Street Clashes, Created Dialects and Performances in Psychiatric Institutions: French Forgotten Rock Revolution of 1968

The seismic shock that May 1968 exerted on the France's culture has been widely documented. The youth protests, which erupted at the university before spreading around the nation, quickened the conclusion of the Gaullism government, radicalised French philosophy, and spawned a surge of radical movies.

Much fewer understood – outside France, at bare minimum – about how the revolutionary concepts of 1968 expressed themselves in music. An Australian artist and reporter, for one, understood not much about France's alternative music when he discovered a crate of classic vinyl, labelled "France's prog-rock" on a pre-Covid journey to Paris. He felt impressed.

Beneath the alternative … Christian Vander of Magma in 1968.

There was Magma, the multi-personnel collective producing music imbued with a John Coltrane groove and the symphonic emotion of Carl "Carmina Burana" Orff, all while performing in an made-up tongue known as Kobaïan. There was Gong, the synth-dabbed experimental outfit established by Daevid Allen of the band. Red Noise embedded protest messages throughout tracks, and yet another band produced catchy arrangements with outbreaks of woodwinds and rhythm and flowing spontaneous creations. "I never experienced thrill comparable since discovering Krautrock in late 1980s," remembers Thompson. "It constituted a authentically underground, instead of merely alternative, movement."

The Brisbane-native musician, who experienced a degree of musical accomplishment in the eighties with independent group Full Fathom Five, completely fell in love with these artists, leading to additional travel, lengthy conversations and currently a volume.

Revolutionary Foundations

The revelation was that France's creative transformation came out of a frustration with an already international Anglo-American norm: sound of the 1950s and 60s in western Europe typically appeared as uninspired carbon copies of US or English artists, like Johnny Hallyday or other groups, French equivalents to Elvis or the Rolling Stones. "They believed they had to sing in English and sound similar to the Stones to be capable to produce music," Thompson says.

Further elements influenced the passion of the period. Before 1968, the North African struggle and the France's authorities' severe suppression of dissent had radicalized a cohort. Fresh artists of French music musicians were against what they regarded as oppressive surveillance structure and the Gaullist regime. They became seeking innovative influences, detached from American mainstream pulp.

Musical Roots

The answer came in US music. The legendary trumpeter became a frequent figure in the capital for a long time in the fifties and sixties, and musicians of Art Ensemble of Chicago had found sanctuary in France from discrimination and social constraints in the America. Further influences were Ornette Coleman and the musician, as along with the avant-garde margins of music, from Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention, Soft Machine and King Crimson, to Captain Beefheart. The pattern-based style of La Monte Young and Terry Riley (Riley a French capital denizen in the 1960s) was another inspiration.

The musician at the Amougies event in 1969.

One band, among the groundbreaking experimental rock groups of France's underground scene, was created by the siblings the Magal brothers, whose parents brought them to the renowned jazz club jazz club on the street as youths. In the late sixties, during performing music in bars including "The Sinful Cat" and going across the country, the musicians encountered Klaus Blasquiz and Christian Vander, who went on to create the band. A scene commenced take shape.

Artistic Innovation

"Artists like Magma and the band had an instant impact, motivating further people to form their individual bands," states the writer. The musician's ensemble developed an entire category: a hybrid of jazz fusion, classical rock and modern classical music they christened the genre, a term representing roughly "cosmic power" in their invented language. It continues to unites artists from across the continent and, particularly, the Asian nation.

Following this the urban battles, started after youths at the university's Nanterre annexe protested against a prohibition on integrated student housing access. Almost all artist mentioned in the volume took part in the protests. Some musicians were fine arts learners at the institution on the Left Bank, where the collective produced the legendary 1968 artworks, with messages such as La beauté est dans la rue ("Creativity is on the streets").

Youth spokesperson the figure addresses the French capital gathering after the evacuation of the university in the month of May 1968.