups of the French non-mainstream scene, was established by the siblings the Magal brothers, whose relatives brought them to the famous jazz club jazz club on the street as young adults. In the late 60s, during performing music in establishments including "The Sinful Cat" and going across India, the Magal brothers met Klaus Blasquiz and the future Magma founder, who went on to create Magma. A scene began to coalesce.

Artistic Revolution

"Groups including the group and the band had an instant effect, motivating further artists to create their personal ensembles," states the journalist. Vander's ensemble created an complete category: a combination of jazz fusion, classical music and neoclassical music they christened the genre, a expression representing roughly "celestial force" in their created language. It continues to draws together artists from across Europe and, particularly, the Asian nation.

Following this the urban battles, begun following youths at the Sorbonne's Nanterre branch rebelled challenging a prohibition on mixed-gender dormitory interaction. Almost each group referenced in the book participated in the demonstrations. Some musicians were creative individuals at the institution on the Parisian district, where the people's workshop printed the legendary 1968 posters, with phrases such as La beauté est dans la rue ("Beauty is on the streets").

Youth leader Daniel Cohn Bendit addresses the French capital audience after the clearing of the university in May 1968.